Chapter 23
Katharina
Ihad managed to doze off somehow, my face plastered against the inside of my arm. Everything tingled like a thousand tiny insects walking all over my skin.
No, not a thousand. Three.
Three bees, dancing on my knee, each exchanging positions with the others in a repeated loop.
“What does it mean?” I croaked, my throat dry from lack of water. They continued their circles, then all paused, their wings beating rapidly.
I heard shouting down the hall. Then footsteps, and three shadowy figures appeared outside the cell bars. My chest felt it might cave in with how rapidly my heart beat, but one stepped forward, and I knew that body, that gait.
“Katharina Müller, I have come to hear your last confession.”
Heinrich.
I said nothing as one of the guards lifted a ring of keys. The metal screeched as he turned the lock, the loud thunk echoing off the stone walls.
Heinrich walked in, torchlight bending around him. Not much, barely enough to be noticeable. But I noticed.
The cell door slammed shut behind him and groaned again as the guard relocked it.
“Ten minutes, Father,” the guard sneered, hitting the iron bars with the key ring as he and his partner stalked away.
Heinrich watched them go. As their footsteps faded, the only sound left was my breathing, as if he had turned to stone.
The door at the end of the hall banged shut, and then he fell to his knees before me.
“Katharina, my Katharina. Are you all right?”
The movement was so sudden I jolted back as he reached for my face, slamming my skull against the wall and sending lights dancing before my eyes.
He pulled his hand back immediately, but his eyes continued to roam over me.
“They hurt you.”
I let out a dry laugh, closing my eyes and leaning into the pain. “Not as much as they soon will.”
“If that damn fool had just let me—”
My eyes shot open. “Heinrich?”
He let out a low growl. “He nearly tore us apart fighting me, trying to get to you. It seems you are not the only one who doubts my dedication to you.”
My Heinrich, still there, still fighting. I had seen him. It had not just been a wish of my breaking heart.
“You said that you could not be separated?”
“No.” His eyes darkened. “I said that he would not survive it, not that we could not. But that did not seem to matter to him when he saw you in danger.”
I could not read the look on his face. It almost looked like…
“You did nothing as I was dragged away.”
“I could do nothing.” I hadn’t been deceived; it was on his face now, plain as day. Regret. “You rejected my power, Katharina. You told me not to touch you. I honored that choice, even as it cost you everything.”
“You honored my choice,” I repeated, my voice flat. “While they dragged me through the streets. While they threw me in this cell and told me what they would do to me in the morning.”
“Yes.”
“And you would do it again.”
“If you asked it of me? Yes.” No hesitation. No shame.
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to claw at that calm, beautiful face until something real bled through. “Then what good are you?”
He flinched.
“I know what you think of me. That I am the thing that stole him from you. But I did not take him, Katharina. He invited me in. He prayed every night for the strength to protect you, and the strength to claim what he wanted…what he loved more than anything else. I answered.”
He let out a sound of aggravation, and it was surprisingly…human.
“The both of you! I answered your silent prayers! I want more than anything in this world to give them to you. Don’t you see? I would do anything you ask. Anything!”
“Then give me what I want most. Give me my Heinrich back.”
He faltered, those soft corners of his eyes I loved so much growing sharper. Then, with a great exhale, all that sharpness faded, the devil behind his eyes gone.
“Do you think I was not here the entire time, Katharina?”
My hands snapped to his face. I held him tight as I peered deep into his eyes, as if I could see into his very soul through those dark windows. “My Heinrich?”
“Always yours, Katharina.”
A hand traced up my spine and gripped my neck, pulling me in even closer until our lips met. It was a gentle kiss, just like our first in the woods. How far away that seemed now. Everything melted away but him—all the fear and anger. There was only him and me, and that’s how it should have been.
I pulled back just enough to see his face. His eyes were clear, fully his, and the sight of them broke something open in my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured against his lips. “For all of it. For what he—”
“Don’t.” His thumb traced my cheekbone, catching a tear I hadn’t felt fall. “Don’t apologize to me. You need to stop apologizing for faults that are not yours.”
