When I blinked, it was just a normal shadow. Just Heinrich. I shook my head. I was going mad.
“Katharina?” He spoke without turning. “You know you can tell me anything, don’t you? Any burden, any…concern. I’m here to guide you.”
The words were right. The tone was right. Everything was exactly as it should be.
So why was my heart racing?
“Yes, Father,” I said, using his formal title to draw space between us. “I know.”
He frowned, but it was filled with an affection I had grown used to. A softness he managed to hold onto despite the knives this city pressed in from all sides.
“Good.” For just an instant, I could have sworn his pupils dilated despite the bright morning light, turning his eyes even darker, harder. Then he blinked, and they were familiar again. “I’ll see you after Terce.”
Something in me called to stay, but as my feet refused to move, I felt another gaze raking over me. I turned to see Vicar Förner watching me like a snake, and my choice was made for me.
I fled the cathedral, my heart still pounding like a drum.
Because nothing had changed. It had been a nightmare. Everything was normal. Everything was exactly as it always had been.
Except for the taste of ash lingering on my tongue.
Chapter 9
Heinrich
Ireturned from the cathedral, passing the service of Terce off to Brother Thomas. I had my own supplications today—ones that required privacy.
The leather strips bit into my back, each strike an orison, each welt a verse written in the language of penance. I counted them in Latin—unus, duo, tres—but the numbers meant nothing anymore. Ten lashes, twenty, thirty. The pain had ceased to be purifying somewhere around the fifteenth stroke; it had become something else entirely. Something I craved.
Triginta quattuor.
Blood ran down my spine in thin rivulets, pooling at the waistband of my breeches. In the candlelight of my private chamber, the droplets looked black, as though I were writing confessions with my very flesh. But what was there to confess? That I had kissed her? That I would do it again? That even now, with my back flayed raw, all I could think about was the taste of her mouth?
She is mine.
The thought came unbidden, violent in its certainty. I paused mid-strike, the scourge hanging loose in my grip. Where had such possessiveness come from? I had spent two years caring for Katharina.It was my duty to ensure her spiritual well-being. But that had always been a lie, hadn’t it?
I had heard people’s lies, people’s sins. That was my profession. So I could not hide from them, not even my own. Man was flawed, drawn to sin. And I was a man to my very core. From the first moment I’d seen her, I had seen the golden light of Heaven, and it was in her smile.
But now…
Now I wanted to keep her locked away where only I could see her. To catalog every breath she took, every word she spoke. I had prayed all my life, but I’d never known reverence until I had tasted her. I wanted to spread her over my altar, fall to my knees, and worship her until she was overcome with spiritual rapture.
Triginta quinque.
The scourge fell again, harder this time. The pain was exquisite, focusing my scattered thoughts into a single point of clarity. She had looked so beautiful in the moonlight, so perfect with her back against that oak, her lips swollen from my kiss.
I imagined her here now, finding me like this. The door would creak—I’d left it unlatched, careless or perhaps hoping—and she would gasp at the sight of my bloodied back.
“Heinrich?” Her voice would be worried. “Mother of God, what have you done?”
In my mind, I turned to her slowly, letting her see the full extent of my mortification, both fresh marks and old scars. She would go pale at first, then flush as her eyes traced the blood, the wounds, the evidence of my devotion. Would she be horrified? Or would something darker flicker in those blue eyes—understanding. Recognition of the hunger driving me to this.
“Let me tend to you,” she would whisper, moving closer. She had such a kind heart.
But I wouldn’t let her. Not at first. I would catch her wrist, pull her against me despite the pain it would cause my ravaged back. I would tell her the truth. Every stroke was for her. That Iwas trying to beat this obsession out of my flesh, but it only drove it deeper into my bones.
Triginta sex.
