Interlude Dieter

Interlude

Dieter

Ha! Safe.

No, my sister.

Nothing is further from the truth.

As if a charm could protect you from me.

I watch her draw closer. I should be flattered, really.

My little sister needs a whole brigade with her just to face me. Does she think that will be enough to kill me?

She will fail.

How delightful that she is delivering herself to me, though! The anticipation! Such fun. A little game for us to play until she offers me her magic on a platter.

I shall suck that magic from the marrow of her bones.

And then I will use it to break the walls that hold all magic back. I will burn their precious Tree, and the magic of the world will flood into me.

They have tried for so long to hide so much from me. All of them. All of them liars. Everyone lies. Everyone lies. The only thing real is power.

My mother told me when I was young that she loved me, no matter what. But then I realized there were conditions to her love, just as there were conditions to wield magic.

"I will always love you, my only son," she whispered to me just before she banished me from the coven. "But I cannot allow you to put your sister in danger." It was so obvious she cared more about Fritzi than me. My sister and I are special. I knew Fritzi was powerful even before the goddess chose her. Had my mother truly loved me, she would have let me drain Fritzi oh so long ago.

Holda lied to me, too, when I was a child. She regaled me with the delights of wild magic, and told me the limitations were not real, but when I dared to believe her, when I had the audacity to truly believe the rules of magic were nothing more than false restraints, when I tried to test those rules she claimed not to care about…

She quit speaking to me. A goddess can lie as well as a man, better even. It didn't take me long to realize the stories she whispered in my head were only half-truths. Because if I was a witch with wild magic, how much more powerful could I be if I were a god with the powers she tried to pretend she could not share with me?

Holda whispers to my sister now.

Good little obedient Fritzi. Trusting little sister.

Who could have possibly guessed that Fritzi would lie to me the most, would nearly kill me and strip me— me! —of my power.

Now, the only lies my sister tells are to herself.

That she is loved.

That she matters.

That she is safe.

Safe . How amusing the thought.

Nothing fun is safe.