“Thank you,” she said.
His reply was a soft grunt. What made no sense to her was how someone who’d committed such heinous acts could be so kind and caring. Unless it was a façade to draw her in and manipulate her into letting her guard down.
The slam of a door in the distance interrupted her thoughts. What followed was the clamor of the wooden club banging against iron bars as the guards moved from one cell to another.The prisoners responded in kind, yelling and cursing. Some pleaded. Seraphina waited with bated breath.
Her hopes were shattered when Weber shouted at her to get back, then smashed her fingers with the club when she wrapped them around the bars. She cradled her hand to her chest as she huddled near the wall, turning her face away from them, still keeping her back to Rune. She begged them to return her to her cell, but Weber laughed and Bauer didn’t react. The man who was with them placed two bowls on the floor, along with two pieces of bread and two cups of water, then the door was shut and locked, and they all moved on.
“Fuck,” she said under her breath, her fingers throbbing. She inspected them gingerly, but they didn’t seem to be broken.
“Are you all right?” Rune asked.
“Yes,” she said, harsher than intended.
The food smelled something awful, but her empty stomach still rumbled.
“You can have my share,” he said.
And there it was again, that feeling of weakness and vulnerability, just because she was hungry, and in pain, and he’d noticed. She cursed under her breath again and again, and Rune didn’t say anything, just listened to her and waited for her to calm down.
He’d asked her not to look at his face because he was hideous. She’d asked him not to look at her face, because if he saw what she was trying to hide under the linen scarf, he would think her even weaker. An easy prey, maybe easier than all the ones before.
She ate quickly. The vegetable stew was thin, made from scraps, and there was no spoon, so she soaked the hard bread in it and ate it with her fingers. The portion was small, so she ate Rune’s too. After all, he had offered, and if he’d indeed killed those women, then he deserved to starve.
She didn’t know for sure, though. Innocent men ended up in jail all the time. Still, it was better if he remained hungry and weak until she decided whether he was indeed guilty, and if he was, what she was going to do about him. She drank one cup of water and saved the second one for later. She was still severely dehydrated, but they only had one bucket for their needs. The thought that she would eventually have to use it made her want to throw up what she’d just eaten.
Feeling infinitesimally better, she wrapped the blanket tightly around her body and tried to make herself comfortable in the corner where the wall met the door hinges. An hour passed. Rune’s breathing was regular, though she could tell he wasn’t sleeping. Moans and cries echoed down the corridor as night and its nightmares fully enshrouded the prison. Seraphina tuned them out as best as she could, her attention tight on Rune’s side of the cell.
Another hour passed. Her eyes felt heavy, her body slumping despite herself. When her forehead hit the wall, she jerked awake and pinched herself. She couldn’t afford to fall asleep. She chased away the fog that had taken over her mind, and that was when she heard it – the sound of a pointy object scratching against stone. She lifted and inclined her head, trying to determine where it was coming from and what it meant.
“Rune? What are you doing?”
The scratching stopped. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
“I wasn’t sleeping. What is that noise?”
“I’m just...” He sighed. “I will stop.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing, I’m writing.”
“Writing?”
“Sometimes I write on the walls. I managed to pull a rusty nail out of the cot, and I use it for writing. Or drawing. Sometimes I draw.”
Well, now she was wide awake. Rune had a rusty nail? Fuck. Could he eviscerate her with it? But if he’d wanted to do anything to her, he would’ve moved already. She couldn’t afford to spiral; she had to take things slowly.
“What are you writing?”
“Things I remember.”
“What things?”
“Words... that rhyme.”
“Do you mean poems? Are you a poet, Rune?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
