Chapter Twenty
The man had never been hers to care for, get close to, touch, kiss…
Briar’s first instinct was to run after them.
She pushed herself off the ground and swayed on her feet.
The slush under her boots made it difficult to keep her balance.
She took a few steps toward the open gate, but the sister who was jumping cut her path.
Briar caught one of her flailing arms, trying to stop her.
“I can’t,” the sister said. “I’m trying, but I can’t.” She had a maniacal expression on her face.
“What is happening?” Briar whispered, letting her go.
She turned and looked around the courtyard.
The Mother Superior was running toward the main building – Briar guessed she was headed for her chambers.
Father Anton was shaking and mumbling something under his breath as a sister was wiping blood off his face.
Two sisters were trying to convince the one standing on one leg to put the other foot down, but the nun was refusing between tears.
The sister who was singing was close to losing her voice, and the one who was dancing was covered in mud up to her waist but still didn’t cease.
Briar felt someone pull at her arm. She turned her head and met her mother’s dark brown eyes, so much like hers.
The only difference was that her mother didn’t have three flecks of gold in her left iris.
She placed a hand on Briar’s cheek, shook her head, and dragged her to the side, away from the chaos.
“What happened here? Why didn’t you try to stop it?”
The corners of the woman’s lips turned downward, but she didn’t answer.
“Are you Briar?” came a man’s voice.
Briar saw a young man with dark skin and eyes that were almost black walking toward them. He stopped at a respectable distance and bowed.
“Are you Briar?” he asked again.
“Yes. Who’s asking?”
“My name is Idris Gharbi. I’ve traveled here with Seraphina.”
His name sounded familiar.
“Seraphina told me about a naturalist colleague and friend at Kr?henstein Academy. Are you him?”
“Yes, I am. And she told me about her best friend Briar at Saint Vivia’s Convent.”
Briar nodded.
Taking her gesture as a signal that it was safe to approach, Idris stepped closer and started speaking fast, in a lower tone.
“Seraphina trusts you. She said so many times, and by extension, I trust you. You must know that the sisters, as well-intentioned as they are, got it wrong, and Seraphina is in no way possessed. All that happened is that she used an apex relic that has the ability to put people in thrall. She didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
Sometimes she…” He hesitated, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
He fixed Briar with an intense gaze. “The relic’s toll is great.
She hasn’t been herself lately. Sometimes she pushes limits that shouldn’t be pushed. ”
“She could die,” Briar said. “All that blood…”
“A cut tongue bleeds more than one would think, but I assure you that Seraphina will be all right. The apex relic is implanted. Most likely, it has already healed the open wound.”
Briar’s gaze traveled over the convent wall, up the hill. Rune was blind, the path was abrupt and dangerous, Seraphina couldn’t speak. Why was she standing here when she should’ve followed them?
“We need to get it back,” Idris said.
“What?”
“The tongue. I can reattach it. I’m a surgeon.”
Briar’s eyes snapped back to his. Dark brown met darkest brown.
“You reattached her eyes…”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think Mother Superior will hand it over easily.”
They both looked at the jumping, flailing nun.
“Seraphina caused a lot of damage today,” Idris said. “Still, she didn’t deserve to be punished so terribly. What if I have something to offer the Mother Superior?”
“Like what?”
Idris tilted his chin toward the gate. Beyond it, Bramble was waiting with the cart, only a few paces down the road.
“I’ll show you,” he said.
No one paid them any mind as they slipped through the gate and walked to the cart.
Briar’s mother followed them silently. Idris reached inside, where the Sentinel’s body lay wrapped in a tarp he’d found at the water mill.
He lifted a corner to reveal white hair and a white face, the skin marred by deeply etched stitches.
“A revenant,” Briar gasped.
“A Sentinel. He called himself Nine.”
“But how…” She looked at Idris with different eyes now. “It’s not possible.”
“We thought so too.” He dropped the edge of the tarp.
“Is there a place that’s less open? Where we can talk more privately and I can show you something the Mother Superior might accept in exchange for Seraphina’s tongue.
I know the sisters collect relics for their vault.
