Not knowing about the raging war was a blessing. Why did she have to take that from him? Now, he had more reasons to feel unsafe and think his best option was to rot in this prison cell.
“What happens if he wins?” Rune asked.
She shrugged, though he couldn’t see her. “He wants his chosen few to control all the relics. And he would control his chosen few. He would be... the King of Relics.” She laughedbitterly. “So, I don’t know. Chaos? The end of the world as we know it? Death to everyone who opposes him. He wouldn’t be a king, he’d be a god.”
Rain started pelting the ground, splashing onto the window ledge, dripping down the cold stone and onto the floor. Seraphina heard Rune move, and then the blanket fell over her back and rolled right off. He’d thrown it at her. She unfurled it but didn’t wrap herself in it.
“We should share the blanket,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“No, it’s freezing cold. We’ll sleep back-to-back, share body heat, too.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
He didn’t protest a third time, so she scooted over the floor, closer to the center, gathering straw as she went. She packed it and patted it down, making a nest as best as she could. She lay down on her side, with her back to him, and waited. After a few minutes, she heard him approach tentatively, until his back was pressed to hers. She threw the blanket over them both and pulled her knees to her chest, then changed her mind and straightened her legs, pressing them back to touch his.
The more they touched, the warmer they were.
Chapter Eight
It was hard to be a pragmatist among the religious and the obsessed.
Despite the exhaustion, Seraphina couldn’t fall asleep. It was impossible when her body was pressed flush against Rune’s, even if they had their backs to each other and the way they touched wasn’t intimate at all. It was a practical choice, so they wouldn’t freeze to death when the rain turned into sleet and the cell into an ice box. The old man in the cell next to theirs wheezed and coughed all night. Seraphina could swear she could hear his teeth chatter through the wall.
Sleet in mid-October wasn’t normal, but the weather had been weird and chaotic in the past two years. It all started in 1816, when spring never came and summer felt like autumn. They called it the year without a summer. The crops failed across Europe, and people starved. Some said it was God’s judgment, others blamed the wars – all the cannon fire and bloodshed poisoning the air. Seraphina didn’t know what had caused it, and she doubted anyone truly did. All she knew was that the weather never went back to the way it used to be. Winters came early and stayed late, rain fell when it shouldn’t have, and the cold lingered.
She listened to Rune breathing next to her, feeling his back expand and contract with each breath. He was asleep, so at least one of them was getting some rest. His body heat seeped under her skin, and she realized she hadn’t felt warm since she’d left Saint Vivia’s Convent, where she’d shared a room with Briar. It hadn’t been heated, because only three rooms in the convent had fireplaces – the warming room, the kitchen, and the infirmary – but she and Briar would snuggle together in one bed and bury under blankets on cold nights. It had felt natural, since Briar was a girl, but with Rune – with a man – it wasan entirely different thing. While she understood the necessity of his proximity, it kept her awake. She couldn’t relax, couldn’t allow her consciousness to fade into sleep.
She’d never slept like this with Matteo, even if they’d been together for nearly two years. They’d met when she was appointed as his shard technician. Before, she’d heard about him. There was a four-year gap between them, and as she was working on her studies, of course she’d heard about Matteo da Siena, the newest, most talented master weaver at Krähenstein Academy, after his predecessor had turned to the dark side and decided to build himself a cult. Matteo didn’t know she existed until she walked into their workshop behind Headmaster Von Linden, who’d introduced her.
It pained her to think about the former headmaster. He’d been a man in his sixties, tall and strong, who refused to be hunched over or slowed down by age. He came from one of the oldest families in the Sarumite Order, and he’d been unmoved in his beliefs since he’d declared himself a purist, like his father and grandfather, and all their ancestors before them. Despite his purist ideas, he was the one who reinforced that Krähenstein Academy would remain open to all four currents of thought, going as far as to organize the students into four houses, each house representing a current and being named after the philosopher who’d defined it.
There was House Syracuse, his own, named after the purist Valerius of Syracuse, who’d written the foundational text for the purist school of thought – Kanónes tis Katharas Thysías, or The Canons of the Pure Sacrifice. The purists believed that for a person’s bones to turn into relics after their death, they had to be innocent of body, mind, and spirit. Untouched. A virgin. And for that reason, purists remained ascetics and only allowed themselves to perform the sexual act after marriage, and onlywith the purpose of creating an heir. It was how they showed respect to the consecrated and their relics.
