Her eyes remain fixed on mine, wide and pleading, searching for something that cannot return to her.
I look at her.
At the tears that shine in the firelight. At the mouth that shaped prayers over me until they became heavier than breath. At the hands that taught me to bow, to lower my eyes, to shrink myself into something small enough to be kept.
"Pray, Mama," I say softly.
My voice does not tremble.
"Pray as you did for me. Call to him. Let us see if he answers."
Her lips part, a broken sound catching there before it can become a word. The fire crackles louder now, the heat pressing closer, curling into the space between us. Her hands lift again, but this time not toward me—upward, trembling, fingers forming the shape of something she has repeated her whole life.
"Do not be afraid," I murmur. "You go where you have always longed to be."
For a moment, she believes it. I see it flicker across her face—fragile, desperate, clinging to something that has already abandoned her. Her head bows. Her lips begin to move, the prayer returning, steadying her even now, even here.
I turn away.
Behind me, there is a quick, wet sound. Steel meeting flesh. A breath breaking where it should have continued. The prayer collapsing into silence before it can reach its end.
It is over.
The fire rushes in to fill what remains.
Something touches my cheek. I lift my hand and find it there—a single tear, warm against my skin. I let it fall, watch as it strikes the wood at my feet and vanishes at once, taken by the heat.
I do not turn back. I step out.
The night meets me again, but it is no longer whole. Fire follows at my back, pouring through the open mouth of the doorway, spilling down the wooden frame, devouring beam and roof alike. The structure groans like something alive being unmade, each collapse a slow surrender, each spark carried upward like souls denied rest, scattering into the dark.
The steps are slick beneath my feet. The square no longer breathes. Only the fire does.
He comes to me.
I feel him before I see him, the air tightening, bending, answering to his presence as it always has. When I turn, he is already watching me, his face marked, his hands dark with what he has taken, his mouth curved in something that does not soften.
We stand there, between the crumbling church and the ruined stake. The fire rises behind us. The dead gather at our feet.
He reaches for me, and I do not hesitate.
My hands find him as easily as breath, unyielding, drawing me toward him as though there has never been a moment where I was not meant to move this way. When our mouths meet, it is blood and heat and something deeper that has no name left for it, something that consumes rather than joins.
I taste it.
On him.
On myself.
I deepen the kiss, my mouth parting against his, taking what he gives, giving back in equal measure, the taste of death no longer foreign, no longer wrong. His lips move against mine, down, to my throat, where the marks still linger, where the skin remembers him even now.
I tilt my head in offering—but not as I was taught. In knowing. In want.
The flames rise higher.
They crown us.
They bear witness.
