Page 11 of Alchemised

If she was being taken to the mainland, then the High Reeve must have an estate of some kind.

Either one was seized and bestowed post-war, or perhaps he was from one of the wealthy guild families.

There had been a number who’d seen their fortunes explode from the industrialisation of the last century.

She leaned forward, looking towards the front window, searching for any signs of their destination.

Removed from Central, she was finally beginning to develop a vague shape of a plan.

Realistically, her chances of escape were negligible.

Even without the manacles impeding her dexterity and suppressing her resonance, she had minimal combat training.

Her resonance had always been her greatest asset.

Assuming she could somehow escape, she had nowhere to go, no idea who was alive or who could be trusted, or who would trust her.

If she was cooperative, there was a chance she’d survive transference, but if she did survive, she’d be betraying the Eternal Flame, giving up information she’d sacrificed her own memory to protect.

Her hands clenched, pain sparking like fire in her wrists.

In the stasis tank, she’d told herself over and over that she’d survive, that she had to hold on. She couldn’t explain why.

After all, the whole point of her healing had been to ensure the survival of the others, to be a fail-safe so that Luc would not die. There was no use in a healer when everyone was dead.

She wouldn’t be a traitor. Whatever she’d allowed to be hidden in her mind, she wouldn’t let the Undying discover it. Surviving didn’t matter. She’d kill herself before they learned anything from her.

Perhaps her violent captor could be her means to that end.

If what Grace had said was true, the High Reeve preferred murder to strategic choices like interrogation. Men prone to violence were generally thoughtless, acting with emotion first and applying reason after.

If she could provoke him, he might kill her on impulse. One mistake was all she’d need, and her secrets would be lost. No amount of necromancy could bring a mind back from death.

What would Morrough do to the High Reeve then? Undoubtedly something even worse than what was done to Mandl.

Helena hoped it would be.

She might not be able to avenge Luc, but she could get justice for Lila.

The thought of Lila Bayard, dead, her face ripped off, her corpse used to imprison the people she’d once protected, made Helena’s chest grow so tight, it ached.

Lila had been one of the few who wasn’t bothered by Helena being a vivimancer. During the war, they’d even shared a room. They hadn’t been close—as a paladin, Lila was often gone, fighting at the front— but she’d never treated Helena like she was lesser for not being in combat.

Lila had been considered a once-in-a-lifetime talent as a combat alchemist. She’d joined the crusades of the Eternal Flame at fifteen, travelling the continent, investigating rumours of necromancy. Her life had revolved around becoming a paladin and serving the Principate.

People used to call Lila the embodiment of Lumithia, the warrior goddess of alchemy.

Helena couldn’t imagine how anyone could have killed Lila, especially not after Luc had been killed. Lila would have died a thousand times over before she’d live to see Luc captured. She had lived and breathed her vows of protection.

Helena blinked as they stopped at a checkpoint.

The trees along the road were all skeletal, bare-limbed. The motorcar drove a few miles farther and turned off the main road.

A building loomed through the trees as they drove down a long lane and a heavy, ornate gate swung open. The motorcar drove through, towards a towering house.

It was an old thing, its facade covered in bare vines which crawled up the front like blackened veins.

The architecture was far from the modern elegance in the city.

There was a dark, heavy quality to the ornate details, which appeared to have weathered at least a century.

It bore five dark spires that jutted across the sky, three on the main portion of the house, and one on each wing that sprawled forward to form a half circle.

The gate and wall and other buildings all curved in to create an enclosed courtyard with an overgrown garden in the centre. The motorcar crunched over white gravel as it pulled around and stopped.

At the top of a wide flight of stone steps stood a young woman.

Helena was shoved out of the car behind Stroud. She drew a deep breath of clean air and shivered. It was bitterly cold, the damp country air immediately seeping into her bones. She’d forgotten the brutality of Northern winters.

The woman on the steps was barely more than a girl, and she stood out starkly in the drab surroundings.

She had light-brown hair that fell in perfect ringlets around her pale face.

Her dress was poison green, embellished with a black external corset resembling a rib cage, and a gleaming plated bird skull was fastened so that the long beak ran down between her breasts.

