The Baron pushed himself up, bleeding. His face twisted in fury. “You can save her if you help me. You can command the demon to restore her.”
“You are a liar. There is no truth in you. You are the son of lies,” I said, and I broke open the lantern and reached inside for the eternal flame.
I had not made the curse on these stones, but I had fed it. I was his pig. His woman or child to enhance the spell. The glyphs on my thighs, the symbols he’d painted on my belly, the cup, the blood, thealtar. He’d only ever seen me for a vessel to be emptied and used to bring forth. I was responsible for undoing it. The task was clear. I must break his spell and lift this curse.
I took out the flame, the fire that could not be expunged, and carefully I held it to the Baron’s wretched book. He screamed for me to stop and managed to pull himself up and lunge at me, trying to save his precious tome.
But it was too late. He clutched the burning book to himself, trying to smother the flames, but the flames would not go out. I stood too long, watching in numbness as the fire spread quickly, eagerly, up his arms and engulfing his shoulders, and still he did not seem to know to run. He screamed his last breaths for power, for demons, and to curse me. And then the fire poured down his throat and his curses were cut off in a thick choke.
The chapel was silent, but for the crackling flame. I stood, in shock. In some way I had still underestimated his humanity, his fragility. That he could die so easily and sostupidly.
The fire spread, fueled by magic, across the altar to the pews, and I was jolted from my stupor.Dacia.If we did not run now, we would be swallowed in this inferno. Just when I thought to despair, Schneid appeared, all aflame, eyeing me with chastisement, as if I’d missed an appointed meeting.
“I’m coming!” I said to him. I transformed again and hoisted her over my shoulders as the fire eagerly engulfed the broken cross. Even the spirits drew back in terror as they watched. As fast as I could, I dragged Dacia out the chapel doors and commanded them to follow. Schneid led the way.
We went out through the ruined house, the inferno building past the holes in the roof, the mouse nests, the leaf litter, the broken and blackened stones, finally to my little garden. That, at least, had not been an illusion. I dropped Dacia into my plants, tinged with the burn of frost and purple with death. Falling to my knees beside her, I began to weep.
He had taken her. He had taken her because of my love for her. To hurt me. Because he could. In some way, it felt as if I were responsible for this. Not in some way, I corrected myself.I was. I might have also been his victim, but I was still responsible. Through my tears, I picked the last of my vervain, my thyme, my wolfsbane. Everything I had grown I had grown for this moment—only I hadn’t known until now.
I burnt some, covering Dacia’s body with a soft smoke, and pounded the others on rocks into a mash of wet green that I applied to every wound I could find.
The fire devoured the roof and I heard the crack of timbers and stone. I would have to move her soon. Thick waves of smoke filled the valley, making it hard to breathe, and the sun sank lower, the air turned blue and heavy. The forest watched, dark and silent.
Dacia stirred, the herbs doing their work. Finally, we could wait no longer—the smoke was too strong and the heat radiated through the stones, even here in the garden. Soon the fire would reach this side of the château and engulf it all.
“I have to finish it,” I said, gathering all my strength and lifting her into my arms. “I have to break the curse of this place.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “I will never be parted from you again.”
“I will come back,” I assured her. I kissed her bloodied forehead tenderly and carried her through my stone gate, into the forest, just deep enough that the bower of the trees closed over us. I saw her fear and I assured her. “They are friends. You will be safe, I promise. Just wait for me.”
She sank into the curve of an enormous root, and it felt as if the tree molded around her, cradling her. Her hands reached for me, trembling, I clutched them. Kissed her fingers. And then grimly turned to the spirits that had been following us since we left.
They filled the forest with an eerie glow, huddled together. I realized as I led them into the trees, trees that were quiet in witness, that it was not a curse—to see what others could not. It was my work, myattention. The offering that I had for the mystery that opened inside me. I could not have saved them. But my attention and care now could set them free.
I longed to find that spring again and wash myself clean under the sharp scent of spruce and the moon. I longed to crawl in bed beside Dacia and simply watch her breathe. But I had much more ahead of me before I could rest.
I led them through the forest, into Perchta’s grove under a full moon.
I thought I might say words, or a blessing, or something profound. But in the end, I simply felt the cool wind of the stirring forest graze my body, and looked into each of their faces as they must have been in life—women, girls, who were more than their deaths, more than their broken spirits. They were laughter and pleasure and joy. Girls like Rochelle. Odette. Women like Dacia. Witches like me. I looked at them and called for Hecate.
She appeared in the same terrifying form—facing the forest, facing me, facing the spirits. The wind swept cold and strange, and I was filled with an exquisite terror I now understood was what you felt in the presence of a true god.
All I had ever felt in the presence of men was a fear of domination. This was the fear of dominion, of being so small and the abyss being so massive, and suddenly understanding how much more there was in the world and in time—and how little of it I could understand.
But I took heart that she had appeared, that she waited now, patient and stern, at the border of the grove. I bowed my head to her in respect and then turned to the spirits, blessing each one and leading them across the sacred grove to her.
She took each into her embrace, said something only the spirit could hear, and then each spirit’s anchor to the world was dissolved. Gently, peacefully, they lifted their arms to the moon, to the stars, and were freed into the great dust beyond. When the last one disappearedinto the stars, I looked back to Hecate, and she too was gone. I stood alone.
It was true dark now, but the moon was bright. I picked my way through the forest back to the château.
It was an inferno.
I stood past the hawthorns to watch it burn, arms crossed over myself. It was not the vindication I’d wanted—I’d wanted to be proved righteous, to be recognized as powerful, to have everything restored. I wanted to be able to point to this cursed place and say I am not mad, look at your villain. I wanted to be redeemed in the sight of the village and be able to return. With the Baron’s death and the destruction of this place, those things would never happen. I would always be a witch, a monster, at best a madwoman. While I knew his end was fitting, it felt like a meal from my childhood at the convent—several bites short of satisfying.
Anger and grief mixed tightly in my throat. A spire collapsed in a roar and a rush of sparks, and I thought of all those books and scrolls, all the magical knowledge lost. I thought of how gentle the Baron had sometimes been. I remembered how I’d felt alive with his stories and our discussions. Those memories lived alongside my disgust—alongside the unbearable revulsion of his true nature. I hoped, for the first time, that there was a hell so that he might continue to burn in it.
“Salomé,” I heard behind me, faintly. It was a voice so far away and so familiar. “Sister.”
