Page 130 of Alchemised

K AINE CALLED HER. O FTEN.

Sometimes his duties came to an end in the late evening, but most of the time it was past midnight. When she wasn’t on shift, Helena would work in her lab until her ring burned.

There were many buildings that were abandoned. Kaine had found one with a large open roof and working lift. Helena didn’t have to pass through any checkpoints to reach it.

Sometimes Amaris wouldn’t even land.

Helena would stand in the open-most part of the rooftop, and silent as a wraith, Amaris would drop from the sky, Kaine leaning over and snatching Helena up, and they’d be airborne, riding the wind, climbing over the buildings without being seen.

They’d land, and he’d pull her off Amaris, checking her over.

“You’re all right? Has anything happened to you?” he’d ask, even though she’d felt his resonance beneath her skin while they were flying, and he knew she wasn’t injured.

She hadn’t expected him to be so obsessively worried. She’d observed his quick arrival at the Outpost, the careful way his eyes would track her, but she hadn’t considered how deep the fear cut into him until he didn’t have to hide it.

They’d go inside, and she’d let him see her in the light, holding her arms out to prove she was in the same condition she’d been the last time.

“I’m fine. See? You don’t need to worry.”

The reassurance never seemed to have any effect. Whatever had happened to his mother had been hidden, and Enid Ferron had never told him fully—either because she couldn’t, or to spare him.

Withholding it had probably been the worse choice. Kaine was like her. He obsessed over what he didn’t know more than anything else.

She’d meet his eyes, hold his face in her hands. “I’m fine. Nothing has happened.”

Once he was finally convinced that she had no hidden injuries, a tension inside him would break. He’d gather her in his arms, and she’d feel his heart pounding.

You did this to him, she reminded herself whenever she was tempted to grow impatient with the ritual. You guessed where he was vulnerable and you exploited it.

She’d run her own fingers over him, trying to detect any injuries on him before he kissed her again.

He’d hide them or ignore them as if they didn’t exist unless she managed to discover them.

Nullium injuries had begun appearing among the wounded after battles.

Sometimes Kaine would end up with a shard in his body somewhere, and while its effects on him were limited, when it entered his bloodstream, it could slow his regeneration for hours unless she intervened.

She never had and never would heal anyone the way she healed Kaine: in his arms, pressed against his body.

She’d bribe him into cooperation by pressing openmouthed kisses across his shoulders, hands, and face while her resonance found every place he was hurt, checking him over meticulously until he’d grow impatient and pin her hands down, pushing her back on the bed and taking her slowly. It was always deliriously slowly.

He’d stare into her eyes until she almost felt their minds touching.

“You’re mine. You’re mine.” He’d repeat the words over and over. “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

He’d entwine their fingers, press their foreheads together, and sometimes his whole body would tremble. She’d wrap her arms around him, trying to reassure him.

“I promise, Kaine. I’m always going to be yours.”

There was a possessive terror in him—in the ways he touched her—as though he always expected it to be the last time he ever saw her.

When he didn’t summon her, time stretched, filling Helena with a bottomless dread until her ring burned again.

Then she was the one who would desperately demand to know if he was all right. On the nights she slept alone, she had nightmares of him being killed. Sometimes gone forever, other times as a lich, or discovered and caught. She didn’t know which possibility to fear most.

“Be careful.” It was always the last thing she said to him before he left her on some rooftop. She would hold his face in her hands, staring into his eyes. “Don’t die.”

He’d dip his head forward, kissing her inner wrist or the palm of her hand, his silver eyes locked on her face. “You’re mine. I’ll always come for you.”

He always did.

Yet each day it felt as though the odds were being pushed higher. Steeper. The war teetered on the brink of calamity. She wasn’t sure how far the array and his own determination could take him before everything came crashing down.

He was walking a razor’s edge.

When he slept, she’d stare at his face and will his survival.

She’d make it happen. They’d go away, across the sea so no one would ever find them. She promised herself she’d find a way. She promised him: There would be an after.

