From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 159
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"You do not lie very well," Elise said.
Vickie took another step backwards.
"Something's happened between you and Kat. But I'm nothing if not patient and congenial, so I didn't say anything at dinner last night despite the fact you had two glasses of sherry, you lush. This morning, however, something smells different."
Millie's smile was so big it actually hurt. Vickie was pretty observant, maybe Millie had gone mad. But if that were the case it was Vickie's fault, so she was going to have to deal with it either way.
Elise's presence in Millie's mind was a bonfire of barely-contained glee. "It is very noticeable. Would you like to talk about it?"
Like a pair of prize-worthy sheepdogs, they drove Vickie backwards to the bed, which she fell onto with a surprised yelp.
Resigned to the reality that the rest of her Coven shared a psychic bond, Vickie crossed her arms with a little huff. "There isn't much to tell."
With Elise's anticipation compounding Millie's own, she couldn't hold back any longer. "Oh, for the love of God, do you know how long I've been waiting for something unequivocally good happening to you? Talk, woman!"
Of all the words that could be used to describe Victoria Ravenwood, one that completely failed was 'demure'.
She demurred.
"Katya kissed me."
The line holding Millie back snapped and she hurled herself at Vickie, laughing uproariously. Elise piled on top, rolling them off of the bed to share their delirious hug on the floor.
"That is wonderful! You kissed her back, yes?"
The look that came over Vickie's face was all the answer needed.
"I am so happy for you!" Elise exclaimed before the sounds coming out of her stopped resembling words. Ecstatic joy and more than a little relief poured across the Bond, and they tightened their embrace together.
Vickie let herself be smothered a moment before returning it. The gesture shouldn't have been surprising, but it took Millie off-guard nonetheless. It was so normal, so human, but for Vickie to enjoy others being happy for her this way over something that none of them would have imagined happening in their previous life?
Without warning, tears welled in Millie's eyes, and she didn't resist. They came gushing out in a torrent, making Vickie sparkle in the low morning sun.
"Why are you crying?" Vickie asked, her own eyes not entirely dry.
"Because! I can't…" Millie shook her head, sending her hair flying. What she needed to say was almost impossible to articulate. Elise felt it, too. With a quick swap of feelings and impressions across the Bond, Millie took one of Vickie's hands, and Elise the other. "Vickie, we remember the day after you came home from the asylum. When we learned… everything. We'd almost lost you forever. But those first few days, when it truly sank in what had happened… you, Colette. Watching the reality crush you smaller and smaller. You barely spoke, like you were in a trance. You were emotionally dead. I thought forever."
"And then Katya came," Elise said, her sky-blue eyes glistening with a rain about to fall. The gold that was only for Millie seemed to flit and dance on the updraft of her rising joy.
"But today… you're smiling, Vickie!" Broadly, genuinely, with no caveats. A way she hadn't done since before ADAM; before her family was killed. Millie threw her arms around her again, and pulled in Elise. "I can't tell you how happy I am."
When the impact had settled and the three of them were capable of speech again, Millie wiped her eyes with witchscale. "But one little kiss doesn't explain why you smell all over Kat this morning. Does it."
Vickie sniffed her wrist, then stared ahead, like she was trying to remember a dream.
"I have not seen you at a loss for words in a very long time," Elise said.
Vickie shook her head. "I have never planned for anything like this. No forethought, no hypothesising. I do not even understand myself well enough to attempt to make sense of… things. The moment she kissed me was so overwhelming, but things have not slowed down. In fact, the opposite has happened."
"Sounds about right, actually. Did it feel like time stopped?"
"It did."
"You feel sick?"
"No."
"Then you're already ahead of where I was," Millie said with genuine admiration. "Elise and I didn't share a bed until months after our first kiss. There were a few extenuating circumstances, I suppose."
"I never said we—" Vickie flicked a look between her tormentors and let out another huff. It was adorable. "Damn the both of you. We slept together. In the literal sense. Nothing more."
"Have to start somewhere," Millie said with a heavy bit of side-eye, since the forwards bits were mostly pointed at Elise.
Vickie sobered over the course of a few blinks. "Katya has come incredibly far in her healing, but it is not complete. It may never be. I do not mind your celebrating our progress to this point, but I would rather you not intimate any preferences for us going forward."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"I know you didn't. It's all right. Our relationship is an ever-evolving thing. And like the process of biological evolution, it is not in any fixed direction. If this is its natural plateau, then I am happy."
Within her sharp blue eyes there was no sign of the Raven. The piercing gaze of Doctor Ravenwood had softened. Mistress Victoria was absent. It was Vickie, the old Vickie that Millie had met 14 years ago, before she'd had her heart and will to live taken away, that looked out from them. Though her back was turned to the sun, they glittered with an inner light that was unmistakably white.
Millie shared a look, and a thought, with her wife. "Then so are we."
No-one at EVE was expected to do any sort of work at the weekend. The lives the founders had led taught them the necessity of rest and relaxation being as important as hard work and dedication. After all, how was a would-be witch supposed to understand and integrate into a community she never got a chance to spend any time with?
