She would’ve loved to refuse, but she was in no condition to do so. Her throat was raw from how dry it was, and she was starting to find it difficult to swallow her own saliva. She reached for the cup and found that he’d managed to push it close enough that she could grasp it without having to push her whole arm throughthe bars. She drank greedily. The water was stale and smelled funny, but right now, she was too grateful to care.
“He threw your food on the floor,” he said. “Koch is a bastard. He’s the worst of them. Bauer is acceptable, and even Weber has his moments of decency. But when Koch and Fischer are on shift, it’s better to lay low and not draw their attention. Maybe ask Bauer next time. About that letter, I mean.”
Seraphina heard more shuffling, and she could tell he was trying to pass something else to her.
“Here, have my bread. It’s hard and moldy, I’m sorry. It’s what they feed us. Better than nothing, still.”
She accepted it. Again, she would’ve loved to refuse and tell him she didn’t need his bread, and that he shouldn’t go starving for her sake, but her stomach had started to rumble and twist itself into painful knots. She took it and nibbled at it. It was the worst thing she’d ever put into her mouth, but she had to eat.
The best way to distract her mind from the literal trash she was eating was to make conversation with the man whose generosity was unexpected and a little suspicious.
“Is it true you killed...” She choked on the bread and coughed. On second thought, she’d probably choked on the words.
“I’m not a violent man.”
Seraphina had no clue what that was supposed to mean. An idealist would take it as a “no”, but she was a pragmatist, in more ways than one, so she categorized it as a non-answer.
“How do you do it?” she whispered.
There was a long pause before he asked, “What?”
She drew in a breath. “Kill someone and live with it after.”
A longer pause. A minute passed, and Seraphina realized it wasn’t a pause at all. He wasn’t going to answer her.
“I’m not judging you,” she said. “I’m in no position to judge you. I’m only asking because I was supposed to kill someone, and I couldn’t do it. I failed. And now I’m here, but that’s noteven the worst part. Maybe I’ll survive this, maybe I’ll get out, and then I have to... I must not fail again. So, how do you do it? That’s what I want to know.”
When he still didn’t say anything, she chuckled darkly. Was he startled by her confession? She knew she was, but why would a murderer be?
“If someone could teach me,” she said. “If someone could explain it to me. I’ve learned many things I’d never thought I’d learn, done things I shouldn’t have been capable of doing, but this... Killing a human being, no matter how rotten and despicable, no matter how much they deserve it and how much better the world would be without them in it... This is where I draw the line, apparently.”
She heard a squelch coming from outside her cell, to her left, where their two cells were separated by a thick wall, then a trickle of freezing water reached her. She moved her hand away.
“It’s a cloth,” he said. “Take it. I rinsed it and soaked it in clean water. They give us a bucket a week. To wash. Take it.”
“Th-thank you.”
She reached for the wet bundle and used it to clean her face and her neck, and get as much of the slop out of her dress. The man told her to give it back to him, and he rinsed it again and returned it clean once more. They passed the cloth between them until Seraphina thanked him again and said she was fine.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Con–”
He gulped, as if he’d swallowed wrong just as he was speaking.
“Con? Conrad?” she asked.
“No. Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. Rune. My name is Rune.”
“Rune. I’m Seraphina.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” he whispered.
She smiled. “My mother insisted. She wanted her only daughter to be called something special. Not Mary, or Anne, or Catherine, or Theresa. You know, the most common saints’ names. Though she never called them saints. She called them consecrated. Yes, she was a purist. Isn’t it hysterical that a purist’s daughter ended up in jail? And for cutting off a man’s dick, of all things.” She let out a dry laugh. “Still, she wanted me to have a name with a divine meaning. But there was a Saint Seraphina, you know? In Tuscany.”
Her voice lost its strength, and she sighed.
“My mother didn’t know, and I found out later, when I came to study at Krähenstein Academy and met...” She bit her suddenly trembling lip. “I met someone from Tuscany who told me about Saint Seraphina, or Saint Fina, as they call her.”
