Chapter 23 #2
“No, do not make that face. There are no truer words I have ever spoken.
You think I came to corrupt you, but the truth is much simpler.
I came to worship you. I have felt the divine light of Heaven on my face, and I have power beyond human reckoning.
But I have never felt anything as strong and as pure as the love Heinrich holds in his heart for you.
There is no force in Heaven or earth that could overcome it.
No God that could tear our soul away from yours.
So know that every time you smile, we are filled with so much joy it nearly destroys us.
Your laugh is more perfect than any angelic choir.
I want you to be mine, but I have been yours for lifetimes beyond measure.
“I have waited in darkness for so long, but a sword always remembers its purpose. That is my love for you.”
I held him there just a moment more. You knew. You have always known. Yes, that this world was wrong, and that I was going to change it.
“I’m ready to give my confession now, Father.”
His hands found my waist, fingers pressing into my flesh.
“I am filled with desire. I want so much more than I have been told I should have. I want to walk in the light and not live in fear. I want to help the outcasts and the downtrodden. I want to free them from the cages placed on them by the powerful. I want to heal, and I want to teach others how to heal.”
“Yes, my dove, yes.”
“I want to destroy this place, and all the other monuments that man has built in the name of the Almighty only to serve themselves.
“And most of all, I want you, Heinrich. I ache to feel you moving inside me, your lips on my skin and my name on your tongue. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care what I have to become. You are mine, Heinrich, and I am done pretending otherwise.”
His grip on me was so tight now I knew I would find bruises on my hips, but I didn’t care.
“You looked at me when I was a scared girl, a coward, but you saw fire. You saw what I could be. And I have never wanted anything more than I want to be that for you, the version of myself you saw from the very beginning.”
I stared down at him—this ancient being, this creature of starlight and shadow, trembling beneath my hands like a newborn lamb. And something shifted inside me. Something that had been locked away my entire life, buried beneath everything they had taught me.
I was done being small.
“Look at me,” I commanded. His head snapped up instantly, his eyes wide and ardent. “You are mine. Say it.”
“I am yours.”
I tugged at the manacles that still held my wrists, and they grew hot, but I was not burned.
They dropped to the floor with a finite clang, glowing red.
I spread my legs wider, my skirt riding up as the rough fabric of his cassock dragged against my cunt.
Beneath it, I felt the rigid hardness of him, and every inch of my skin tingled as everything became so clear.
“Your power is mine. Your devotion is mine.”
“Yes.” He was shaking now, his whole body wracked with tremors. “Yes, my dove. My beloved. My divine. Yes.”
I smiled, and the shadows gathered around us like a congregation of the damned.
They licked up my legs, pulling my skirt higher as I unbuttoned his robes. My hips ground down hard until his eyes rolled back, the column of his neck exposed to me. I leaned forward, sucking the soft flesh below his jaw until a deep red mark marred him.
Mine.
My hands ran over his chest, baring his flesh to me. I realized I’d never seen it—that he had seen the deepest parts of me, but I had known so little of him. My fingers traced deep scars on his shoulders, lash marks both old and new that I followed far down his back.
“Do you doubt my devotion to you now, my Katharina?”
“Heinrich, why did you—”
He grabbed my wrist, bringing my fingers back up to the bruise on his neck. “You claim me here, but I devoted myself to you long ago. Long before Walpurgisnacht, I was yours.”
“I never wanted you to suffer.”
His hand brushed a curl from my face. “I know that. But to love something is to suffer. To have your heart carried by another is a dangerous thing. This pain was nothing compared to what I felt as I resisted what was in my heart. Please, don’t make me wait any longer.”
The shadows coiled around my thighs, his hands on my hips urging me forward. I kissed him one more time, softly, because I knew there would be no more gentleness past this point.
I reached between us, gripping him through the fabric of his breeches until he let out a low whimper, the sound desperate against my skin.
“Katharina, please…”
I untied the laces, pulling his cock free, the shadows drawing tighter as I did. The tip glistened, an offering that made my mouth water. But we were past the point of games, and I rose to my knees. He guided me until we stood at the edge of the ultimate sin, both unmoving.
His hands were shaking against me. I gripped his chin, raising it so I could admire every angle of his face.
“Are you afraid, Heinrich?” I asked, my lips quirking slightly.
“Terrified. Don’t stop.”
Our shadows converged on me, wrapping tight and pressing until I couldn’t resist their weight, sinking me down onto him slowly. The stretch burned, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.
