Chapter 20
Katharina
“Where is it? I was sure I had more!” Glass clinked as I shoved aside the loose boards in the sick house storage room. I’d left one vial of valerian tincture; I was sure of it. I had counted my stores just three days ago.
I would go to the vintner. He supplied wine to the Drudenhaus guards. I’d smile and bat my lashes until he showed me which barrels. I’d add the valerian, then I’d make sure it made it to the guards, and while they slept, I’d—
I let out an animalistic sound. It was a terrible plan. Reckless and filled with opportunities for failure. But I didn’t have time for anything better.
My fingers clawed at the dirt, nails catching on splinters, desperate to locate the lost flask. Perhaps it had rolled. Perhaps I had miscounted. Perhaps—
I heard the latch of the door.
I sucked in a sharp breath as my forearm scraped against the rough wood, skin tearing as I flung myself backward, covering the hole with my skirt.
Blood welled in a thin line, bright crimson.
Heinrich—no, not Heinrich—stood in the doorway, his face hidden in shadow.
The light from the corridor behind him made it impossible to read his expression, but I knew his gaze was on me.
“What do you want?” I hissed, pressing my hand against my bleeding forearm to staunch the flow.
He stepped into the room, and the door swung shut behind him.
In the dim light filtering through the single high window, his face emerged.
His lips flattened, and if I believed it possible, he might have looked saddened.
There was a hesitation in the way he held himself, none of the predator I knew lurked beneath.
It made my stomach clench with dread.
“Sister Margareta is dead.”
The words sank like lead into my stomach.
I shook my head. “You lie. It has only been a few hours. They would not have started yet.” Anticipation was its own type of torture.
“I have never lied to you, Katharina.” His voice was soft—tender. “They found her dead in her cell, a small glass vial clutched in her hand. Empty.”
My chest heaved as I tried to control my breathing. The room seemed to tilt around me. The valerian I’d been looking for…the vial I could not find.
She had taken it. Somehow, she had taken it from my stores. Perhaps for Herr Holtzmann, or maybe she suspected—
“No.” The word came out broken. “No, she wouldn’t—she was strong, she was fighting, she—”
“She was facing the strappado tomorrow morning.” His mouth twisted into a grimace. “They wanted her to confess not just her sins, but the sins of others.” He gave me a hard look. “She knew what they would do to her body to get it.”
I pressed my hand harder against my forearm, focusing on the sting of the wound, using the pain to anchor myself to the present. If I let go, I would fly apart, and I did not think I would ever return.
“It brings me no joy to tell you this,” he said, his voice heavy with something that might have been genuine regret.
“Margareta was a good soul. One of the few I have encountered in this wretched city. I did not wish her harm.” He paused, watching me with those ancient eyes.
“Although the choice she made was likely far kinder than the fate that awaited her. The strappado is…not a gentle death. What she chose was peace. A final act of defiance they could not take from her.”
She chose death to protect me. This is your fault. This is all your fault.
“There is more.”
I peered up at him, and something in his expression made my heart stop.
“Greta Welser was taken this morning.” He said it flatly, without inflection, as if reporting the weather. “They found her husband dead, and she tried to run.”
Greta. Oh, Greta…what have you done?
“Men die every day.” My voice sounded distant, as if it belonged to someone else.
“More lies, my dove.” The demon’s eyes held mine, and there was no satisfaction in them. Only a terrible patience. “She will confess everything, and you know that. Everything.”
The room spun. I pressed my palm flat against the floorboards to steady myself, feeling the grit and dust beneath my fingers, the solid reality of wood and earth. It was not enough. Nothing would ever be enough.
“They’re coming for me.”
It was an inevitability I had been fooling myself into thinking I could escape. Somewhere deep down, it almost felt like relief.
“Yes.” He crouched before me, bringing himself to my level, and in the dim light his face was the one I loved so deeply that my heart seized in my chest. “Tomorrow, perhaps. The day after at the latest. Forner wants to make an example. You know how he’s been waiting for this.
The witch’s daughter, following in her mother’s footsteps.
It’s too perfect a narrative for him to resist.”
I thought of my mother’s face in the cabinet doorway. The blood on her cheek. The way she had not looked at me, not once, even as they dragged her away.
Survive, she had said. And be kind.
I had tried. God knows I’d tried. But kindness had only led me here, to a dusty storeroom, with the blood of everyone I’d ever loved on my hands.
