Page 129 of Alchemised

W HEN H ELENA STOOD ON THE DAM, STARING across the bridge to the Outpost, she hesitated.

She’d missed Kaine the whole week, but now, returning, she felt dread. He could be so unpredictable. Every moment of softness between them tended to be followed by its direct inversion.

She drew several steadying breaths, set her jaw, and made herself cross. A necrothrall was waiting outside the tenement when she arrived. Her heart dropped, and she swallowed hard, opening her satchel and pulling out the envelope along with replacements for his medical kit.

Her face was burning, but she tried to control her expressions and not look directly at the necrothrall as she held it all out.

“Here.” She shoved everything into the necrothrall’s hands and turned away.

“Marino.”

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her name. She whirled around.

The necrothrall was the only one standing there.

“Did you—talk?” She’d never heard a necrothrall speak. Motor func tion was one thing, but reanimation of the language parts of the brain was too much. Necrothralls didn’t talk. They never talked.

“Come,” it said.

She followed him warily, relaxing when she realised they were headed for the panic room. He couldn’t have just told her to go there last week?

She was half indignant when she arrived, and then forgot, because before she was through the door, Kaine had her in his arms and was kissing her as if starved.

Her fingers caught his cloak and her eyes fluttered closed as she kissed him back. The whole world dropped away. She felt his teeth, hungry against her lips and tongue.

His hands found her hips, guiding her backwards. Then his lips were on her neck as she gasped, the dip of her throat, between her clothed breasts, and he was on his knees, pushing her back on the sofa, and she was under him and she had not even put down her satchel.

His hands were sliding under her clothes, lips burning a trail of desire across every inch of skin his mouth could find.

She had never felt so intoxicated.

His resonance hummed beneath her skin, following the pathway of her nerves and veins, mapping her.

Not erotically, but in the same panicked way her own resonance sometimes flared when she was afraid someone was hurt and wanted to find the injury.

It reached all the way to her toes and then vanished, but she scarcely noticed as his tongue ran up on her inner thigh, and then a haze of hot pleasure consumed her.

Her shirt was undone, skirts up around her waist, when he sank into her. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck, pulling him close, burying her face against his shoulder. The world had reduced itself to a single point, Kaine, his breath and body and touch.

As they lay entwined on that too-small sofa, limbs entangled, it was like that horrible hungover morning and yet completely new. This time, they’d gotten it right. Her eyes fluttered closed, tracing her fingers across his skin, but he sat up after only a few moments.

He was looking her over, his eyes searching.

She lifted her head, still catching her breath. “What’s wrong?”

His thumb found the scars on her ribs. “I worried about you. Had a lot of time to wonder if I’d done everything right when I healed you.”

She caught his hand. “You did everything perfectly.”

He still looked worried. “And nothing’s happened since?”

“No,” she said. “I haven’t left Headquarters at all since I got back. And I—I won’t anymore—except to come straight to you. I’m not—” The words caught, tangling in her throat. “I’m not allowed to. Got very strict orders about that, so you won’t have to worry anymore.”

He gave an audible sigh of relief and sank down to her, brushing a kiss against her forehead.

Helena closed her eyes, trying to let him have this, but her stomach clenched and her jaw trembled as she tried to swallow her emotions.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked up and found him watching her again.

“I—I liked foraging. I used to go with my father, during the summers.”

There was a pause. “I didn’t realise it was important to you.”

She was silent for a moment. Thinking of the wetlands stretched out around her, nothing but the wilds and the mountains and the brilliant blue sky above, the only place where she could breathe without smelling blood.

“Sometimes it was the closest thing to freedom I still had.”

She felt him freeze.

“It’ll just be until the end of the war,” he said, the words half plea and half vow.

A bitter laugh caught in her chest as she looked at him. “Just till then? When’ll that be? And what end do you think will somehow go well for either of us?”

He couldn’t meet her eyes.

She looked away, too. “There are things I’ve been a part of that I know the Eternal Flame would never officially approve of. I don’t know what will happen if it all comes out.”

Her chest tightened as she thought about those rooms underground where Crowther had taken her so many times now.

The blood. The burns, the flayed body parts, tangled nerves, split open and twisted apart in horrible, terrifying ways.

Helena’s name was beside Crowther’s in those prisoner logs.

Her handwriting cataloguing in clinical terms the injuries she’d healed, the condition of the prisoners when they died or were placed into those horrible underground cells.

She knew it was intentional on Crowther’s part, having her listed as the medical personnel on-site. Leverage.

At one point, he might have let it remain a latent threat, but she expected no mercy now.

If the war was won, without Luc on her side, she had few friends.

Kaine took her hand. “You can run. Say the word, and I’ll get you out.”

A craven, exhausted part of her sparked to life at those words. Out. Free. Away from the war.

She hadn’t known how much she’d wanted it until she heard it offered by someone who meant it. She’d been so quick to refuse her father when he’d wanted to return to Etras, but now she physically longed for it.

But the war would continue, no matter where she went, and Kaine would be there. He couldn’t run. If she was gone, Crowther would not keep him alive.

“No,” she said, meeting his eyes.

“The offer stands. Say the word, and I’ll get you out.”

She reached up, combing a strand of pale hair back from his eyes.

“What about you?” she asked.

He grimaced. “If I could run, I would have vanished while my mother was alive.”

