Page 54 of Night of the Witch
“What if your magic doesn’t let you out?” he asks, and I can hear the hope in his voice—that I might have to stay here while he goes to the market alone.
“Then I’ll rip your house down to its foundation,” I spit, and I shove past him.
The magic does let me climb out, thank the Three, when I go slowly and don’t try to hurl myself into untold danger. The kapitän points out the safe footholds—a few boards and crates are broken—and I wait on the street as he locks the door and climbs down behind me. It gives me a moment to get my bearings—not that I’d knowwherein Trier I am—and I turn in a slow circle, surveying the neighborhood.
It’s abandoned.
Mostly.
The buildings are all quiet and dilapidated, held together by old boards or tattered sheets. There’s a…feelingthat I can’t quite place, like this neighborhood is cloaked in some sort of protection spell.
Only it isn’t a spell at all. It’s grief, I realize with a jolt. This street, these buildings—whatever happened here left a stain of sadness in every stone and plank.
It knocks on the grief in my own heart. Like calling to like.
Aunt Catrin would have been able to communicate with whatever spirits are here. Birresborn felt like this before I left—like the dead were pressing up against the veil between our worlds, unable to move on just yet.
The kapitän starts walking, and I follow. “What happened here?”
He glances down at me. “It’s the Judengasse.”
The realization punches me in the gut. It’s been decades since that edict. I’d forgotten, and my body washes with disgust—at myself for forgetting, and the hexenjäger for being so cavalier about it. A whole people wereforced out of this city.
The Church leaves a trail of displaced souls in its wake.
“I don’t understand how anyone can believe in your church,” I whisper. “The corruption is so obvious, it’s blinding.”
The kapitän cringes. “Normalcy has a way of breeding acceptance—when darkness is all people know, they forget to ask for the light.”
“This isn’t seductive darkness though. How can people—”
“Seductive darkness?”
His question makes my words snap off. I hadn’t meant to say that. Not…like that.
I swallow, eyeing him, gauging how much he might press for clarification. “Your church speaks of the lure of the Devil. There is nolureinthis kind of evil.” I wave at the Judengasse. “I can’t imagine seeing this kind of treatment andchoosingto step into a church.”
His jaw flexes. “This is the Church’s doing, as you said,” he whispers, “not my God’s. And people recognize that. I have to believe so, anyway.”
I shiver, folding my arms tight. The rage that wells up when he speaks of his faith is equal parts disgusting and…familiar.
I remember someone who had unwavering faith in the Three.
Someone who believed our magic had no end.
Someone they disappointed.
“You can’t separate your god from the evils committed in his name.” It comes out harsher than I intended. It’s thisplace. This neighborhood. The evil that lingers from the cruelty of the atrocities that happened here.
There are faces peeking out of some of these windows. People hiding in these abandoned structures. People driven to desperation by the hexenjägers.
Two faces in a house just behind us are easiest to see. The rest duck down quickly when I look at them, but these two stay. Staring. Watching.
They’re children. Maybe seven, eight years old. I can see the dirt smudged on their faces even from here.
Fury rages up my throat, making me liable to scream at the hexenjäger, lay this blame on him, force him to see what’s happening in his own city.
But I think he already does.
