Night of the Witch

Book 1: Witch and Hunter

by Sara Raasch, Beth Revis

Genres: YA Historical Fiction; YA Romance

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling authors Sara Raasch and Beth Revis weave a tale of romance, vengeance, and magic in this start to the Witch and Hunter duology, an epic enemies to lovers fantasy romance.

Fritzi is a witch. The lone survivor of a brutal attack on her coven, she's determined to find her only remaining family member and bring the hexenjägers—zealot witch hunters—to justice for the lives they ended. To do this, she will need to take down their leader, the merciless and enigmatic Kommandant Dieter Kirch.

Otto is a hexenjäger—but that's just his cover. Years ago, the hexenjägers burned his innocent mother alive, and he has been plotting his revenge against the people who tore apart his family ever since. And now the time has come for them to pay for what they've done.

When Fritzi and Otto are unexpectedly thrown together, neither is sure they can trust the other. The reluctant truce fueled by their common enemy takes them from the city at the heart of the hexenjägers' power to the wild and mysterious Black Forest. As old truths come to light and new dangers are revealed, Fritzi and Otto uncover a horrifying magical plot at the center of the hexenjäger attacks that leads back to Kommandant Kirch . . . but their own growing feelings for each other may be the most powerful magic of all.

Praise for Night of the Witch:

"Set against the backdrop of the Medieval German Witch Trials, Raasch and Revis weave a fantasy and heart-pounding tale full of history, love, witchcraft, and war that will have you gripping your book, waiting for the next shocking twist." — #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout 

"Night of the Witch is an irresistibly compelling page-turner, distinguished by vivid descriptions, a fascinating magic system, and crackling chemistry between the two leads. Best of all? When I finished reading, I wanted more. Bring on the next book!" — Claire Legrand, New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn

"A breathtaking adventure from beginning to end. Full of wild magic, stunning twists, and a romance that burns on the page,Night of the Witch is an addictive read that will leave readers desperate for more." — Rachel Griffin, New York Times bestselling author of The Nature of Witches and Bring Me Your Midnight

"Raasch and Revis have brewed a brilliant novel that combines history and fantasy in the best of ways. Be prepared to stay up late reading this one. If it isn't the action keeping you on the edge of your seat, then it'll be the sizzling romance." — Tricia Levenseller, New York Times bestselling author of Blade of Secrets

 

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Release date: October 3, 2023

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Print pages: 416

Sample

1FRITZI

DECEMBER, 1591

My mother’s eyes are fire embodied, smoldering with such fury that I feel their heat on my skin. That fire burns straight to my core, spearing me, as I stand helplessly in our little kitchen, arms splayed, empty potion vials clutched in my fists.

“Go, Friederike,” she tells me, a growl of command. “Get in the cellar.”

The shouts of battle outside haven’t waned. How long has the fight lasted? And still, each cry of attack is as jarring as a crack of thunder, surging alertness into my veins, a building stockpile of wake up and danger and go.

Mama tells me that again. “Go, now.”

I only came in here to restock my supplies and regroup. Our coven needs help—

“Mama, you cannot ask me to hide. You cannot.”

She throws a glance through our warped front window. A protection talisman hangs against our single pane of fogged glass, ash tree twigs knotted into a triangle, limbs strung with rosemary bundles still fresh and floral-sweet.

A lot of good that talisman has done.

A lot of good any of our protection spells have done.

I grab for the herbs spread on our kitchen table. Birchbark for protection, fennel seed in a cedar box for defense; what will work, what will be enough? I brought everything that we had out of the cellar, all our last remaining herbs, but I turn back to the open hatch helplessly, like something else will appear, some great solution I’m too panicked to see.

“Mama,” I try again. I am faltering, my voice is too high, my movements too unsteady. When I reach for the herbs again, the cedar box tips, spilling dozens of tender fragrant fennel seeds across the wood. “Let me make more potions. I can do it quickly. Let me try—”

The wrinkles around her usually smiling mouth tug down. She smooths back her unruly blond curls, identical to mine, hoping to wipe away some of her uncappable sorrow. I have seen that look before; it is branded on my soul, and I know, a flash of realization, what’s changed in the last few seconds.

This battle teetered on the edge of hope before it even began. We always knew the witch hunters would come for us, so we had defenses, strategies planned, but success relied too heavily on luck.

And every ounce of luck turned its back on us from the start.

Whatever my mother saw outside has told her: We can’t win. We won’t.

I pull the empty vials to my chest. “We’re still standing. We have to keep fighting!”

Mama surges forward to cup my cheek in her palm. She smells of sweat and gunpowder.

Outside, screams. From my family. From hexenjägers, the vile witch hunters. Spells explode and rifles pop.

“Mein Schatz,” Mama whispers, her thumb soft on my face. “I don’t need you to be brave now. I need you to listen.”

I shove the potion vials into the leather pouches hanging from my belt and grab her wrists. “Mama, please—I need to tell you—”

She presses a kiss to my forehead. “I love you, Friederike.”

Then she pushes me. Hard.

I stumble back, stunned, and trip on the open hatch door.

