Chapter 9
Heinrich
Ireturned from the cathedral, passing the service of Terce off to Brother Thomas. I had my own supplications today—ones that required privacy.
The leather strips bit into my back, each strike an orison, each welt a verse written in the language of penance.
I counted them in Latin—unus, duo, tres—but the numbers meant nothing anymore.
Ten lashes, twenty, thirty. The pain had ceased to be purifying somewhere around the fifteenth stroke; it had become something else entirely. Something I craved.
Triginta quattuor.
Blood ran down my spine in thin rivulets, pooling at the waistband of my breeches.
In the candlelight of my private chamber, the droplets looked black, as though I were writing confessions with my very flesh.
But what was there to confess? That I had kissed her?
That I would do it again? That even now, with my back flayed raw, all I could think about was the taste of her mouth?
She is mine.
The thought came unbidden, violent in its certainty. I paused mid-strike, the scourge hanging loose in my grip. Where had such possessiveness come from? I had spent two years caring for Katharina. It was my duty to ensure her spiritual well-being. But that had always been a lie, hadn’t it?
I had heard people’s lies, people’s sins. That was my profession. So I could not hide from them, not even my own. Man was flawed, drawn to sin. And I was a man to my very core. From the first moment I’d seen her, I had seen the golden light of Heaven, and it was in her smile.
But now…
Now I wanted to keep her locked away where only I could see her.
To catalog every breath she took, every word she spoke.
I had prayed all my life, but I’d never known reverence until I had tasted her.
I wanted to spread her over my altar, fall to my knees, and worship her until she was overcome with spiritual rapture.
Triginta quinque.
The scourge fell again, harder this time. The pain was exquisite, focusing my scattered thoughts into a single point of clarity. She had looked so beautiful in the moonlight, so perfect with her back against that oak, her lips swollen from my kiss.
I imagined her here now, finding me like this. The door would creak—I’d left it unlatched, careless or perhaps hoping—and she would gasp at the sight of my bloodied back.
“Heinrich?” Her voice would be worried. “Mother of God, what have you done?”
In my mind, I turned to her slowly, letting her see the full extent of my mortification, both fresh marks and old scars.
She would go pale at first, then flush as her eyes traced the blood, the wounds, the evidence of my devotion.
Would she be horrified? Or would something darker flicker in those blue eyes—understanding.
Recognition of the hunger driving me to this.
“Let me tend to you,” she would whisper, moving closer. She had such a kind heart.
But I wouldn’t let her. Not at first. I would catch her wrist, pull her against me despite the pain it would cause my ravaged back. I would tell her the truth. Every stroke was for her. That I was trying to beat this obsession out of my flesh, but it only drove it deeper into my bones.
Triginta sex.
Shame flooded through me at the thought, but I didn’t stop the fantasy.
I couldn’t stop it. She would wear that red dress, the one that brought out the green flecks in her eyes.
It would be so easy to push her against the wall, to cage her there with my body, to show her exactly what kind of monster her priest had become.
I would start with her throat. Press my mouth to that pale column and taste the herbs that always clung to her skin.
She would gasp—from fear or desire, it wouldn’t matter.
Both would feed the thing growing inside me.
I would mark her there, where everyone could see, where the whole city would know she belonged to—
Triginta septem.
“Forgive me,” I gasped to the empty room—to God, to the Katharina who existed only in my fevered imagination. But even as I begged forgiveness, the fantasy continued.
Her hands would tangle in my hair, pulling me closer rather than pushing me away. She would say my name like a prayer. Or perhaps like a curse. I would lift her onto my desk, scattering the carefully translated scriptures, making a sacrilege of every sacred thing except her.
“I’m yours,” she would whisper against my mouth. “I’ve always been yours.”
The words sent a dark thrill through me even as I knew—knew—that the real Katharina would never say them. She was brave, independent, fierce in her compassion. She belonged to no one but herself. That’s what I had loved about her.
Loved. Past tense. Because this wasn’t love anymore. Love didn’t imagine locking its object away. Love didn’t make my shadow stretch too long across the floor, reaching toward her empty room as though it could drag her here through will alone.
Triginta octo.
In my mind, she was beneath me now on my bed, her hair splayed across my pillow, golden locks shifting with each pulse of my hips.
I was showing her all the ways Latin could be used—not for prayer, but for darker purposes.
Teaching her words that would make her clench tighter around me, opening her legs to take me deeper.
The flails traced across my back, and they were her nails as I filled her until her very soul knew my shape. I whipped the sharp barbs again, and she knelt before me, tears of adoration streaming down her cheeks as her plump lips stretched over my cock.
The vision coaxed another drop of dew into my wool pants, my cock straining, desperate for some kind of relief. Once, I might have left it—the pain a penance for the sins conjured in my mind. But not tonight, not now that I’d tasted her.
Hot blood ran down my arm as I freed myself, the thick liquid coating my palm and fingers as I fisted my cock. How warm it felt, just like she would. Would she bleed for me? Would I be the first and last to know the paradise she had tucked between her legs?
A groan escaped me at the thought, my fist moving faster.
Mine. She was all mine.
The candle flames guttered suddenly, all at once, as if something had taken a breath in my sealed chamber. When they steadied, the light was wrong; the shadows it cast were misshapen.
Triginta novem.
I forced myself back to the fantasy, to the Katharina who would submit to my touch, who would beg for more.
The sweet prayers she would whisper in my ear as I drove so deep inside her she would never be free of me.
But even in my imagination, she was starting to look afraid—her eyes too wide, her breath too quick. No longer passion, but terror.
Good.
No, not good. I struck myself harder, trying to drive out the satisfaction that came with the thought of her fear.
I should want her to feel safe—protected.
That’s what love meant, wasn’t it? But I knew now, love was too small for what burned in my chest. Love was patient, kind, all those things Paul wrote about.
This was…possession. This was the need to devour and be devoured in return.
My hand never stopped as pressure built at the base of my spine, a shade desperate for release.
My blood pooled on the floor, forming patterns in the gaps between stones. In the dancing candlelight, they almost looked like letters, like words in a language I didn’t recognize but somehow understood. They spoke of claiming what was mine so thoroughly that God himself couldn’t separate us.
Another deep groan left me as my body convulsed, my seed joining the blood on the floor—another offering to a silent god.
She would be here soon.
I would make her read Latin verses about devotion and surrender while I watched her pulse flutter in her throat and imagined pressing my teeth there, leaving marks that would never fade.
And maybe, if the thing in my shadow had its way, I would do more than imagine.
Quadraginta.
The scourge fell from nerveless fingers. My back was more wound than skin now, and still the obsession remained—stronger for the pain, not weaker. As if suffering had opened doorways in my soul that should have remained forever barred.