“We’re looking for an apex relic. What did I tell you about people who have them and want to be absolutely sure they aren’t found?”
She turned to him and pointed at her right eye socket.
“They implant them,” Rune said, his voice betraying astonishment.
“I bet what we’re looking for, if it really exists, is in the graveyard.” She started toward the door, then another thoughtcame to her, and she stopped and sighed in defeat. “The earth is frozen, though. We won’t be able to dig.”
“Wait! When you say what we’re looking for might be in the graveyard, you mean... You want to dig up the graves?”
“Yes, but it’s impossible, damn it.”
“You want to desecrate graves...”
Seraphina wrinkled her nose, displeased. “It sounds bad, but we’d just be taking a peek. Never mind, we can’t do it.”
She heard Rune sigh as if he were giving up.
“I can do it,” he murmured. “If we find a pickaxe made of forged iron or steel, so it wouldn’t break. A crowbar would be good, too. I’m strong enough to do it, it’s just a matter of the tools not breaking.”
“Really?” Hope returned to Seraphina’s voice.
He shrugged. “If you want to dig up bodies, then I’ll dig up bodies for you.”
She laughed. “You make it sound unholy.”
He laughed with her. “Isn’t it?”
“And you’ll do it for me...”
He took her hand in his and pulled her into the corridor and back toward the stairs.
“I’ll do anything for you,” he said.
Seraphina blushed and pushed into his side. He surprised her by wrapping an arm around her and holding her to him. It was a slow process, but he was becoming more accustomed to gestures of affection, to being close to her and touching her outside of the bedroom. Earlier, he’d let her rest her hand on his cheek, and now they were walking embraced, which made them fumble and nearly trip on the stairs. They laughed together, and she wondered if he might feel comfortable doing more soon.
Chapter Thirty-One
All this nasty adventure hadn’t been for nothing.
Seraphina held a gas lamp as Rune was digging. There was a second gas lamp he’d set on the ground to help him see what he was doing. To her, it was all the same. Night or day, the shadows she saw were black, and the empty spaces around them gray.
There were eight graves, five bigger and three smaller. They left the small ones alone, as they knew those buried in them were children. Rune worked in silence, switching between the pickaxe, the crowbar, and the shovel – all of them found in a tool shed. He didn’t complain, nor make any grunts or groans that signaled exertion, which told Seraphina this was no effort to him at all. His main concern was to not break the wood handle of the pickaxe by putting too much pressure on it.
“These are shallow graves,” he said, throwing the shovel away and kneeling to sweep at the dirt with his hands. “They didn’t bury them in coffins, only wrapped them in sheets. This one, I think, is a man.”
“Can you pull back the sheet a little?”
Seraphina heard fabric tearing, then the smell hit her. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand.
“His flesh is gray and looks like it has collapsed inward,” he said. “The eye sockets are hollow and dark. What do you want me to do now?”
Sometimes, Seraphina thought Rune should take a break from being her eyes.
“Cover him back up and fill the grave. If the body is rotten, then it doesn’t hold a relic.”
Rune did as she said, and it must’ve been an hour later when he managed to uncover a second body, that of an old woman. It was still not what they were looking for, as this corpse was also in an advanced state of rot.
Seraphina had to take a few steps back to clear her lungs. Even after Rune covered the second grave, she felt like the foul smell was still in the air. It had started snowing, which made Rune’s job harder despite his physical strength, and she was beginning to feel guilty for making him do this. He didn’t like it. In fact, he thought it was horrible thing to do, and Seraphina happened to agree with him. But if she was right, the reward would be worth it.