On Saturdays and Sundays, the EVE campus served as more of a staging ground, either for wider adventures outside its walls or, for the less spirited, a safe, known space for quieter pursuits.
The clement weather had sprouted no less than three picnics across the lawns and gardens, including one made from the members of EVE's burgeoning sewing club. It was a picturesque scene, in many ways exactly the one Katya had envisioned with the inception of the conservatory. Laughter, camaraderie, young women allowed to explore and express themselves in a place of safety and security.
But it was EVE's original, more clandestine purpose that was keeping her from taking part. The door and windows to the second-floor conference room had been shut and locked, with her and the rest of EVE's seniority inside.
Along with their newly-arrived guest, who had her bag and hat piled onto the chair she should have been seated in. Instead, she stood at the head of the table, her hands occupied fidgeting with her rings.
Helga, as always, was dressed as befitted her station as one of the most celebrated opera singers in Germany, if not all of Europe, in sumptuous fabrics on the cutting edge of style. The silver diadem that had become her trademark was centred perfectly on her forehead, the cobalt-blue sapphire aglow with sunlight even through frosted windows.
Her posture was impeccable, and she stood with poise and confidence, even as it took her a few moments to decide exactly how to say what she had come all the way from Berlin to say.
When she finally did, it became obvious why she'd made the trip: "I'm going to stand for a Reichstag seat in the next election."
A fierce emerald fire burned in her eyes, her voice ringing with the strange musical quality that had always made it compelling to listen to—and the message hit all the harder. The last time Katya had spoken to Helga, she had all but laughed off the idea of becoming involved in organising witches, let alone an entire country.
"That is incredibly brave of you. What prompted you to even consider such an action?" Vita asked.
Helga's poise faltered for a split second as the reasons flashed across her face. "Circumstances made the decision for me. I will not stand idly by while monsters torture our sisters and devour my country."
Katya immediately looked to Millie, who went preternaturally still. She had seen that torture first-hand, and put a stop to every instance she and Niamh had come across. Permanently. The hateful binder that provided a written record of the Nazis' (thus far failed) attempt to force witches to Manifest, for what purpose none of them knew, was sealed away in a double-locked safe deep within EVE's library.
Without a word or glance, Millie took her wife's hand. Whatever was passing through their Bond was for them alone to know.
It was better that way.
"I can see why you didn't want to put that in a letter," Katya said. "I'm very impressed, and honestly gratified, that you've chosen to run for government. We will support you however we can, but what was so urgent that it put you on an aeroplane first thing this morning?"
For that, Helga had a ready answer: "I needed to personally inform you that the meeting place for your visit next week has changed, along with the scope of its importance. And that it may be considerably more dangerous."
Leaning back in her chair, Katya ignored the looks from her sister witches, her attention only for Helga.
So was Vita's. "Explain."
"You were incredibly gracious in agreeing to come give a few of my sisters and me advice on improving community outreach. But following my decision, the meeting will expand far beyond that. It won't just be regular witches in attendance, and it won't be entirely private."
Katya shared a look with Vita, but both agreed to let Helga continue without interrupting.
"It's now going to be primarily other witches who want to become more involved in politics. We will be organising and discussing strategies, as well as holding a public rally to amplify our voice. We've been relatively quiet thus far, but… no more. We will be heard. I know this is a dramatic change, but I can't sit idly by any longer. You were right, Kat."
And now she was going to have to back up her advice, Helga didn't say. Nor did she need to, by Katya's reckoning. She had insisted Helga use her notoriety to try to make a difference, how could Katya object? The suddenness of the change was unexpected, but the arrival of the three letters on top of each other made a lot more sense now.
"Where will it be held?" Katya asked.
"Baden-Baden."
The very air of the room seemed to flee before eight Manifests swelling at once to displace it.
"That's very near where we found Lucie. Why there?" Millie asked with flat, artificial calm.
Helga, to her credit, met Millie's considerable gaze. "Josephine told me everything, so I know both who and what you brought out of there with you. That's why. To show them that we are not afraid. That we won't be intimidated."
Millie relaxed slightly. "Good."
"On a more pragmatic level, it's the high tourist season. An influx of visitors is to be expected, we won't stand out. And if our meeting does become known, I very much doubt anyone will try anything in front of so many non-German eyes."
"Smart," Millie said. Her spine finding the back of her chair made Katya realise how much tension she had been carrying herself.
But the Raven remained a statue of onyx. "Please elaborate."
"Amongst the common folk there are none more 'common' than witches. We will stand for decency, and be the voice of right-minded people everywhere. Germany's problems will be solved by working together, not by dividing us and murdering those who disagree." The last few words came out hitched, and Helga swallowed against it. "I was dismissive of Hitler and his cabal as a bunch of rabble rousers after that buffoon went to prison when their coup in Munich failed, but I, and many others were mistaken in not taking them seriously. They are violent, organised, and gaining seats with every election. People are starting to take them seriously now. The wrong people."
