I remembered the sound of Heinrich’s voice, split into something inhuman.You knew. You have always known.
I tried to pull away, but his grip was firm. “You’re not Heinrich.”
“Who else would I be?” His voice echoed in the room with that low thrum I’d tried so hard to ignore. “And I finally have everything I prayed for. I have the strength to act, the power to protect, and the will todowhat must be done.” He leaned closer, and I was engulfed in miasma and the thrumming coming from deep inside him that resonated in my bones. “I am whatyouhave been praying for, Katharina. Whether you knew it or not.”
“Let go of me.”
“Not until you understand.” His hands moved from my shoulders to cup my face, and where his skin touched mine, I felt fire—not painful butalive, singing through my blood. “I am offering you everything. The power you have always desired. The power to make Förner and every witch-hunter in Bamberg kneelat your feet andbegfor the mercy they never showed others. All you have to do is reach out and take it.”
My heart pounded so hard I could barely hear him over the roar in my ears. For a moment I saw it all. Förner cowering at my feet, his eyes filled with the fear that had haunted me for a decade. I saw the cathedral engulfed in flames that burned not with pain, but righteous fury.
But then I saw her, my mother, with blood dripping down her face. “I can’t!”
My mother’s hands were shaking as she lifted me and shoved me into the narrow darkness between bundles of dried chamomile and yarrow. Stems scratched my cheeks and leaves crumbled against my hair. The familiar scents of healing, of safety, of home closed around me like a shroud in the small hidden cabinet.
“Not a sound.” Her face filled the gap before the door closed, pale in the candlelight. Her eyes were wet. I had never seen my mother cry. “No matter what you see, no matter what you hear, you must stay silent, my little one. Promise me.”
My throat had sealed shut. I could not speak.
“Promise me.”
“I promise.” The words came out broken, barely a whisper.
She pressed her lips to my forehead. Then the cabinet door swung shut, and the world shattered into fragments. Nothing more than thin strips of light through wooden slats, showing the edge of our table and my mother’s worn brown boots stepping backward.
The door exploded open.
I flinched so hard my skull cracked against the back of the cabinet. Pain bloomed white and hot, but I did not cry out.
I had promised.I had promised.
Black boots flooded our floor. So many boots, thundering against the boards my mother had swept that morning, trackingmud across the rushes I had helped her lay. I tried to count them—four, five, more—but they moved too fast, swarming like wasps, and my vision had gone strange and swimmy with terror.
Someone grabbed my mother’s arm.
She did not scream. I watched through the slats as a soldier’s gloved hand closed around her wrist, wrenching it behind her back at an unnatural angle. Her jaw clenched, the tendons in her neck standing out like cords, but she still made no sound.
Be like her, I thought.Be brave like her.
But I was not brave. I was thirteen years old, and I’d wet myself, the warmth spreading down my thighs and pooling beneath me in the cabinet, and the shame of it burned almost as hot as the fear.
A soldier backhanded her across the face.
The sound caused my stomach to drop—a wet crack, like a branch snapping in a storm. Her head whipped to the side. Blood sprayed from her lip, droplets catching the candlelight, spattering across the table where we ate our meals. Where she had taught me to read. Where she had held my hands and shown me which herbs healed and which ones harmed.
I bit down on my own hand to keep from screaming. My teeth sank through skin, and I tasted blood, felt the meat of my palm give way, but the pain was distant, unreal. The only real thing was my mother’s blood on the table. My mother’s silence, holding even as they hit her again.
I prayed for this.
The thought came unbidden, and with it a wave of nausea so violent I nearly retched.
Three days ago, in the confessional, I’d knelt in the darkness and whispered my selfish, childish wishes.I miss her when she goes out at night. I wish she would stop.
I had prayed for her to stop.
Now she would never leave at night again.
I prayed for this. I prayed for this. God answered me, and this is what he gave.
