My head drops back, an exhausted, self-deprecating smile tugging across my face.
“What is humorous?” my brother asks, and there is the slightest twinge of annoyance in his voice.
How far has the corruption of wild magic taken him? Five years wallowing in it. Is there any part of who he really is left?
I will not speak to him. I have nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn’t destroy me, and I cannot be destroyed, not now.
But—
Liesel.
She isn’t here.
Do I dare show that desire? Do I let him see that he still has that piece to play against me?
My eyes find his lazily, and I can feel the tears gathering, all sensations dulled by how impossible this situation still is.
My brother killed our coven. He burned our mother.
Because of me.
Because I helped him.
Because I didn’t know what he’d become.
“Where is she?” I whisper. “What have you done with Liesel?”
His face doesn’t change, not really. But something in his eyes, an emptiness in the pale blue depths, makes my chest buck with renewed panic.
I’d become distracted with preparations for the prison escape. I’d smothered my fear for Liesel under action, blissful, ignorant action, but now, I see a hundred possibilities play across my brother’s face.
He could have done anything to her.
He’d spent his years in Birresborn studying healing—how to reknit wounds, how to soothe aches. But he’d always been more interested in thecause, hadn’t he? Asking Mama how much blood a person could lose before they died. Wondering which organs were necessary, which could be removed. Questions that had seemed a part of his studies at the time, but are now so horrifying my stomach fills with lead.
I know—I know—he has Liesel alive. And suddenly, that is the worst possible outcome for her.
Dieter steps back with a renewed grin, all teeth. I teeter after him, one hand going to my chest, trying to smash my heart back together, but I’m falling, falling—
“Well done,” he says again. His cruel smile slides to Otto. “You have earned the honor coming to you tomorrow.”
Honor? But I can’t breathe, each gasp too short, my stomach cramping, lungs burning.
Otto bows his head to Dieter. He looks at me, and he risks both of our lives in the way he lets his eyes soften, pleading.
I feel the memory of his arms around me.
The rush and swirl of his inhale beneath my ear, a fortifying breath as he held me in the house fort.
I manage a choked breath. In, steady, out. Another.
“Your sister, sir?” Otto asks. When he looks back at Dieter, his face is hardened again.
My brother beams. “Indeed. Did you think yourself the only hexenjäger cursed with a traitorous family?” Dieter slaps a hand on Otto’s shoulder in camaraderie, but I see Otto’s lip curl, just a flash. “Your sister will similarly be brought to justice, Kapitän, once we find her. And have no fear—wewillfind her.” Dieter glances at me, and I know those words were meant to spike fear into my heart. He knows Liesel’s skills. “For now, we rejoice in our great diocese being soon purged of yet another witch.”
“Praise God,” Otto intones, but it’s hollow.
“Praise God, indeed,” Dieter says, and it sounds even more fake, a mockery, and I wonder how he has led them all to believe that he follows this doctrine, that he has given himself over to the Catholic god.