Adolf Hitler was a name already cursed among witches; it was in the very room they were sitting in that Niamh had sworn to kill him herself. To EVE, he and his Nazi party would have simply been another blip in the tumult of Weimar German politics without Millie and Niamh seeing what they had. Or what was locked away two stories below their feet.
Millie sat forward again. "You're telling me people are treating those monsters as legitimate?"
"There's no work, our money is most useful as kindling… people are becoming desperate and starting to look for someone to blame," Helga said defensively.
An icy pit opened up in Katya's belly. It was exactly the kind of sentiment that had built up to the revolution in Russia. The indifference of the powerful crushed the common folk first, but only until they sprang up again with nothing to lose. With seemingly insurmountable problems, violent opportunists would always come along with easy solutions. Gaining ground little by little, frightening or tiring out the right-minded opposition, who knew complex problems had complex solutions. But complex solutions took time, and as the problems got worse, the more appealing it became to simply burn it all down and start over. Katya had been too slow to see it all those years ago, insulated as she was from the very worst symptoms of the sickness that had putrefied the Russian Empire. To hear it was happening again, with such clarity, brought a wave of nausea crashing over her. Without thinking, she took Vita's hand, needing a dose of her strength to keep from pitching her breakfast onto the floor.
"The economy has been shaky for a while now," Carice said. "What's changed?"
"Those scared people are being told who to blame."
The room went very still. "Witches?"
"Not only us. Anyone different. Witches, Jews, Roma… any scapegoats who are too small in number to fight back. That it's all our fault."
"As it always is," Carice said. "Nefarious enough to be behind everything, yet conveniently small enough in number to round up. It is a song I have heard many times before."
Ivy nodded, her jade eyes gone distant, to some other time the younger witches were very glad to have never known.
Speaking of the conditions at home out loud made them all the weightier, but Helga's poise only grew more resilient. She met the eyes of her audience with all the conviction of one of Wagner's Valkyries. "People are afraid, and when they're afraid, they'll listen to anyone who is saying they'll make it better, no matter how simplistic or asinine the solution. The others and I are going to present the alternative that no-one else will. We are already working from the bottom up, in local villages and towns, helping where everyone else has failed. Medicine, helping food go farther, combining resources, trying to make sure people talk to one another. Isolation almost killed us, and it still could if all people are fed is suspicion, conspiracy and hate. The farther apart we are, the more we start to believe it. And all the while, they are butchering our sisters. To my shame, I was slow to act. But act I have, and will continue to do so until Germany's wounds are healed."
Helga's hands found the back of her chair, the white of her knuckles betraying the depths of her conviction.
"Slowly but surely, the people are being corrupted by darkness because it's easier than maintaining the light. Other voices are being shouted down, or forcibly silenced. It's them or the Communists."
The head of both Russians snapped to Helga at once, but got little in return but an apologetic look. "They're killing each other in the street. There are clashes constantly, and innocent people are dying. The courts are choosing sides. The fringes are shooting across the middle, but even though the majority of people are still there, they feel powerless to stop either. I believe that we can give them that power. A different strength. What you've done in Britain is a miracle, my sisters. You are the rock of witchkind right now, and we need a reminder of that. Personally. We can do this; I believe in my heart of hearts that Germany can be pulled back from the brink, but we have to give it the chance. And a helping hand.
"As such, I've also taken the liberty of inviting a few members of the APP to come, as consultants and observers. They must have some kind of window into internal German workings if they are to adequately address our needs on our behalf. That… and they need to know what we're up against. I realise it's dangerous, but I feel no-one understands just what kind of madness is threatening to grip my country except you, my Russian sisters. First-hand accounts may go a long way towards spurring the rest of the world to act, if only to spare themselves what may happen if such bilious rhetoric should happen to overflow our borders."
Helga looked over the assembled witches of EVE. Eight Manifests, the greatest concentration of magical power in history. But she lingered on Katya. "To do so, we need your help. I know that asking you to stick EVE's nose directly into German domestic politics is not what you need right now. But I and many others believed in and agreed with Doctor Ravenwood's speech at the last Council. We are trying to build, but we simply cannot do it alone."
"Is there no-one in Germany?" Carice asked. "Have so many elders… are you so few?"
"Yes," Helga replied. "It has taken this long to get to this point. Selene, along with help from France and the Low Countries, have been invaluable, but the Pact did more harm than good in this case. Scattered, isolated, scared witches with no mentors… they can barely keep their families together, let alone a country. We are grateful for the help we've received, but it is help in the old way. You, my sisters of Britain, are the new, and I humbly beg use of it now. Your power is as known as your voice, and for you to be there beside us when we speak would amplify what we have to say a thousand times over. People are frightened, and seek those offering strength. The people need to know that there is more than one kind, and that which we offer is more than guns and tyranny."
"What is it actually like there right now?" Ivy asked.
Helga's inner fire dimmed slightly. "There's so much anger. The need for blame. The mortal damage the pride of so many suffered at Versailles. Britain, France, you know what a waste the war was, and you won. Imagine how it must feel to know that and have lost. The economy only makes it worse. Now someone comes along with easy answers. And violence. Vandalism; they're cowing people who disagree and emboldening those who don't."