It’s my fault, that’s what I was going to say. The battle outside, the witch hunters being here, is my fault. You cannot save me from it—

I fall, hands tearing on the rough wood ladder, knees banging against the wall until I drop with a jaw-clacking thud on the dirt floor of our cellar.

Pain pierces through my body, bright and shattering, as I look up at the hatch and see Mama gazing down on me, backlit so there is only darkness where her face should be.

“Wait!” I cry. “No—”

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 to act.

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 not touch her.

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 above is 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.

Our responsibility.

My stomach spasms with that responsibility, toxic and consuming as I scramble down the ladder.

We cannot give up.

I cannot give up.

I tear down the stacks of crates and barrels in front of the window, our stores of food dumping at my feet, beets and radishes and rolling potatoes.

“Maid, Mother, Crone,” I pray out loud as I heave the last barrel away. But I don’t know what I’m even praying for. Salvation? Strength? Comfort? Everything, I need everything, and no prayer is sufficient.

I leave a single crate to use as a stepladder and leap up onto it. The window is barely the size and width of my head—will I be able to crawl through? Did Mama’s spell extend to this exit?

We didn’t waste money on glass for this window, just a series of iron bars shoved into the dirt. A better witch would stop and form a spell to break the bars, but I’m not my cousin, skilled with controlling lit flames; I’m not even my mother, who can call animals as easily as she breathes. What do I use? Herbs. Useless, stupid herbs, and how will they help me now? I have none left, anyway—we had pulled the last of our herbs up to the kitchen when Mama told me to hide, so in this moment all I have is myself and empty potion vials.

I work faster, fingers bleeding as I free clumps of earth and rock. Thank the Three that Mama and I aren’t exactly skilled architects. I’d joked about it then, how this window would one day collapse, but schiesse, I never thought I’d be grateful for our shoddy craftsmanship.

One of the bars breaks free.

The shouts outside heighten.

I look up before I can think not to. My eyes lock on a group not four paces from this hidden window: two hexenjägers are fiercely locked in battle with two witches. Their fight is a mimic of others happening all over the town square, witches embroiled in extricating these intruders from our coven.

The jägers use swords, hacking and slashing.

Witches fight back the only way we know how: with magic. We have physical weapons as well, some of us, but a well-placed spell can be as effective as a blade.

One of the witches is Agathe, whose affinity is in weaving. Her loom makes our fabrics, threading spells into our wool. The blue kirtle I wear now has a hem embroidered with green in a repeating pattern of an ash tree, for protection.

Now, she swings a net in a mighty arch, ensnaring one jäger. He screams, and I hear sizzling, his skin boiling against the magic Agathe wove into the fibers.

Next to her is Gottfried, whose affinity is with animals, like Mama. He whistles, and a dozen ravens break from a tree line, making a sharp dive for the other jäger. He shrieks in tandem with his comrade, and for a moment, hope wells—how can simple humans stand against us? We’ll push them back; surely Mama’s worries were misplaced—

Then the jäger in Agathe’s net twists. No warning cry.

He impales Agathe on his sword.

Head to toe, I go utterly immobile, a horror I’ve never known pinning me in place.

Gottfried wails. His distraction is enough—the other jäger frees himself from the ravens and hurls his body at Gottfried, tackling him to the ground. I see the flash of metal, the bite of blade scraping the air between them, and then Gottfried’s wail plummets into silence.

The two jägers leap to their feet and race off, throwing themselves into the next fight with furious, single-minded drive.

I am a body without thought too.

I use the freed iron bar to hack away at the dirt beneath the remaining two bars, heart bruising on my ribs. If I can get this window open wider, I can get out there—I’ll get out there and—and—

More screams float into the cellar, more garbled shrieks as battles are lost, as jägers slaughter my family, and with them drifts a single thought. A single, shattering question.

Where is my mother?

I should have seen jägers drag her across the square. Shouldn’t I have? Where did they take her?

“Keep that one!”

The voice—Kommandant Kirch.

My eyes seek out the source. There, across the square—the kommandant stomps toward a prison wagon. He points at a girl one of his hexenjägers is dragging away.

“Liesel!” I shout for my cousin. It gets swallowed in the battle cries that have pitched into outright screams. “Liesel—”

She shrieks in terror as the kommandant grabs her from the hexenjäger and throws her into the prison wagon himself. He says something to her, something that makes her tiny body cower back, a wraith of blond hair and pale eyes, and then he slams the door on her.

My focus widens so suddenly, so aggressively, that I teeter in the shift.

I thought we could wrest victory from this battle—I thought Mama’s fear had been misplaced—

But I see now what she did, what she knew: we are lost.

Between my window and Liesel, the town square is a massacre. Blood coats the ground. Bodies lie in piles, the few remaining witches getting cut down in harsh, thrusting blows from jägers lost in their hunger for war.

So many are fallen.

Too many.

I drop to my knees in the cellar, clinging to the freed iron bar, and vomit on the dirt floor.

Maid, Mother, and Crone, forgive me, forgive me, please, forgive me—

The prayer comes easily, but I feel its uselessness. The Three won’t hear me.

It’s too late. Anything I do—it’s too late.