Several of her fingers bore alchemy rings, and she swung a short staff idly in her hand as she watched the party ascend the stairs towards her.

She stared past Stroud to Helena, pale-blue eyes narrowing. “Well,” she said as they reached her. “I suppose fanatics must come in all sizes.”

Her attention turned to Stroud, and she donned a brittle smile. “Welcome to Spirefell. My husband is waiting for you.”

Stroud fell in step with the lady of the house, while the necrothrall guard nudged Helena to follow.

The door of the house was held for them by a dead butler, and the sight made Helena’s blood run cold.

Unlike the necrothralls in Central, the butler was freshly deceased and immaculately dressed.

She thought for a moment he was alive, or that he was a lich.

His skin lacked the waxy adipocere sheen, and he moved with none of the sluggishness she’d come to associate with necrothralls.

But his expression and eyes were completely blank.

He must have been recently killed. Grace had said the Undying kept necrothralls as staff, and a wealthy family wouldn’t want to deal with the smell, which meant they’d be replaced frequently.

Her stomach knotted as she stepped inside and took in the trappings of the house.

The foyer was large and cold, and the first thing she saw was a bright smear of blood.

Helena gasped, eyes and head instinctively averting.

“What’s the matter?” Stroud asked sharply.

“The blood,” she forced herself to say, unable to look again. All the executions flooded through her mind, the smells and sickening taste in the air, washing like a flood across the white marble.

Stroud glanced around the room. “Where?”

Helena tried to indicate, and Stroud only looked confused. She looked again and discovered her mistake. There was no blood.

A bouquet of roses sat arranged on a table in the centre point of the room. She flinched just looking at them.

“Never mind,” she muttered.

The girl in green was watching. She looked between Helena and the roses, and then a slight smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she turned away, heading towards a set of doors across the foyer.

“Wait here,” Stroud said. The door shut, leaving Helena with the dead. She glanced around, trying to look anywhere but at the roses.

The gloom felt heavier inside than under the oppressive grey sky. Spirefell was a cavernous thing, shadowed with filigree metalwork. There was a large, ornate stairway to the right, leading to multiple landings that looked out over the foyer.

Darkened hallways led farther into the house, illuminated by weak electric sconces that hummed and hardly penetrated the gloom.

The windows high overhead seemed designed to direct the light only to the table at the centre.

There was a distorted black shape inlaid as a mosaic into the marble floor, encircling the table.

From her angle, Helena couldn’t work out what it was.

The house felt dirty. There was no visible dust, but Helena couldn’t shake the sense that the place was untended. The air was stale, as if the building also were a mouldering corpse.

The door across the way opened. “Come, Marino,” Stroud said as if summoning an animal.

The room she entered had two immense latticed windows looking out into gardens with a large hedge maze.

The winter curtains were drawn back to let in cold light.

The girl in green had set the short staff aside and was seated on the edge of a spindly-looking chair, her skirts spread to show off the fabric.

Across the room, by the windows, stood a dark figure.

The hair on her arms rose.

Stroud pulled her past the spindly chairs and chaises towards the figure.

Winter light silhouetted him, and it wasn’t until she drew near that Helena could begin to make out any details.

Pale skin. Silver-white hair.

He was old, then. He must be one of the guild patriarchs.

She’d met a few of them at the Institute. They were always the same. Prideful, obsessed with their power and perceived status, always demanding more respect.

This was exactly the kind of person who would be easy to manipulate. Helena would only need to be insufficiently cowed, and he’d snap her neck.

With luck, she might be dead within a fortnight.

He turned. Helena’s throat closed as the world around her vanished, footsteps faltering.

He was not old at all.

It was the iron guild heir. Kaine Ferron.

She stared at him in stunned recognition.

He’d been one of the few guild students who’d stayed at the Institute for undergraduate study. They’d been the same year, shared classes, even worked as assistants on the same research floors.

Her mind refused to accept what it was seeing, because it could not be Kaine Ferron.

His hair had been dark, now it was colourless. While the pallor of his skin didn’t come from age, he looked as if he’d been bleached in moonlight.