Chapter Thirty-Four
It wouldn’t change them, they would survive this.
Rune pulled the ledger toward him and started leafing through it.
“What is this?” he asked Mayer.
Of course, Mayer didn’t respond, and Seraphina had to prompt him. She was impatient, wondering how they were going to do this, and she had to push her boiling anger down in order to get information from Mayer. He knew things she and Rune needed to get out of him before they could end him.
“That is Project Prometheus,” Mayer said. “The physicians and surgeons working on it noted down all the revenants and the parts they were made of.”
“The parts were chosen intentionally?” Rune asked as he kept turning pages.
“Yes. It was so each revenant was capable of specific things, the Constructs more than the Sentinels.”
Seraphina inclined her head, watching Rune’s shadow through the relic, trying to determine how he felt as he looked through the heavy ledger.
“Construct and Sentinels,” she said. “Elaborate.”
“The Constructs were the first experiments. Up to Construct-Six, they were failures. The first three died within hours or days from creation, and the next three had to be put down. Constructs Six through Twelve were successful – strong, fast, and able to perform complex tasks. The Lord Harvester put them in the dungeons and used them as he saw fit. The Sentinel series was different. After the surgeons perfected the method through the Constructs, they were ordered to create perfect soldiers, and those were the Sentinels, One through Twenty.”
“I am Construct-Twelve,” Rune whispered. “And these pages are about me.”
He set the open ledger on the table and placed his hand on it, his fingers curling and wrinkling the page.
Seraphina thought he was going to rip it out, but he didn’t.
His shoulders shook, as if he were sobbing, then he cleared his throat and steeled himself.
He removed his hand and started reading.
“What does it say?” she asked.
“It describes the process of how I was made. It started on September 14, 1816, and ended on October 3rd, 1816.”
“This means–”
“I am two years old, Seraphina.”
There was no way she could process this information now, so she tucked it away for later.
“What else does it say?”
“There’s a list of parts and where they came from. It’s very specific. Every bone, every organ, and every stretch of skin.”
“That is... what you wanted to know. What you’re made of. Who you’re made of.”
He followed the lines of text with his finger.
“Right lung, Alois Lamm, shepherd from the village of Tegernsee, died at twenty years of age, never traveled more than six miles from his birthplace. Left lung, William Hartley, textile merchant from Manchester, England, died at thirty-two years of age. Left femur, Sebastian Hoffman, grammar schoolteacher in Landshut, he taught Latin and Greek.”
Seraphina pressed her hands to her chest. These names belonged to people who’d lived, worked, loved, hoped, and dreamed.
To hear them reduced to the body parts that were taken from them was morbid, unhinged.
.. It was pure blasphemy. Some called the High Harvester the Blasphemer because he farmed relics.
They had no idea how well the name actually fit.
“Mouth, Tomas Kovac, convicted murderer and thief from Bohemia. He was executed by hanging in Prague, at the age of twenty-seven, his body was sold cross-border for medical use. Witnesses said he would kiss his victims mockingly after robbing them.”
Rune’s voice shook as he read the words.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Seraphina now understood why he’d told her so many times that she wouldn’t want those lips on her. She wasn’t horrified. To her surprise, she thought it could’ve been worse.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Go on.”
She could tell he wasn’t reading the notes in order. He was probably focusing on the body parts that had raised questions for him these past two years since his conception.
“Larynx, Rune Larsen, traveling singer and performer from the Kingdom of Norway, he sang in beer halls, at weddings and fairs, was found dead at the age of thirty-five in an inn in Augsburg. Hands...” he faltered. “Hands...”
Seraphina saw his shadow pull away from the ledger, as if the pages had burned him. He held his hands in front of him and looked at them as if he were seeing them for the first time.
“Rune?” She said his name with gentleness, as if he were a scared animal that might bolt. “What does it say about your hands?”
He shook his head. “I can’t...”
“You made it so far. Tell me.”
“N-No...”
His reaction worried her. Something was wrong.
She didn’t know what it was, couldn’t read, and had no way to help him.
She sensed him starting to shake, lightly at first, then harder, until he had to grab the edges of the table to steady himself.
He curled his back, head bent low, and sobbed, his shoulders shaking.
Seraphina reached out and placed a hand on his arm.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t touch me.”
