Chapter Two
The more one used an apex relic, the worse it got.
“It’s you…” Seraphina held the torch away from their faces and reached up to touch the man’s cheek. “Idris.” His name caught in her throat, the sound between a choke and a whisper. “It really is you.”
He leaned into her touch. Under her dirty palm, she could feel his cheek gaunt, the skin pulled tight over the bone.
Her thumb rubbed over the sharpness of it, then her fingers traced his jaw, which she found as clean-shaved as she remembered, before resting at the joint between his neck and shoulder.
His pulse thudded against her fingertips.
“Seraphina.” The surprise in his voice was replaced with worry. “You’re hurt.”
“Yes,” she said without thinking, then shook her head. “No, no…”
“Is it…” She could feel his eyes studying her from head to toe. “Is this your blood?”
“It’s not. I’m fine, Idris, I promise.”
He let out a breath, though she could tell he didn’t fully believe her.
“I thought you were dead,” he said. “Everyone said so.”
She hung her head and took a step back, her touch falling from his shoulder. Before she could pull away, he caught her hand in his.
“How are you here?” he asked. “Why… What happened?”
He was staring at the scarf tied around her head, and for the first time in what could’ve been more than a year, she felt the flesh in her empty eye sockets tingle.
An itch that, once noticed, turned insistent, until she could feel it in her brain, as if it knew the bits of her that had been missing were close, just in her pocket.
Around the handle of the torch, her fingers twitched.
“What happened to you?”
“I’ll tell you, but not now. We must hurry. I need your help.”
“Anything.”
She let out a sharp laugh at that, short and high, more of a cackle. She pulled her hand free from his and shoved it in the pocket of her cloak, her fingers wrapping around the wet, squishy eyeballs that she needed him to reattach.
Anything. Her next cackle turned into a sob. Anything. Her brain itched harder.
Seraphina was terrified of showing him what she’d become.
To untie her scarf and let him see the monster behind it was nearly inconceivable, but at the same time, she was glad it was him.
She was relieved that when the soldier had told her there was a ghoul, that ghoul turned out to be Idris Gharbi.
Once upon a time, they had been colleagues, and maybe more.
Neither of them had ever called the other “friend”, but Seraphina liked to think that was what they’d become after hours spent studying together in the library, after endless philosophical debates over lunch, shared laughs and eye rolls, inside jokes and polite teasing.
She’d helped him with his German and taught him English, and Idris had opened her mind to new perspectives on science, religion, and how there was no contradiction when it came to the anatomy of the human body.
His views were naturalist in their essence, as Idris belonged to House Cordoba, but even so, he was strange enough – “other” enough – to not be accepted by his peers.
He was the only dark-skinned student in their year.
Muslim, coming from a modest Tunisian family, he prayed five times a day, didn’t drink a drop of alcohol, and only spoke Arabic, French, and Latin when he came to Kr?henstein Academy at fifteen.
He’d expected to be othered in Europe, but not between the walls of the greatest relic school, one of the few that encouraged the study of all four currents, not within House Cordoba itself, whose foundations had been laid by an Arab-speaking woman working at the height of the Islamic Golden Age, Muslim herself, bearing a Muslim name – Zahra.
However, no one knew what Zahra had looked like.
The portraits in the Cordoban hall showed her fair-skinned and European-featured, dressed in something a German painter had imagined an Andalusi woman might wear.
Kr?henstein liked to call itself international and took pride in celebrating all four founders of the great currents.
But its painters had only one face to give them, and that face was white.
Idris didn’t belong, and Seraphina saw that.
She didn’t like it, so one day she sat next to him under the linden tree in the courtyard, where the boy isolated himself to have his lunch in peace.
He was scared of her at first, eyeing her long blond hair and black and gray robes with suspicion, but she smiled at him and asked what his name was.
Then proceeded to call him by it every time, and use it when she spoke of him to others too, even when they asked, perplexed, “Who do you mean? The Moor?”.
She’d say, “Idris. He’s had this fascinating idea about… ”
She’d never called him a ghoul either, a courtesy extended to all naturalists, which came as a surprise to most, seeing how she was a pragmatist, and by the definition of her house, she should’ve been dismissive and irreverent.
