Chapter Nine
Men didn’t have the energy to scream anymore.
Seraphina woke up in the late hours of the evening.
Her muscles were stiff, and to move meant to hurt, but she was warm.
It might’ve been from Rune’s proximity as he lay beside her, his body within an inch from hers, or from the menstrual cramps that were making her sweat.
He’d stopped playing with her hair, his big hand gently resting on her shoulder.
Through the thin fabric of her dress, she could feel his palm was hot, as if he were generating his own heat regardless of how frigid the air was.
“Are you hungry? The guards brought dinner.”
Knowing the ruckus they made every time they did their rounds, she was shocked she hadn’t woken up.
Or maybe she had and couldn’t remember. The chaos of the prison had become so familiar to her, almost normal, that it didn’t affect her like it had during her first days here.
It was a bitter thought... To realize that she was part of this place now, and the prison didn’t feel like a temporary setback in her life anymore, but more like an inescapable condition.
“If I eat, I’ll throw up,” she said.
“A sip of water, then?”
“All right.”
Her lips were dry, her throat like sandpaper. She waited for Rune to sit up and move away before she pushed herself to her knees and combed her fingers through her hair, pulling it over her face. She felt a gush between her thighs, which made her wince and feel thoroughly disgusted with herself.
Being a woman was, for the most part, unbearable.
The regular pain and bleeding, and then the contempt society showed toward all of it, as if it was the woman’s fault her body functioned the way it did.
Menstruation was considered dirty, but when she didn’t bleed, the woman was seen as desirable by men, especially if she was a maiden.
Pregnancy made her undesirable again, a whale no one wanted to touch, and birth was something no man wanted to hear about or witness.
Rune pushed a cup of water into her hands, and she wrapped her fingers around it.
He’d promised her not to look at her face so many times that she’d lost count.
She trusted him but still made sure her face was turned away from him.
The water was relatively clean and soothed her as it slid down her throat.
“I have to change,” she murmured. “Wash the...”
“Of course. I’ll just...” He crawled away from her, facing a corner of the cell and curling within himself. “Take your time.”
Her chest tightened. She felt so damn guilty that he had to make himself small for her comfort.
She moved quickly, replacing the cloths that were soaked through with clean ones, and using a bit of water to wash most of the blood.
Her only option was to lay the wet cloths on the edge of the cot and hope they would dry at some point.
It was more likely they would freeze, though, and stay wet.
“I’m done,” she announced.
Rune didn’t move. She could hear him scratching on the wall again, probably writing poetry with his rusty nail.
“I think you should get out of here,” he said.
“What?”
“Hartmann won’t stop until you’re dead, and he’ll make sure that happens before your trial.”
She chuckled bitterly. “Not that I don’t agree with you, but... how?”
“I’m strong. I can break the lock, or the door, and clear the way for you.”
“Clear the way? Rune, the guards are armed. They will either shoot you dead or hack you up with bayonets.”
“I’ll fight them and I’ll win.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that Seraphina was at a loss for words.
She wanted to contradict him but felt like nothing she’d say would get through to him.
She knew he was unnaturally tough. There had been a few instances where that had been proven to her, but that didn’t make his idea sound less like suicide.
Maybe this was just wistful thinking because the situation was getting dire for her.
And he seemed to care about her for reasons she couldn’t begin to divine.
If it was just a fantasy to soothe himself, then she liked it.
She could allow herself to entertain it for a few minutes or hours, just to distract her thoughts from the darker edges of her mind.
“We should escape together,” she said.
“No, just you. I will get you out, then return to my cell.”
“No, Rune. I’ll only go if you come with me.”
The scratching on the wall halted.
“You know I can’t.”
“It will be different this time. You won’t be alone out there. You’ll get me out of here, and I’ll teach you how to exist in the world, how to... deal with its vastness.”
She tried to remember what he’d said about the sky, the river, and the smells of the city, how they were too much for him. The bigger the outside, the smaller he felt, until he was crushed by it.
“I don’t think it’s something that I can learn.”
