Page 112 of Alchemised

He shook his head. “Lila’s out. I have to bring Luc back before she wakes.

She can’t wake up and find out I didn’t go after him.

” His chin trembled. In twelve years of knowing him, Helena had never seen Soren cry.

He looked down. “I didn’t tell them, but she told me to leave her.

To go find him. But I didn’t. I told her I’d go, as soon as I got her safe—”

He started trying to climb out of the bed. It only took one hand to push him back. He was barely strong enough to sit up.

“Soren, I need to deal with the ruptured tissue in your eye,” she said, trying to sound firm.

He ignored her, trying to shove her off, but she was adept enough at combat now. She deflected his hand and slipped her fingers behind his head. It took only a frisson of resonance and his remaining eye rolled back as he collapsed, unconscious.

She closed his eye gently so it wouldn’t dry out. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she set to work.

If there was anything intact inside the socket, there would have been a small chance of saving some of his sight, but Soren’s eye was wrecked.

She removed all the tissue that couldn’t be repaired so that it wouldn’t rot or cause infection, then carefully rebandaged him. In a few weeks, someone would make a beautiful glass eye for him, or perhaps shape a gem.

Assuming there still was a Resistance in a few weeks.

Rhea arrived just as Helena finished.

It had been a long time since both twins had been in the hospital.

Rhea’s expression was stoic, but her eyes were searching as she moved towards Soren.

Helena stood up. “I just finished. I can wake him,” she said, quickly covering all the eye tissue with a cloth.

“No, let him rest.” Rhea sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, studying the parts of Soren’s face that weren’t obscured. “My little boy,” she said softly, her voice a murmur, as if she feared Soren might wake.

Helena stepped back, not sure if Rhea would want privacy or answers.

“You know, he was such a little thing when he was born,” Rhea said, one of her hands reaching and covering Soren’s.

“Titus could fit him into one hand. The doctors didn’t think he’d make it.

Lila came out bright red and screaming, but my little Soren was just a wisp of a baby.

Quiet and pale. Even when he needed to nurse, he’d barely make a sound.

He always followed Lila around, never caused trouble himself, but was always right there, getting into hers. ”

Rhea gave a sobbing laugh. “I thought I was doing such a great thing when they were born. Twins. Two babies for the Bayard family. Our little paladins.” Rhea’s body trembled as she held Soren’s hand.

“And now Titus doesn’t even know what’s been done to our beautiful children—all my family, I only have pieces of them left. ”

She folded over Soren. Her body was shuddering, but she cried silently.

There was a trick to sobbing like that; it was something a person had to learn to do.

Helena slipped away, to give her space to grieve.

T HE MEETING WAS SOMbrE. I LVA sat at the Council table, looking almost drugged while the reports were being given.

The attack had occurred on the lower part of the East Island.

Luc and Lila had been leading the battalion towards Headquarters; they’d passed a condemned building, and just as Luc and Lila stepped beyond it, there had been an explosion. The building had collapsed.

Soren had been on the edge of the blast and thrown by it. Only two others had survived, because they’d fallen behind. They’d been caught in the rubble with only minor injuries.

There’d been signs of a fight, char marks and a pool of blood, presumed to be Lila’s. Burned human remains, presumed to be necrothralls, a lich with his talisman ripped out. Luc’s sword, rings, and other weapons were found discarded, as if he’d left first and then been stripped.

There’d been no word from the Undying. No proclamation that Luc was dead or even captured.

The guards had all been told to prepare for the possibility that he might return reanimated or with his body possessed by a lich.

If Luc reappeared, all due diligence must be performed.

No one was to believe in any miraculous escapes.

As time passed, the questions grew. Why would the Undying keep him alive? Wouldn’t they announce if he was dead, or were they keeping him hostage to negotiate a surrender?

If he was a hostage, why hadn’t they reached out?

“Until we know that Lucien is dead, we will assume that he is alive,” Ilva said in an icy voice, rousing herself when one of the lead metallurgists referred to planning for contingencies.

“The Undying have no reason to conceal his capture. It’s been twelve hours, and we haven’t received word.

It may be a sign that not everything is as it seems.”

As the meeting closed, Matias stood, announcing his intention to entreat the heavens to return Luc to them safely. Many people followed him.

Ilva remained at the table, speaking to Crowther.