What I have to offer is more valuable than a sacred bone. ”
Briar took him to the cottage in the woods.
The track was barely wide enough for the cart, but at the end of it, there was a small barn for Bramble, stocked with hay, and a spring that rushed over rocks.
The inside of the cottage was simple – a stove, a bed pushed against a wall, a table and two chairs.
While Idris and Briar brought in the medicine chest, Sister Margaret set about making the fire and heating a pot of water.
There was a narrow pantry the nuns had filled with basic supplies.
Idris went out again and came in with a bucket filled with snow.
From it, he pulled out a bundle stained with red, gently placed it on the table and undid the knot.
“I… I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” Briar said.
“It’s his heart.”
Sister Margaret touched her daughter’s arm, and Briar knew she had many questions she couldn’t voice.
Briar sighed and kept her composure. Her mother frustrated her greatly.
Hadn’t five years been enough? When she took the vow of silence, Briar didn’t think it would last for more than a few months, maybe a year.
She’d thought her mother would definitely end it at the two-year mark, then at the three-year mark.
Here they were, still, half a decade later. She’d forgotten her mother’s voice.
“Nine allowed me to open him up and see what was inside,” Idris continued. “This is a lattice, wrapped around it. No linen, the heart muscle is the base onto which the bone shards were sewn.”
“But it’s still beating!” Briar said.
“The revenant gave his last breath once I removed it. However, his heart is very much alive, I believe due to the lattice. And this isn’t all.
Even if it’s cold, the body should’ve shown signs of decomposition.
I checked it regularly, and all tissue is intact.
It’s like a vessel, waiting inert, and if I were to place the heart back inside the chest, Nine would wake up and live again as if nothing happened. ”
“And you want…” Briar pointed at the throbbing organ. “To trade it for Seraphina’s tongue.”
Sister Margaret took hold of Idris’s arm and squeezed hard as she shook her head violently.
“Why not, Mom?” Briar asked. Then, to Idris: “This is my mother, by the way. She took the veil and the name Margaret.”
Her mother pinched her.
“Aww! I think it’s a good idea. Mother Superior is upset, but she’ll listen if we bring her this.”
The woman gave her the sharpest look she could muster.
Briar raised her arms and dropped them at her sides, sighing.
“Are you trying to say that this heart is more important than Seraphina being able to speak again? Eat and drink properly?”
Sister Margaret nodded, then shook her head.
Idris reached into his satchel and pulled out a pen and paper.
The woman looked at them, pursed her lips, but eventually accepted and wrote something quickly.
DO NOT GIVE THE HEART TO MOTHER SUPERIOR
Briar rolled her eyes.
“What are we supposed to do, then? Break into her quarters and steal Seraphina’s tongue?”
I’LL DO IT
Briar lifted an eyebrow and exchanged a look with Idris, who shrugged.
“That works, I guess,” she said. “If I’m not needed here anymore, I’ll go check on them.”
Her mother grabbed her arm to stop her, once again shaking her head. This time, there was regret in her eyes, as if she knew that the silent advice she was giving Briar would hurt her.
“I think she’s right,” Idris said softly. “Seraphina talked a lot about Rune. She never said anything… explicit, but–”
“She left him!”
“She punished herself every waking hour for it. She cares about him. I don’t know if her feelings are reciprocated, but maybe it would be sensible to give them some space.”
Briar rolled her lips, barely holding back.
Everything she’d been through, everything she’d done to bring him here, to convince him to stop punishing himself for things that weren’t his fault.
Now she was asked to step aside. Remove herself because the man had never been hers to care for, get close to, touch, kiss…
He didn’t want her. Had he wanted her, he would’ve pulled her in, not said, “You lost your balance.”
Earlier, she’d seen how he’d run to her, found her by following her voice, reached for her and pressed her to his chest, as if she belonged in his arms. He’d never reached like that for Briar, and they’d spent days together, in such proximity that they knew the smell of each other’s skin.
The floating feeling in her stomach turned heavy.
It made her shoulders drop and her feet drag as she walked to a chair and sat, elbows on her knees and head in her hands.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now.
She’d done all she could, all she’d known, yet somehow, she felt like she’d failed.