Chapter Seven
His grave was the bodies of revenants.
Every time she dozed off, Seraphina dreamed about the men she’d controlled with the thrall relic, about the specific things she’d made them do.
Sometimes, it was the two soldiers who’d told her and Rune about Project Prometheus and took them to Schloss Ewigheim.
Other times, it was Captain Mayer, forced to watch as she pressed the dagger to his throat, compelled to accept his own death without moving, without trying to escape it. Then, it was Rune.
Rune, whom she’d forced to kiss her. Rune, with the ledger open before him, reading out loud, between tears, the words that had broken them apart.
He hadn’t wanted to. She’d made him.
Three days and three nights. The storm raged outside, and Seraphina huddled on the workbench that had become her makeshift bed, near the fire.
Sitting or lying down, it didn’t matter, her back hurt perpetually, and her limbs fell asleep if she didn’t shift them every few minutes.
She stayed awake for as long as she could, talking to Idris or asking him to read to her from his anatomy book.
She listened to him pray five times a day, clean after the horse, feed and water it, cook for her and himself.
He took care of everything while she shivered and whimpered like a wild animal every time sleep took her and she woke up from a nightmare.
Those where she was an outside witness were bearable.
Hovering like a ghost, watching herself give orders and the victims stand to attention and execute them.
The dreams that shattered her were the ones where she saw through the victims’ eyes, heard their thoughts, felt their terror and impotence.
Rune was always the worst. If she was lucky, she’d dream about people from before she’d had the relic, when Madame Rothenfeld had been its mistress.
They weren’t less nauseating, but at least they hadn’t been Seraphina’s puppets.
Though the things Madame Rothenfeld had made some of them do often had Seraphina vomit the little she’d eaten in a bucket Idris had strategically placed by her side.
Even so, she couldn’t stand to be separated from the vomer bone.
As soon as she could walk on her own after the surgery, she’d dug it out of her cloak and hidden it in the pocket of her dress.
She often caught herself running her fingers over it or squeezing it in her hand, as if she constantly needed to make sure it was there and she hadn’t lost it.
“You are healing surprisingly fast,” Idris had said on the second day, when he’d changed her dressing.
She’d shrugged.
On the third day, he’d frowned, still impressed but suspicious.
“And here I thought I’d have to concede and reimplant the atlas vertebra.”
“It’s better this way,” she’d told him. “I stole it from the nuns, and when we reach the convent, I’ll have to give it back and hope they forgive me.”
“You stole it?” Idris had tsked in disappointment. “You’ve changed so much.”
“Not by choice,” she’d said through gritted teeth and left it at that.
The weather calmed, but they were snowed in, so on the fourth day, Idris grabbed a shovel to clear a path. It took him an hour just to open one of the doors a crack so he could begin the back-breaking work.
Seraphina felt useless. She walked around the barn and did light exercises to reengage her stiff muscles, brushed the horse and spoke to it in hushed tones, and gave it a name.
Bramble. Was it too obvious? Perhaps. It reminded her of Briar and her beloved Nettle, and every time she whispered the name in the horse’s ear to get him used to it, she felt an ache in her chest that was also sort of warm and soothing.
Because she knew that Briar was out there, and she had Rune.
Sure, she was taking him to Saint Vivia’s for her own purposes, but that didn’t matter.
Two things Seraphina knew for certain. One, Briar was capable and Rune was safe with her.
And two, Seraphina would get him back. What the nuns might want with him was of no consequence, as long as she got there in time and reclaimed what was hers.
That night, it snowed again. Idris’s reaction was to clatter the pots a bit harder as he cooked dinner, but other than that, he didn’t complain.
The next day, he checked her eyes, carefully removing the Anodyne Band and unwrapping the bandage.
“Are you sure you don’t have another relic implanted somewhere?” he asked. It was intended as a joke, but not quite. “Because it looks like I can remove the sutures.”
Seraphina’s hand was in her dress pocket, squeezed around the vomer bone.
“No implants, I promise.”
