Epilogue
He crawled to the window and grabbed the ledge but couldn’t pull himself up.
His fingers were slick with blood, they slipped on the stone, and he collapsed back on the floor, a heap of mangled flesh that should have never moved, breathed, or pretended to have a soul.
Where tears had run down his face, now trails of dark blood coagulated.
He’d hoped the pain in his skull would knock him unconscious, but it was subsiding instead.
With the tips of his fingers, he touched the tatters of skin and muscle around his eye sockets.
He hadn’t been gentle when he’d pried his – her – eyeballs out, yet it didn’t matter. The wounds were healing already.
What was he made of? Because the parts coming from dead people made sense only up to a certain point.
Nothing else had been written in the ledger, no mention of revolutionary science, obscure alchemical processes, or use of relics.
The ledger was a collection of entries that marked the beginning and end of each experiment, what had worked and what had failed, with dates attached, and lists of bones, organs, hulks of flesh and where they came from, in an attempt to determine what skills the revenant would have.
Revenant. That was what he was.
It came from Old French, from the present participle of the verb “revenir”. It meant to come back. To return. The root was ancient, coming from Latin – “revenire”. And Rune knew that because he knew everything the people he was made of had known.
Did this mean that they lived inside him now? That they were gone, dead, and then they came back through him, a sliver of their consciousness forced to haunt an organ, a limb, and spin fragments of memories in a loop?
Rune sunk his hands into his hair and pulled at the roots as he dug the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. He let out a guttural wail.
He’d ruined Seraphina. She thought she’d been destroyed by the men she was hunting, but Rune had destroyed her better. He’d kissed her with the lips of a criminal, touched her with the hands of her dead lover, and looked at her through her own eyes that he’d stolen from her.
He’d given them back. It had been the only thing he could do for her in the moment – maim himself to return what was rightfully hers.
He heard footsteps approaching. He kept his face covered as he rocked back and forth and breathed heavily.
Light boots clicked on stone, and he sensed that the one wearing them walked with grace, nimble on their feet, though he could hear a slight hesitation, a drag, as if they were injured and recovering.
This was not a soldier, this was a female.
“We must go,” she said. “Before someone finds you.”
He didn’t recognize her voice. He turned away from her, hiding his head between his knees.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Briar.”
Briar. It sounded familiar. Yes, Seraphina had once told him about her. Briar was her friend from the convent, the one who’d trained her and broken her finger.
“Leave me alone,” he said.
He didn’t know why she was here, how she’d found him, if she was looking for Seraphina, and he didn’t care.
Seraphina was gone, which was the only right thing that had happened since they’d met, and that meant he had to remove himself from anything and anyone associated with her.
An absolute break was what he could offer her.
He would not seek her or mourn what they’d had, he would not think about her, and if his brain conjured up dreams of her, he would crack his own skull, pull the blob of matter out, and squash it under his boot.
Briar crouched before him with a soft grunt.
“Rune,” she said. “That is your name, isn’t it?”
“No. That is the name of a Norwegian singer who died in an inn in Augsburg.”
“Rune.” She said it firmly, as if his observation had confirmed it, not denied it. “Come with me.” She reached for something on the ground, and he heard the scrape of wood over stone. It was the walking stick. “I will teach you what I taught Seraphina.”
“Kill me,” he said.
“I don’t think I can do that,” she whispered.
“Then give me a weapon. I will do it myself.”
She sighed. “I doubt that will work.”
She let the words sink in, and they did. Men had shot him, he’d been without food and water for days, he’d slept in a freezing cell and barely felt it when others perished of frost sickness. He wanted to die, but he’d been built from death. And he’d been built to last.
“I shouldn’t be alive,” he said, his voice desperate. “I am not. I am a walking pile of rotten flesh.”
“You’re not rotten,” she said. “I’m looking at you, and while you’re not the handsomest face I’ve seen, you smell better than most fellows.”
He shook his head. “I am an assemblage of others, a cluster of bits and parts, I am an abomination.”
“That... you are.”
“I am... I am...” he groaned. “Who is this I?”
Briar’s answer was a deep sigh.
He lifted his head and turned to her, letting her see the extent of the damage he’d done to himself.
“Do I have a soul?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have no answers for you. I’m not even going to attempt to understand who or what you are. I am just doing what I think is right.”
“What is right?”
“The High Harvester wants you, and I can prevent him from having you. So, come with me, and I will teach you what I taught Seraphina. How to navigate the grief of being in this world blind.”
Briar placed her hand on his arm, then slid it down to his wrist. Her fingers stroked the back of his hand, and Rune waited a few beats before he rolled his wrist, so her hand slipped into his palm.
She squeezed his fingers, he squeezed back, and then she was standing up, and he was following her.
She pushed the walking stick into his free hand.
Rune held his head bowed low. His black hair fell around his face, long enough to hide the holes where his – her – eyes had been. He would have to find a scarf.
THE END