I reached for her again, catching her hands where they twisted in her skirt. “What if you didn’t need me to protect you at all?”
“What do you mean?” The question was quiet, but I heard the interest in it. A crack in her certainty. She craved it, desired power, as much as she tried to hide it from herself.
Good, the voice purred.Now. Push now.
“What if you had real power?” I said softly. “Not just herbs and tinctures. Real strength. Enough to protect yourself, to protect the women who come to you. Enough that Förner and his kind would be the ones cowering.”
She went very still. “What are you talking about?”
I didn’t know completely. The words had come from that thing I had been trying to suppress, the shadow that had been lingering around my heart. But I knew them to be true.
“I’m talking about claiming what’s yours. What you’reowedafter everything they’ve taken from you.”
“Heinrich.” She tugged her hands free and stood abruptly. The vials rattled as her skirt caught them. “You’re talking like—you sound?—”
“Like what?” I rose and moved closer. She backed up a step. “Say it, my dove.”
“You sound like…someone else.”
Ah, so she did see. I saw it in her eyes now. She was smart; of course she knew. But she had been denying it, lying not only to me, but to herself.
Push harder.She’s close. So close to understanding.
But looking at her face—torn between anger and terror—I felt the urgency drain away. Felt, for just a moment, like myself again.
What was I doing? Pushing her toward something I didn’t fully understand. Trying to mold her into—what? What did I even want from her?
Everything, the voice whispered.We want everything.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, and meant it. “I hate watching you diminish yourself. You’re glorious, Katharina. And you hide it all away like it’s something to be ashamed of.”
“Because it is,” she said with a bone-weary sigh. “In this world my skillsareshameful. They’re dangerous. And I’m trying to survive long enough to use them where they matter.”
She’ll understand, the voice soothed.Eventually. When the time comes, she’ll see we were right. That caution saves no one. That the only real choice is power or death.
“No. Survival means you have to live in fear forever.” I closed the distance between us, and this time she didn’t back away. I wrapped my arm around her, tucking her under my chin and kissing the top of her head softly. “You think caution will save you, Katharina. It won’t. The only question is whether you’ll face them as yourself or as this diminished thing you’ve made yourself into.”
I turned to leave her in the darkness, knowing she needed time, that she wasn’t quite ready yet. But before I left?—
“The Bishop has ordered another wave of arrests. He was forced to let the lord’s wife go, and the people of Bamberg will pay the price. Will you stand by and watch?”
She said nothing, and I let the silence stretch.
“There is a proverb,” I said quietly. “One our Church does not like to dwell upon. ‘Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not He who weighs the heart perceive it?’?1” I glanced back at her over my shoulder. “Silence in the face of evil is not neutrality, Katharina. It is participation. Even James wrote that faith without works is dead—that to know the good you ought to do and not do it,thatis sin.?2”
I left her there in the dark and prayed she would make the right choice before the choice was made for her.
1 New King James Version,Proverbs 24:11-12
2 James 4:17
Chapter 17
Katharina
The orchard stretched forever under a sky that held no sun, yet golden light fell soft upon the laden branches. Heinrich walked beside me, his hand warm in mine, our fingers intertwined without fear of observation. All around us, the apple trees bent low with fruit so ripe the air itself tasted sweet.
“Here,” he murmured, and his voice was deep and soft, the voice I knew well. He reached up and plucked an apple, its skin red as altar wine, the flesh firm beneath his fingers.
