Chapter Ten
All stories of true relics are horrible.
Seraphina bled for three more days. While Rune never said anything to her, she could feel his impatience, his restlessness as he schemed in his head.
He was committed, she realized. He’d decided to get her out, and there was no changing his mind.
She didn’t try. She waited, listening to him scratching on the wall, humming to himself, or tapping his fingers on the floor in rushing patterns.
These were noises he made that she’d gotten used to.
They were his, part of him, habits and quirks that made Rune who he was. She tried to memorize them all.
“Tonight,” he said to her when he noticed she wasn’t changing her cloths anymore.
They were sitting at opposite ends of the cell. Seraphina knew he had her back to her, because he was busy carving something into the stone below the window. She crawled to him and pressed her spine against his, perfectly aligned. She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
She felt him shrug. “I will break the lock, walk ahead of you, knock down anyone who stands in my way. I’ll take you to the gate.”
“Across the courtyard?”
“Yes.”
Seraphina inhaled sharply. “There will be watchmen at the gatehouse.”
“Two,” he confirmed.
“Out in the open, they will shoot at us.”
“At me. You will stick to the shadows, close to the walls, where they won’t see you. I’ll take care of them, open the gate, and you’ll run as fast as you can.”
“Rune, they will shoot you, and you’ll drop dead.”
“No.”
“No?” More words wanted to tumble out, but she pursed her lips. This wasn’t an escape plan, it was a fool’s ramblings. “How?”
“I’m strong,” he said. “Stronger than I look, stronger than I let them believe.”
Stronger than he looked... Except she didn’t know what he looked like. She bit her lip and made a decision.
“Before we go...” she hesitated. “Because you’re going with me.”
He swallowed, his throat clicking, and she felt him nod. Or maybe he was hanging his head in shame because he was lying to her and she knew.
“We should meet properly,” she ended her thought.
“What do you mean?”
“I would like to know your face. And I’ll let you see mine.”
He shifted, pulling away from her. Where his back had been pressed to hers, she felt a rush of cold air.
“No, you can’t look at my face,” he said, his voice low and tinged with sorrow.
Or disgust. It could’ve been both, Seraphina thought as she tried to decipher the tone of his voice.
He started carving again, the sound of the rusted nail running over the stone sharp and maddening.
She wanted him to stop and pay attention to her, talk to her about what they were about to do like she was involved in it – because she was, she could be, if he let her – not like she was a damsel who was supposed to wait on the sidelines as he got beat on and shot at, then run and leave him behind.
But more than anything, she wanted him to... look at her.
She wanted him to see whom he was putting himself in danger for.
“Rune.”
He ignored her and scratched more harshly at the wall.
She half-turned and placed a hand on his arm to still him.
“Rune, I have a confession to make.”
His arm fell on his lap, and he leaned back into her slightly, not enough to press their spines together, but enough that Seraphina could feel the heat of his body chase away the chill.
“Rune, I’m blind. I have no eyes. The reason why I didn’t want you to look at my face is that my eye sockets are.
.. empty. And mangled. They look really bad, I’m told.
You heard Hartmann. I’m the ugliest thing he’s ever seen.
I believe him, because he knows me from before, when I had eyes, and.
.. and Matteo told me so often they were my prettiest feature. Along with my long blond hair.”
Something tore inside her chest as it all poured out of her, more words than she’d thought she’d say. She could stop here. Details were irrelevant, but she hadn’t talked about it in so long, hadn’t had to explain herself to anyone, not even to the nuns or to Briar.
“The bluest eyes he’d ever seen,” she whispered.
“He loved my eyes. He said they were as blue as the clear summer sky reflected in the stillness of the sea. I lost them when he died. They... They took his life and my eyes, carved them out of my skull, so the last thing I saw was the blood pouring out of him as they stabbed him over and over, and... and their faces as they...”
Her breath hitched. She swallowed, her throat tight.
When she tried to speak again, only a gasp left her lips.
She breathed in and out through her mouth, which refused to close.
Her heart hammered painfully against her ribs, and she wanted to break down and cry, but she couldn’t.
