Page 110 of Alchemised

T HE MOOD IN H EADQUARTERS GREW SOMbrE AS the winter crawled on. The days felt endlessly dark, the air so cold and damp that even quick walks across the commons were bone-chilling.

After months of largely successful defence and fortification, the Resistance was hit hard and sudden.

One of the walls along the East Island was blown up by a bomb blast so large, it took down several buildings.

Then more blasts, and before they’d even begun to evacuate the survivors, the necrothralls and chimaeras poured in.

The Resistance lost a battalion and an entire swath of the East Island.

Luc’s battalion was trapped inside a building, pursued down to the river level where they ended up cornered for more than a day until the Resistance assembled a large enough force to get them out.

The casualties were terrible. Half of them were badly injured.

One medic was killed in the retreat, and another died from injuries during the siege.

Luc had held back the chimaeras and necrothralls by maintaining a wall of flame for hours on end.

He and Lila had been coated in smoke and grime, too exhausted to even speak when they were brought back.

Soren sustained a shattered right arm when the floor collapsed under him and several others.

He’d been held back from defence during the siege, caring for the injured and watching them die one by one.

He refused to talk about it.

B EFORE H ELENA COULD RETURN TO the Outpost, Crowther informed her that she would see Kaine only once a week now.

No explanation about why; those were simply the new terms of the deal.

When Martiday came, she didn’t know what to expect, how different things might be, but when Kaine arrived, he wordlessly kicked the padding cloths across the floor and began training her as if nothing had changed, except he didn’t look at her anymore. His eyes seemed to go through her.

“How do you know all this?” she asked when he paused in attacking her to show her several techniques for breaking arms in ways that would shatter the bone or pierce the skin, slowing regeneration.

“The same way I know any of it,” he said, staring across the room. “When you can’t die, people keep hurting you until you can hurt them more.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her sharply, fury in his eyes. “I’m sure you are.”

There was no more conversation. He attacked and she had to fend him off. She managed to get a jab in under his arm but experienced only a moment of triumph before his fingers were wrapped around her throat, dragging her close.

They both froze, eyes meeting, and it was as if time stopped.

He snatched his hand back with a scathing glare. “Unless you start thinking faster than you move, you’re going to be killed.”

She failed twice more.

“That’s enough for today.” He finally turned away from her, reaching into his cloak, and pulled out an envelope, setting it on the table.

Helena’s chest clenched in dread as she went over to her satchel and pulled out an envelope of her own, fidgeting with it as she turned to face him.

“Crowther said to give you this.”

A sort of deadness filled his eyes as he looked over. “Right … My orders for the week.”

He pulled it from her fingers with a listless jerk.

“Kaine—”

“Run along, Marino. I have work to do.”

I T WAS H ELENA’S JOB TO examine Luc to ensure he was healthy before he was allowed to leave Headquarters. He was still so shattered he scarcely seemed to notice her, which was for the best, as they hadn’t spoken since the solstice.

He and Lila watched each other with a fervent intensity, as though the other person were their only touchstone.

If it were possible, Helena would have recommended a break—a few weeks to recuperate at least. Luc was dangerously haggard, and his lungs worried her, but they could not afford the luxury. Both were dispatched back to the front in their newly polished armour to reassure the now nervous battalions.

Soren was only a few days behind them.

Each week Kaine would train her, hand over intelligence reports, take his orders, and leave without even a backwards glance.

They didn’t talk anymore. If she asked questions and it wasn’t about combat, he ignored them. It felt as if there were a canyon between them now.

It was fine, though. He was alive. Every week she got to see him and know he was alive.

However, that was not something he seemed to care about. There was a raw despair visible in his eyes. Even his rage was smothered, as though he were existing out of sheer obligation.

After three weeks, she caught him by the wrist as he was taking Crowther’s envelope from her. “Please—look at me.”

He snatched his hand back but then stared squarely at her, that cold rage briefly reappearing. “Is this not enough for you? Is there something else you want, too?”

“No—” She looked at him helplessly. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

He gave a dry laugh. “Perhaps someday, if I have time again, I can make you a list of all the things that apologies don’t fix.”

Her hands dropped. “Kaine, I—”

“Don’t—use my name. I hate the way it sounds on your tongue.” He ripped the envelope from her fingers and left.