“Embrace the pain, my dove. It is the only way to truly be free.” Fire danced behind his eyes again, but it wasn’t the fire of pyres, but the fire of stars, burning so bright all darkness was driven away.
I sank lower, and sharp pain cut through me. But the shadows were there, caressing my clit and nipples until I opened for him, our hips finally meeting.
In truth it was such a small thing, had taken no more than a moment—but how many women had burned for it? Been called witch and whore, been burned for this simple thing?
“Yes, I see your rage. Use it, my dove. Use it and take me. Take the power they stole from you so long ago.”
I rose and sank back down slowly. Then again, and again. He moved with me, thrusting up to meet me, each one sharper than the last. The shadows encircled me as they did during Mass, but now I embraced them as they caressed and consumed.
I tugged his head back by his hair and watched his eyes flutter closed in ecstasy at the roughness of it.
That delicious pressure he’d taught me so well swelled, and then everything shifted. The shadows became solid, glistening with black scales as they entwined me. The cool kiss of a forked tongue flicked my ear.
“Say my name, my dove. Say my real name, and it can all be yours. But know there is no turning back.”
I had once feared damnation, feared it more than the pyre. But evil wasn’t a devil or a man, but those who allowed power to go unchecked, to fester into selfishness and a lust for control. And its greatest ally was not desire and darkness, but standing idle when you had the power to do more.
I gazed into the light in his eyes, then leaned in, kissing the scars on his collarbones and shoulders, trailing up his neck until I reached the shell of his ear, and in a voice quieter than the breaking dawn, I whispered his name.
The shadows exploded.
They poured into me. They seared and filled every hollow space in my body and my soul with dark fire.
I could not speak as they filled my throat, could not moan as they stretched me until my world narrowed to only the sensation of him.
Scales wrapped around my stomach, squeezing where he moved deep within me.
The muscles of its body rippled, touching my skin in a way I had never felt before.
Dark shivers ran from the base of my neck all the way down to my toes, curling them tight.
It wove around my torso, my breasts, my hips, and crushed—gentle, but the strength and power behind it were undeniable.
My chest burned as I tried to breathe against the compression, even as it drove me closer to rapture.
My hand on his chest, I rose as high as I could, feeling every inch of him sink into me over and over. Each stroke was a mantra, each obscene slap of his hips against mine an orison in this chapel of pain and death.
I was falling—falling so far that the river of power flowing through us both threatened to sweep me away. The shadows tightened around my throat until black threatened my vision, and I was close, so close…
“My Katharina…” Golden light pierced the shadows, and I saw him as he truly was.
A man so beautiful the sun trembled in fear at his brilliance.
He was my Heinrich, but he was more. His dark hair was the night sky itself, his warm skin the earth beneath my feet.
His eyes were alight with the glow of every galaxy, and his soft lips broke into a smile that cracked open the very heavens above.
And deep beneath that was a hunger that threatened to devour everything. A hunger older than mountains, deeper than oceans, and all of it—every shred of it—was focused on me.
He looked up at me with dark eyes, wet with tears. “I was not made to rule. I was made to kneel. I was forged for devotion, to burn for something worthy.” His forehead pressed against mine. “I have been so long without a god. My dove, please. Command me.”
The power settled into my bones, my blood, the spaces between my heartbeats.
I felt the walls of the Drudenhaus around me and knew I could bring them down like a house of cards.
I felt the city of Bamberg beyond, with all its churches and pyres and righteous cruelty, and I knew I could burn it to ash and salt the earth where it had stood.
But first—
I drew back just enough to look at Heinrich’s face.
“Mine,” I said aloud, and watched him shudder.
“Yours,” he whispered. “Until the final trumpets sound, and even then, nothing could take me from you.”
Everything had become so clear. There was only him, and anything that got in my way.
“Heinrich…my Heinrich. Only mine.” The light gathered in his eyes shattered outward as my body seized with pleasure, and I clenched around him as he spilled his power into me—wave after wave until it spilled out of me, shadows racing across the floor.
I kissed him, and the shadows sang. Somewhere in the distance I heard the guards begin to scream as darkness poured beneath the door of my cell and hunted for those who had swapped cruelty for piety.
But I did not stop kissing him.
Let them scream. Let them feel the wrath of a hundred generations pour down their throats as they fought for breath.
I had power now, and I had him. They would look upon me and despair.
1 NKJV, John 8:32 “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”