“I don’t know. I haven’t—they haven’t let me stand.”
I helped her up, supporting her weight when her legs buckled. She was so small, it was easy.
“Why are you helping me?” she whispered against my shoulder. “After what I did?—”
“Because they wanted us to hate each other,” I said. “They’ve made us afraid of each other, teaching us that survival means betraying our neighbors. Turning on one another so we’re too busy destroying each other to see who’s really destroying us.” I glanced at her ruined face and traced my hand down her cheek. The swelling and bruises dimmed until I could see the girl she was underneath. “I won’t give them that. I won’t let them make enemies of us.”
I walked her into the hallway lined with cells. “You need to get out of Bamberg. Tonight. If there is anyone you love, take them with you, but leave and do not look back. Do you understand?”
“What are you going to do?”
I thought of Heinrich waiting in the cathedral. Of the power thrumming through me, dark and eager. Of Förner sleeping soundly in his bed, of the Bishop counting his seized properties, of a church that had built its doctrine around the inherent sin of being a woman.
“When a man hurts you, you can run or you can fight. But what if it is not one man who harms you? What if it’s generations, legions? What if the violence has become so ingrained that it hides in broad daylight? That it’s what allows men like your husband to go unpunished? What do you do then?”
She did not answer, so I did.
“You burn it all down.”
Chapter 25
Katharina
It was easy to find Förner. Like a festering plague, he’d left a trail of rot behind him. I followed it to the residence beside the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. George.
The door was locked. I placed my palm against the wood. Smoke curled from beneath my palm, and the lock glowed red and then white, and the door swung open on a wave of heat that smelled of hellfire.
Förner was in his study, surrounded by papers and ledgers. In my heart I understood they were the names of the condemned. Every woman—every life—organized and catalogued like livestock sent to slaughter. He looked up as I entered, and for one delicious moment I watched understanding dawn across his face.
Then fear.
“Witch,” he breathed, scrambling backward, knocking his chair to the floor. “Guards! Guards!”
“They can’t hear you.” I stepped over the threshold, and the shadows came with me, pooling at my feet like obedient hounds of Hell. “I made sure of that.”
He grabbed a crucifix from his desk and thrust it toward me, his hand shaking so badly he nearly dropped it. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I command youto?—”
I plucked the crucifix from his grip and examined it. Good craftsmanship. Solid silver, probably worth more than some families in Bamberg earned in a year. I closed my fist around it, and when I opened my hand again, it was nothing but a lump of molten slag.
“Your god isn’t the one you should be begging, Förner.” I let the cooling metal drop to the floor.
“Please.” The word came out broken—pathetic. This man, who had shown no mercy to hundreds of women, was begging for his life. “Please, I was only doing my duty. The Church commanded?—”
“The Church commanded you to torture children?” I stepped closer, and he stumbled into his bookshelf. Volumes of theology and demonology crashed around him. “The Church commanded you and your men to rape women in your cells and call it interrogation? The Church commanded you to keeptrophies?”
I flicked my wrist, and the desk drawer flew open. I could feel their presence, the shadows of pain that lingered in the artifacts. Teeth, locks of hair, small personal items taken from his victims before they burned.
I raised my hand, and an invisible force lifted him from the ground, pinning him against the wall.
“I know you enjoyed it.”
“I was saving souls!” Spittle flew from his lips. Even now, even facing death, he clung to his delusion. “Every witch I burned was a victory against the Devil! The suffering was necessary—purification requires pain?—”
“Then let me purify you.”
I started with his hands. Hands that had hurt so many. Fire bloomed beneath his skin, and I watched as his fingers blackened and bubbled.
His screams were pathetic, high and raw, bouncing off the stone walls of his study, swallowed by shadows that would not let them escape. No one would come. No one would save him.He would die as my mother had died—in agony. But the difference was that he was completely alone.
