Chapter Twelve
His body knew it was meant to be with the worms.
He lay limp as they dragged him by the scruff of his shirt, his body leaving deep furrows in the mud.
He was drenched, the freezing rain stabbing his eyes, and he closed them to protect his mind from the immensity of the open sky.
He was covered in dirt and his own blood.
He didn’t look like a person anymore, but then again, he never had.
Cursing and kicking him, the watchmen dragged him through dark corridors, down three sets of stairs, into the bowels of the prison.
The cells here didn’t have windows. The stone smelled of mold and piss, of rot and rat leavings.
They threw him in one that was barely big enough for two people to fit at the same time, pushed him against the back wall and secured his wrists and ankles with iron cuffs, the chains short and bolted to the floor.
One of the guards kicked him in the shin, the other spat on him.
Rune hung his head and stared at a dark smudge between his dirty feet.
“How did he get out?” the sergeant’s voice boomed from down the corridor.
The watchmen stepped out of his way. The two men in the cell with Rune removed themselves to let him enter.
“I won’t ask again. How did he get out?”
He was fuming. He looked down at Rune with utter disgust, but his question and rage were first and foremost directed at his inferiors.
“He broke the lock,” one guard provided.
“How?”
The guard shrugged, and that only fueled the sergeant’s anger.
“With his bare hands?” he asked with a tinge of sarcasm. When the men didn’t contradict him, he narrowed his eyes at them. “That’s impossible.”
There was shuffling and whispering in the cramped corridor, and the turnkey stepped forward holding out the two broken pieces of the lock for the sergeant to inspect. He huffed and waved him away, as if not ready to accept the proof.
“And the woman? Did he break the lock to her cell as well?”
At this, the men fell silent. Rune, though pretending he was detached, was listening intently, and he felt a smirk tug at the corner of his lip.
Seraphina had gotten away. He hadn’t seen her run through the gates with his own eyes, too busy letting the watchmen overwhelm him, drawing them away from her, but he’d hoped she’d done the right thing, even if she hadn’t wanted to leave him behind.
Rune had made sure not to give her a choice.
“Why so quiet all of a sudden?”
The sergeant was on the verge of losing his temper. Rune saw his right hand going to the short saber hanging in a leather scabbard at his belt.
“She was in his cell,” someone said in a weak voice.
“Who? The woman? In whose cell? Speak plainly, man.”
The man in question waited for someone else to say something, but the others stepped back, doing their best to shrink in the shadows.
“Seraphina Bell was in the creature’s cell.”
“What?!”
It was as if the whole prison vibrated with the sergeant’s indignation.
“She was put into his cell,” the guard said, his voice shaking slightly, aware that he was digging his own grave.
Rune didn’t recognize his voice. He realized that all the prison guards and watchmen working at the gatehouse knew that he and Seraphina had been sharing a cell for the past two weeks.
Word traveled, he guessed. Still, no one had told their superior.
Snitching was worse than not respecting regulations.
“Why?”
“For... fun?”
The sergeant opened and closed his mouth.
His face twitched, and it made Rune think of a fish out of water, though he couldn’t say he’d ever been close to a body of water or seen a live fish.
The image was burned into his brain, so it came from somewhere.
From the depths of his being where memories were stored, some quiet and faded, others loud and bright, some fitting well together, others contradicting each other.
“Whose fun?”
The guard remained silent, and after a minute, the sergeant knew he wasn’t going to get an answer to that question.
“Seven days’ pay, forfeited. All of you standing here, and anyone who knew and said nothing.”
There were murmurs and grumbles, but no one dared to speak up in protest.
“Now get out of my sight.”
They didn’t wait to be told twice. They filed down the corridor, and the sergeant waited until he could hear their boots thudding up the steps to the ground level.
He paced the cell – there was only enough space for three small steps to the right and three to the left – both hands on the hilt of his saber.
“We’ll find her,” he said, eventually.
That confirmed she had gotten away, and Rune allowed himself to relax. He leaned back, letting his head rest against the damp wall. His eyes – as blue as the clear summer sky reflected in the stillness of the sea – followed the sergeant’s boots as he moved back and forth.
“As for you,” he continued, “I should tell you that two witnesses have now stated that they saw a man on the night of the crime, around where the body was found. They both described a well-dressed man, well-off, maybe even of some wealth. They said he was fair of skin and fair of hair. When shown a sketch of your face, they shook their heads, said they’d never seen you before. ”
Rune hazarded a glance at the man’s face. The sergeant cocked a bushy eyebrow, and Rune looked away.
“I see. I must say, I don’t know what to think, but it’s not up to me to think anything of it. I’m only here to do my job.”
He stepped forward and checked the iron cuffs, pulled at the chains to make sure they were perfectly secured, then straightened his back and kicked an empty bucket that had been pushed into a corner closer to Rune.
“Why didn’t you escape? Freedom was right there, yet you let them catch you and beat you into submission.
” He squinted in the darkness, his eyes zeroing in on the places where Rune had been shot.
“How are you not dead?” He shook his head in resignation.
He knew better than to expect an answer. “Creature...”
With that, he walked out of the cell, banged the heavy wooden door shut, and locked it.
Rune found himself in a void. Once the sound of the sergeant’s footsteps vanished, there was nothing left. No noise, no light, barely any air.
But most painful of all, she was gone.
No, not painful. It was good. She was out of this hell, free, safe from what that bastard Hartmann wanted to do to her.
