Chapter Twenty #2
She waited for him to finish his sentence, but it seemed to take him a while to find his words. Whatever this was, whatever was happening, they’d stumbled into it unprepared. They hadn’t rehearsed it in their heads.
“What do you see?” she prompted him.
“Seraphina…”
Her name rumbled out of him, in that low, soul-melting register.
She felt a flutter in her belly. It was soft and liquid, and the moment she noticed it, it slicked lower.
She wasn’t sure what had prompted this unexpected reaction.
To extend this strange game they’d started seemed unwise.
Yet she couldn’t stop herself from giving him a coy grin.
“What do you see with those blue eyes of yours, Rune?”
“I see you. I see your pain, your anger, the unfairness of it all.” It was all whispered, as if he were afraid he was saying the wrong things.
“It’s you against the world, and you’re so small, so fragile, and the world is big and uncaring, like this massive, stumbling giant that’s going nowhere but tramples everything in its path.
The world makes no sense, but you do. And I am terrified, Seraphina, that it will crush you, and I won’t be there.
Or I will… I will be there, dumb and paralyzed, useless, stuck in my own head.
” He reached up and slammed the heel of his hand into his temple.
“This head that’s all messed up. What use is my strength if my mind is weak? ”
“Rune…”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and pulled his hand away.
His sleeve had rolled down, and she felt the stitches encircling his wrist, prominent and rough.
The sensation sent a jolt through her. Since that day in their shared cell, when they’d faced each other for the first time and he’d allowed her to touch his face, Seraphina hadn’t felt his skin against hers.
Its warmth and unevenness fed her curiosity, which Rune sensed, because he tried to pull away.
She didn’t let him, instead entwining their fingers.
His hand was rigid for a moment, then she felt him yield.
She didn’t know what to say to him. Now that he’d told her what he saw when he looked at her, she didn’t know how to feel about it.
Was she small? Of stature, yes. But she didn’t see herself as a small and fragile person.
Compared to him? Sure. His confession made contradictory feelings battle inside her.
“I’ll ask the innkeeper’s wife to send someone up with buckets of hot water. We can both wash ourselves properly.”
She let go of his hand and took a step back. It was easier to change the subject. When Rune got serious and honest like this, Seraphina felt like the ground was about to slip from under her, and it was safer to evade. Until he did it again. He was dismantling her walls brick by brick.
Rune didn’t react. He stared at his hand as if it was different now that she’d held it.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Hm?” He seemed confused. “Oh. I just can’t believe we’re here. Together.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you would get two rooms. We have enough money.”
“We do,” Seraphina said. “But it’s better to spare it. We can share a room and a bed. We’ve shared a cell and a storage room. There’s no sense in getting two rooms when we should be mindful of our money.”
“But bathing? While you’re here? I don’t think I can do that.”
He sounded shy, and if she wasn’t mistaken, a bit afraid?
“Rune, do I need to remind you that I’m blind? I should be more concerned about bathing while you’re here.”
That caused a complete change in his attitude.
“I won’t look, I swear. I will sit in that corner and stare at the wall.”
He pointed at the farthest corner opposite the screen that separated the tub from the rest of the room. She shook her head and laughed. No matter how many times she’d told him not to point, it just didn’t stick.
“I’ll be back soon. Hang tight.”
Seraphina left him in a state of bewilderment, but she couldn’t think about it.
She needed a few minutes to herself. She walked out of the room and headed downstairs, found the innkeeper’s wife and made her request for hot water.
She went through the motions while her mind wandered to Rune and what he’d said.
Maybe he was right. It was strange to want to share a room and a bed when they didn’t have to.
Sharing a prison cell hadn’t been their choice, and when they’d slept together in the chandler’s shop, it had been about surviving the cold.
Now, they had plenty of gulden for two rooms. Still, she wanted to be with him.
Seraphina had gotten used to Rune.
As she went back to their room, she thought about his hand in hers. She was beginning to make an obsession with his hands. What would it be like to feel them on her face, her neck… Lower?
She found him standing exactly where she’d left him
“We should go to the common room to eat,” she said. “The meal is ready, and the water will take time to heat.”
Her voice startled him. He’d been lost in thought, and she’d brought him back to the present. His inconsistent behavior today was starting to become concerning to her. He was out of his depth, and she wasn’t helping, though she was doing her best.
Rune followed her out without a word, and they made their way back downstairs. Seraphina found a table tucked in a corner, away from the main flow of traffic but close enough to hear the conversations around them. They sat, and within minutes a young serving girl brought their food.
Seraphina smelled roasted pork, still sizzling and hot, cabbage stewed with bacon and onions, dark rye bread that was fresh and warm, butter in a small crock, and boiled potatoes with herbs. Two mugs of dark beer followed, set down with a thud.
They ate ravenously. The pork was tender, the bread soaked up the meat juices, and the beer was strong. While she ate, Seraphina listened to the conversations around her.
A group of soldiers sat at a table nearby. One of them was speaking, his voice tired but loud enough for the whole room to hear.
“It wasn’t even a battle. That’s what I keep saying. It was slaughter, plain and simple.”
Another soldier added, “Our troops were decimated last night. We lost a hundred men, maybe more.”
“Tell them what happened,” someone else urged.
The first soldier continued, “There was this man standing in the middle of the field. We saw him there, alone, no weapon in sight. He started walking toward our lines, slowly, like he had all the time in the world.”
“We should have shot him down right then,” the second soldier said. “But no one did, and that was when we knew something was wrong. The closer he got, the more the men started acting strange.”
“Strange how?” the innkeeper’s wife asked.