“Rune, I won’t go without you. You don’t deserve to be in here anymore than I do.”
In fact, she was pretty sure she deserved it to some extent, while he was completely innocent.
He was silent for a while, then he started scratching on the wall again.
“All right,” he finally said, in a voice so low that she barely heard him.
“Good,” she said.
She wondered if he might have lied to her for the first time.
When night fell and the cell was shrouded in complete darkness, they crawled back to their spots and slept like they had the night before, back-to-back, the unnatural heat of his body seeping into her flesh.
She’d slept all day, so she lay awake for hours, listening to Rune’s regular breathing and the noises of the prison.
The sounds she’d gotten used to had changed, faded with the encroaching winter.
Men didn’t have the energy to scream anymore.
If they cried, their tears froze on their lashes, so they didn’t.
The prayers weren’t as loud or frequent, or maybe they were thought more than spoken.
There were still grunts and whimpers, too soft to disturb anyone.
The sharpest noises the prisoners made was when they coughed violently and spat on the ground.
Seraphina listened for the wheezing of the old man in the next cell.
For a few minutes, she strained to hear him, but her ears were only met with silence.
She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, knowing what that meant.
Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard him wheeze or cough all day.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She didn’t want to wake Rune, but she also felt like the words needed to be spoken out loud. “I should’ve sung the lullaby when you asked me. I should’ve sung it every night.”
Morning came with banging, shouting, and guards turning over the cell next to theirs.
“Another one bites the dust. Or the frost.” Bauer’s gruff voice.
“Less prisoners, less work for us,” came Weber’s sage reply.
Seraphina trembled under the blanket, and she felt Rune shift and place a protective hand on her shoulder.
She stilled under his touch. This was the second time he did it, and even though she hadn’t pulled away or admonished him the first time, and she wasn’t going to do it now either, she felt a tinge of discomfort.
She knew it was irrational, as he wasn’t doing anything to harm her, but it felt intimate.
As intimate as their backs pressing together at night, and his calves touching hers, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for such closeness.
But she’d told him to escape with her, promised him she would be his crutch when he felt like the world was too much. How could she help him when she had issues with being touched?
No, that was just a silly dream. There was no escaping this rat hole.
The door to their cell unlocked, and the turnkey hurried about his duties.
“Creature, get up. The sergeant wants to see you.”
Two sets of emotions rushed through Seraphina, contradicting each other.
She didn’t want Rune to go. What did it mean that the sergeant wanted to see him?
Was Rune going to be hurt? Tortured? She didn’t want to be left alone in this freezing cell; she’d gotten too used to his presence.
But then, maybe it was a good thing. If Rune told the sergeant that Hartmann had stopped his letter from reaching Kr?henstein Academy, that he wanted Seraphina dead and he’d thrown her in a cell with a man. ..
Her thoughts clashed in her aching head, and she didn’t know what she wanted.
Rune squeezed her shoulder lightly before pushing to his feet and following the watchmen.
The door clanged shut, and she felt utterly alone and devastated.
What if he didn’t return? What if this had just been the last time she’d talked to him and felt his warmth, and she’d spent it thinking that he was too close and she couldn’t bear it?
She clambered to her feet. Pain shot through her lower belly, and she had to reach for the wall to support herself.
She stayed like that for a few minutes, trying to think rationally.
If they believed that Rune had committed those murders, then there was no way they wouldn’t return him to his cell. Unless...
How hadn’t she thought about it before? How hadn’t she realized?
Rune was in here awaiting his trial, but once the trial happened and he was proven guilty, the punishment for manslaughter was death by decapitation.
She knew that, but she’d been distracted by him being so vague in answering her questions, then by his confession that he didn’t actually do it.
Hell! She’d been distracted by her own predicament, and she hadn’t come to truly care about him until a few days ago.
Did he know he would get the death sentence? She’d asked him if this was his way to end it without having to do it himself, and she’d suggested there were easier ways. How cruel of her to say that to him! What if all this time, he’d known what would happen because he’d planned it?