“Because it makes me want to do things we shouldn’t.”
I peered back up at him, and something darker had replaced the usual softness—darker and hungrier.
“Katharina.” My name came out barely more than a whisper. He moved closer, and I stepped back until my spine met an ancient oak. His hands rose, one on either side of my head, and he was near enough that I could feel the warmth of him as he bracketed me, see his racing pulse beneath the skin of his neck.
“There are so many things we shouldn’t do, and I want to do every single one of them to you.”
His fingers brushed my chin, holding it steady, and his breath ghosted over my lips.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered just above them.
But I couldn’t—didn’t want to. Instead, my hands looped around his waist, the wool rough beneath my fingers. I tuggedhim closer, the movement no stronger than a gentle spring breeze, yet it toppled our resistance all the same.
The kiss was soft, chaste—even by the Bishop’s standards. His lips met mine, warm and unassuming. But I didn’t want chaste. If we were to be damned, I wouldn’t hold back my sin. The fire I had always kept tamped down swelled in my belly. I fisted his shirt and pulled him flush against me, teasing the seam of his lips with my tongue. A petition.
He answered in kind, the kiss desperate, filled with yearning and two years of suppressed desire breaking free at once. I gasped into his mouth and he deepened the kiss, his tongue brushing mine as his hands tangled in my hair. He tugged gently, tilting my head, opening me to him even more.
His body pressed against mine, and for a heartbeat there was nothing but this—his hands in my hair, his mouth on mine, the solid heat of him bracing me against the bark. He was my shield, and in that suspended breath, I was free. Free from the fear that had followed me every day since my mother was taken. Free from the clock always ticking down to my destruction. Every sermon about sin, every warning of damnation, every careful boundary we’d maintained shattered like ice in a spring flood, and I let myself drown in him.
His hand slid to my waist, tightening as my nails traced up his neck and into his hair. I felt him shiver, but he did not let go. If anything, he held me harder, unwilling to break what we had begun.
We both knew that once we did, there would be no coming back.
Then the temperature plummeted.
Heinrich tore away from me, his eyes scanning the dark wood. His breath ghosted like smoke in the freezing air—air that had been warm only moments before.
“Heinrich—”
The shadows between the trees began to move. Not the natural sway of branches in the wind, but something liquid,circling us like wolves. Moonlight bent and warped around the shifting voids, creating not darkness but an absence of light.
Heinrich pushed me behind him, his body taut. “Stay behind me.”
The shadows coalesced into something tall and wrong, with suggestions of too many teeth and eyes that weren’t where eyes should be. When it spoke, the sound came from everywhere and nowhere, a voice like nails dragged across stone and yet somehow also…just like Heinrich’s.
Finally. Such beautiful sacrilege.
Heinrich’s hand found his crucifix and lifted it toward the thing. The silver gleamed for an instant before blackening in his grip, crumbling to dust between his fingers. He stared at his empty palm in horror.
The thing laughed, a sound like breaking glass.Did you think your god would protect you? He fled this place long ago.
It struck. Darkness wrapped around Heinrich’s throat and lifted him off the ground. He clawed at the nothingness, choking. I lunged for him, but the shadows hurled me back, sending me sprawling into the wet leaves.
The darkness poured into him through every opening—mouth, nose, eyes, ears. His scream was no longer human, a sound that reverberated in my chest until I felt it in my bones. His body convulsed, rising higher as shadow flooded him like water filling a bucket dropped to the bottom of a well.
I crawled toward him, dirt grinding beneath my nails, reaching for his thrashing feet. But the darkness noticed me again, turning its incomprehensible attention my way. When it touched me, it wasn’t violent as it had been with Heinrich. It was gentle.
Sleep, my dove, it whispered in Heinrich’s voice.When you wake, everything will be different.
Cold surged through me, filling my vision with static black. The last thing I saw was Heinrich’s body going limp in the shadow’s embrace, his eyes rolling back to show only white. Then the darkness took me too—wrapping me in that terrible tenderness.
I fell into nothing, Heinrich’s name dying on my lips.
Chapter 8
Katharina
The shadows found me in the same way the flames had before, creeping up through the soles of my feet. In the dream, my wrists were bound not with rope but with darkness itself, a living thing that pulsed against my skin. The forest pressed close, and I tasted ash on the wind. It wasn’t the bitter char of burning wood, but something older—and colder. It was the ash of extinguished stars, of prayers that died before reaching Heaven.