“Agitated. Breathing heavily, panting like dogs. We could all feel it, this heat spreading through our bones, making us sweat despite the cold. Men started pulling at their clothes, tearing their uniforms to shreds with their bare hands. They threw away their weapons, their helmets, everything. Then they started falling to their knees, just dropping down in the mud. And they started eating it.”
“Eating mud?” someone whispered.
“Shoving it into their mouths, cramming dirt down their throats, crunching through worms and gravel, weeping and moaning while they did it. They couldn’t stop themselves. And this man just kept walking toward us, and even though we wanted to shoot him, we couldn’t.”
There was a beat of silence before the second soldier continued.
“Our captain had the presence of mind to run. Everyone thought he was abandoning us, running like a coward. But he ran to the back of the line, to the artillery positions. He reached the cannon crew and told them to aim at the enemy. He said, ‘Don’t stop until he’s soup.
’ The man must’ve been wearing an apex relic, and when you deal with something like that… ” He shook his head. “God help us all.”
“They fired two cannons,” the first soldier said.
“One after the other. The first shot missed but the second one hit him dead on. At that range, canister shot tore him apart, bits of him flying everywhere. But he was so close to our own line by then that our men got caught in the spread. Blood and shrapnel, men screaming. It didn’t matter, anyway. ”
“Why not?”
“Not many of those who ate mud were going to survive. Internal bleeding, poisoning. Better to end it quickly with cannon fire.”
Silence fell over the common room. People had stopped eating and drinking, heads bowed, thinking about the lives that had been lost. When someone spoke minutes later, there was barely restrained anger in their voice.
“Why don’t we have relics like that? Why does Kr?henstein Academy keep powerful relics locked in their strongroom while the Harvester sends soldiers with apex relics? A single man killed a hundred people, and we’re not going to do anything about it, are we?”
No one had an answer. The silence stretched, and Seraphina knew this wasn’t the first time people had asked that question. It had been asked since the beginning of the relic war, and no one had ever come up with a satisfactory answer.
Seraphina forced herself to pick up her spoon.
“Finish everything on your plate,” she told Rune. “We can’t let ourselves be affected by this. We need to regain our strength.”
Rune obeyed halfheartedly.
“I don’t want to be here anymore. I can’t listen to these stories.”
“I agree,” Seraphina said.
They were done quickly, got up, and headed for the stairs with their heads down and faces covered by their hoods.
No one paid them any mind. When they entered their room, Seraphina heard the fire crackling in the fireplace.
Four buckets of water waited behind the screen, steam rising from three of them.
“Can you pour the water into the tub?” she asked Rune.
He did so, then straightened his back and looked at her, as if waiting for her next order. She shuffled in place, playing with the buttons of her cloak. A gasp left his throat when he realized, and she couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the corner of her lips.
“I’ll go sit in the corner,” he said hurriedly. “I won’t move until you’re done with your bath.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Seraphina began stripping off her clothes. The cloak fell at her feet, then the gray dress, her undergarments, and her stockings, until she was bare. Her skin prickled as she stepped into the tub, lowering herself slowly.
The moment the hot water surrounded her, she let out a moan of pure pleasure.
Across the room, she heard Rune grunt softly, a strangled sound that made her skin flush.
Heat pooled in her core, a tingling sensation that spread through her belly and tightened low in her abdomen. Her nipples hardened into peaks, and she was shocked to realize that she was aroused.
For the first time in two years, her body was responding positively to the presence of a man.
Seraphina felt a combination of fear and wonder, because this was new territory. Matteo had always been the only man in her life, the only man whose touch she’d desired, and she’d thought that part of her had died with him and with… what had happened to her.
She ran her hands over her ribs, feeling how thin she was, how the bones protruded from underneath her skin. She cupped her breasts and arched into her own touch, biting her lip to suppress another moan. How much better would it feel if Rune’s hands replaced hers?
Seraphina pursed her lips and released her breasts, gripping the edges of the tub instead. She stayed like that, unmoving, waiting for the tingling to pass and the arousal to fade. Because she couldn’t want Rune. She couldn’t want any man to touch her, not even one she trusted.
It was wrong.
As the minutes passed, however, her resolve began to waver. And why not? She was a woman, after all. A ruined one, sure, but a woman nonetheless, and she had womanly needs. She’d thought her body was asleep forever, cold and disconnected, but it turned out it still functioned.
She was lusting over a man who’d proven to her, again and again, that he cherished her and would never cause her harm.
Why not, indeed? Maybe it was a good thing that she could still feel and want. Maybe it was a sign that after all this was over, after she got her revenge, she could hope for a normal life.
A life with Rune.
Feeling somewhat better at this prospect, she sat up and started looking for the soap. Her hand patted the edge of the tub, searching, but there was nothing there. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized she’d forgotten to take it from the three-legged chair that also held the towels.
“Rune?”
“Yes?”
She spoke quickly, before she could change her mind.
“Can you please come here and give me the soap?”
Silence. Seraphina counted her heartbeats.
“You want me to–” He faltered.
“Please,” she insisted.
She heard the chair scrape across the floor as he stood.
“All right. I will keep my eyes closed.”
She chuckled.
“Don’t. You’re not used to it, like me. You’ll bump into something. Just come, Rune. Don’t overthink it.”
The only thing she hadn’t removed was her scarf. It was tightly secured around her face because it made her feel safe – a brick in the wall that separated her from the world, which not even Rune would be able to remove.
Seraphina pressed her hands to her chest, folding herself with her back curled and her arms around her knees. He wouldn’t see much, just a bit of skin exposed above the water. She waited, every nerve in her body on fire.
Rune stepped behind the screen, and his tall shadow fell over her.