“I’m going to take care of you. I swear, Helena, I’m always going to take care of you.” She heard him muttering the words against her skin or into her hair in such a low voice, she could barely make them out. Some days the compulsion seemed worse than others.

She heard him repeating it over and over one night. He usually stopped after a little while, but this time he didn’t.

She lifted her head and held his face between her hands so that she could meet his eyes. “Kaine, I’m all right. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

He stared at her with the same bitterly resigned expression he’d worn while training her and whenever she turned to leave, like he was bracing himself, waiting for what he regarded as inevitable.

The war was a cage with no escape.

He subsided and rested his head on her chest, listening to her heartbeat, arms framing her. She tangled her fingers through his hair, and it was quiet, but she could feel him mouthing the words.

She hesitated before she spoke.

“Tell me about your mother, Kaine. Tell me everything you could never tell anyone.”

He went silent. She slid her fingers over his shoulders, tracing the interconnected scars from the array. “You can tell me. I’ll help you carry it.”

He didn’t speak for such a long time, she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Then he turned his head, just enough that she could see his profile.

“I’d never seen anyone tortured before,” he said at last. “She was—the first person I ever saw tortured. He—” His jaw trembled as he struggled for words. “—they experimented on her. Even though she wasn’t even—she hadn’t done anything.”

As he spoke, his eyes grew wide. He stared across the room, his gaze far away.

Helena watched and she could see him, just sixteen and home for the summer holidays.

Home, walking unknowingly into a nightmare that he would never escape.

“I thought—” His voice was suddenly younger.

Boyish. “For a while I thought that if I killed the Principate soon enough, she’d recover.

That I could fix it all. But she was—a shadow of herself when I returned.

I think—I think she tried to hold on over the summer, show a brave face while I was there, but—

“I wasn’t even gone a month.” The words were low, wavering.

Helena laced her fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes and drew his chin down, his body contracting inwards.

“After I killed the Principate, it took more than a day to get back, and they knew I’d done it.

They’d heard, but they didn’t let her out until I gave him that fucking heart—still beating.

She kept having these fits; she’d crumple on the floor, or stop breathing, or sit rocking and muttering.

I brought in doctors, but they said there was nothing wrong with her but a weak constitution and tendencies towards hysteria.

They recommended institutionalising her, or administering all these tonics and injections that left her in a stupor. ”

Helena squeezed his hand, running her fingers across the array.

Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.

To avenge his mother. In penance for all the ways he believed he’d failed her.

“I’m so sorry, Kaine.”

He was quiet. He closed his eyes and drew a sharp breath.

“Then—” His voice cut off.

“Then—” It failed again. “She’d been doing better, I thought she might even recover, but I—I—We’d taken a new district.

There was a list of families we were supposed to make examples of.

Father, mother, two children. After we killed the parents, they reanimated the mother, had her with the older girl.

I was supposed to come up with something with—with the father and the younger one.

Little thing, wearing two braids with bows on them.

There was a birthday cake. I think it was hers.

Durant dragged her over by her hair and handed her to me—I knew what they wanted but I ran. ”

He swallowed. “I booked a ship, passage for two. I thought my mother and I could just sail away together, and she wouldn’t know I couldn’t really go with her until it was too late. But when I went to get her, they’d gotten there first. They’d brought the corpse.”

“Oh, Kaine …” Helena was too horrified to say more than that. He was gripping her hand so hard, she suspected there’d be bruises where his fingers were entwined.

“I tried to find a way to run with her.” His voice shifted, starting to grow familiar as the story moved through his life.

Traces of his hard, controlled tone beginning to emerge.

“I had everything prepared, every detail and contingency, but she wouldn’t leave without me.

I thought about forcing her, drugging her, putting her on the boat and sending her away, but I was so afraid she’d come back for me, and I didn’t want to have her locked away.

I didn’t want to be someone who caged her again. ”

His voice grew deadened. “If I hadn’t gone home that night … she wouldn’t have died. I don’t know why I did.”

He fell silent.

Helena shifted out from under him enough to sit up. She couldn’t look at him without a tearing pain spreading through her chest.

She touched him lightly on the forehead. “Kaine—I’m not your mother.”