Page 104 of Alchemised

His voice broke her from her thoughts. “Don’t be afraid to use your elbows. When you’re fending off a close-range attack, elbows work well. You’re more likely to break something with your elbow than your fist.”

He lunged at her.

Rather than bolt, she moved towards him, sidestepping at the last minute. He pivoted, but she’d already gotten him in the leg with one of her knives. With a real knife, she would have severed a tendon and artery, enough to hobble him for a minute.

She tried to leap back for the next attack, but he used his remaining leg as leverage to tackle her, dragging her to the ground. She tried to roll but his weight trapped her. Helena kicked and snarled as she tried to fight free, but his grip was relentless, blocking her hand.

“If this were a real fight, I’d be very angry by now,” he said, his voice low as he slithered up her body, pinning her wrists to the floor, his torso moulded against hers. His mouth reached the base of her neck, breath running hot across her skin.

She kept twisting and bucking her hips to try to break free. Kaine abruptly let go of her, shoving himself off.

The muscle in his jaw rippled, and his eyes were dark as he stood up, breathing heavily, a low flush in his cheeks.

“If you’re ever pinned down like that, I would not recommend trying to escape that way,” he said in a tight voice, turning as if catching his breath.

Helena was so tired, she lay there on the floor a moment longer. “How should I do it?”

“Like I said,” he said without turning, “elbows. Target the nose and eye sockets. Or go limp long enough that they get careless and let go of your wrists. Once you have a hand free, do whatever you want, liquefy their brain. Just don’t—squirm.”

She was following now.

She immediately sat up. “Noted.”

“Again.” He’d turned back and attacked her before she’d gotten her knives back.

When she left the Outpost, her whole body was aching. She paused on the bridge to heal the bruises so that she could walk normally before reaching a checkpoint.

She found a few books on hand-to-hand combat in the library and read them diligently.

She reviewed all her notes about Kaine, their interactions, his words, his tells, the things he said and all the things he didn’t, trying to understand him.

All the time she’d spent with Crowther, dissecting his behaviour, and yet she still had no idea what any of it meant.

What could Kaine possibly want that could ever be worth this much risk?

She didn’t see the ambition or hunger for power that Crowther and Ilva were so convinced he possessed, but she had no alternative explanation for his choices.

Everyone who’d returned to Headquarters for solstice had gone again, the heroes off to reclaim more of their city. There was no one to notice the strange hours Helena spent flitting between the hospital and the lab like a ghost.

Each time she went back to the Outpost, they continued with hand-to-hand combat, her armed and him empty-handed, as he demonstrated technique after technique for disabling and killing the Undying. She wished he’d stop.

“Is there any point in training you if you aren’t even paying attention?” he said, irritated at last after he’d disarmed her for the tenth time without effort.

Helena retrieved the wooden knife from the floor automatically. “I just don’t see the point, if I’m being honest. If I’m attacked by one of the Undying, I doubt I’ll survive it. If I do, I’ll probably be so badly injured there won’t be any point in it.”

He shifted his stance, eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired,” she said, staring at the floor.

“I’m tired of this war. I’m tired of trying to save people and watching them die anyway, or saving them only to watch them die later—in a worse way.

It’s the same cycle, over and over. I don’t know how to get out, and I don’t know how to keep going, either. ”

“I thought you’d do anything for Holdfast.” He was pacing the room.

“The price keeps getting higher,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if I can keep paying it.”

He stilled. “I suppose even martyrs have limits.”

She glanced up, glimpsing for a moment the intent way that he watched her when she wasn’t looking.

She wasn’t imagining it. It was there, just below the surface. There was a want in him that practically shone in his eyes. But he refused to give in. Whenever she tried to beckon, to tempt him across the line he’d drawn, his malice surfaced, vicious as a serrated blade.

He was always cruellest when he was vulnerable.

Lately he’d hardly been cruel at all, which told her everything about her chances now.

Perhaps if she’d been more dogged, she would have found a way to push through the pain, but he always seemed to know how to hurt her most.

She had to do this, though.

