Chapter 21
Katharina
Iknelt in the damp soil, my fingers buried in the cool earth up to my knuckles.
The bees had found me, as they always did.
A handful of them crawled across my shoulders, tangled in my hair—I had left it uncovered, for what did it matter now?
Their humming filled my ears, drowning out the distant sounds of the city waking.
Run.
The thought had circled my mind all night, chasing sleep away until I’d finally given up and come here, to the only place that had ever felt safe.
I should gather what little I could carry and run before dawn.
I should disappear into the woods, although I would likely now find them quiet.
I should survive, as my mother had told me to.
But where would I go?
A woman alone on the road was prey. A woman without papers, without money, without family—she might as well paint a target on her back. Villages were no better than Bamberg. The witch trials had spread like a plague across the Empire, and there was nowhere the flames could not reach.
And Heinrich was here.
That was the truth I could not escape. Whatever wore his face, whatever had taken root inside him, some part of the man I loved was still there. I’d seen it in his eyes, and felt it in the desperate grip of his hands. I knew it in my heart.
If I ran, I would abandon him to his fate, the fate I had condemned him to. I would not do that to him. But what could I do?
I pressed my palms flat against the soil and closed my eyes.
“Help me,” I whispered. Not a prayer—I was done with prayers. Just a plea, sent to the bees and the plants and the very earth itself. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fight this. Please. If there is anything listening, anything that cares, help me.
The earth did not answer.
For the first time since I was a child, I screamed.
I screamed into the early morning air until my voice cracked into something raw and broken. I screamed for my mother, for Sister Margareta, for every woman who had ever come to me in the dark, desperate and afraid.
I screamed for Heinrich, trapped by something that played at power while doing nothing.
I screamed for myself. I screamed for years and years of milking, sweeping, cleaning, hauling, and toiling, all for a cold, hard bed and stale bread. I screamed for the girl I might have been, for the life I might have had if I had just stopped being so afraid to be seen.
I screamed because I was so tired of being silent.
The bees swarmed around me, agitated by my distress, their buzzing rising to a deafening crescendo. They landed on my arms, my face, my hair, their tiny feet crawling, humming, pressing against my skin as if trying to burrow inside.
“Stop it!” I swatted at them. “Leave me alone! I don’t want your warnings. I don’t want your—”
A bee stung my palm.
The pain was sharp and sudden, and something inside me snapped.
The rage I’d been swallowing for ten years—the rage I had buried beneath fear and the desperate need to survive—erupted from my chest. It poured down my arms, gathered in my stinging palm, and reached for something to burn.
The rosemary bushes at the edge of the garden exploded into flame.
I stumbled backward, my hand still outstretched, and watched the fire spread along the row of herbs I’d tended since I was a child. The smoke rose thick and black into the morning sky.
I had done that.
The buzzing in my ears shifted, no longer a warning but a choir that had the resonance of approval.
I heard voices at the garden gate.
I turned, my hand still crackling with heat, and saw them—black uniforms pushing through the narrow entrance, boots trampling the garden without regard for the hours of effort put into its creation.
The leader pointed at me, his mouth moving around words I could not hear over the roaring in my ears.
The fire was still burning behind me. I could feel it at my back, feel its hunger echoing my own. It would be so easy to turn that hunger outward. To send the flames racing across the garden, to watch them catch the guards’ uniforms and climb their bodies and—
Yes, the buzzing seemed to say. Do it. Burn them all.
But my mother’s voice rose alongside it, fainter now, fighting to be heard.
Do not let hatred take root.
I had listened to that voice my whole life. I had been kind. I had been careful. I had swallowed my rage and bowed my head and done everything right, and they were still coming for me. Just as they had come for her.
I had hidden in that cabinet. I had stayed silent. I had let them take her without lifting a finger.
Not this time.
“No.” The word hit the morning air like thunder. “You will not take me.”
I’m sorry, Mama. But you also told me to survive. He was right. I don’t want to survive—I want to live.
I thrust my hand toward the guards and reached for the fire, trying to pull it forward, to send it roaring across the garden and into their smug, sneering faces. I felt the heat respond, felt it surge toward my call—
And then nothing.
The flames guttered and died. The heat in my palm flickered once, twice, and went cold.
I stared at my hand in disbelief. The power that had been there moments ago—the fire that had leaped so eagerly to my rage—was gone. Snuffed out like a candle after evening prayer.
No. No, no, no—
I tried again, reaching deeper, clawing for the well of fury that had burned so bright. But there was nothing there. Only emptiness, and the cold creeping certainty of failure.
The scarred guard laughed.
“Trying to play tricks, little witch?” He spat at my feet.
I ran.
I ran for the gate, but this was not their first arrest. They’d surrounded the entire garden.
I made it three steps outside before they caught me.
A hand fisted in my hair, yanking my head back so hard my vision went white.
Another guard drove his fist into my stomach, and I doubled over, retching, the air punched from my lungs.
“Fight all you want.” The scarred man’s breath was hot against my ear. “They always fight at first.”
I did fight. I kicked and scratched and bit, tasting blood when my teeth found flesh. I screamed, thrashing against the hands that held me. I was not my mother. I would not go quietly. I would not make it easy for them.
But there were too many of them, and as I should have known, whatever power I’d found was not enough.
They seized my arms, wrenching them behind my back, and iron manacles bit into my wrists. I did not scream again. I simply stood there, breathing hard, staring at the smoke still rising into the sky.
“Katharina Müller. By order of the Prince-Bishop, you are under arrest for the practice of maleficium and consorting with the Devil.”
I almost laughed. This might have been the first time those words had ever been true.
A harsh shove at my shoulder, and we were moving. Buzzing filled the air, and for a moment I hoped—but the swarm flew off into the sky.
The Schergen hauled me through the convent courtyard, where the sisters stood in the shadows, passing whispers to each other. No one moved to help me.
We marched out onto the city street, and a small crowd had gathered, drawn by the arrival of the Schergen. More whispers behind raised hands, a cruel mixture of fear and delight mixing in the morning air.
And there, on the steps of the church, he stood.
Heinrich’s face was pale as bone. His hands were clenched at his sides, and somehow I felt the war raging behind his eyes—the demon and the man fighting for control.
“Stop.” His voice rang out across the courtyard, sharp with authority. “Release her. I command it.”
The scarred guard laughed. “You command nothing, Father. The Bishop’s orders supersede yours.”
“She is under the protection of this church—”
“She is a witch.” The guard’s voice was flat. “And you would do well to step aside before we start asking questions about your known…association with her.”
Heinrich moved toward us. His body jerked forward, driven by something desperate and human. He grabbed the scarred man’s arm and tried to wrench me free.
Two guards slammed into him, driving him back against the church doors. His head cracked against the wood, and he crumpled.
“Heinrich!” His name tore from my throat before I could stop it.
He lifted his head, blood trickling from his temple, and our eyes met. For one moment, it was him—truly him, my Heinrich, the man beneath the monster. His lips moved, forming words I couldn’t hear.
Then the guards dragged me away, and I lost sight of him as the crowd closed in.
The last thing I saw before they shoved me into the cart was his hand, reaching out toward me.
And then the hood came down over my eyes, and there was only darkness.