“What lattice?” he asked.
Seraphina shook her head, not removing her hand from her traitorous mouth.
“Are you all right?”
She jumped off the workbench, grabbed Matteo’s journal, and with her back to Idris, opened it and ripped off the last few pages. She scrunched them up and threw them in the fire.
“Seraphina?”
She watched them burn and didn’t utter a word until they were ashes.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I… I don’t know what came over me.” She touched her temple. Her hands were shaking. “Today was a lot.”
“I agree. You need to rest. Close your eyes for a bit. I’ll make you some tea. Or would you like a cup of warm beer?”
“Beer, yes. That’s what I need. Thank you.”
Despite his suggestion, Seraphina couldn’t sit still. She paced the barn, rubbed Bramble’s neck to distract herself, paced some more. She muttered under her breath without realizing she was doing it, as if she were trying to figure something out, as if she’d just been given a mathematical problem, and she couldn’t find peace until she solved it.
“What’s that?” Idris asked.
Her head snapped up. “N-Nothing. Don’t mind me.”
He gave her the cup of beer, and she gratefully curled her fingers around the warm metal. Idris drank water, which he’d achieved by melting snow earlier and boiling it.
“We nearly have a cleared path,” he said. “I’ll work for another hour, then we can eat.”
“Yes, that sounds good. I’ll prepare the food.”
He gave her an indulgent smile. “Don’t push yourself.”
“No, I want to help. For once.”
“All right. You can make your own food if you want. I don’t need you to cook for me, though.” He winked at her and grabbed the shovel. “You’re not my wife.”
Seraphina shook her head because her eyes weren’t yet ready for a roll.
Organized as ever, Idris had built a makeshift kitchen near the fire. She found the pan he used to cook her meals, cut a generous slice of smoked pork, and threw it in. It sizzled and filled the barn with the delicious smell of fat. She added beer and a piece of hardtack, thinking how nice it would be to have some vegetables. There was a sack of dried peas, but those were for Idris, who could barely eat anything that the army supplied. Since he’d come to Bavaria when he was fifteen, it hadn’t been easy for him. This was pork country. The pig was on every plate from the lowest tavern to the highest table. Krähenstein Academy had students from every part of the known world, and its kitchens knew to set aside portions before they touched what they weren’t supposed to. The world outside was not so careful.
She set melted snow to boil so she could soak a handful of peas for him. Her hands shook as she tried to focus on what she was doing. The fire was too low, so she added a log to it. She winced when a splinter got under her fingernail.
What was she doing, acting so natural, like her world hadn’t just been tipped off its axis?
A tremor started in her chest and spread through her torso and back. She stumbled on her feet and grabbed onto the edge of an overturned crate they used as a table to steady herself. Her teeth were chattering, her hands shaking. She held them in front of her eyes, fingers splayed, and blinked in disbelief. She couldn’t control herself.
A whimper escaped her throat, and she doubled over and dry heaved.
It was all his fault. It was all Matteo’s fault. She understood now. It was as clear as day. Clearer, even!
He wrote the secret in his journal, failed to burn the pages, somehow forgot the journal when they left Langenbach, and the tavern keeper’s boy, Kaspar, read it. She was willing to bet on her own life that when Kaspar read Matteo’s confession, their carriage was attacked on the road to Ingolstadt. Matteo died because that was the punishment of the Oath Relic. But it didn’t end there. They took his body and chopped it into pieces for the High Harvester to use in his experiments. And Seraphina… They raped her, took her eyes, and left her for dead in a ditch.
He did this to them. To her!
Seraphina covered her mouth with her hand as she sobbed. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and now her vision was even blurrier. She smelled burning food and rushed to take the pan off the fire. The water boiled over and nearly extinguished the flames before she managed to snatch the pot and pour half of it over her trembling hand. She cried out but didn’t let go. Once the pot was secure on the crate, she dumped peas in it, refusing to let Idris down just because she was losing her mind.
Why didn’t Matteo burn the pages like he always did?
Something or someone must have interrupted him. She couldn’t fathom how distracted he must’ve been to leave his precious journal with all his pattern sketches behind.
