“All right. I’ll count to thirty.”
He held his breath and her hand for dear life, and rolled onto his back. Seraphina knew his eyes were squeezed shut. She didn’t comment on it and started counting, wondering if he wasn’t going to breathe for a full half minute. He didn’t. When she reached thirty, he rolled onto his stomach, his fingers digging into the earth. He was panting. She stroked his back and waited for him to recover.
“Shh... You did good. I’m so proud of you.”
He let out a choked, bitter chuckle. “You shouldn’t be. I’m a coward. I couldn’t look at the sun. The moving clouds... They make me feel nauseated.”
“We’ll try again tomorrow.”
They tried again for two, three, four days. They spent a week at the inn, burning through their gulden, eating delicious meals twice a day, drinking too much beer, and sleeping embraced at night. Seraphina didn’t ask for more, sensing that Rune was expending all his energy on their daily walks to the lake, forcing himself to lie on his back until he was able to look at the sky forlonger than a few minutes at a time, and in the evening, he was exhausted. He clung to her like a haunted man, and she didn’t have the heart to initiate intimacies that would have put further pressure on him.
Whenever he could, he scribbled with a pencil on pieces of paper but didn’t tell her what he was writing when she asked. It was part of his process to be unhappy with what he wrote until he polished it to perfection.
By day seven, he was feeling more confident and walked with his back straight and a pep in his step. Seraphina observed his shadow through the relic and praised herself for a job well done. It was time for the next challenge.
They were sitting at their usual table after lunch. They had each finished a slice of roast pork, browned and glistening with fat, and boiled potatoes on the side, everything sprinkled with coarse salt and caraway seeds.
“Why don’t you go get us two mugs of beer?”
“Me?” He turned to look at where the innkeeper’s wife and a servant girl were pottering behind the wooden counter. “You want me to go there and talk to them?”
“Yes. Do you think you can do that?”
So far, she’d been the one to interact with the women and the innkeeper himself, who was usually busy outside and didn’t talk much to his customers. Rune hadn’t exchanged a single word with anyone since they arrived, always hovering behind her and keeping his head bowed low.
He opened his mouth, and she thought he was going to say no, but he only let out an exhale, then nodded, more to himself than to her.
“I’ll try.”
“It’s easy,” she encouraged him. “Just ask them for beer, wait for them to pour it, then bring it over. I’ll be right here, waiting for you.”
“All right.”
He wiped his palms on his trousers and stood up. After a few more seconds of hesitation, he made his way toward the counter, and Seraphina turned away, choosing to trust him instead of observing his every move and gesture. He was doing better than ever, and he wasn’t going to freak out at the last moment and return empty-handed.
She was lost in thought when someone slid on the bench where Rune had sat earlier. She snapped out of it, but it was too late, because the stranger was already in her face, leaning over the table to whisper to her.
“Seraphina,”
She blanched at the sound of the woman’s voice.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment. You’re never alone. For days I’ve wanted to approach you, but you’re always with him, he’s always loitering around like a fly attracted to a glob of honey.”
“Briar...”
Her old friend moved closer, until Seraphina could feel her warm breath on her face.
“Come to the lake. Alone. I’ll be waiting.”
Briar swept out of the bench as fast as she’d swept in. Like a ghost.
Except she was real, she was here, and Seraphina knew why she’d come.
Chapter Twenty-Four
She hoped today was the day she outperformed her master.
The sisters at Saint Vivia’s Convent had cleaned her up, spread salves over her wounds, bandaged her and tucked her in an infirmary bed, then sat by her side day and night, taking shifts. Seraphina would wake up screaming and thrashing, and a sister would be there to gently hold her down, brush her hair, and whisper in her ear. To help her sleep, they murmured prayers and sang songs about the lives of the saints. They did this because they had a duty to the wounded and the wretched, because their God and their saints told them to.