Seraphina knew what Idris thought of her, the pure light he saw her in, and she felt guilty about it later, when she drifted from him.
It happened when she started working with Matteo da Siena and became absorbed by both the work and the man.
Now, as the word “anything” echoed through her jumbled thoughts, she felt a squeezing ache in her chest. She wasn’t the girl Idris knew anymore, yet he regarded her as if nothing had changed.
She was glad it was him. She agonized over the fact that it was him.
She drew out the two bloody eyeballs and heard Idris gasp, but that was the extent of his reaction. He was a surgeon; he’d seen worse.
“I need you to…” She started, faltered, and swallowed heavily. “Do you think you can…”
“Ice. There is ice in the medical tent.”
He grabbed the torch from her and headed up the stairs. Seraphina let out a breath of relief and followed.
“How long…” he asked.
“Not long. Maybe an hour.”
He stopped abruptly, and she nearly slammed into his back. He turned to look at her. She could feel his scrutinizing gaze as he took her in once more and came to the obvious conclusion that something wasn’t right.
“It happened a long time ago,” she waved at her own face vaguely. “I just got them back from… from the one who had them.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She couldn’t help a chuckle, as inopportune as it was. Idris Gharbi saying that he didn’t understand something was unheard of.
“I’ll explain, but you said we need ice.”
He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts, then nodded.
“Lucky it’s winter. The low temperature slows corruption of the flesh. “
Instead of rushing back up the stairs, he started rummaging through the satchel he always carried slung across his body. It was a familiar sight, as he’d worn it at the academy as well, once the relic war broke. Inside, he had a small surgeon’s kit.
“Hold this.” He pushed the torch into her free hand. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should’ve done this first.”
“It’s all right,” Seraphina said, even though she had no idea what he was talking about. She could sense his distress.
He pulled out a flask and uncorked it with his teeth as he took hold of her wrist. The smell of brandy assaulted her.
“This will prevent mortification.”
He poured the spirit over her hand and eyes and didn’t stop until the flask was empty.
He returned it to his satchel to refill later, then produced a strip of clean cloth used for bandaging wounds.
He carefully wrapped her eyes in it, made it into a bundle, and held it gingerly as he took the torch back from her and resumed ascending the stairs.
Seraphina let out a whimper. Her old friend’s easy gestures acted like a balm to her soul, burdened for so long with making decision after decision, trying to do things right, doing her utmost not to fail.
Idris knew what he was doing. He was a man of science, a surgeon hardened by the atrocities of the war, and she could trust him with this.
She could trust him to restore her vision.
They emerged on the first floor of the schloss, and Idris put out the torch in a puddle of dirty water.
Seraphina kept close to him. The soldiers knew him as one of them, so there were smaller chances of stopping her and questioning her presence.
They seemed to be busy, though, distracted by something that was happening in the western part of the castle.
There were whispers, shouted orders, weapons clanging and boots thudding up and down the narrow staircase that led up to the tower.
Just as Seraphina and Idris were crossing the main hall, they were intercepted by the soldier she’d sent to find Rune.
She swiveled her head, hoping the relic would show her Rune’s tall, familiar shadow, but he wasn’t there.
Her stomach dropped. Somehow, she’d expected it.
She didn’t have a rational explanation for it, but she could sense him far away, removed from her, the connection they’d shared severed, its tattered remains bleeding.
Idris had asked her if she was hurt. She was, only not physically.
And it was all her fault. She’d done it to herself, to him, to them.
“I found no blind man,” the soldier reported.
He was agitated, looking left and right, as if searching for an escape. He made eye contact with one of his comrades, his mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Seraphina realized the influence of the thrall relic must’ve been wearing off.
“You,” she said the moment the man looked back at her. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“I don’t know. Half of the company is in the western tower. They found Captain Mayer dead.”
“Go out, then. Find the blind man. He’s tall, taller than anyone here, and he has dark hair and…” She was about to say blue eyes. As blue as the clear summer sky reflected in the stillness of the sea. She swallowed around the knot in her throat. “Go.”