The shadows exploded.
They poured into me. They seared and filled every hollow space in my body and my soul with dark fire. I could not speak as they filled my throat, could not moan as they stretched me until my world narrowed to only the sensation of him. Scales wrapped around my stomach, squeezing where he moved deep within me.
The muscles of its body rippled, touching my skin in a way I had never felt before. Dark shivers ran from the base of my neck all the way down to my toes, curling them tight. It wove around my torso, my breasts, my hips, and crushed—gentle, but the strength and power behind it were undeniable. My chest burned as I tried to breathe against the compression, even as it drove me closer to rapture.
My hand on his chest, I rose as high as I could, feeling every inch of him sink into me over and over. Each stroke was a mantra,each obscene slap of his hips against mine an orison in this chapel of pain and death.
I was falling—falling so far that the river of power flowing through us both threatened to sweep me away. The shadows tightened around my throat until black threatened my vision, and I was close, so close…
“My Katharina…” Golden light pierced the shadows, and I saw him as he truly was. A man so beautiful the sun trembled in fear at his brilliance. He was my Heinrich, but he was more. His dark hair was the night sky itself, his warm skin the earth beneath my feet. His eyes were alight with the glow of every galaxy, and his soft lips broke into a smile that cracked open the very heavens above.
And deep beneath that was a hunger that threatened to devour everything. A hunger older than mountains, deeper than oceans, and all of it—every shred of it—was focused on me.
He looked up at me with dark eyes, wet with tears. “I was not made to rule. I was made tokneel. I was forged for devotion, to burn for something worthy.” His forehead pressed against mine. “I have been so long without a god. My dove, please. Command me.”
The power settled into my bones, my blood, the spaces between my heartbeats. I felt the walls of the Drudenhaus around me and knew I could bring them down like a house of cards. I felt the city of Bamberg beyond, with all its churches and pyres and righteous cruelty, and I knew I could burn it to ash and salt the earth where it had stood.
But first?—
I drew back just enough to look at Heinrich’s face.
“Mine,” I said aloud, and watched him shudder.
“Yours,” he whispered. “Until the final trumpets sound, and even then, nothing could take me from you.”
Everything had become so clear. There was only him, and anything that got in my way.
“Heinrich…my Heinrich. Only mine.” The light gathered in his eyes shattered outward as my body seized with pleasure, and I clenched around him as he spilled his power into me—wave after wave until it spilled out of me, shadows racing across the floor.
I kissed him, and the shadows sang. Somewhere in the distance I heard the guards begin to scream as darkness poured beneath the door of my cell and hunted for those who had swapped cruelty for piety.
But I did not stop kissing him.
Let them scream. Let them feel the wrath of a hundred generations pour down their throats as they fought for breath.
I had power now, and I had him. They would look upon me and despair.
1 NKJV, John 8:32 “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”
Chapter 24
Katharina
The iron manacles that had held me lay in puddles of cooling metal on the cell floor. The door stood open before me, and I walked toward it, power thrumming beneath my skin, the torchlight flickering and dancing with its rhythm. In the hall, dozens of bodies lay slumped against the walls, eyes burned out to an oozing black.
Then I heard the sobbing.
A girl’s voice, raw and broken, repeating the same words over and over: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Heinrich glanced at me before leaning in to kiss my forehead. “What do you desire, my dove?”
“Find the Bishop. Make sure he suffers for all he has done. Then meet me in the cathedral.”
He nodded and began to walk away when I grabbed his collar.
“You leave Förner for me.”
At that, his grin split into something just beyond human.