No eyes meant no tear ducts. They’d hacked at her face crudely, tearing more than her eyes, damaging her lacrimal glands and leaving the upper part of her face in tatters.
The nuns had healed her to the best of their ability, but she would never see and never cry again.
During her first weeks of recovery, she’d screamed at the top of her lungs, especially at night, when she couldn’t sleep and the agony of what she’d lost was too much, and she couldn’t release it through tears.
The sisters had let her, never admonished her for how she kept them up for hours on end.
Briar had sat by her side, smoothed her hair and prayed for her.
“Seraphina...”
The sound of her name coming from him pulled her back together when she was on the brink of falling apart. She closed her mouth and wetted her lips.
“I had a scarf that I used to tie around my eye sockets to cover them, but Hartmann took it. I know it’s stupid, but it made me feel... less exposed. Less ugly.”
“So, you can’t actually see my face.”
“I can, if you let me touch you. Trace my fingers over your features. That’s all I ask.”
“Why?”
“Because... if we do this, I don’t know how it will end. We might succeed, and tomorrow, we’ll be hiding together in the city, trying to find a way through the gates. Or we might fail, and we’ll never see each other again. We’ll be separated or... or dead.”
“You won’t die, Seraphina. I promise you.”
“What about you?”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve survived worse.”
She smiled to herself. It was bitter.
“Will you ever tell me?”
He shrugged, shook his head. A non-answer.
“I’ll let you look at my face, if you let me touch yours,” she said.
Why would he take her up on her offer, though? What man wanted to look into the maimed eye sockets of a ruined woman? This was a bad idea. If this was their last time together, it was better for him to remember her by her voice and her yellow hair, which she was sure he’d gotten glimpses of.
Seraphina felt him shuffle, struggle with something, and then a tearing sound filled the silence of their cell. He was ripping his clothes again. Before she could ask him why, he pushed a long strip of torn fabric into her hand.
“What–”
“To replace your scarf.”
“Your shirt,” she whispered, unbelieving.
“It’s only a bit shorter now.”
“And sleeveless...”
He didn’t say more, and she ran her hands over the strip of fabric, feeling the threads stick out where he’d ripped it.
This meant he could look at her and not see the worst of it.
Because he didn’t want to? Didn’t want to see the voids in her skull in his nightmares?
Or because he understood how hard it was for her to show him her wounds?
Seraphina positioned the fabric over her eyes and tied the strip at the back of her head, strands of her hair getting entangled in the knot.
“Thank you.”
“I want you to feel safe,” he said. “It’s not because I don’t want to see you without it. I will look at your face, if you want me to, and I will let you touch... my right cheek.”
“Your right cheek?”
“It’s less mangled.”
“Can I touch your nose?”
A moment of hesitation. “Yes.”
“Your forehead?”
“No.”
“All right.” She would take whatever he was willing to give. “On the count of three, we turn toward each other?”
“All right.”
“One, two...” She counted slowly, allowing herself two breaths between counts.
This was hard. Harder than she’d thought. When she’d been arrested, they’d taken her scarf and looked at her face. The sergeant had backed away in repulse, and the watchmen had made sounds of disgust. But she didn’t care about them. It was better if she repulsed them. It was different with Rune.
“Three.”
They both shifted at the same time, something between a turn and a crawl, and they settled on their knees, facing each other.
They were close. Their knees touched, and she could feel his warm breath on her forehead.
He was tall, even if he was probably hunching so he wouldn’t tower over her.
Instinctively, she lifted her chin as if to look up at him.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello.”
His voice was as kind as ever, and she didn’t sense him flinch. His knees were firmly pressed to hers, and his body didn’t jerk back in contempt. She smiled, and it was genuine. He wasn’t recoiling from her, and for that, she was willing to thank a saint or two.
“You’re not ugly,” he said.
Seraphina scoffed.
“You’re certainly not the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” There was amusement in his voice.
She blushed, though she had no reason to. She lifted her hand but stopped inches from his chin.
“May I?”
She heard him swallow, and she could imagine the way his Adam’s apple bobbed in anticipation. Or regret that he’d agreed to this exchange. How mangled could he be, she wondered. More than she was? She doubted it.