“Speak.”
Seraphina was grateful for the time he’d given her to organize her thoughts. She started with the beginning and told him about Matteo’s mission from Headmaster Wolff to travel to Tuscany to bring his family’s apex relic, the journey back, the attack, his death, and her eyes being carved out of her skull. She didn’t give him details, not even suggested the four men had raped her, but she knew he understood from the visible tension in his shoulders. It wasn’t something that needed to be said. It was a known fact that when men at war got their hands on a woman, they treated her body like loot.
She told him about the convent of Saint Vivia, the sisters who nursed her back to health, about Briar who became her friend and guardian. She’d learned to navigate the world blind, do almost everything she could do before. And more. Fight. She told him about the nuns’ raids to collect relics for their vault, andhow a name heard in a tavern – Major Eisengrau – ignited a fire inside her, and from that moment on, she knew there was no other purpose to her life except to get revenge on the men who’d ruined her.
Ingolstadt followed, Hartmann, and the prison. Rune.
Their journey south, the stop in Langenbach where they cured a plague, the things they learned in the western tower of Schloss Ewigheim.
“Matteo’s hands,” she said. “My eyes.”
Idris was too struck to speak.
“He tore them out of his sockets and gave them back to me. And I ran. I left him there, bleeding, terrified, alone… I left him there in pain, remorse, hating himself. When I came back to my senses, it was too late. He was gone.”
“The eyes are for him.”
“Yes.”
“Seraphina.” Idris turned to look at her. “You know what he is.”
“I do.”
“The creature who ripped those people apart…”
“They’re not the same,” she said. “That revenant was a Sentinel. Rune is a Construct. They were built for different reasons.”
Idris was silent, processing her words.
She climbed onto the plank next to him and placed her hand on his arm, feeling his muscles flex and release. He wasn’t disgusted with her, only uncertain. There was still time.
“Did you work on Project Prometheus?” she asked.
“No. I know about it, but I stayed away from it, kept my head low and downplayed my skill and knowledge. Most of my colleagues from House Cordoba were and are still involved with it. From all years, not just ours, surgeons and scientists in their own right. Bright people. Knowing who is working for the HighHarvester, I fear that the resistance has no chance of winning this war.”
Seraphina bit her tongue. The urge to reveal Matteo’s secret was strong, the words ready to fly past her lips. She tasted blood and swallowed hard. The compulsion throbbed behind her lids, an ache that intensified with every beat of her heart. She moved back into the cart, rummaged for a cup, and poured herself beer from the half empty cask. Yes, she’d drunk half of it while stuck in the barn, but in her defense, it was a small cask, she’d been in agony for most of that time, and Idris had used it in her food, too.
“Stop the cart,” she said.
Her head was killing her, she wanted to lie down and sleep for ten hours, but that wasn’t possible, so what was left was for her to stop letting her problems drown her and get on with the solutions.
Idris pulled at the reins and looked at her expectantly. It was as if he knew she was going to say something bad, something crazy and punishable by a trip to hell, because he was braced for it.
“We should get that Sentinel.”
His thick, black eyebrows shot up, and his lips curled into a disbelieving smile.
“What?”
Seraphina knocked back the last of her beer.
“We should kidnap him.”
“Seraphina, did you see what I saw? Were you there, or did your soul leave your body? I wouldn’t blame you for it. God knows I often pray for the ability to separate from myself so I don’t have to experience every single dreadful moment of his life. But then I feel guilty, because I was meant to live it all, and I choose to believe there must be a greater purpose to it.”
“No. I mean, yes. But I can do it.”
She took out the vomer bone and showed it to him.