“I can still save you.” His voice was barely audible. “The offer stands, Katharina. Take my power. Let me protect you. Walk out of this city with me and never look back.”
I raised my eyes to his. In the dim light, I could almost pretend he was just Heinrich—my Heinrich.
Almost.
“Give me Heinrich back.”
The words hung in the air between us.
“That is what you want?” he asked quietly. “That is what you would ask of me, knowing everything I could offer you?”
“It’s the only thing I want.” The only thing I had ever truly wanted.
He was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it, stripped of its usual honeyed confidence.
“I cannot.”
“Cannot, or will not?”
“Both.” He reached out to brush a strand of hair from my face but hesitated, pulling back.
I hated how much I craved it, how much I longed for the feeling of his skin on mine.
“We are woven together now, he and I. To separate us would be to destroy us both. And even if it were possible—” He broke off, his jaw tightening.
“Even if it were possible, what?”
“I would not do it.” The words came out a rumble, carrying eons of anger.
“Do you still not understand, Katharina? I have watched empires rise and fall, have seen stars born and die, have known pleasures and horrors beyond human comprehension. And in all that time, I have never—” He stopped again, and when he continued, his voice was barely a whisper.
“I have never wanted anything the way I want you.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears as I shook my head. “I’m just a poor healer—and a coward. You said so yourself.”
“You are human.” His gaze traced the lines of my face, down my neck. “And Heinrich loves you for it. That is real. It has always been real, long before I ever entered him. Do you think I could have chosen this body if he’d not already been so thoroughly, devastatingly yours?”
A sob caught in my throat. “Then let me speak to him. Please. If you care for me at all—”
“I care for you more than I have ever cared for anything.” His gaze dropped, and he stood, putting distance between us.
“Because as I have said, he and I are one and the same. His love for you has molded me, reshaped my very nature. I have power beyond measure, and I lay it at your feet, because there is no other truth, no other future that I desire.”
“You are not him.”
“I know him.” The demon’s voice was heavy with something that sounded almost like grief. “I know every corner of his mind, every prayer he has ever whispered. He loves you enough to tear himself apart trying to reach you. I will not let him.”
“So you’ll keep him prisoner forever? Let him watch through your eyes while you—”
“While I what?” His eyes flashed red. “Love you? Protect you? Give you everything he was too afraid to offer?” He laughed bitterly. “He should be thanking me, Katharina. I am doing what he never had the courage to do.”
“He had the courage to be good.” My voice broke on the last word. “He had the courage to resist, to hold on to his faith even when it cost him everything. You’ve taken that from him.”
“Faith.” The demon spat the word like a curse.
“Faith in what? A god who watched his home burn? A Church that taught him to hate himself for the crime of having a heart?” He shook his head slowly.
“I have given him freedom from all of that. I have given him you. And you would rather he suffer in silence, burning with want, than accept the gift I am offering.”
“It’s not a gift if he didn’t choose it.”
“He chose.” The demon’s voice was quiet now, all the anger drained away. “He prayed for deliverance, and I answered. That is more than his precious God ever did.”
We stared at each other in the dim light, the dust motes drifting between us like lost souls. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. I could feel the walls closing in, the weight of everything I’d lost and everything I was about to lose pressing down on me until I could barely breathe.
“I won’t take your bargain,” I said finally. “Not like this. Not at the cost of his soul.”
Something shifted in his expression, and he looked almost human. Almost heartbroken.
“Then you must run,” he replied softly. “I will not watch them destroy you slowly.”
“All that power, and yet you can do nothing?” It was a barb, intended to cut deep, and it did.
He grabbed my face, the touch rough as he forced me to look at him. “You still do not see! I need you, Katharina, just as you need me. Why will you not—”
I shoved him back, and he staggered, catching himself against the wall. He looked almost vulnerable—an unholy being thrown off balance by a woman half his size.
“Because I am not yours to take,” I hissed, my voice buzzing. “I am tired of being weak! I am tired of hiding. I will face this as my mother and Margareta did. With dignity!”
“You will burn.” He said it without malice, only as truth.
“Perhaps it is what I deserve. No more will suffer because of the curse in my blood. I won’t lead anyone else down the path to damnation.”
His eyes softened. “Katharina…”
I pushed past him toward the door, then paused and glanced back at him over my shoulder.
“If you truly love me, if any part of what you feel is real, then you will find a way to give him back to me. Not as a bargain or a price, but because it is right.”
I did not wait for his answer.
I walked out into the fading light and did not look back.