Theta Waves Book 1 (Episodes 1-3) by Thea Atkinson

questions; all of them ludicrous. She tries to swallow but her mouth is so dry the flesh sticks together. The judges take her silence as some sort of assent.
    "The devil has stolen your tongue, child. We've been charged by the holy church to discover the truth and divest this community of evil."
    She realizes she needs to speak, but she's too weak. The pain has indeed refreshed her memory. Hours of torture, demands of her to admit to witchcraft. Nothing she says seems to make any difference.
    "It's a misunderstanding, my lords," she croaks out.
    At that, one of the men, the magistrate she supposes, waves an arm and the hooded torturer trudges his way to the door. It's a heavy, oaken thing that creaks when he opens it, and Cathrin can see that just beyond in the torchlight and shadows of another room, another figure is hunched forward on a bed of straw. The figure is lifted by his arm, and dragged into the room. His legs are obviously broken; they bend at abnormal angles.
    "Markus," she murmurs.
    "Yes," the magistrate says. "A man who has confessed to being lured and tempted by you to perform unholy acts. What say you to that?"
    Unholy indeed. Each one of them at the time felt so delicious, that they couldn't possibly be anything but sanctified. She can't explain that to these men, though. Their agenda is set and nothing can sway them from it. They'd never see a difference between witchcraft and wantonness now that the former has been brought into question. She's seen the condemned women over the last months as they're dragged to their deaths. Each of them so beaten and bloody by the time they are tied to their wooden crosses that even she had come to believe that some physical wrestling of the soul had occurred deep in the dungeons. Now she knows the truth.
    "I say I'm innocent," she says, trying to see Markus, trying to will him to lift his gaze to hers. Surely they will see that all that is between them is the love of a man and a woman. Nothing more.
    "And yet the man confesses you a witch. Thankfully for him, his end will be swift and painless."
    Markus groans, but when he tries to lift his head, it falls again so that his chin nestles onto his chest as though he's fallen into a tender slumber. Seeing it, Cathrin seethes with anger. Never has she believed Erich could be so hateful as to do such an evil thing.
    "Then you have what you need," she says, the old spite and fire finding some way to the surface through all of the fear. Let them kill her. Let them kill them both. At least this would be over. Maybe the others had been foolish enough to protest their innocence until the last, leaving them bound to crosses with patches of gunpowder tied around their necks. Maybe many others have been naïve enough to think their protestations would end in something other than death. She wasn't that foolish.
    "Alas, no; we do not have what we need. Our last sacred charge is for your very soul, my child. Your confession can set you free."
    "I'll neither confess nor protest," she says.
    "If Lucifer so fights for your soul, then we must compel you to answer."
    "Please," she begs. "Please don't do this. Just kill me."
    There is nothing after but senseless begging and mindless panic. She barely hears her own voice as she screams, and she can't for the life of her find a way to drag in any breath once her lungs are exhausted of sound. The only thing that brings her back from the edge is the fixing of splints around her fingers, splints with screws on the outside. She realizes that they're in earnest now. The small tortures of hot pokers and tearing the fingernails from their beds were but introductory measures. She whimpers as she tries to stare off into space, tries to find some way to leave her body.
    "See how she stares at her master? See how she tries to gain strength from him?" The magistrate says and Herr mumbles a hasty Hail Mary.
    The pain comes as she expects, but the sound of her knuckle cracking and breaking beneath the pressure