“I did terrible things to her, Katharina. Things that would make you weep to hear them described.” His voice was calm, conversational, as if describing something of no consequence. “But still, she insisted you were innocent. That you were just a child.”
He moved toward me, close enough that I could smell the sourness of his breath.
“I knew better.”
His hand shot out and gripped my chin, forcing my face up toward his. His fingers dug into the bruises the guards had left, and I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out.
“All of you carry the sin of Eve,” he said softly. “Everydaughter of that first betrayer, born with corruption already flowering in your hearts. None of you are innocent. You cannot be. It is not in your nature.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” I spat the words at him. “When you torture women for confessions you know are false? That you’re doing God’s work?”
“I am doing God’s work.” There was no hesitation in his voice, no flicker of doubt. “I am the shepherd, culling the diseased sheep before they can infect the flock. Every witch I burn is a soul I save—not hers, perhaps, but the souls of all those she might have corrupted.” He released my chin and stood, brushing off his hands as if my skin had soiled them. “Your mother understood, in the end. They all understand, eventually.”
“My mother understood you are a monster.”
“Your mother confessed to consorting with the Devil.” His smile widened. “She signed her name to every charge. Shethankedme for showing her the depths of her own depravity.”
“After you tortured her.” Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “After you broke her body until she would have said anything to make it stop. That is no true confession.”
“The flesh is weak.” He shrugged, as if this were self-evident. “But the confession cleanses the soul. Your mother died absolved of her sins, Katharina. She should be grateful.”
“She died screaming while you made me watch!”
“Yes.” His eyes glittered in the torchlight. “She did.”
I had looked into the Devil’s eyes and seen less hatred there. “You’re terrified of me.”
“What terrifies me”—he gnashed his teeth, and for the first time I saw doubt in his eyes, but it quickly turned into a depraved hunger—“is the corruption that lives in every woman’s heart. The weakness that led Eve to bite the apple. The vanity that makes you believe you can be more than what God made you.
“Your mother thought she could defy the natural order. She thought her herbs and charms made her powerful. But in the end,she burned like all the others.” He loomed over me, blocking out the torchlight. “And now I finally have you.”
“What do you want from me?”
“A confession, of course.” He said it so simply. “You will tell me every woman you have helped. You will give me names, Katharina. Enough names to keep the pyres burning for months.”
“I will tell you nothing.”
“That is what they all say.” He reached out and patted my cheek, like one would with a cheeky child. “But this place has a way of loosening tongues. There are the normal ways, and if those fail”—his hand trailed down to my throat, fingers pressing lightly against my pulse—“there are other methods. Methods I have been refining for years, waiting for this very moment.”
He straightened and moved toward the door.
“Rest while you can, Katharina. Tomorrow, we begin.”
“Förner.”
He paused, turning back. Rage pulsed through me, but no flames came. Instead, an oath.
“I am going to make you feel every moment of pain you have ever inflicted on another person. And when you are finally begging for death, I am going to remind you of this conversation.”
He laughed. It was a warm sound, genuine, as if I’d told him a particularly amusing joke.
“I believe your mother made similar threats, although that was on day two,” he replied. “I still have the tooth I pulled from her mouth when she did.”
The cell door clanged shut behind him, and I was alone with nothing but the distant sound of screams. A woman, of course. It wasn’t words anymore, just sounds—animal sounds or human sounds, the difference hardly mattered. Not in this place.
My wrists were raw where the manacles held me to the wall. I could sit overextended, could stand if I bent. Could doneither comfortably. That was the point, I supposed. To make the waiting itself a kind of torture. To make me soften like meat before the real work began.
I pulled against the chains without meaning to. The iron bit deeper and blood, warm and slick, ran down my forearms.
