I flick my wrists, calling forth the blades hidden in my cuffs.
I may not be a true hexenjäger, but I dressed for the part.
“Daggers? Against a sword?” Bertram mocks, steadying his stance and relaxing his shoulders. The fool thinks I intend to cross blades.
But I don’t hesitate.
I throw a dagger straight into his neck.
Blood bubbles up his throat, over his open mouth, staining his teeth red. He drops his sword, his hands going to the wound. Even as he pulls the dagger out, his fingers tremble, droplets of red trickling between his knuckles as a spray of blood pulses, falling short of reaching me. He has only the strength to hold the weapon weakly in his hands before it clatters to the floor, and he falls to his knees. His back sinks against the wall as his limp hands open, palms up on either side, as if he were a supplicant in prayer. His head falls forward, hiding the wound, but nothing can hide the blood.
I turn to Fritzi, who’s on the steps, waiting for me. “It’s safe,” I say.
She mounts the last steps and enters the corridor, gasping when she sees the body, the blood.
“That was so…quick,” she mutters, shaken.
“Never hesitate,” I say. “The first part of our combat training.” I remembered the lesson, even if Bertram had not.
Still, before I step away, I say a prayer. Not for my soul, but his.
I motion for Fritzi to follow me, and I ignore the way one of my boots sticks against the stone corridor, leaving behind a bloody print.
When I reach the kommandant’s office, I kick the door in.
“Where is she?” Fritzi asks, eyes darting around the room.
I cross the chamber in two strides. For once, I am glad I know Dieter well enough to know where he stores the key. I grab it and unlock the tiny closet, straining my body weight against the stone door. Fritzi chokes out a sob when she realizes what my movement means—that her beloved cousin is inside.
The door scrapes open, stone grinding on stone, and the limp body of the child falls onto the floor.
“Liesel!” Fritzi cries, dropping to her knees.
“She’s not dead,” I say immediately, noting the flicker of the girl’s eyelids now that she’s been exposed to light again.
Fritzi brushes her cousin’s dirty hair from her face, her touch as gentle as a mother’s. “Liesel,” she whispers, her voice soft.
The girl blinks several times, as if slowly coming out of a trance. Her eyes settle first on Fritzi, and her entire body sags in relief. Then her gaze shifts to me.
She screams, eyes wide in horror, the sound cracking and choking in her throat. She has screamed so often within the stone chamber that her voice is barely audible now, but her horror at seeing me is just as real.
“Shh, shh,” Fritzi says, her own voice tight with emotion. “He’s not one of them, he’s on our side.”
I rip my black hexenjäger cloak off and let it flutter to the floor; I would rather freeze in the winter cold than wear it a moment longer. Liesel’s red-rimmed eyes are still a mixture of disgust and horror and fear, but she turns to press her face into her cousin’s shoulder, clinging to her and hiding from me.
It does not matter what my subterfuge was used for; there is blood on my hands and fear in her heart, and I will never be more than a man in a hexenjäger cloak, even when I grind it under my heel.
25
FRITZI
Dieter kept her in a closet.
I glance back into it, the stench emanating from it sour and vile.
Liesel shivers against me.
She cannot create fire from nothing, but even so, she usually runs hot, and I would beg her to sleep at my cottage during the winter so the bed would be cozy—but she’sshiveringnow, and that rocks me into biting clarity.