The iron bar drops from my fingers, thuds against the cellar’s floor under my knees. Powerlessness seizes my muscles so unrelentingly that I start shaking, vibrations I can’t stop, terror I can’t control.

You know how to help.

Sweet and jarring all at once, the voice slithers up the back of my neck, pounds on my head, equal parts seduction and sting.

I knot my arms around myself, eyes squished shut, ears deafened to the screaming outside, the primal, guttural cries that go beyond pain.

You know how to help, Fritzi.

No. No, I don’t.

Without needing herbs. Without needing a conduit at all.

STOP!

Just say the spell. You know the words. You remember them.

My mouth opens. I hate the part of me that does that, the part of me that always leans in to listen to the darkness whispering its saccharine promises, temptation brushing my cheek like it isn’t responsible for one of the greatest traumas of my life before this one.

Muscles shaking in terror now tremble with tension from the way I hold myself against the voice, the promises of wild magic always lingering, always waiting to pull me over the edge. The cellar is dark, shadows creeping in, night coming fast and cold in winter—those shadows loop around my quaking body, and I am all fear and weakness.

Everyone is dying out there. Liesel is in a prison wagon.

What can I do?

“Do all witches hear the voice, Mama?” I asked years ago. I been about ten. “The one asking them to try wild magic? Is that a goddess talking to me like Perchta talks to you?”

The goddess Perchta, the Mother, long ago chose my mother as one of her favored witches. It means nothing more than Mama has her ear, is blessed and guided by the Mother Goddess—but to be chosen by a goddess! For a young witch, the idea had been all I wanted.

But my mother’s face. Save me, I’ll never forget that look on her face, a flinch of disgust that she smothered with a too-wide smile. “The goddesses do speak to us, but they would never tell us to use wild magic. Don’t think on it, mein Schatz. Think only on how you will resist its pull. Tell me now, what are you?”

My heart sank. A goddess hadn’t chosen me? Not even Holda, the Maid, young and fierce and bright? Surely I was worthy of Holda’s blessing!

“I’m a good witch, Mama,” I said, and smiled. “A green witch!”

She nodded. “A good green witch, indeed.”

I say that to myself now. A good witch. A green witch. I use herbs and create spells. I do not hear the voice in my head; I do not feel its pull; I am a good witch—

Will a good witch survive this?

I scream and fly to my feet, the iron bar back in my hand, and with my last fleeting remnants of strength, I pry the other bars free and gouge enough dirt out to widen the opening.

I will not give in. Not today. Not tomorrow. Never.

I throw that word up against the voice in my head. Never, never, you will never get me; you’ve taken enough.

A stream of smoke floats through the cellar window.

It could be mist on an early morning breeze, common enough now in winter—except for the smell. Wood and cinder, earthy and rich, a fire on a summer night, a smoldering kitchen flame under a boiling pot—and it isn’t innocently gray. It’s heavy, choking black.

The oddity doesn’t make it past my focused terror.

I need to get out of this cellar. Now.

The smoke blows, obscuring the town square, filling this cellar until every blink is grating sand on my eyelids and every breath burns.

Once the bars are freed, I stack more crates back beneath the window and haul myself up to the opening.

My body scrapes against the edges of the window hole as I wiggle free. Streaks of dirt drag along my coarse blue kirtle, my square-necked shift beneath splotched with grime and sweat as I roll to my feet outside.

“Mama!” I scream into the smoke, coughing each breath. “Aunt Catrin! Liesel!”

Why haven’t any hexenjägers swept in on me yet? I’m out of the cellar; they might not be able to see me in the smoke, but they should be able to hear my screams now. I don’t care. I’m too overcome with panic, and I shout the names again.

The wind shifts.

The sky clears first. Brightest blue, high afternoon, a crisp December day as any other.

Liesel wanted to make sweet zwetschgenkuchen today but use apples instead of plums. No, I told her, I’m sorry, Liesel, I can’t. Mama needs my help with the chores I didn’t do yesterday, on my birthday.

My birthday.

The thought of it cracks my heart, shatters what’s left, and it’s in that state that I see what has become of Birresborn.

Bodies lie everywhere, left to fall where they were killed. Some hexenjägers; not enough. Mostly my family, my coven, shot with rifles or stabbed with blades.

I stand still for a moment, the world off-balance, and I realize—I’m the only thing standing now in this village. The surviving hexenjägers have left. My coven is…

In the center of the square stands a single stake.

How long did I cower in that cellar? Too long, not enough.

The wind whistles, catches, puffs smoke higher, and I hear only the thud of my shattered heart beating in my ears. I hate the absence of noise more than screaming, this incessant, defeated silence.

I drop to my knees in front of her stake. Her burnt remains are held to the charred wood by a great iron chain.

They didn’t take her back to Trier. Didn’t give her the sham of a trial.

They branded her chest. A curved D, for dämon. Demon.

I did not hear her scream when the kommandant lit her fire, when he branded her—she would never have given him the satisfaction

“Mein Schatz.”

My body bends double. I cannot will it to stay upright. I claw the earth, nails digging deep into ashes and mud, and from the pit of me, the core of me, I scream.

It is a promise.

It is a beginning.