Stop. Stop it. Save your strength.
For what?
The question sat in my chest like a stone. For what? For the trial that was no trial, where my guilt was already certain? For the pyre? My mother had screamed. Would I scream like that? Would my voice sound like hers?
I was going to vomit.
No, I would not give them that. I would not foul myself before they even began. I still had that much control.
I closed my eyes and tried to pray. Unsurprisingly, I found no peace there.
Footsteps sounded down the hall. I went rigid, my heart hammering against my ribs.
They passed, then faded. It was someone else’s turn.
I sagged against the chains, shaking so hard my teeth rattled.
How long had I been here? The torch gave no measure of time, only that constant sullen light, that smoke that made my eyes water and my throat close. I was thirsty—so thirsty. They’d given me nothing. Another softening, to make me grateful when they offered water in exchange for confession.
Would they even need a confession? My body was covered in marks made by Heinrich, made by the Devil. Was that enough evidence for a conviction? Would Förner torture me anyway, just because he could? I had no doubt.
I tried to focus on that, on his depravity wrapped in the Church’s dogma. Anger swelled in me, but no flames. Blood rushed hot beneath my skin. My stomach roiled, but I couldn’t find that heat I’d felt in the garden.
It’s because you are weak. You thought you could want something and not be damned for it, a voice whispered in my mind. Myvoice. My mother’s. Sister Margareta’s. All the women who’d learned that lesson before me.You thought if you were good enough, selfless enough, you could earn the right to desire.
I had thought that. Had believed that if I helped others, if I made myself useful, if I kept my own wants small and quiet, then maybe—maybe—I could have something for myself. Could have him. Could have one thing that was mine.
Foolish girl. Foolish, foolish girl.
Unless…
The thought came like a serpent, coiling in my mind. Crushing and deeply seductive.
Unless I accepted what the demon had offered.
Power, freedom, the strength to break these chains, to rain fire on the men who’d built it. To make them scream as they’d made so many scream. To burn the Drudenhaus, the cathedral, the Bishop’s palace. To burn it all.
I could do it, if I said yes. If I became what they already believed me to be.
The witch they’d been searching for all along.
My mother had died powerless. Sister Margareta had died powerless. How many others? How many women had died powerless?
The demon had been right about one thing: this world was not just. God, if he existed at all, did not intervene. Did not stop the torture, the burnings, the endless crushing weight of men who believed their cruelty was holy.
So why not power? Why not vengeance? Why not become the monster they’d been hunting and make them fear they’d ever spoken my name?
The fantasy was sweet. I could practically taste it—Förner’s face as I turned his instruments against him, the Bishop screaming, Heinrich?—
Heinrich.
The sweetness curdled.
If I did this—if I became this—would he even want meanymore? Not the demon. The man. Would there be anything of Heinrich left to want anything, or would the demon have consumed him entirely, the way it would consume me?
How do you know he ever wanted you at all?
I didn’t. Couldn’t. The demon had spoken with his mouth, touched me with his hands. How much had been Heinrich and how much had been the creature wearing him? How much of what I’d felt had been real?
