Not Briar.
Briar had strutted to Seraphina’s bed, looked down at her, sighed deeply, and decided to do it out of the goodness of her own heart. She spent long nights in a creaky chair, telling Seraphina about everything and anything under the sun. The nuns weren’t ones for personal stories, having left their lives behind and taken new names, but Briar hadn’t taken the veil and never would, so she told her about London, about the Thames in spring, its high tidesflooding the docks twice daily, and its low tides laying bare the mudflats where children scavenged. Briar had been dirt poor before she and her mother fled to Bavaria.Seraphina could imagine a small version of her, barefoot in ragged trousers, her thin shirt clinging to her skeletal shoulders, as she dug through the mud. Briar told her she once found a brass button that caught the light so beautifully, she’d kept it even though it was worthless. Did she still have it? No, she’d lost it years ago.
Seraphina had been born in London too, into a wealthy family. She’d shared her own stories with Briar, and Briar had listened intently, showing no envy when Seraphina describedher room,with its crystal chandelier and canopy bed draped in silk, and the shelf lined with wax dolls in velvet gowns. Her favorite had always beenCordelia, with her blond curls arranged in perfect spirals, and painted blue eyes. She told Briar about the riding lessons in Hyde Park, and the private tutors who taught her languages and music.
When Seraphina was ready to leave the infirmary, the sisters had allowed her to share Briar’s room. They became inseparable, which was a blessing and a curse, because there were times when Seraphina wanted to be alone with her dreadful thoughts. Briar wouldn’t let her indulge in the darkness, but Seraphina sought it sometimes, needed it, or she would suffocate. One morning, she got up early and wandered the corridors, and climbed to the highest tower, where Briar found her standing on a ledge, her head bent to the cliffs below, which she mercifully couldn’t see. And that only made her next step easier. Briar had coaxed her back down and into her arms, then she’d held Seraphina to her chest and told the story ofSaint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, a Carmelite nun who fell into years of darkness.
Mary Magdalene’s despair grew so heavy that twice the sisters found her close to taking her own life. She once held a knife in her hands, weighing the relief it might bring. She carried it to a statue of the Virgin and laid it at her feet, choosing to live when everything inside her screamed to stop. Briar said it took years for the darkness to lift, but the saint kept choosing the next breath, the next hour, until slowly, the weight became something she could carry.
Seraphina had listened, but tried a second time, and a third. Briar always found her, because Briar always watched.
Now, Briar had found her again.
Seraphina had left Rune at the inn. When he’d returned with the beer, she’d told him his next challenge was to sit at their table alone and drink his cup while Seraphina went for a stroll.It was to teach him how to be on his own among people without using her presence as a crutch. Rune had reluctantly agreed, and it had broken her heart to leave him there, paralyzed with fear, and hope he would be all right without her, but she’d had to go to Briar.
She was at the lake, and Briar stepped out from the forest, hands hanging loosely at her sides. Seraphina knew she was armed. Briar knew the same about Seraphina.
“What are you doing here? When I told you I was leaving, I asked you not to follow.”
“And I wasn’t going to,” Briar said. “But then you stole Saint Vivia’s relic, and I didn’t have a choice. The Mother Superior sent me. I am to bring you back to the convent.”
“Me, or the relic?”
Briar shrugged. “I’d rather bring you with it. I know what you’re doing and I understand. I feel for you, Sera, but after you told me about the men you want to kill, I’ve thought about it, and it’s not worth it. They’re not worth damning your soul to hell. After you left, I blamed myself for it. I should’ve stopped you that night, tied you to the bed if that was what it took. You told me what they did to you, and the details shattered me. I faltered. I failed you. I’m here to fix it now.”
Seraphina shook her head. She knew Briar’s words came from the depths of her good, kind heart, but they just didn’t fit her reality.
Briar took a step toward her, hands raised.
“Sera, come with me now, and the Mother Superior will forgive you. All you’ll have to do is fall to your knees, repent, and ask for her blessing. Return the relic yourself, and all will be forgotten. We can go back to how things were. We’ll train together, we’ll go on raids, save relics from hands that would use them unwisely, fill the convent’s vault, and wait out of war. Allthis can be undone. Just take my hand, and let’s leave this place. Come home with me.”
Seraphina took a step back, not taking her empty eye sockets off Briar’s extended hand. She knew her friend wanted to save her, but once Seraphina refused, she didn’t trust her offered hand to be harmless anymore.
“I can’t,” she said. “The convent is not my home and never was. I need to do this, and if you’re my friend, you’ll let me. I will turn away, walk back to the inn, and you’ll allow me. And not follow.”
Briar’s hand turned into a fist. “You’ll go back to that thing?”
“What thing?”
“That creature. Do you know what he is? Do you know what he looks like?”
“Briar... Don’t talk about him like that.”
“You don’t know, of course, because you have no eyes. The relic shows you shadows, doesn’t it? It doesn’t show you his patched skin, the different shades sewn together in a horrific tapestry, and it doesn’t show you the sutures, raised and crude, keeping body parts that clearly don’t match attached to each other.”
Seraphina gasped. The picture Briar was painting was not at all how she envisioned Rune. She knew about his stitches, but she’d thought they were there to hold together his torn flesh, wounds too deep to heal. Her theory didn’t make medical sense, but neither did Briar’s description.
“His name is Rune, and what you’re saying about him is cruel and not true at all. You’re exaggerating, and I don’t know why. He’s not a thing... a-a creature. He’s my friend.”
“I am your friend, and you should believe me,” Briar yelled, sounding pained. Betrayed. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Sera! I saw him... I saw what he did to that watchman.”
“What?” She took another step back.
“That’s right. I have been following you since you left the convent, but I lost you in Ingolstadt. It was as if the earth swallowed you. I looked everywhere, but after a week, I gave up and thought you must’ve slipped out of the city without my noticing. I took the villages around Ingolstadt one by one, in all directions, and asked about you. Then I had a feeling, and returned to Ingolstadt to try again, and lo and behold, you were at the market, singing. I saw you at the same time as the creature did, and I ran after you and him. He tore that man to pieces. With his bare hands.” Briar sounded equally horrified and awestruck. “I was hiding at the other end of the postern gate, behind a carriage filled with barrels. I saw you beat the shit out of that watchman and was feeling proud of having trained you, but before I could call for you, the creature appeared, and then... I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. It was the most unholy thing I’ve witnessed in my life. And I couldn’t believe it when you went with him. I followed you after. I saw you at the Church of Our Lady, I saw you steal clothes and weapons, and I saw what he did to that other man too.”
“They both deserved it,” said Seraphina in a weak voice. She was breathing heavily, her muscles taut in anticipation of having to run or fight. Briar wasn’t going to let her go, not willingly. “All this time, you watched me from the shadows, yet you didn’t understand a thing. What he did, he did for me. So I wouldn’t have to do it.”
“You would’ve done it?” There was a hint of astonishment in Briar’s voice. “You would’ve broken their necks and gutted them like fish?”