She drew a deep breath, shaking her head, trying to focus. “Just an off day,” she said. “I’m fine now.”

She retrieved her knife, and he lunged without warning.

She sidestepped, using her free hand to try shoving him past her, but he easily evaded her.

With lightning speed his hand caught her wrist. Her first knife dropped.

She pulled out the second, managing to elbow him in the ribs, and wrench herself free.

She snatched the larger knife up off the ground as she got back into a defensive position, ready as he closed in again.

He grabbed her by the arm when she stabbed at him, ripping the larger knife out of her grip again.

She attempted to hook her foot behind his ankle, but he swept back and dodged, getting her arm twisted behind her back.

He liked that trick, it was almost predictable, and his hold always just marginally loosened as his grip rotated.

She lunged, breaking free, experiencing a flash of triumph before realising he’d let her go.

Using the momentum of her escape, he spun her, caught her ankle with his boot, and slammed her to the floor. The wind was knocked from her lungs, and she lay gasping.

He knelt over her. “You’re still trying to win by being quick rather than clever. Use that brain of yours. Again.”

Helena was tiring, but she managed to last longer. She could tell she was getting the hang of it; starting to see the patterns, the openings, to begin spotting weaknesses and opportunities. She wasn’t fast enough to exploit them, but with time, she could get there.

She managed to knock him down twice, but he always evaded.

He tried to pin her down, and she spun to the side, using his momentum.

They fell, tumbling across the floor until he hit the wall, and she pinned him there.

His left hand was wrapped around her throat, but she had a knife across his, and her other palm was pressed flat against his chest, her resonance humming through him.

She could feel his heartbeat as though it were cradled in her palm.

She gave a startled laugh as they both went still. Their faces were so close, they were almost touching.

“Just like that,” he said, panting. “Just push in. It’s right there.”

She looked up sharply. He was watching her, making no move to stop her. Waiting.

Her smile fell, and she stared at him in horror.

That bitterness in his eyes—she finally understood it. He had been waiting for her betrayal.

This was what held him back.

He’d known from the beginning, before the possibility had ever occurred to her, and he’d trained her anyway.

She didn’t need a book or Crowther to tell her what the expression on his face meant. She could feel it.

His hand was warm against her throat, and his thumb ran slowly along the scar below her jaw.

She leaned closer, her hand sliding up from his chest to his shoulder to pull him forward and kiss him.

It was not a slow, sweet kiss. It was not a kiss caused by alcohol or insecurity.

It was born of rage, despair, and desire so hot, it threatened to burn her into oblivion.

It was possibly a kiss goodbye.

She wanted him to know. It was real. For her, it had always been real.

He froze when their lips met. She felt his hand on her shoulder and braced herself to be pushed away even as she deepened the kiss, gripping the fabric of his shirt tighter, her lips frantic.

He wavered a moment and then something broke inside him, like a dam bursting, and Helena was drowning in him.

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her savagely.

The heat was like wildfire.

The tension, the waiting. Months of expectations. After being told this was what she was sent for, why she was wanted. All a ruse. A feint to conceal his true motive. Demanding her had been the same trick of misdirection he taught her to use to protect her memories.

A lie, until it wasn’t.

Somehow she’d shifted in his estimation, manipulated her way into becoming the very obsession he’d pretended she was.

His palm pressed against the side of her neck before he slid his fingers up under the braids and anchored her in place as he kissed her, twisting so that she was under him on the floor.

Her fingers slipped beneath the collar of his shirt, following the dip of his collarbones, the curve of his neck.

She ran her fingers through his hair, wanting to lose herself completely in the nearness. Her fingernails bit into his shoulders. She could feel the scars on his back, the thrum of energy inside them.

Despite how cold he often was, a dragon was an apt sigil for the Ferrons. He kept walls of ice around himself, but there was fire in his heart.

Her shirt ripped as he tore it out of the way.

She pulled him close, tight against her body until she could feel his skin on hers.

She bit him without thinking. There was a hunger inside her that she couldn’t explain, a pit of want to taste and feel and hold and not be always, always empty.

She wanted to curl up so tight alongside him that she vanished.