He was crying, she realized.
“Rune, what’s wrong?” She found his hand and covered it with her own. “You can tell me. Please, I want to help you, but I can’t if you won’t tell me what’s wrong. What does it say about your hands?”
His beautiful hands... She ran her fingers over his smooth skin until she found the stitch that encircled his wrist. He didn’t stop her, but the more she touched him, the harder he cried. Tears fell on both their hands.
“I love them,” she said. “No matter whose they were, I adore your hands, Rune. It was so frustrating to me when you wouldn’t touch me, and when you did, when you got over that barrier, it felt.
.. It felt amazing. I will never forget that night, what we did at the White Horse.
I will never forget any instance after when you touched my face, my body, when you held my hand in yours.
So, you can tell me. Please, Rune, you can tell me anything. I am here for you.”
“You will hate me,” he sobbed. “You will wish you’d never met me.”
“No...” She squeezed his hand, grateful that he wasn’t pushing her away. “No, never...”
He nodded, as if trying to pull himself together. He straightened his back and looked at the ledger once more.
“Only because you asked,” he said. “Only because you deserve to know.”
That sounded ominous. Could it be that bad? His mouth had come from a murderer, and that didn’t put her off. Because it didn’t matter. That man was gone, dead, and one part of his body didn’t carry all his sins.
“Hands,” Rune started reading, “Matteo da Siena, master weaver at Kr?henstein Academy, member of the Sarumite Order, born in Tuscany, died at twenty-six years of age, on September 9th, 1816.”
Seraphina clung to his hand, still. She could hear him saying words, but the words didn’t make sense.
She tried to focus and understand, but it was as if Rune was suddenly speaking a language she didn’t know.
She squeezed his hand again, and he responded by taking her hand in his.
They stayed like that. She opened her mouth, closed it.
Rune lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
The hands of Matteo da Siena. The lips of a thief and a murderer.
Seraphina felt the world tilt on its axis.
She was floating, her body upside down, bouncing in the air.
Her stomach pressed into her spine, her heart rose into her throat, she tried to swallow it back down, she couldn’t dislodge it, return it to where it belonged, in her chest..
. Her chest constricted, there was a dull throb in her temples, she bit her tongue, tasted blood. ..
Seraphina pulled her hand free, turned away, and retched.
Nothing came out. She dry heaved for a minute while Rune stood still, not saying a word, barely breathing. Mayer watched them both from his chair, his breathing ragged, his mouth shut and his body rigid, because he couldn’t do anything unless Seraphina said so.
She straightened her back, smoothed down her cloak and rolled her shoulders.
Her feet were on the ground, or so she thought.
They had to be. She was here – sadly, unfortunately, cursedly.
She couldn’t run, there was no going back.
She knew that. She’d said it to herself earlier.
.. When had that been? A few hours ago? It felt like a lifetime ago, when she hadn’t known this thing.
.. this awful thing that she knew now, and the world was right because she was ignorant.
“I... I understand.” Her voice didn’t choke, which was a miracle in and of itself. “You can... continue.”
“Seraphina...” He brushed a hand over his face. “Seraphina...”
She walked up to him and slammed her hand on the open ledger.
“Read, Rune.”
“No, this is enough.”
He tried to pull the ledger away and close it, but Seraphina grabbed it and held it there.
“Read the rest of it.”
He sobbed, and she realized he hadn’t stopped crying.
If anything, he was crying harder, only silently.
She could imagine rivulets of tears running down his cheeks, and she wanted to reach out and wipe them away, but something stopped her.
There was a pull inside her chest, right between her breasts, and it wasn’t pulling her toward him; it was pulling her away from him.
“Rune, the worst has passed,” she said firmly. “Read the rest of it and let us be done with this.”
He shook his head vigorously. “If you knew... But you can’t know... You can never know...”
“What are you talking about?” she yelled at him. She was losing her patience.
He only shook his head again, as if he were a broken puppet.
Seraphina turned to Mayer. “You, do you know what’s written in the ledger?”
“I do.”
That was all he said, because that was all she’d asked. Seraphina could make Mayer tell her. Did he know the list by heart? Maybe. Did she want to hear it from his mouth? No.
“Rune, if there’s something else...”
“Don’t make me,” he begged.