Matteo had been a purist as well, and even though he’d loved Seraphina with all his heart – he’d told her countless times, and she’d believed him – he wouldn’t touch her. Only after they were married, and even then, only to produce an heir. And he wouldn’t marry her without his parents’ blessing, which they had refused to give when Matteo had taken Seraphina to visit them in that terrible first year of war, a journey that had ended in his death and her ruin. Even if his parents had told them explicitly and to both their faces that they would never allow their purist son to marry a pragmatist woman, Matteo had defied them and promised Seraphina that nothing would stand in the way of their love.
Except death. And his death had come too soon, too fast.
They had hold hands and kissed chastely on the cheeks – mere pecks, nothing more. That had been the extent of their touching each other. She’d wanted so much more from him, burned to feel his hands on her face, her throat, lower... She’d dreamed about him crushing her to his chest and exploring her body, of his lips tracing down her jaw and nipping at the sensitive spots she didn’t even know were there. The desire she felt for him scorched her. It was painfully delicious to know that she had him, he was all hers, but at the same time, he was out of her reach.
And then, the unthinkable happened, a nightmare she’d barely survived, and Seraphina had sworn she would never let another man touch her. Unless it was to allow him close enough to break his offensive limbs.
It was no wonder she couldn’t sleep when Rune – a man, real and solid, his frame three times larger than hers – was pressed against her back. Her swirling thoughts, bitter memories, and silent promises wouldn’t let her sleep. She felt a migrainebeginning to bloom between her temples, and a sharp pain in her lower belly. She wrapped her arms around herself and started counting her breaths, hoping it would help her doze off.
House Syracuse was the largest at the academy, since the purist current was the oldest and had the most adepts. Then, there was House Rome, named after Leonis of Rome, a devout Christian who’d lived in the era of Emperor Constantin and who’d written De Vera Sanctitate, or On True Holiness. The founder of the doctrinist current redefined the third condition of a sacrifice. It wasn’t about a state of innocence, but about an unwavering belief in God. By His divine grace, the sacrificed became a saint, and his bones became relics. Headmaster Wolff, who’d replaced Von Linden after his murder that had caused the eruption of the relic war, was a doctrinist.
Personally, Seraphina thought both currents were utter, steaming piles of bullshit. The obsession with purity, godliness, sainthood – these were the visceral reactions of humans who lived in times when the world was an amalgamation of scary unknowns. She wanted to believe that humanity had moved on from that and could do better. So had the founders of the newer currents – Zahra of Cordoba, who wrote Kitab al-Tabi’a al-Jasadiyya lil-Masdar, or On the Corporeal Nature of the Catalyst, effectively starting the naturalist school of thought, and Magnus of Hamburg, who wrote Das Maß der Macht, or The Measure of Power, the foundational text of the pragmatists.
At the academy, House Cordoba was the smallest. The study of biology and anatomy wasn’t for everyone, especially when it implied human dissection. The other students called the naturalists ghouls or corpse-tenders. Not Seraphina. She’d never called them derogatory terms because she could appreciate their dedication and intelligence, the wisdom and reverent fascination with which they studied the physical body in trying to understand why some bones gained magical properties afterdeath, while others remained inert. She could admire their passion, though she’d never share it, as a pragmatist herself.
House Hamburg, to which Seraphina belonged, didn’t care about the how or the why. They only cared that relics existed and could be used in endless ways. To do good or harm, to heal or destroy, for selfish or altruistic reasons – it made no difference. Relics were a means to an end, and why would they care about the sacrificed – or yields, as the pragmatists called them – since they were dead anyway?
The High Harvester had belonged to House Hamburg, and when he built his little cult, most pragmatists trained at Krähenstein and other relic schools across Europe had joined him. Seraphina was already in love with Matteo. Had it not been for him, she might’ve joined the enemy too, who knew? It was hard to be a pragmatist among the religious and the obsessed. The naturalists were the only ones who didn’t look at the pragmatists with disgust, and that was why a lot of them had chosen the Harvester’s side, because he offered them opportunities to study the human body like never before.
Matteo had kept her grounded, sane. He’d kept her by his side and made her into an important part of the resistance. When she was under his wing, no one dared to point their finger at her and accuse her of blasphemy just because of the house she was in. It had been hard in the beginning, right after the war started. Even though later, Headmaster Wolff had made it clear that the pragmatists and naturalists who’d chosen to stay and fight against the Blasphemer were welcome, needed, and part of the family, it hadn’t been necessarily easier.
