“The trees of the Black Forest awoke at her call! They rushed to our aid! Branches snapped in the morning mist—splinters flew—”
“Liesel.” I try hard not to laugh her name. “I think that’s quite enough for now.”
Her shoulders sag. “I haven’t finished.”
“We have enough information,” Philomena says to her blank sheet of parchment.
She has been trying to get the exact details of our journey for weeks, for the council’s posterity. Cornelia has kept her delayed with insistence that we needed to rest and heal, which were far too true. I had merely intended to just never recite any sort of tale to her, but Liesel had been the one to insist.
I lower back down into the chair, the scars pulling at my chest, my thigh, my stomach.
Philomena only asked once for details of what happened after Dieter magically ripped me out of the Well, what he did to me when he had me chained up in a room in Baden-Baden, what spells he might have used.
The look I gave her was enough to shut her up.
I was barely able to tell Otto. The thought of repeating what Dieter did to me, and having that account written down, made a record—
Absently, I scratch at the brand Dieter left on my sternum. My headache pierces, pain a lightning bolt behind my eyes, and when I snap them shut, briefly, I see—a tree. The Tree, the Origin Tree, the guardian of our magic—
I shake my head, and the image fades. Or maybe it was never there—the light from the windows flares against the veins in my eyelids like branching arms.
Cornelia shoves to her feet. “If we are quite finished?” She doesn’t wait for their response; she locks her fingers around my arm and hauls me up, but my gut stays in the chair, a sudden, intense jerk of nerves.
Philomena sets her quill down with a huff.
Rochus manages to look up with a rather sincere smile. “Yes, of course.”
Cornelia bows her head. “We will have proper council meetings after she’s bonded.”
Philomena shoves away from the table wordlessly, lips pursed. Rochus’s face goes tight.
For being the leaders of the Well, the sanctuary ordained by the triple goddesses as a haven for witches, they are remarkably bad at hiding their true feelings. Each flash of disdain for me is carved across their faces.
“Yes,” Rochus says stiffly. “We look forward to our council bearing Holda’s champion.”
As though summoned, Holda makes a low hum in my head.He will show my champion proper respect, she tells me, as though I will snap at him to swear fealty to me.
I shrug away her concern, an annoying itch at the back of my mind, and I think that might be the cause of my headache. Her presence comes and goes, and even after months of it, I haven’t gotten used to having a goddess not only in my head, but also invested in my life.
“And her warrior,” I add.
They will not downplay or warp Otto’s contributions to this. Liesel may have, but that’s their relationship; she barely tolerates him, he dotes on her, and she goes away with armfuls of sweets and toys and whateverelse he’s able to scrounge up for her. It’s a brilliant system she has, honestly. I don’t think he’s yet figured out that she truly does worship him.
But as for the council…
Cornelia has accepted Otto, of course. She was the one I did not have to sway, the one who eagerly accepted my role as a goddess-blessed champion and Otto’s role as my protector, both of us harbingers of change.
Rochus and Philomena, however, still act as though it will all go away, and they will return to a normal secluded life of being secreted away in the deep dark of the Black Forest, without the troubles of violent hexenjägers and meddlesome girls from beyond their borders.
Dieter’s defeat has made them complacent. Instead of seeing his threat as a need to act to prevent more dangers from others like him from forming, they believe we are safe from any dangers now.
Rochus’s jaw tenses. “And her warrior.”
Cornelia tugs my arm, and I reluctantly peel away from the table. Liesel has gathered her notes and meets us at the door, her bright eyes snagging on mine.
“Was I good?” she asks, breathless. It is only now that her nerves show, the anxiety I’d thought she had blossoming to the front.
Cornelia leads us out into the pale morning, the sun gleaming down on the little deck that juts off the council meeting room. All around and down below, the Well spreads out, a tangle of bridges and ladders and stairs, cottages nestled in branches and buildings formed to flow with the bends of trunks. The trees are just beginning to think of budding, small bundles of coming greenery clinging to the tips of branches, giving the faintest promise of spring against the gray and brown of winter’s palette.
