‘See? We did it.’
The words were as much to comfort me as her.
But it was true. The fire burned on below us, but now in the empty stone chamber of the great hall it had nothing to feed on but the staircase it had already destroyed. Smoke rolled across the ceiling in a dense black cloud, and filled the corridor. I half carried the Witch to my room that was well away from the smoke and left her on my bed, all the windows thrown wide open.
I patrolled the castle but there was no other sign of fire. From the kitchens, I fetched a fresh jug of water, and salve and bandages for our burns. But the Witch stilled my hands, took the dressings from me and pulled my arm towards her, where a line of shiny puckered skin showed my closest brush with injury.
‘You could have stayed in Blumwald,’ she said. ‘When you went to see your father, I didn’t know if you would come back. You could have left with Frieda or taken her side.’ She smoothed a layer of honey salve along my skin, fingers gentle and precise, then looked at me from under her lashes, cautious, unsure. Hopeful. ‘But you didn’t.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
The air between us was too thin, I felt every prickle of her gaze on me, I could feel the warmth of her body, the beat of her heart like it was mine.
‘You would choose to stay?’ she asked, a tremor in her voice. ‘For me?’
I wet my lips, dry and cracked from the immense heat of the fire. Her eyes were not the solid black I had thought them, I saw specks of amber and grey, and a delicate filigree of lines around them.
I thought I had never loved anything more.
‘Yes,’ I said, without hesitation. ‘I choose you.’
XIII
When dawn came, I slipped away quietly, thinking of Wolf and breakfast. I wanted to tell her what had happened before she came across the destruction in the great hall, and perhaps discuss Frieda, and whether we should send anyone after her.
I was too late.
Wrapped in my dressing gown, I found Wolf in the hall beside the charred remains of the staircase. She looked at something among the ashes.
Frowning, I joined her.
Then there, amongst the fallen beams, was Frieda.
There was no question that she was dead.
Falling debris had pinned her leg before she could run, and a patina of burned skin and cloth ran up the exposed front of her body. One arm was flung over her face for protection, the skin melted like wax, making a claw of her hand.
Horror rushed through me and before I understood what was happening I was doubled over, emptying the contents of my stomach onto the floor.
This could not be.
I cast my mind through the night before. Frieda at the foot of the stairs, bearing the flaming torch that had set the fire – and then, nothing. I had no memory of her after that. Had she stood there hypnotised by the effect wrought by her own hand? Or had she wanted to witness us in our death throes? I could not understand it. Never for a moment had I considered she could still be within the castle.
Whatever reason she’d had, when we cut down the stairs, she had been caught in the wreckage.
Wolf watched me with no sympathy. I wiped my mouth and straightened up, shaking.
Worse, among my guilt and shame, was a glimmer of relief. I was sorry to see her dead but I was not sorry to see the problem of Frieda over.
What a cold thought. The longer I stayed here, the more like the Witch I became.
‘What happened here?’ asked Wolf.
Haltingly, I explained.
‘Wolf. Would you –’
‘I will take care of it.’
