Page 98 of Night of the Witch
“For what?”
My finger glides down, from the edge of Otto’s hairline to the apex between his dark brows, and his eyelids flutter shut. He moans softly in his throat.
Schiesse.
“What?” he asks.
Oh, the Three save me, I said that out loud.
I swallow and gather more of the potion on my finger. “For…for everything you’ve done for us. I know you give Liesel your share of the food. I know you’d work yourself to near death to keep us safe—and that’s why I fight you, and will keep fighting you, because I won’t have that be your end. Dying for us. I’ll keep you safe as much as you’re keepingussafe, whether you like it or not.”
His face breaks into a wide smile, eyes still closed. “I have the suddenimage of how it’d be to face your brother again. Both of us yelling at the other to run so we can take the danger.”
“Andyouwould be the one to run, because he’s my brother, and it’s my responsibility.”
“No. You would run. He’s my kommandant. The responsibility is mine.”
“He’s a witch. You’re not. You’d run, and I would face him.”
“Fritzi—”
“Shush now. Hold still.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. You keep”—Distracting me—“distracting me.” Schiesse, I really meant to say something else.
Otto frowns, and it creases his forehead, his eyes slitting open to look at me. He doesn’t say anything, though, just keeps his eyes on mine as I draw the oval, the branching limbs of the sigil.
“I was trying to give you a compliment though. To let you know I’m grateful for what you’re doing for us.” It comes out as a whisper. “You’re…exceptional, Otto Ernst.”
“Exceptional?” he asks, arching an eyebrow at me.
“Well, acceptable, at the very least.”
I try to laugh it off, but his eyes stay on mine, and I fight with every remaining shred of my pride not to look into them; then he speaks, and his voice sounds hoarse, roughened with restraint.
“You make it easy.”
I slip the remaining potion into the pocket on my belt and lean forward to blow the sigil dry, and something about his posture changes as my breath rolls across his skin. Something in his shoulders, maybe, the tension there. But I watch the sheen of the sigil fade into his forehead, and I hold over him, lips parted, lingering so close that I can smellthe beer he drank, hoppy and light, can feel the shuddering pulse of his exhale on my collarbone.
All of my insides quake, great building tremors that will shatter me inside out, and I start to sway, only catching myself by grabbing his shoulder, which just pulls me closer to him.
My lips brush his forehead. The dried sigil.
I go impossibly still.
His hands clutch onto my hips, all my senses drawn to the intimacy in those points of contact—my lips on his forehead, his fingers gripping my skirt, my hand on his shoulder.
The pause stretches, widens until it’s as vast and deep as the Forest, and I can’t take it anymore.
I whimper into him, the past days pummeling me, all my building desperation to be right here, to have him beneath my lips like this.
His fingers on my hips turn bruising, and his arms shake with a barely capped effort. “Friederike,” he rumbles into the disappearing air between us. “There are about a thousand things racing through my mind. You need to tell me what’s in your head. Now.”
That demanding tone.
That consuming presence.
