“And its toll?” he asked gently.
Seraphina pressed her forehead against the tops of her knees. Bad move. The pain behind her newly reattached eyes intensified.
“No toll,” she said, voice muffled.
“All greater and apex relics have tolls,” he said.
“Not the ones that have positive, healing properties.”
“Seraphina, we studied together. Hours upon hours spent in the library. Even the good ones have tolls. They might just be more subtle.”
“No, not this one. Not Saint Vivia’s atlas vertebra.”
He sighed. “If you say so.”
She heard him walk away, then the clatter of tin pots as she guessed he set about making the willow bark tea he’d promised.
“Not this one,” she repeated in a lower voice, only to herself.
The other one, though…
The vomer bone she’d desecrated a grave to find. The thrall relic she’d been using for the past two days.
The dreams were the toll.
Chapter Five
This was all a dream, a mad hallucination of some amorphous consciousness.
Briar sensed the impending snowstorm hours before it hit and set about finding shelter for the rest of the day and what was going to be a cold, merciless night. She and Rune had been trudging at a slow, sad pace, keeping away from the roads. In this rhythm, the journey to the convent would take twice as long, but she wasn’t sure what she could do about it.
Once outside the walls of Schloss Ewigheim, Briar had dragged Rune into the forest. Beyond the tree line, in a clearing, her dark bay horse, Nettle, was waiting. He’d neighed and hit the frozen earth with his hoof at the sight of her, and she’d run to him and pressed her forehead to his neck, inhaling his familiar scent. For a moment, she forgot about all the aches in her body. It didn’t last, as she soon realized she couldn’t walk anymore. She’d planned to get Rune onto Nettle, since he was blind and Seraphina’s walking stick was useless in his hand. All he did was trip on every root, slip on patches of ice, and slam face-first into trees if she didn’t direct him. Was Nettle strong enough to carry them both? It turned out that he was. Briar didn’t push him, hence the snail’s pace.
From a copse of trees, she was watching the windows of a forester’s lodge, the only standing building she’d seen since skirting around the last village. She would’ve liked nothing more than to stop at an inn, but they were still in the Harvester’s territory, or right at the edge of it, and she couldn’t risk anyone recognizing what Rune was. When he had his wits about him, the man could be inconspicuous enough, but he was disoriented, miserable, and a liability in his current, disabled state. He waited a few feet behind, next to Nettle, his hands sunk in the horse’s mane as if he needed the animal for support, or he wouldcollapse. It was a small mercy that Nettle tolerated him. She’d had him since he was a foal. The Mother Superior had gifted him to her because she seemed to be the only human he let close. Since then, they’d been Briar and Nettle, both prickly, common, and growing wild around things nobody tended to.
“I don’t think anyone is home,” she whispered.
Rune didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure he’d even heard her.
“Abandoned, perhaps?” She pursed her lips and clicked her tongue. “No. The grounds look well maintained.”
She watched and waited for a few more minutes, then shrugged and touched the crucifix that rested just above her breastbone.
“Only one way to find out. Stay here.”
She trusted Nettle to look after Rune. She wouldn’t be long.
The lodge was made of timber and stone. Everything was under one long roof, including the stable and a storage loft above, under the gable. It was a basic structure, built to be uncomplicated and serviceable for a forest warden living alone. If the man was inside – something that Briar doubted – he wouldn’t be too hard to handle. Not if she took him by surprise. So, she approached the house from the side and looked through each window, her frown deepening with every room she found empty. Could she be so lucky? Was she allowed to be? For once.
The fact that the window shutters weren’t closed and barred from the inside, as they should’ve been in such weather, gave her pause.
In the kitchen, no fire burned in the hearth.
She looked through the parlor window last. On the wooden bench built around the side of the stove that shared a wall with the kitchen, she saw a man’s form huddled under blankets.
Briar held her breath. She narrowed her eyes and pressed her nose close to the glass. He wasn’t moving. She watched forthe rise and fall of his chest, for a twitch of his limbs. Nothing. She released her breath and the glass fogged up. In a bout of recklessness, she knocked on the window and held her breath once more, only to let it out with a huff when the result was… still nothing.
She walked to the front door. Locked. It was a heavy thing, made of three oak planks joined vertically, and certainly reinforced on the inside. Out here in the wilderness, miles from the nearest village, it had been made with the purpose of keeping animals out. Briar put her good shoulder into it, but it didn’t budge.