He would have put her in a cell with another prisoner, and then another, until one of those wretched men would’ve done unspeakable things to her and then killed her.
Rune didn’t know much about the justice system, except that it was far removed from actual justice, if the guards had broken every rule and common decency, and all they got as a reprimand was a pay cut.
Seraphina wouldn’t have made it to her trial.
And even if she did, he doubted the magistrate would’ve ruled in her favor, even after learning what Hartmann had done to her two years ago.
Seraphina had talked a lot about Kr?henstein Academy, and how she was important to the Sarumite Order – the best shard technician in Bavaria – and about her lover, now lost, the master weaver that some still hoped was alive.
But Rune had glimpsed no proof that the academy truly cared – or had ever cared – about Seraphina and what had happened to her.
Had it been him, had he been a part of the Order, when she’d disappeared two years ago, he would’ve looked for her everywhere, turned the country inside out and never rested until he found her.
He slammed his head against the wall, hard enough to rattle his thoughts and set them back in order.
These fantasies were ridiculous. He was no one. He would never have a say in the way of the world. He wasn’t even a part of the world, so to daydream about belonging to an organization so mystical and ancient was embarrassing. What he would’ve done differently had he had any power...
He’d had power just an hour ago, when he’d broken them out of prison and sent Seraphina to her freedom. And what had he done? He’d sent her alone. He’d said so many things to her, made so many promises.
“You shouldn’t soil your hands with their blood.”
“I’ll kill them for you. One by one.”
“We’ll escape together.”
Lies. He’d known, and she’d probably known, but she’d still hoped.
Out there, before the broken gate, she’d taken his hand and pulled him toward her, urged him to follow her.
It had been so hard for him to turn her down, walk away, because he would’ve followed her anywhere, to the ends of the world, to the goriest pits of the revenge she sought. But the sky...
The sky, gaping above him. The wind, howling through his bones.
Beyond the gate, he didn’t see freedom, he saw streets and winding alleys he didn’t know how to navigate, bustling markets from dawn till dusk, shouting people, clattering carriages, dogs, and horses, a river that was treacherous and beckoned one to its depths.
Even standing in the courtyard, empty air pressing in on him instead of secure walls, he’d felt like he was suffocating.
A vise grip inside his chest, and he could’ve sworn his organs had started to shrink and shrivel, shying away from the world outside.
Each and every body part reminding him they weren’t meant to be out and moving with the living, and only when he was tackled to the ground, pushed into the mud, had his parts sung with relief.
Because they were supposed to be buried.
Six feet under.
Years ago.
His body knew it was meant to be with the worms, not breathing and yearning for things he couldn’t have. Like the touch of her dainty hand, the sound of her voice when she sang lullabies, the brush of her golden hair against his neck when they slept back-to-back. The smell of her skin.
He’d learned so many things about her. How he longed to learn more.
To know her heart, discover what she tasted like.
Hold her when she sobbed with no tears, listen to the parts of her story she’d left unsaid.
He’d embrace and contain her when she was vulnerable, drink her fears from her trembling lips, and tell her she was beautiful and pure, and all those who’d wronged her would die by his hand.
All these things he’d wanted to do when they’d shared a cell. All these things he would’ve done if he’d gone with her. She would’ve let him, maybe. Not at first, but in time, as she allowed him to draw closer.
Daydreams, again.
Rune squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them with fury.
He was a coward. He’d betrayed her.
He wasn’t going to kill anyone for her, because he simply wouldn’t be there.
She would go after the men who’d ruined her, and she’d soil her hands with their filthy blood.
It wouldn’t make her less pure, but the terror of taking human lives.
.. Would she survive it? She’d exact revenge for the death of her lover. ..
Rune ached.
He would never know how it felt to be loved by someone with such devotion that spilling blood was a fair way to show it. Thinking about it, he could do it for a woman. For Seraphina. But he couldn’t imagine reciprocation. And he wouldn’t ask for it.
He was unworthy of these daydreams alone. Indulging in them only made him feel more miserable and pitiful. And that, he did deserve.
It was better this way. He would’ve been a burden to her, panicking at every step, wanting to duck into alcoves, like he had when he’d been on his own, trying to make sense of the city.
He would’ve slowed her down, and she would’ve come to hate him and despise his weakness.
He didn’t think he would’ve gotten better even if she helped him.
There was something broken in his brain, and he didn’t know what it was or if it could be fixed.
Maybe his brain had been this way before. If its original owner hadn’t been able to find a cure, then what chance did Rune have?
And that was the other thing which was better left to rot in this cell, and not paraded out there, where people would eventually see, and Seraphina would ultimately suspect and ask about.
Who was he? How old was he? Why did he know how to do things one man couldn’t hope to learn and execute in one life?
Why were his memories disjoined? How could he remember having grown up in a barn with the animals, and at the same time be able to recite in his head Ovid’s verses as he’d learned them from his tutor?
When he thought about the barn and the warmth of hay, he felt a stab in his right lung.
When his mind spilled at him:
“In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas...”
“My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed into new bodies...”
... a vein in his left thigh throbbed and didn’t stop for minutes on end.
Melodies that played in his head made his fingers twitch and move of their own accord, tapping invisible notes on the nearest hard surface.
They never stopped. The echoes, the longings, the nightmares and confusions of egos clustered in one body, each haunting an organ or a limb, a patch of skin, or a fragment of bone.
He was all of them. He was none of them.
He was...
... like every single part of him...
Better off. Dead.