Fritzi comes over, shivering. “Oh,” she says, looking down at the carving in my hand. “The dog you made for Liesel.”
“Dog?” I gape at her. “It’s not a dog!”
“Pig?” she guesses.
“It’s ahorse!” I say. “A noble steed!”
Fritzi snorts. “Trot it back into your bag to find some soap and let’s get some of that mud off you.”
I tuck the little carving back into my pack and then finally find the soap. I’m far dirtier than her, even with the mud bath she and Aloisapparently had. I pull off my tunic as I kneel before Fritzi, and she washes my dirt-encrusted hair for me, chills going down my spine with every pull of fresh water from the dark well. With soap streaming over me, I almost don’t hear her when she speaks.
“It’s because she loves you.”
I look up, risking the soap bubbles in my eyes.
“Liesel,” Fritzi says. She blinks rapidly. “It’s because she loves you. She hates admitting it, because everyone she loves has been killed. But she loves you. And she wants—needs—you to come back.”
Fritzi dumps more water on my head, clearing up the suds and not giving me a chance to answer her. I stand, grabbing her hands before she can busy herself with the task of helping me clean again.
“Liesel knows that what we’re doing now…must be done,” I say, looking in her eyes even as she tries to avoid my gaze.
“I know.”
“And Liesel knows that you’ll do anything to protect me, and I’ll do anything to protect you.”
“I know.” Her voice is so small.
“And Liesel knows if anything happened—”
“I won’t let anything happen to you!” she says, now almost shouting.
“—ifanything happened, it wouldn’t be your fault.”
A tear falls down her cheek, so silent and small that I almost don’t notice it.
“I…” She starts. Stops. Swallows. Tries again. “I saw the earth take you. And I tried, I tried, Otto, I tried to call up my magic and—”
“And I’d already bled you dry.”
She shakes her head furiously. “You did what you had to!”
“We need practice. We need balance, so that we can both fight, together, not with one taking everything from the other.”
“If only I could give you a little pocket of magic, all your own.” She snorts bitterly, regretting a desire for the impossible. Her face falls, lips pressed tight. Then she adds, “I panicked. I didn’t think, I didn’ttry,Otto, I just…Ifelt.”
I wait, unsure of what she means.
Fritzi looks up at me. “I felt sheer terror at losing you, and all I wanted was to rip the world apart and claim you again. And I happened to have the air stone in my hand when I felt that way.That’swhat tore the earth apart, that’s what worked. What saved you. The stone. Not me.”
I shake my head. “The stone is just a stone. It lay in that barrow for how many centuries, nothing more than a rock.Yousaved me.”
“But—”
I press my lips against hers, silencing the doubt on her tongue, wishing I could silence the doubt in her heart.
When we pull away, I can see that old guilt weighing on Fritzi, tugging her shoulders, her soul, down. She let Dieter back into her village, and even though it was him, not her, who slaughtered nearly everyone in her coven, she blames herself. Even though I came to this mission willingly, if anything happens to me, she will blame herself.
Every choice she’s made has been to survive.