There was another deluge of injuries. Helena could barely keep track of all the battles and skirmishes, the victories and losses. In the hospital it all blurred together into endless screaming. Time seemed to morph into a horrific monotony, punctuated only with Kaine’s cold resentment.

She tried to stay busy. With Rhea’s permission, she attempted a tentative treatment of Titus, but he reacted poorly, becoming severely sick with a fever, putting an immediate end to the attempt.

She was cut loose. Left to her own devices. Everyone else seemed to come and go—even the other healers got dispatched down-island to the new hospital every few weeks—but Helena was always at Headquarters.

Ilva and Crowther no longer made any demands of her except to pass on their orders.

She was a collar around Kaine’s neck, and her job now was to bear it.

S HE WAS RETURNING FROM THE Outpost when her hospital charm grew hot. She sprinted the rest of the way back. There was blood smeared across the ground of the gatehouse.

The guards were waiting for her. “Where were you?”

“Who? What—” she gasped out as they cleared her.

“Lila,” said one of the young guards. “And Soren.”

Dread flooded through her like poison. “Where’s Luc—”

There was a pause and she knew before the older guard spoke.

“Missing.”

Helena’s body moved but her mind had stalled as she raced to the hospital.

No. This couldn’t be happening.

The casualty ward was in a frenzy as Helena entered. Elain immediately turned to Helena, hands covered in blood, her face white with panic.

“My resonance doesn’t work!” she said, her voice rising with panic. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”

Lila was laid out on a bed, covered in dust and dirt and blood.

The remains of her armour were smashed and split, her clothes shredded, as if she’d been caught in an explosion.

Nurses were cutting off the straps and transmuting her armour to get it off her.

A wide gouge ran down her face, from temple to cheek, and below that, at the base of her neck, a large puncture was pouring blood.

“I don’t know what’s wrong!” Elain was saying as Helena washed her hands under scalding water and doused them in carbolic dilution. “I think there’s something inside her, but my resonance doesn’t work! When I try to feel her, it’s like—my hands—”

“Soren too? Or just Lila?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t tried him. We just got them in. She’s bleeding out, and I can’t feel anything!”

“Check Soren,” Helena said. “I need medics for Lila, and Pace. Tell her I need her now.”

She moved next to Lila. The neck was one of the few openings in her armour if her helmet had been off. Her blood was soaking the bed. She’d been hooked up to an intravenous drip with plasma expanders, but it wouldn’t do any good if they couldn’t get her to stop bleeding.

Lila’s head was lolled back. She was still conscious, muttering under her breath, over and over. “… told him—to run. I—told him—t-to run—”

Helena reached out with her resonance and felt the horribly familiar disruption of nullium.

She’d hoped to be wrong. That Elain was just hysterical. Or even burned out.

Anything but this.

The nullium was much stronger than the shrapnel Helena had retrieved from Kaine. Altered in some way to intensify the effect.

She tried to at least get a vague sense of the size of what had been driven into Lila’s chest cavity.

Trying to determine if there was a risk of puncturing her heart if they put pressure on the wound.

It was like peering through fog. Her hands felt as though they were asleep, needlepoints pricking across her nerves as she tried to search for the most intense sense of dissonance.

It was long and slender. It had likely pierced her lung, possibly grazed her heart, but it was hard to tell.

This was so much worse than she and Shiseo had been prepared for.

“What is it?” Pace appeared at her side.

Helena was pressing gauze over the wound, trying to keep it from bleeding more. Lila had gone silent.

“It’s nullium. She’s going to need manual surgery to get it out. Maier isn’t trained, but you were in the hospitals, back when they still used it, right?”

Pace went very white. “It’s been a long time. I only assisted.”

Helena drew a harsh breath. She couldn’t disclose her own surgical experience with nullium. “I—used to help my father, sometimes. If you’ll lead, and I keep her stable, then maybe. Is Soren—?”

She was afraid to know if Soren had nullium injuries. If she and Pace had to choose which twin to save, protocol dictated that the person with better odds of survival should receive priority, but as paladin primary, Lila had priority.

“The others can heal him,” Pace said. “He took a bad blow to the head, but it’s nothing Elain can’t manage.”