Chapter One #2
Seraphina hung her head, so low that her lips almost touched the words, her breath steaming the cold metal.
This was why she’d come here. She’d run because at that moment, her body had vibrated with two impulses: fight or flee.
There was no one to fight – maybe only herself – so she’d fled.
Toward him, still. Even as she was running away from Rune, she was still running toward him.
She’d come here, to the place where he’d been kept for two years, the first two years of his life.
He’d spent them alone, in the dark, staring at three walls and a solid door.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered against his name.
She crawled over the door, finding what was left of its hinges, trying to determine which cell it had come from.
On her hands and knees, she moved to the left, her palms turning black with soot, a splinter lodging into her thumb.
She clawed at the doorframe and pulled herself to her feet, then stepped into the enclosed space.
It was larger than the prison cell she’d shared with Rune, but no less claustrophobic.
The relic showed her a narrow cot, of which only the metal frame was left, a toppled table, half-burned, and a chair in pieces.
She advanced toward the center of the room and imagined what it must’ve been like to be him, just awoken, existing for the first time – not born, she wouldn’t call it that – with no one there to explain who he was and what world he’d been brought into.
Seraphina crouched low and ran her fingers over the fallen table.
She considered setting it back straight but felt like it would’ve been too invasive a gesture.
Her fingernail caught on a drop of hardened wax.
So, he hadn’t been kept in complete darkness, he’d been given candles.
What had the Blasphemer made Rune do by candlelight?
The eyes of a bone shard technician and the hands of a master weaver.
Had he sewn lattices in here? She supposed it wouldn’t have been Quietus Nets and Anodyne Bands.
Maybe not even Wards of Rebound. Those could be made by any senior journeyman weaver.
No, the High Harvester must’ve made him copy his own dark patterns for lattices that crippled, manipulated, and poisoned.
She thought about the Obedience Lattice, Falk Kühner’s prized invention, rejected by the academy board.
She thought about the Pestilent Wheel that had killed hundreds in Langenbach.
Who knew how many more twisted patterns the Harvester had created?
One more wicked than the other. Had he made Rune weave them to deploy them on the battlefield?
Seraphina stood and approached the nearest wall.
She didn’t expect to find anything, seeing how Rune had had access to paper and graphite pencils, but she ran her hands over the stone anyway, her fingertips pressing, searching.
Nothing on the wall against which the table had sat.
She walked along it, her boot caught in a soggy sheet of fabric crumpled on the floor, and she braced herself on the bedframe to stop from falling.
The sheet once kicked into the corner, she stepped inside the bedframe and ran her palms over the wall above the bed.
There. Words carved into the stone.
“I struck a word with silence, bare and deep:
I keep her charmed, she grants me sleep.
I struck forever with the time I’ve lost:
I hide what remains, it spares me the cost.”
A sob tore from her throat. How could she have abandoned him? What was she doing here, still? Discovering him, his first years of life. She’d needed to know, so she’d come on instinct. The loose thread floating at the back of her mind connected her to him.
She stepped over the bedframe again, walked out of the cell, and reoriented herself back toward the stairs. The sound of footsteps and voices stopped her, making her press herself against the wall.
“Why are you doing this!” A young man’s voice, accented.
“Keep going.” The soldier from before.
Seraphina knew she was safe, so she went to meet them at the foot of the stairs. They soon came into view, dark shadows against gray. She smelled oil and smoke from a torch.
The soldier had his musket pointed at the young man’s back, and every time the man tried to turn around, he poked him with the bayonet.
“This is insane! They need me! Didn’t you hear that man?”
“Walk.”
“He was screaming, crying… He said his friend was dead. Maybe he’s not, and I can help. What’s down here that’s more important that another soldier’s life?”
His voice sounded familiar to Seraphina. She couldn’t place it when the man sounded near hysterical. The voice from her past had always been calm and measured.
The soldier stuck him again with the tip of the bayonet, and the young man grunted and walked forward. She felt it when his eyes landed on her and he froze.
“This is the ghoul,” the soldier said.
Seraphina heard the gnash of teeth coming from the naturalist. He didn’t comment, so she didn’t either.
“Give me the torch,” she said. “And put that away.”
The soldier lowered his musket and passed her the torch, then stood at attention.
“Now go to the western tower. There’s a man there. Bring him to me.” After another thought, she added: “He’s blind.”
“Yes.”
The soldier turned on his heel and disappeared up the stairs. Seraphina was left with the newcomer. She approached him, holding the torch up to her face, so he’d see.
“Seraphina Bell?”
She placed his voice this time, just by the way he said her name.
“Idris Gharbi?”
She’d spent days in Ingolstadt, stalking around Kr?henstein Academy in hopes of hearing a familiar voice, someone she knew from her time studying and working there. And that voice had finally found her miles away, in the dungeons of a cursed castle.