“Marino, a word before you go,” Ilva said when Helena rose to return to the hospital.

Helena waited until the room was empty. Ilva flicked a hand, and the guards closed the doors.

“You’ll head to the Outpost. We’re going to use Ferron,” Ilva said in a brusque voice. “Every piece of information he has or can obtain about the circumstances of Luc’s capture—I want it all. As well as an explanation as to why we received no warning about this.”

“Of course.” She’d expected as much.

“Tell him this is a critical mission,” Ilva added as Helena turned to go. “Those precise words, Marino. A top priority. If he has an opportunity to get Luc back for us, that would be preferable to the losses we’ll suffer with a rescue.”

They meant to sacrifice Kaine to recover Luc. It was the obvious choice. An easy trade-off. The kind that any strategist would make.

But—

“All right.” Her voice was lifeless.

L UMITHIA HUNG LIKE A GIANT silver disc in the sky, so near full Ascendance that she blotted out the planets, leaving the night sky as an endless black abyss overhead. The bright silver light cast glaring shadows across the city.

When Helena reached the landing in the tenement, she paused and stepped intentionally into the silver shaft of light cascading from the broken skylight, looking up at the eye hidden in the corner. Then she waited.

It was a long wait.

The windows rattled in the wind, but she didn’t hear anything until the door clicked and Kaine strode in. Everything about him seemed sharper. “What happened?”

The instant he asked the question, she realised he didn’t know.

Ilva had been right: If the Undying had Luc, it was being kept secret.

“There was an attack today. A bombing,” she said, and her voice trembled. “Killed most of a battalion, the Bayard twins barely survived, and Luc—is missing.”

“Are you sure?”

She gave a stiff nod. “They used a weapon made from that resonance- interference alloy. We call it nullium. Lila was stabbed and nearly killed with it. You didn’t know this was in the works?”

He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t. There’s suspicion of a spy due to—recent sabotage. And I haven’t had the leisure to be as present as I used to be.”

She looked down, drawing a deep breath before she spoke. “We have to get Luc back. I was told to tell you it’s critical. Your top priority.”

“Right …”

“Any information you can get on his capture, who did it, where he is, if he’s alive … The Council wants you—” Her words caught. “—to do anything you can.”

“Of course,” was all he said, and he turned to go.

She watched his back, the shift of his shoulders, one dipping as he reached for the knob. She didn’t know if she was ever going to see him again.

“Wait,” she said.

He paused but didn’t look back. “I’ll call you when I have something.”

“Kaine … when I kissed you, I—”

He turned suddenly. In one moment he was across the room and in the next, he was in front of her, his expression venomous, his teeth bared. “Really, you want to discuss this now?”

Her throat was so thick with guilt, she could barely speak. But she was desperate. “Will you look at me, at least?”

A cruel glint entered his eyes as they locked squarely on her face. It was like being punched to have his full attention again.

“You want me to look at you?” His voice was light, almost cajoling, but there was fury beneath the surface. He leaned towards her. “Fine. I’m looking. I must say, it’s delightful, seeing all the guilt in your eyes.”

He sneered, drawing back. “You know, I used to think the circumstances of my servitude to the High Necromancer as cruel an enslavement as anyone could conceive, but I must admit, it pales beside you.”

He tilted his head. “At least before, I could console myself that it wasn’t my fault; acceptance was the best I could do to keep my mother safe. It’s different when I have no one to blame but myself.”

His hand came up, his gloved fingers wrapping around her throat, pulling her forward. “After all, I did choose you.”

She met his eyes, that deadened despair so visible when he looked at her.

“I envied your na?veté, how you credited me with goodness and failed to realise that it was a setup from the very beginning. When you begged for a chance to heal me, I gave in. When you touched me, I didn’t push you away.

I thought, Where’s the harm? It all ends soon enough, and life has been cold for such a long time. ”

She didn’t realise she’d started crying until his thumb brushed across her cheek.

“By the time I realised I’d miscalculated, you’d already forced your way in.

You were so obvious, but that only made it worse; knowing you’d let me do anything to you in the hope it would save everyone else, even the people who’d sold you in the first place.

At least when I sold my soul, my mother prostrated herself, begging to take my place.

I suppose, in some regards, I am luckier than you. ”

She gave a low sob.