He brushed a hand over his dark hair. It was cut too short to thread his fingers through it. Seraphina had the impression that if he could, he would’ve pulled his hair out by now. He started pacing, and for the next half hour, he vastly ignored both her and Nine, who was watching them with slight amusement in his eyes.
Nine.
She’d told him they were going to cut him open and study his insides, and he’d gladly offered them the key to his cage. She couldn’t begin to understand what he was thinking or feeling. He could’ve been lying. Once the deed was done and the lattice deactivated, she had to be alert and use the thrall relic on him. He hadn’t attempted to hurt her when she’d been within his reach, but that could as well have been because he needed her to escape.
She couldn’t trust Nine. He wasn’t Rune.
She’d said it herself, and she truly believed it: Constructs and Sentinels were different.
The sound of crunching footsteps snapped her back to the present. She moved to the right side of the open barn door, back pressed to the wall. Idris did the same on the left side.
“I swear, if you brought me out here for nothing…”
“Something is wrong with the revenant,” she heard the sentry say in a deadpan voice.
“You keep saying that!”
The captain raised his tone, and now that Seraphina heard him better, she felt her stomach tighten. A knot formed in her throat, and her eyes went wide.
She knew that voice.
It was one of them, it had to be. But Mayer had said that Eisengrau was in Munich, and Krause and Holzer had been sent to Neuburg.
Daggers at the ready, she felt resolution and apprehension course through her. She hadn’t expected to run into one of them so soon.
From across the open space between them, Idris shot her a concerned look. He’d noticed her changed expression, and if he’d been worried before, now he seemed terrified. Of what was about happen? Of her?
Seraphina pursed her lips. So be it. She’d do this first and seek his understanding later.
Chapter Twelve
Would you like a musket ball to the head, or a dagger to the throat?
It wasn’t him. He had the same voice, the same steel gray eyes and light blond hair, even the same square jaw and long nose. But from up close, it was clear it wasn’t him, no matter how much Seraphina wanted him to be.
He currently had his musket trained on her.
“Hands where I can see them,” he said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
He eyed the broken padlocks and the axe discarded on the floor.
Seraphina had her hands behind her back, fingers curled tightly around the hilts of her daggers.
“You,” she said when the captain’s eyes moved from the revenant in the crate back to hers. “Place the muzzle of your musket under your chin.”
His face paled. One moment, his cheeks were red from the cold, the next, all blood drained from his features, and it was as if Seraphina was looking at a ghost.
“I won’t make you pull the trigger,” she said. “But I’d rather it was in your face, not mine.”
He fought her order. She could see it in his eyes, suddenly stormy, in the furrow of his brow and the purse of his lips. The captain wasn’t as easily influenced as his subordinate. He was older, tougher, more experienced. His mind wasn’t as readily bent.
Seraphina raised her eyebrows in expectation. After a full minute of staring at each other, neither of them flinching, the captain turned his musket around and tucked its muzzle right under his chin. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“How are you doing this?” he asked through gritted teeth.
He was strong of mind, this one. He was the first of her victims to speak without being told.
“Never you mind that,” she said. “What’s your name?”
