Greta. Oh, Greta…what have you done?
“Men die every day.” My voice sounded distant, as if it belonged to someone else.
“More lies, my dove.” The demon’s eyes held mine, and there was no satisfaction in them. Only a terrible patience. “She will confess everything, and you know that. Everything.”
The room spun. I pressed my palm flat against the floorboards to steady myself, feeling the grit and dust beneath my fingers, the solid reality of wood and earth. It was not enough. Nothing would ever be enough.
“They’re coming for me.”
It was an inevitability I had been fooling myself into thinking I could escape. Somewhere deep down, it almost felt like relief.
“Yes.” He crouched before me, bringing himself to my level, and in the dim light his face was the one I loved so deeply that my heart seized in my chest. “Tomorrow, perhaps. The day after at the latest. Förner wants to make an example. You know how he’s been waiting for this. The witch’s daughter, following in her mother’s footsteps. It’s too perfect a narrative for him to resist.”
I thought of my mother’s face in the cabinet doorway. Theblood on her cheek. The way she had not looked at me, not once, even as they dragged her away.
Survive, she had said.And be kind.
I had tried. God knows I’d tried. But kindness had only led me here, to a dusty storeroom, with the blood of everyone I’d ever loved on my hands.
“I can still save you.” His voice was barely audible. “The offer stands, Katharina. Take my power. Let me protect you. Walk out of this city with me and never look back.”
I raised my eyes to his. In the dim light, I could almost pretend he was just Heinrich—my Heinrich.
Almost.
“Give me Heinrich back.”
The words hung in the air between us.
“That is what you want?” he asked quietly. “That is what you would ask of me, knowing everything I could offer you?”
“It’s the only thing I want.” The only thing I had ever truly wanted.
He was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it, stripped of its usual honeyed confidence.
“I cannot.”
“Cannot, or will not?”
“Both.” He reached out to brush a strand of hair from my face but hesitated, pulling back. I hated how much I craved it, how much I longed for the feeling of his skin on mine. “We are woven together now, he and I. To separate us would be to destroy us both. And even if it were possible—” He broke off, his jaw tightening.
“Even if it were possible, what?”
“I would not do it.” The words came out a rumble, carrying eons of anger. “Do you still not understand, Katharina? I have watched empires rise and fall, have seen stars born and die, have known pleasures and horrors beyond human comprehension. And in all that time, I have never—” He stopped again, andwhen he continued, his voice was barely a whisper. “I have never wanted anything the way I want you.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears as I shook my head. “I’m just a poor healer—and a coward. You said so yourself.”
“You are human.” His gaze traced the lines of my face, down my neck. “And Heinrich loves you for it. That is real. It has always been real, long before I ever entered him. Do you think I could have chosen this body if he’d not already been so thoroughly, devastatingly yours?”
A sob caught in my throat. “Then let me speak to him. Please. If you care for me at all?—”
“I care for you more than I have ever cared for anything.” His gaze dropped, and he stood, putting distance between us. “Because as I have said, he and I are one and the same. His love for you has molded me, reshaped my very nature. I have power beyond measure, and I lay it at your feet, because there is no other truth, no other future that I desire.”
“You are not him.”
“I know him.” The demon’s voice was heavy with something that sounded almost like grief. “I know every corner of his mind, every prayer he has ever whispered. He loves you enough to tear himself apart trying to reach you. I will not let him.”
“So you’ll keep him prisoner forever? Let him watch through your eyes while you?—”
