“What are you wearing?”
She bit her lip the second the words came out. It was such an inappropriate question, but she was curious. Was he dressed better than her? They’d taken her coat when they’d arrested her, and she was covered in only a thin wool dress and linen undergarments.
“I have my shirt and my trousers,” he said simply, as if he didn’t think at all that her question was out of place. “No boots. They took those.”
“Fuck.”
“It’s fine, I’m not cold.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I have thick skin.”
“Thick skin doesn’t protect you from the cold. As a surgeon, you should know that.”
He didn’t say anything. She tried to focus on stretching her calves and doing small, warm-up movements. Once again, she’d asked him a question, and he’d given her an evasive answer.
She rolled her ankles one at a time, then bent forward to press her palms flat against the cold stone. Her hamstrings protested. She straightened and twisted at the waist, then dropped into a crouch and held it, breathing through the burn in her thighs. Her body began to warm, blood moving faster. She rose and shifted her weight from foot to foot, testing her balance. Her body remembered how to move, even after weeks of stillness.
Without thinking, her hands drifted into fighting position. Left hand low at her hip, right hand raised to chest height,palms angled as if gripping hilts. She bent her knees and stepped forward. Her right hand swept down in a diagonal slash while her left came up to guard. She pivoted, reversed the motion, felt the phantom weight of the blades. Step, turn, strike. Her breathing steadied as she moved through the sequence.
“What sort of exercises do you do?” she asked him.
“Push-ups. Squats. I hold positions until my arms shake. Sometimes I pace the cell for hours.”
She went through another set of movements Briar had taught her.
“It sounds like you’re doing something much more complicated,” he said.
“Fighting drills,” she said. “I was trained with twin daggers. I’m good with a stick, too, if needed.”
And she would probably have to remember how to use a stick, since she had little hope the daggers would be returned to her. She couldn’t buy new ones, either. They were expensive.
“Trained?” he asked.
She considered how much she should tell him. If he knew she could fight, then it would be to her advantage.
“I spent the last two years at a convent. When the sisters took me in, I wasn’t in very good shape.” She was beaten to a pulp, nearly dead, but she didn’t tell him that. “They taught me how to fight. There was a girl my age who lived there. Her name was Briar. She was my trainer, and in time, she became my best friend. All I know, I know it from her. The first month, she worked me so hard, I could barely roll out of bed in the morning.” She smiled fondly. “I was covered in bruises. Until I became any good, she beat me so badly, but she’d always say she was gentle with me. Gentler than I deserved. She broke my finger once and had no regrets.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Hey, I overpowered an academy porter a few days ago and cut off his cock. Academy watchmen are better trained than the city watch. I’d say Briar did a fine job.”
“A convent where you learned how to fight,” he said. “I’ve never heard of warrior nuns before.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, especially if you have relics under your roof during a relic war. When the Harvester took over the court in Munich, most monasteries and convents sent their relics to Krähenstein. The strongroom at the academy is the safest place there is. A lot of families did the same with their hereditary relics. But the nuns at Saint Vivia’s chose to stand their ground and defend what was theirs.”
“The Harvester?”
Seraphina stilled. Her muscles were aching pleasantly, and she felt warm. She thought of going through a few more drills, but she didn’t want to sweat, because it would make her so much colder later.
“The High Harvester,” she said. “The war broke out when he captured the royal family and seized the court three years ago. Then he murdered the headmaster of Krähenstein Academy and turned most of the board members to his side. A new headmaster stepped in, but as capable as Konstantin Wolff is, he wasn’t ready for a full-blown relic war, the first in history. He doesn’t know how to win it.”
When Rune didn’t say anything, Seraphina sighed.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know any of this, either.”
He stayed silent, as if afraid that if he confirmed her suspicion, she would get mad at him.
