“While I what?” His eyes flashed red. “Love you? Protect you? Give you everything he was too afraid to offer?” He laughed bitterly. “He should be thanking me, Katharina. I am doing what he never had the courage to do.”
“He had the courage to be good.” My voice broke on the last word. “He had the courage to resist, to hold on to his faith even when it cost him everything. You’ve taken that from him.”
“Faith.” The demon spat the word like a curse. “Faith in what? A god who watched his home burn? A Church that taught him to hate himself for the crime of having a heart?” He shook his head slowly. “I have given himfreedom from all of that. I have given himyou. And you would rather he suffer in silence, burning with want, than accept the gift I am offering.”
“It’s not a gift if he didn’t choose it.”
“He chose.” The demon’s voice was quiet now, all the anger drained away. “He prayed for deliverance, and I answered. That is more than his precious God ever did.”
We stared at each other in the dim light, the dust motes drifting between us like lost souls. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. I could feel the walls closing in, the weight of everything I’d lost and everything I was about to lose pressing down on me until I could barely breathe.
“I won’t take your bargain,” I said finally. “Not like this. Not at the cost of his soul.”
Something shifted in his expression, and he looked almost human. Almost heartbroken.
“Then you must run,” he replied softly. “I will not watch them destroy you slowly.”
“All that power, and yet you can do nothing?” It was a barb, intended to cut deep, and it did.
He grabbed my face, the touch rough as he forced me to look at him. “You still do not see! I need you, Katharina, just as you need me. Why will you not?—”
I shoved him back, and he staggered, catching himself against the wall. He looked almost vulnerable—an unholy being thrown off balance by a woman half his size.
“Because I am not yours to take,” I hissed, my voice buzzing. “I am tired of being weak! I am tired of hiding. I will face this as my mother and Margareta did. With dignity!”
“You will burn.” He said it without malice, only as truth.
“Perhaps it is what I deserve. No more will suffer because of the curse in my blood. I won’t lead anyone else down the path to damnation.”
His eyes softened. “Katharina…”
I pushed past him toward the door, then paused and glanced back at him overmy shoulder.
“If you truly love me, if any part of what you feel is real, then you will find a way to give him back to me. Not as a bargain or a price, but because it isright.”
I did not wait for his answer.
I walked out into the fading light and did not look back.
Chapter 21
Katharina
Iknelt in the damp soil, my fingers buried in the cool earth up to my knuckles. The bees had found me, as they always did. A handful of them crawled across my shoulders, tangled in my hair—I had left it uncovered, for what did it matter now? Their humming filled my ears, drowning out the distant sounds of the city waking.
Run.
The thought had circled my mind all night, chasing sleep away until I’d finally given up and come here, to the only place that had ever felt safe. I should gather what little I could carry and run before dawn. I should disappear into the woods, although I would likely now find them quiet. I should survive, as my mother had told me to.
But where would I go?
A woman alone on the road was prey. A woman without papers, without money, without family—she might as well paint a target on her back. Villages were no better than Bamberg. The witch trials had spread like a plague across the Empire, and there was nowhere the flames could not reach.
And Heinrich was here.
That was the truth I could not escape. Whatever wore his face,whatever had taken root inside him, some part of the man I loved was still there. I’d seen it in his eyes, and felt it in the desperate grip of his hands. I knew it in my heart.
If I ran, I would abandon him to his fate, the fate I had condemned him to. I would not do that to him. But what could I do?
