“And are you doing that now?” Tante Gretchen asked, shrewdly. “Because this storm is stronger than I expected, and I can tell you’re all of a pother inside, even if you are trying not to show it.”

Inwardly, she cursed herself for not thinking of that, and hastily read the currents of magic around her.

“Yes, everything is fine,” she was able to report, with relief. “I might be all of a pother, but at least it’s not getting out.”

“Well then, in that case, I shan’t worry.” Tante Gretchen took her at her word, which did a little to soothe her anger at having to go a-begging to the Bruderschaft. It still rankled, that was the right word for it. It was more . . . her pride was being rubbed raw that she couldn’t even manage a single year alone without having to go begging for help. She could just imagine the Foresters treating her like . . . like a child, when Mother had been treating her as an adult for years and years now. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know about the military service rolls, or she’d have found some way to avoid towns with army garrisons in them! Why hadn’t someone warned her about this, when they advised her to go to shooting contests?

Or worse . . . Joachim and Pieter had given her the respect that Mother gave her, but what about the rest of the Bruderschaft? What if all they wanted her to do was womanly things? All very well for Mother and Tante Gretchen to be adept at cooking and baking and tending gardens and all of that—but she wasn’t them! She was an Air Master, not an Earth Master. She could do those things, certainly, but she didn’t much like them and she wasn’t all that good at them.

Just get your mind back in the book, she advised herself. What’s done is done. You can’t pour the broken eggs back into the shell. Best to just concentrate on salvaging what you can.

All very good advice, of course. Now if only she could bring herself to take it. . . .

With saddlebags packed with her new wardrobe, her rifle in a saddle holster, and Lebkuchen clearly impatient to be on the road, Giselle stood at her stirrup, waiting for Tante Gretchen to come out of her cottage. It was a beautiful day, and under any other circumstance, she’d have been overjoyed for the chance to ride out under cloudless skies, with balmy spring breezes lilting through the trees.

But given that she was figuratively crawling to the Bruderschaft to beg for their help and hope she was forgiven for her part in killing a man . . . well . . . part of her wanted to stay hidden with Tante Gretchen, pretending to be her niece.