Without hesitation, I raise the bottle to my lips and sip. I pull it back, eyes wide in shock. “This isn’t just any beer,” I say. “This is my sister’s beer!”
“Beer is beer,” Liesel says.
I shake my head furiously and take another swig. There’s no doubt about it. Hilde used her mother’s recipe, and even if the regulations on beer stated not to add extra ingredients, Hilde always added nutmeg to the brewing process, just as my stepmother taught her.
“This is Hilde’s,” I say again, wonder in my voice.
Fritzi and Liesel start discussing what this could mean. But as I drain the bottle, relishing in the taste of home, my eyes drift over the trees. This castle is ruins now, but it had been built in a highly strategic part of the province, a hill that overlooked not just the Black Forest, but also the town of Baden-Baden below, and—
Something’s wrong. The peaceful, snowy landscape is dotted by jet black, cloaks winding up the road.
“Fritzi,” I say, and the tone of my voice makes the girls stop talking immediately.
I point over the side of the broken wall.
An entire regiment of hexenjägers march up the hill toward us. It’s impossible for us to see all the way into the city of Baden-Baden from this angle, but no doubt there’s chaos on the streets. Has he possessed someone else? Is he coaxing the guards of Baden-Baden to work with him by using some magical influence to bend their wills to his? It doesn’t matter. What army of man could survive when facing a witch like Kommandant Dieter Kirch?
“We have to run,” I say, barely able to process the shift from feeling safe to knowing we’re not. “Now!”
31
FRITZI
This castle sits high on a gray granite outcropping that sticks out over the Black Forest. That is where my eyes go; not to the hexenjäger contingent approaching, but to the trees. I realize that this is my first time seeing them in daylight, and I would be shocked at the remnants of greenery still clinging to their branches if I had room to feel anything more than terror and drive. Impossibly green, densely dark trees ripple off into the distance, taller and taller until the horizon takes them, and I arch out over the wall of the courtyard to survey the drop. We’d break our necks trying to climb down into the Forest from here.
“We have to get down the road before they make it too far up,” Otto guesses the same plan forming in my mind. “There are more of them; they’ll move slower. We can—”
“Get to that first curve of the road,” I finish. “It leveled off just outside the castle’s old gate. It looked like it accessed the Forest last night, didn’t it? It was so dark—”
Otto is racing into the main room to gather our rations, still spreadout from last night’s sad mimicry of a Yule celebration. I follow, dropping to my knees to frantically stuff our other belongings back into the sacks.
“Yes—I know where you’re talking about. Make for that. And we’ll run off the path as soon as we’re able. They’ll be hard pressed to chase us on horses through the trees.”
“And then we—” I stop cold when I see Liesel, still standing out in the courtyard, arms around her chest, eyes on the distant road, the black cloaks that move in and out of view through the winter-bare trees.
“Liesel.” My voice pinches. I’m failing terribly at restraining my fear, and I can feel it creeping up through me, rising and rising like water lapping at a crumbling shore.
Last night feels so very far away. Krapfen and Yule offerings and—and Otto, who meets my eyes where I kneel on the floor, and I can see the same tug of regret in him, that our joy was so brief.
It may have been brief, but we will get more. We will get more.
“We’ll get to the Well,” I tell him. “We’re so close.”
“Yes.” Liesel rushes back in, hands in fists at her sides. She stops in the center of the room, her eyes downcast for one beat, before she scrubs her face and pins me with a look. “Stay close to me.Bothof you—especially you, hexenjäger. They won’t take kindly to you trying to get in on your own.”
We’ll get to the Well. We have to. We’ve come this far—surely the forest folk will sense at least Liesel, the one blessed by a goddess personally. Surely they’ll reach out to protect her. Maybe even Otto too. Why else would they have left a beer for him? His sister is there, with them. She’ll fight to help him.
Otto slings the bag with our rations over his back. He tries to take the bag I have, but I shove him off as I stand and loop it over my shoulders, relishing in his lightning fast look ofOh, really?
Liesel takes my hand. “Let’s go.”
There’s a determined set to her eyes, wise beyond her years, that strikes me dumb, and so I can only nod and let her drag me out of the castle, Otto on our heels.
The morning’s frost and ice mingle with the castle path’s uneven stones, either side of the road shielded by high walls that protect against steep drops down the rocky cliffside. The three of us sprint with all our might to break free of the castle grounds, risking the slip and unsteadiness of the ice in favor of desperate motion, the air fogging with our gasping breaths.
We follow the curving path, the crumbling walls, until, finally, the road widens and flattens out. There’s still a drop into the jagged rocks on one side, but the wall falls away on the left, showing a border of trees so thick I wonder how we’ll push into them at all. It isn’t just trunks and branches and errant frozen leaves—it’s an aura that pulses from the Forest itself, a darkness hiding in between these silent watchers that at once beckons and warns against.
“Here,” Otto calls and is the first to duck off the path, angling for the trees—
