She straightened, fingernails digging into the trunk. She pressed her lips to it once more, as if whispering a secret into a lover’s ear.
“The Bastion Weave is a class A ward lattice… There are six of them, five placed in the walls of five cities… The sixth is inside the wall of Krähenstein Academy. They will not fail. They will not fail.”
She whispered the names of the five cities, over and over, like a litany.
“Its shape is that of a trebled chevron. It’s a trebled chevron…”
A heaviness lifted off her shoulders as she spoke the words out loud, into the tree, her voice low enough that only someonestanding right beside her could’ve heard. There was no one there. She was alone, and she knew she would’ve felt even better if she told it to a human being, but for now, it was enough.
The sound of Idris’s boots crunching in the snow made her jaw clench.
“Seraphina?”
She brushed her hair out of her face, wiped the tears off her cheeks, cleared her throat, and focused to the best of her ability. Her head was killing her. Her sore lungs didn’t agree with the cold air.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
She turned to face him.
“Idris, I’m dying.”
“What? No, you’re not. You just need to rest. I’ll make more tea–”
“I won’t recover from this. I can feel it in here.” She tapped her chest. “And we don’t have time to sit around and wait. Enough feeding me, and making me tea, and giving me minted water to inhale. None of it will work. This sickness will kill me, and there’s only one cure.”
He sighed, and she knew that he knew what she was talking about.
“You must implant a relic,” she said.
To her surprise, he nodded. He’d been against it before, but he’d seen and done things so much more horrible tonight that implanting a sacred bone into a person was child’s play. He reached for the atlas vertebra.
“Not that one. I have to give it back when we reach the convent, or the sisters will never forgive me. If they have Rune, they will make my life unbearable before they even let me see him. They don’t implant relics either; they venerate them too much.”
“The vomer bone?” Idris asked, incredulous. “The relic that gives you nightmares?”
“I can handle it. I stole it off a dead woman who’d had it for years.”
“I feel like I must point out that the keyword here isdead.”
“The relic didn’t kill her.”
“What did?”
“The Harvester’s men. Not before she gave them hell. They were too many, she was one. Not even a thrall relic can save you when you’re outnumbered.”
“Sera–”
“You must do it. Please.”
He brushed a hand over his face.
“Where do you want it?”
“Somewhere hidden. Between the ribs?”
He nodded. “I have to wash first, disinfect… everything.”
“What did you do with the heart?”