Heinrich let out a slow breath. “He has never lied to you. I have wanted you—I have loved you for so long, but I was trapped within my own guilt. You are my light, Katharina. You are my everything, and I will do whatever it takes to remain with you.”
I started at him, searching. “How can I know—how can I know that this is really you, and not some manipulation—”
He kissed me again, his tongue rolling against mine, hot and unrestrained. His fingers laced through my hair and he shifted us so I straddled his lap. His hand rested on my hip, tugging me closer, and I felt the intensity of his want.
He pulled back from my lips as he settled against the wall.
“‘Et cognoscetis veritatem, et veritas liberabit vos.’1 Look at me, Katharina. You knew. You have always known the truth. We both did, but we fought it, and for what? For a church that allows men like Forner to go unchecked in their selfish quest for glory or power or control—whatever it is they seek. That allows them to hold power over those who have less.”
He shook his head. “That is the true evil of this world, not whatever resides inside me now. I see in it what I see in you. God’s divine light.”
I swallowed hard, holding his face between my hands like I would never let go. “But in the cathedral, you used shadows to—”
“A trick. A misguided attempt at getting you to embrace your power. Ironically, it was a game I could only play because you allowed it. You have always held all the power, Katharina. Have you not felt it your entire life? The dreams, the fire—even your garden. It was all a connection to the true power of this world. A power that existed long before man placed their god in the sky, and it will exist long after.”
I had felt it, and I had feared it. I had tried to tamp down the fire that had always lived in my heart, had tried to pretend the dreams never came true. He saw the truth in my face.
“Why do you think these men try so hard to be God? It is because, in the end, they know they have no power at all. They were born from dust, and to dust they will return, no matter the games they play. But you—you are made of stars. You can create life, mold it to your will. It was not God who brought his Son to earth, but a woman. She carried him, she birthed him, she nursed him. She taught him what true love looks like, and through that he learned what God was.”
He frowned. “You know they fear it. That is why they have kept you afraid, done everything in their power to hold you down, for fire cannot survive where there is no air. Do not let them.”
“Heinrich, all I want is you.”
He gifted me his kind smile, so full of patience.
“And you have me—you will always have me, but you need to stop being afraid. You need to embrace the power that has burned inside you, because once you unleash it, you will be unstoppable. You can have everything, if you will just reach out and take it.”
Take it. Was it truly so simple?
I slid my hands back and laced them through his hair, pulling him close, until my lips grazed his skin. I breathed deep, and buzzing filled my mind as fire bloomed in my belly.
My hand rested on his chest, and I found the beat of his heart, but also something that writhed, cool and covered in scales.
I looked back into his eyes and found the flames that had danced there since Walpurgisnacht.
I saw him, my Heinrich, young and hopeful.
I saw him coming to Bamberg, shattered and broken.
I saw us in his rectory as he taught me and felt the love that had blossomed in a place of ash and darkness.
But I also saw more. I saw more stars than the mind could comprehend.
I saw flames that grew so hungry nothing could remain, and I saw the shadows that danced alongside them.
I saw a light like nothing I could imagine, that if I looked at it for too long, I knew it would destroy me.
But I also knew—knew like I knew how to breathe—that it would fold to my will if I just took it.
I blinked and realized I was panting, my whole body trembling with the effort of controlling the power roiling inside me now.
It wasn’t like the garden, that had been driven by anger and desperation.
That was why it had fled when I called. This was a rage at injustice so old we had all forgotten what the world looked like before it.
“I am tired of being afraid.”
His face shifted—no longer human, but not devil either. Something this world had not seen in a millennium. He reached out and placed his hands over mine, thumbs stroking the raw skin where the shackles had worn me down.
“There she is,” he murmured against my hair as he leaned in, inhaling deeply. “There is the woman I have been waiting for.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead. “You asked once what I wanted from you. I wanted this. I wanted to be yours. Not through seduction or manipulation—but because you reached out and took me.
“I always understood you, Katharina, because I am made from nothing but desire. I desire truth. I desire complete and utter surrender. But above all else, I desire you.”
My lips parted before I could stop them.