“Would you go now, if you could?”

His eyes seemed to ripple with heat. “With you, I would.”

She forced a smile. “Then we’ll go together. After the war.” She gripped his hand and pressed it against her chest, letting him feel her heartbeat. “When the war is over. We’ll run away somewhere no one knows us. We’ll disappear—forever.”

His eyes flickered, but he smiled back. “Of course.”

He was lying.

They both were. It was daydream to think it possible.

She squeezed his hand tighter until the illusion faded.

She swallowed hard, dreading what she had to say. “The Eternal Flame has recently obtained new information about the process that the Undying undergo to gain their immutability. I was asked to question you about the details. To verify the information.”

Kaine just stared at her for a moment. Then his gaze turned dissociative.

“Kaine.” She touched him, and he started.

“It’s a blur,” he said quickly. “I don’t remember.”

“Anything helps. It really does.”

He was silent, his chest rising and falling several times before he spoke again. “What do you want to know?”

“There was an array involved?”

He nodded slowly.

“Could you describe it? Or draw it?”

He shook his head. “I never got a good look at it. I remember there were nine points, and I was in the middle. I was cooperating, but they still drugged me and strapped me down so I couldn’t move.”

He was staring at the far wall.

“They started to bring the staff in. The ones they hadn’t already killed. I hadn’t known how it worked, that they were going to—when I asked what they were doing, I was told I was lucky we had so many servants, they didn’t need to use my mother.”

“They used your servants?”

He nodded slowly. “We never had much company in the countryside. My mother was sick so often, and with all the rumours, my father didn’t trust anyone.

He was busy managing the guild, so it was just the two of us there, and the servants.

They were almost like family, some of them.

My mother’s lady’s maid, Davies, had been with her since she was a girl, and came with her to Spirefell when she married.

After the birth, when my mother was—Davies practically raised me the first few years. ”

“I’m so sorry, Kaine.”

He was silent for a long time, not looking at her.

“There was this platform over me, and then Morrough was leaning down. He had something in his hand. The bone shard, I think. I remember screaming. When I woke up, there was still screaming, but it wasn’t me anymore.

I couldn’t hear it, I could just feel it.

Like they were sutured inside me, all mangled but still alive. ”

She stared at him in horror. “Do you still—hear them?”

He blinked slowly. “They’re quieter now.”

She swallowed hard. “According to the information we have, the Undying are a by-product of Morrough’s attempts to harness power without suffering from ill effects.”

He was silent a moment. “So if we kill the Undying, that weakens him.”

“In theory, yes. Would destroying the talismans affect the phylacteries? Does that kill the Undying?”

Kaine shook his head. “No. He can make another, but they’re—only slightly more intelligent than necrothralls then.”

“There must be some way, though. We’ll figure it out.”

He looked at her, his expression beginning to clear and sharpen again. “If the Undying are the source of Morrough’s power, that means this won’t be over until they’re all dead.”

She knew instantly what he was trying to prepare her for. “No. I’ll find a way to reverse it. If it’s possible to bind a soul, surely it can be unbound.”

“Helena …”

She shook her head. “You already thought I couldn’t save you once. You should give me more credit.” She cleared her throat, refusing to have this conversation.

She stood, dressing quickly. “I have to take this information back to Headquarters.”

She didn’t really care about reporting to Crowther, though. She wanted to begin reviewing the array that Wagner had sketched. She needed to do research.

“Wait. I have something for you, although I hope you won’t need them again.” Wrapped in oilcloth were her daggers.

She’d been sure they’d been washed downriver.

“How’d you find them?”

“I had spares made. It took long enough to find a metallurgist with a resonance for your alloy. I figured a few extra sets might be wise.”

“Thank you,” she said, touching them fondly and then putting them carefully in her satchel before she began to fix her hair.

“I hate your hair like that,” he said, startling her.

She looked up. “I could crop it instead.”

He looked so offended that she laughed.

“I have to keep it out of the way when working, and I’m always on call for emergencies. It’s practical.”

He looked unconvinced. “I want to see you more.”

Her fingers stilled. She could see the hunger in his eyes. Possessive. Ravenous. He would drag her from the war and hide her the instant she let him. The conflict was visible in his eyes.

Want. Want. Want. She felt it like her heartbeat.

If he couldn’t hide her, he would hoard her to himself as much as he was able to. She’d fallen for a dragon.

“I’ve always been on call for you,” she said. “If you call me, I’ll come here as soon as I can.”

He shook his head at that. “No. We can’t use the Outpost much longer. There’s plans for repairing it under way.”

Her heart sank. “Oh. Then how would we—”

“The Resistance doesn’t watch the skies,” he said.

“Now that Amaris is older, it’s not difficult to fly to the East Island at night.

I’m sure there’s a rooftop somewhere. I’ll find something before next week.

If the ring activates only once, it’s not Resistance-related.

Signal back when you’re there, and I’ll come for you. ”

She lifted her left hand. She’d feared the refraction effect might eventually wear off, but it still held; she could barely see the ring unless she focused. It was so light, she almost forgot about it at times.

“I thought you said if I ever burned you—”

He captured her hand and pulled her close. His other hand slid possessively up her throat, fingers tilting her head back, and he kissed her, long and deep, before he drew away to meet her eyes.

“Call me, and I will come.”