9 Otto

9

Otto

That night, in the privacy of our room, I wake up, and she's gone.

Panic and adrenaline shoot through my veins, and I bolt upright. My shoulders coil with tension.

We're safe here , I tell myself. Safe.

We are in the coven of the Well, with Brigitta and the guards patrolling, and Fritzi is a powerful goddess-chosen witch.

Dieter got her in the Well once before.

But Dieter's dead. Or as good as.

We never got confirmation from Johann. The Grenzwache we sent to Trier have not yet returned.

My eyes dart around the room. I note that Fritzi's cloak is gone, her slippers too. And the candleholder.

She's just stepped out. She didn't want to wake me.

I tell myself these things because I want to believe them. I don't want to think about the chance that she had another nightmare and simply doesn't want me around as she deals with it.

I don't want to think about the concern that lingered in her eyes after the bonding ceremony, as if she worried she made a mistake.

Minutes trickle by. More time. It's dark and late, and too much time has passed for her just to be relieving herself, but—

She's done this before. That night when she went to the council room.

Let's keep this our little secret.

I stand, pause. She's fine. I know she's fine. There's no danger here.

But I grab my dagger and slip it into my belt.

I head straight toward the council room. It's unlocked, the door cracked. I step inside, moving slowly.

There are some things—witch things—that I know I don't have the power to help Fritzi with. And while Cornelia is trusted, the others are not. There are politics at play that are beyond my comprehension, but I do know that I'm on Fritzi's side. I'm always on Fritzi's side. And so if I can do no more than hold her candle, I'll do that.

Which she knows.

And she knows I can hold her secrets.

Why did you not wake me, Fritzi?

I try to be silent as I head to the council room. I can keep her secrets. But the wrongness of this all twists my gut. Something claws at the back of my mind. A warning, an instinct that experience has taught me never to ignore.

I haven't felt this way since Trier.

There are no enemies here , I tell myself, but I drop my cloak, feel for the dagger.

I go to the library Fritzi went to before. I never talked to her about it.

Let's keep this our little secret.

But my stomach tightens. I should have talked to her about it. In private, I should have asked. Pressed her for information, or at least some sort of confirmation. I let all the ceremonies distract me from what really mattered: her.

The library door is closed but not locked. I turn the handle silently. Step inside.

A figure hunches over the desk, back to me, illuminated only by flickering candles and moonlight. I know instantly it's Fritzi. Her cloak, her hair, her body.

But…

I pad forward silently.

My hand does not leave the dagger hilt.

Books have been tossed about the room, and I step over them carefully, winding around the minefield of literature. Fritzi wouldn't treat books so mercilessly.

She's muttering, her voice low, frantic. Her body moves spasmodically, like…

Like a puppet on a string.

My blood turns to ice.

"Fritzi," I say, my voice flat. The same tone I would use for a rabid dog.

Her body stiffens.

The low laugh that emits from her lips stutters, jarringly unnatural.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

She stands, throwing back the chair so violently that it flies at me. I swat it away, and it hits a shelf and knocks over more books. Fritzi whirls around, her head lolling a fraction behind the rest of her body. Her hair dangles in front of her face, stringy. Her skin is sallow, slicked with sweat.

"Otto," she says in a singsong voice. "Hello, Otto."

She takes a step closer.

My hand grips the dagger.

"Fritzi?" I ask. Tentative. Hopeful.

Her head tilts, and she makes a clucking sound with her tongue. "No-o," she teases. "No, Fritzi's not here right now, mein kapit?n."

Her gaze flicks to the blade I hold, and that's when I notice that her eyes are entirely black, no color, no white, just empty, hollow black.

My body washes over with cold, the ghost of all the terror of the last years rising up and strangling my very soul.

"Hello, Dieter," I say, my voice cracking. Shock roots me to the floor.

Fritzi's giggle is high-pitched and manic, and she cuts it off quickly, as if the erratic sound had burst from a whistling kettle that had been whipped away from the stove. "Ot-to, Ot-to," she says, padding forward a single step with each syllable of my name. "Ot- toe ." That giggle again.

"Let her go," I demand.

Fritzi's body stops. Her head swivels from the left to the right side, eyes on me, hair falling over her face. "Cut me out of her," Dieter snarls fiercely in her voice. A sharp snort. "Oh, but you can't , can you, Kapit?n?"

