Page 132 of Night of the Witch
There is silence. Heavy with guilt.I am so sorry, Fritzi—
“Oh, no, no, no, Fritzi! I told you—stay awake.” Dieter turns away, toward the fireplace. “We have things to do. More now that youhave chosen the harder path. Don’t make me regret keeping you all to myself.”
He crouches by the fireplace, his back to me, and I use this moment to look up at the manacles. They’re locked tight, my hands white with strain, and I’m not hanging close enough to anything to try to kick at a weapon or break free.
Sweat beads along my skin, trickles down my spine, cold and hot all at once.
“My hexenjägers know it was you and the kapitän who made fools of them,” Dieter says casually. He twists something in the fireplace and sparks rear up. “They’d love nothing more than to exact revenge on you, my pretty sister. Oh, how they cheered when I told them you’d been captured!” He laughs, something high and grating. “They do not realize the twenty Baden-Baden citizens I had them burn are the reason you werecaptured, but then again, they have not realized the truth in any of this.”
He burned twenty people to get to me.
Betrayal gnaws in my gut, but I can’t wallow in it now. I have to act. I have so little on my side; I can’t afford to alienate Holda.
He didn’t need to burn anyone, I say to her.Did he? Wild magic doesn’t need sacrifices or evil to use it. That’s what you wanted him to see, what you want me to see.
One of the things, yes, she says.Please, Fritzi. You still can say the spell. You’re talking to me, aren’t you? Please. I cannot help you more than this. With wild magic, you will not need to adhere to the rules of the Well. You can fight back.
Metal clanks from the fireplace, and I go rigid, hating the weak whimper that slips out of my throat, the only noise I can make.
Dieter stands. “If I was at all certain that my men would not kill you in their drive for vengeance, you would be at their mercy right now.Morale and all—humans are so much easier to manipulate when they are high on bloodlust! So remember that, meine Schwester.” He turns that beaming grin at me over his shoulder. “Baden-Baden is positivelycrawlingwith hexenjägers. And this time, there are no aqueducts to sneak through, no honorable kapitäns to save you. I doubt very much you will be able to seduce any of my men now—I promised that they would get to hear you scream and shortly see you burn, and they aremanicfor it.”
He faces me and lifts the object in his hands.
I thrash against the manacles, tears leaking down my face, pathetic garbled moans cracking from my throat.
I need to say the spell to sever myself from the Well. I need wild magic.
But my mind is blank with terror as he closes the space between us and cups my cheek around the horrific gag, shushing my sobs, all the while holding a long iron bar out to the side.
At the top of it, glowing orange from the heat, is a brand. One I’ve seen before, singed into the chests of witches.
He twists it, bending it through the air like it isn’t scalding hot and dangerous, and I see the letterD,the size of his palm, the iron thick in artful curls.
Dfordämon.
The letter that he branded Mama with.
He follows my gaze to it and back. “The bonding potion would have let me access your power far more easily—but, well, you did sayno.But this! See, this is one of the things I’d hoped you’d come to realize. Sigils are not somethingholy, something the goddesses designed for us. Wegivethem their power. Sigils can be anything, anything at all, that wechooseto give power to. And this sigil? This one makes you mine.”
His?
It rocks through me. How could I have been shortsighted, so quick to believe he’d do something for the church instead of himself?
NotDfordemon.
ForDieter.
Forhim.
He’s been swinging the brand the whole time. Swinging it, swinging it, each pass of the metal through the air making it flare from orange to red to yellow—
Without warning, he straightens the brand and shoves it against my stomach, straight over the thin bodice of my gown.
Pain is an explosion behind my eyelids, a brilliant, searing burst of lightning and ignition. The expanse of it is too inconceivable to be felt immediately, and it isn’t until he rips the brand away, tearing singed flesh, that I scream.
That noise is garbled, mutilated by the tongue gag, a shrill, careening wail.
“Shush now, Fritzichen. Mama didn’t cry when she got her mark.”