Idris had always been against it. It was true that greater and apex relics had tolls, and some of them had influence over the user beyond that simple cost. It had been observed over time that these things became exacerbated once the bone was placed under the skin.
The advantages were immeasurable: quick healing, protection from illness, sometimes life extension.
But were they worth it? Idris didn’t think so.
But his belief went deeper than science.
Seraphina remembered a debate they’d had at the academy, where her friend had told her that as a naturalist, he believed that a person’s potential to become a catalyst after death was a latent biological trait inherited through certain bloodlines, a trait that led to one or a few of their bones becoming infused with power.
This scientific understanding should’ve clashed with his religion, but it didn’t.
As a Muslim, he also believed that God designed it.
Allah created the world and everything in it – the stars, the tides, the human body, and the magic that slept in certain bones.
To study the mechanism was to study God’s handiwork, so to dissect a catalyst was not to defile the sacred; it was to read the book that God had written in flesh and marrow.
But to implant a relic, a bone of the dead into a living body… That was a different matter.
Idris didn’t impose his views on anyone. Seraphina knew about them because she’d asked.
“Stay still,” he said. “I’ll start cutting now.”
She felt a tug at the corner of her eye and fought the urge to jerk away from him. He moved fast, using a pair of suture scissors and fine forceps to pull the thread out of the skin without it tearing. Once done with both eyes, he rubbed cream onto the eyelids. It smelled unexpectedly sweet.
“It’s a concoction of my own making,” he said. “Cold cream to which I added honey and tincture of calendula. It will soothe the skin and lubricate the lid. Don’t open your eyes for another hour. Take it slow.”
Seraphina nodded. “Thank you.”
He patted her shoulder. “You’re welcome. You’ve been an exemplary patient. The easiest so far.”
She laughed. “Well, you’re a great surgeon. I have no complaints.”
“When you asked for a naturalist at Schloss Ewigheim…” he said in a lower tone, “It’s good that it was me.”
“Yes. I’m so glad it was you.”
He started cleaning his tools and replacing them in their compartments in the medicine chest.
“Do you think we can leave tomorrow?” Seraphina asked.
“I think so. It’s not snowing as hard. I’ll clear the path again, and let’s pray it lasts until morning.”
She wanted to leave today, right now, but didn’t want to push Idris. He’d done so much, and all of it by himself. She’d been a burden to him, her only redeeming quality that she was his intellectual equal and could make good conversation.
Before heading outside with the shovel, Idris left her the cream and told her to use it generously and not let her eyes dry out.
Seraphina massaged it over her eyelids gently, slowly prying them open.
The shock of feeling cold air on her eyeballs was almost too much, but she took a deep breath and opened her eyes little by little.
She didn’t know if an hour had passed since the sutures had been removed, but she felt ready.
She needed to be ready, because they’d been stuck in this filthy barn for five days, and she knew it wasn’t only because of the snowstorm.
Had they not been snowed in, Idris would’ve found a way to keep her here until she was healed.
It was all blurry. She blinked a few times to get the cream into her eyes and moisturize them, then looked around.
It was all unformed shapes, objects and barn furniture she didn’t immediately recognize.
On the other side of the wide space, across the threshing floor, she saw the cart and Bramble eating his hay a few feet away from it.
It was as if she was looking through a thin film that wouldn’t let her see details.
She turned her head and gasped. Orange. The first color after two years of moving in the world blind. The fire burned low in its corner, the flames murky and undefined, but undoubtedly orange.
Seraphina’s chin trembled, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. She felt pressure behind her eyes, as if she was about to cry, but thought better of it and calmed down, focusing on breathing evenly. She didn’t want to force her eyes.
For the next hour, she simply studied her surroundings, blinked often, and added more cream to her upper and lower lashes when she felt her skin raw.
She walked over to Bramble and ran her hand over his neck, smiling at the discovery that his coat was a dirty white.
She inspected the cart but didn’t linger when she saw how Idris had arranged his blankets so he could sleep in it.
It felt too intimate to dwell on her friend’s makeshift bed.