One more step closer.

I fumble back, nearly slipping on a book, the spine breaking under my bare foot.

Fritzi's lips twitch in a smile that doesn't quite take hold.

"What if I told you, Otto, friend , what if I told you that if you kill her now, if you slide that pretty little dagger through her breast, it would kill me too? What if I told you that I am at my most vulnerable now, sharing a body with my beloved sister, that my life, in this moment, is tied with hers?" His speech is quicker now, so rushed that the words flow together. Fritzi's eyes widen, her lips widen, as if the words are boiling out of her, overflowing. "What if you knew that this, this , now, this was the only way to kill me? You tried before. You tried with that poison. It didn't kill me, Otto. It didn't stop me, Kapit?n. But right now, right now, RIGHT NOW" —Dieter screams the words, specks of spittle flying at me—" right now if you kill her, you'd kill me too. So do it, do it , you verdammt coward, you traitor; stab her heart and kill us both, if you can."

He—she—they are so close that I can feel the heat of Fritzi's breath, can smell the sweet lebkuchen she ate, one last cookie before going to bed. I shove her body away, and Dieter makes Fritzi skitter back, dancing over broken books and cold stone.

"You can't do it!" Dieter cackles. "You could stop it all now; you could end me, but you won't!"

He's right. I won't.

I can't.

I can't kill her even if it would kill him.

I can't even hurt her.

Because even if Dieter is possessing her, it's Fritzi's body. The only one she has. She'll come back to it when he leaves—I pray—but…

Dieter twists Fritzi's head around, black eyes wide, lips stretching into a toothy grin. Without breaking eye contact, he backs up to the desk he had been focused on.

He flicks the candle, toppling it.

An old book alights immediately, flaring high. The orange flames lick up, making the shadows deeper.

Dieter giggles in Fritzi's voice. "Let's keep this our little secret."

Bile rises in my throat. It had been him all along. That night—she had acted so strangely because she had not been herself. Literally. What had she told me? She'd had a nightmare. She hadn't meant she had a nightmare before she left for the library; she meant that the whole time Dieter possessed her and sent her body to the library had seemed like a nightmare to her. She didn't know it had happened.

And I, verdammt fool that I am, did not see the threat even when it kissed me on the lips and whispered for my silence.

"Oh, you're figuring it out!" Dieter crows through Fritzi. "My sister and I, we're connected . Not even your little bonding potion can break that."

"Why are you doing this?" I shout, panic blinding me.

"I let you play with my toy long enough."

"Get out of her body!"

"No," he says simply, and he tosses Fritzi onto the flames of the table.

Ashy bits of paper and vivid orange sparks fly up as Fritzi's back hits the burning books, her hair splaying around the flames.

I stare, frozen with horror. There's no reaction as the fire licks her skin, singes her hair. There's no reaction—

The smell.

She's burning.

An animal, guttural roar rips out of me, and I throw myself at Fritzi, at the table, grabbing her blistering hands and pulling her away from it.

She laughs. It's his laugh. " The irony!" he cackles. "The first witch you ever actually burned, and it's Fritzi! Because make no mistake." All merriment fades in an instant, Fritzi's face falling flat, black eyes narrowed. "This is your fault, traitor. She burns because of you. When you see her scars, know that you gave them to her. The longer you fight, the longer you live, the more pain I will twist through her."

My grip on her goes slack with horror, and as soon as Dieter's words die on her tongue, her lips split open in a huge manic smile. Despite her glee, her hands form into fists, squeezing tight around the burnt skin and slamming into me. I stagger back, and she strikes again, landing a blow to my back with both her fists that sends me stumbling forward. I whirl around, and she jabs stiffened fingers toward my eye, her fingernails clawing down my cheek when I dodge. I scoot away, hitting the wall.

Fritzi throws a punch at my head, and I duck. But Dieter doesn't make Fritzi's body pull back—he lets her fist slam into the stone so hard I wince, blood streaking out of her knuckles. He cannot feel her pain, but she will when she wakes up. Did she break her hand?

Her knee goes up, hitting my stomach, and with an oof , I bend over double.

