She slams the hatch door shut. I hear the chain lock, hear the rug drag over it.
“Wolf and fox and strength of bone,” Mama says above me, the words muffled. “Help me here keep safe this home. Protect and care, shield and cover, lend your might for this desperate mother.”
“Mama!”My screams will be useless. Her protection spell means that even if someone was standing right on top of the door, they wouldn’t be able to hear me. If they knew the cellar was there before, they would forget it as long as the spell lasts.
The strength of my mother’s protection magic is renowned, but that doesn’t stop me from tearing up the ladder and thundering my fists on the door.
Though the sounds I make are deadened, I can hear what is happening outside—the shouts of fighting still echo throughout our little village.
Tears stream down my face, but I viciously ignore them. I do not get to cry. I have toact.
Still on the ladder, I whirl to face the front corner of the cellar. The window—Mama and I installed it to help ventilate when our food molded last year. It’s blocked by crates and barrels now, but it should be big enough that I can crawl through—
The door to our cottage bangs open, and my whole body seizes. I know it is not Mama leaving—her footsteps patter overhead, a hurried whirl of reaction as she turns on the intruder.
I go rigid on the ladder, every muscle in my body attuned to listening, heart stunted, breath held. I don’t even dare pray.
“Kommandant Kirch,” Mama says, her tone utterly emotionless.
A shout tries to escape. I press my palm to my mouth and gulp it down.
“Did you think you could hide from this battle?” the kommandant asks.
“I am not hiding,” says Mama without hesitation. “I was waiting for you.”
There is a long moment of silence between them. I can imagine the way they stare each other down—my mother, every bit of her bearing saying that she is the most powerful witch for leagues; and Kommandant Jäger Dieter Kirch, barely two years my senior, emitting the bold, irrepressible spirit that made one so young the head of the hexenjägers.
The prize she will make him. The praise that will be heaped upon him. He’s rounded up a whole coven, the last in the area, and killing my mother means killing an elder. A powerful one.
My terror subsides into fury, breath coming in tight pants against the tears still streaking down my face.
He will nottouchher.
But when he says, “Take her,” I cry out again.
I slam my shoulder into the door, but it won’t lift, and no one aboveis even aware that I’m here. Except for Mama, and I know she won’t look down as hexenjägers stomp into our cottage for her.
Irons clank. But there is no fight or resistance; she goes willingly.
She knows we have lost.
She knows Birresborn is fallen.
Her arrest is swift—they’ll take her to the main city, to Trier, where a mock trial will be held before they tie her to a stake.
All her protection spells. All her wards. Years of watching our neighboring covens get whittled away or flee to safety until here we are, the last of the covens in this corner of the Holy Roman Empire, finally taken out, finally decimated.
Many of our elders pushed to leave in recent months. The hexenjäger threat was too powerful, and we were growing weaker and weaker.
“We should go to the Black Forest,” my aunt Catrin said a week ago; she was getting bolder in her defiance of my mother. “The forest folk of the Well will take us in.”
“And transport the dozens of people of our coven across hundreds of miles?” Mama replied, trying to be calm in their meeting with the other elders. “How far do you think we would get with the hexenjägers on our doorstep already? They would pursue us into the very heart of our magic. We cannot risk it. Besides, the hexenjäger threat is our responsibility.”
“Maid, Mother, and Crone.” Aunt Catrin sighed, her face going slack. “Our only other option is to die here, then? To wait for the jägers to break through our defenses?”
“No,” Mama promised. “No. We will find a way to reach them. We will find a way to end this.”
We will find a way to end this.