Something hard and sharp jabs my back, but the tunic I'm wearing came from Brigitta and was woven magically to be like armor. Dieter, in Fritzi's body, realizes quickly that the attack didn't work, and the blade moves up, stabbing me in the neck. I jerk back, the blade tip sliding behind my clavicle before I wrench free. No major artery was hit, but hot blood spurts up from my wound.

I stand and straighten, positioning myself at an angle so I'm no longer trapped at the wall. My dagger is in her hand, the tip now pressed to her chin. A shining bead of red slides down the blade.

"Which will hurt worse," Dieter asks in Fritzi's voice, "you dying at your lover's hand, or you watching as I carve her pretty face?" The tip of the dagger drags over Fritzi's jawline, leaving a thin red cut.

I cannot fight with a weapon. And he'll kill her in front of me if I try. I shake my head, the futility of it all leaving me breathless.

This is a battle that is being waged with magic, and the only way to defeat Dieter is with magic.

Magic I do not have.

What I need is Fritzi . She would know what to do; she would know how to fight. She would have spells and potions and…

And she's the one possessed. I could run, raise an alarm, call witches to aid me, but every second that ticks by is another second the love of my life is trapped inside her own body with her torturer.

"Otto, mein kapit?n," Dieter croons. The words lisp as he drags the blade gently from Fritzi's Cupid's bow, over her lips, and down her chin. Blood streaks a crimson red, slicking her pale skin. "Pfennig for your thoughts."

Magic is the only thing keeping Fritzi standing right now, I think. Her body is ravaged—charred skin on her arms and back, blisters over her hands, blood pouring down her face. My heart thuds. I don't have magic of my own. I can neither heal her nor stop Dieter's abuse.

But etched into my chest is a tattoo that links me to Fritzi's magic.

And…

I raise my head, knowing inherently what I need to do. I cannot use magic to fight for her; I don't know how.

But she does.

And we're bound.

Which means…could I? Could I use our connection to pull Dieter's dark soul into me, and then she could use her magic to banish him?

"Come kiss me, lover!" Dieter says with Fritzi's bloody lips, red spraying out and splattering her teeth, her tattered robe, the floor in front of her. The wound he gave me is nothing compared to what he inflicts on her. Dieter dances, Fritzi's body moving jerkily like a puppet on fraying strings. I think he's trying to mimic the dances from the bonfire night— was he watching through her eyes even then? —but it's macabre, eerie in its wrongness.

I close my eyes.

I listen to my heartbeat.

This spot , she'd said. This spot on your chest. It's mine.

My hand covers that spot. It's where the tree tattoo is, I realize.

It's hers.

And I can feel…something—a magical pull, a connection , just like the one I felt when we first bonded.

My heart to hers.

It's a rope that binds us. It's a light that illuminates.

It's a bridge .

I look with my mind's eye down the golden connection between us, and I can see a darkness like smoke burning off Fritzi's body. I snort.

"Why are you laughing, Ernst?" Dieter says in her voice. "Is it funny ?" He stretches her cut lips with his fingers, widening the split, ripping the already severed flesh.

I sober. I was amused because the hold he has on her—and I can see it now—is not that strong. He doesn't have a very good grasp of his magic. No—of her magic.

But it was enough to search this library for something , I realize. Enough to hurt Fritzi.

I lunge forward—not with my body, but my soul.

And my soul grabs his.

Fritzi crumples to the ground.

I feel his soul, slick like oil, wrestling with me, frantic, manic, stronger than I had given him credit for. He pulls away from my grasp, struggling to get back to her, to torture her.

But I hold . His soul squirms away, and I pull him closer. Closer.

Fine , his voice says, the word slinking into me like a snake slithering through my head. I'll just take you instead.

He quits fighting me.

His soul slams into my body, the blackness overwhelming. I feel my soul shriveling up, cowering, my conscious thoughts receding into a tiny part of my mind, a part that has no control. How did I think his magic weak moments ago? It was only weak compared to her. Against me? Overpowering.

He lifts my hand. I want to fight it, but I have no control over my own body. My fingers do not tremble as he forms a fist. Gone are the jerky movements, the hesitant puppetlike nature of his possession.

He has full control.

You're even more pathetic than her , Dieter says inside my mind.

Images flit through my head. My fingers digging out my own eyes. My teeth biting off my own tongue. My dagger slicing out my own heart.

He's weighing his options gleefully.

And then he settles on a choice.

My hands around her throat, squeezing until she dies.