Page 131 of Alchemised

He flinched, opening his mouth to deny, but she continued without letting him cut her off.

“The Eternal Flame is not going to hurt me if you fail an assignment. They aren’t going to torture or endanger me to punish you.

I’m not a hostage. I’m in this war because I choose to be.

I’m not fragile. I’m not going to break.

Please.” She brushed her thumb over the arch of his cheekbone. “Believe that about me.”

He shook his head. “Let me get you out. I swear it won’t affect my aid to the Resistance. Just let me get you out.”

“I’m not going to run while everyone else is fighting. We can do this together. Let me help you. You don’t have to do everything alone now.”

Despair flooded across his eyes.

“You can’t ask me to run away from the war.”

His lip curled. “Why not? Haven’t you done enough for them? They sold you. What if I’d—” His voice cut off, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. “What if you’d had the same offer from someone who’d meant it. You would have still gone—and if I hadn’t trained you, you would have died rescuing Holdfast.”

“And I agreed to it. All of it. No one ever made me. We don’t get to choose when we’ve done enough and leave others behind to bear the consequences. There are no civilians in a war like this. If they win”—she spread her hands—“everyone loses.”

He clenched his jaw, and she knew what he wanted to say, that he didn’t care. He didn’t care whether anyone survived except her.

Helena gave a sad sigh and dropped her head, burying her face in his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her.

She was almost asleep when she heard the faint whisper of his voice. “I’m going to take care of you. I swear, I’m always going to take care of you.”

K AINE WAS H ELENA’S ONLY SOURCE of solace as things within the Resistance deteriorated.

When Lila finally recovered her resonance, her long convalescence seemed to have sucked the life from her.

She was unable to spring back the way she usually did, and the scarring from all the surgery on her chest and shoulder was so severe that it bound her movement, requiring extensive healing and therapy to regain mobility.

Helena planned out a potential treatment regimen, but then it was assigned to one of the other healers. Luc had requested that Helena be kept away from Lila as well as himself.

Helena sat staring at Pace’s desk after she was informed of it.

“You’ll still work casualty shifts,” Pace said.

“Right,” Helena said, in a dull voice. “I take it that means Luc’s more lucid, then? If he’s making requests now.”

Since Luc was moved to his private quarters, Helena had not seen or heard a word about him or his condition, although the Council insisted that he was still steadily recovering.

The matron’s lips twitched. “Well, ‘lucid’ is certainly a word you could use.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sure that with time, he’ll even out again. You don’t need to worry about him; there’s plenty of other people doing that.”

Helena nodded slowly, but time was not something that the Eternal Flame had.

Luc was the keystone for the Resistance.

Without him, everything grew quickly volatile.

Crowther began leaning more heavily on Kaine, using him to seed misinformation and sabotage, as though the Undying army were a machine to be deconstructed.

The envelopes with orders were thicker every time Helena delivered them.

Kaine made no mention of what he did, but she could tell he was on the verge of breaking under the pressure. He grew steadily more desperate each time he saw her.

It ate at Helena, watching him erode under everything he was expected to maintain and produce for both sides while Helena was trapped in Headquarters like a caged animal.

Without foraging, she filled her hours with new research, Shiseo taking the lead as they tried to perfect alchemy suppression upon the Council’s request. The Undying were almost impossible to take and keep captive, but with suppression, it might be possible.

She knew from Kaine that nullium interfered with the Undying’s abilities and regeneration the same as any alchemist.

Shiseo designed a nullium cuff to create targeted resonance suppression, locking around the wrist to blur the resonance into a feeling like static.

Helena tested it, locking one around her own wrist, flexing her fingers, sliding it up her arm. When it was near her elbow, she could push through the interference. She shook her head. “These don’t fully suppress the resonance.”

She took it off, inspecting the interior Shiseo had lined with nullium.

“If we really wanted to completely erase it, I think it would have to be internal,” she said.

“If the nullium were encased in ceramic, that would prevent the corrosion and biointerference. If you put a thin tube of it right through the wrist here”—she pressed her fingers against the space between the radius and ulna—“the cuff could slot around a suppression spike and alchemically lock in place. I bet there wouldn’t be any resonance then. ”

Shiseo looked so disturbed that Helena realised the reality of what she was proposing beyond its practical function.

It was one thing to think about cuffing the various Undying, all hidden behind their helmets and their dead, but when she thought about Kaine, a more likely prisoner, a pit opened inside her stomach.

She shook her head. “Never mind. That’s too much. We don’t need to suppress that much.”

“It would probably work.”

She shook her head. “It’s not necessary. This design is good enough.”

S OMETIMES H ELENA’S RING WOULD BURN twice, and often when that happened, Amaris would arrive, and Kaine would practically collapse off her back.

Other times, Amaris would appear alone. Helena would climb onto the chimaera’s back, clinging to the harness as the air whipped around, and they’d fly into the underbelly of the city, to a basement, a wrecked building, or sometimes an alley, and she would find Kaine.

Usually a piece of nullium shrapnel would be buried into him somewhere, deep enough that he couldn’t get it out.

She learned to always have her satchel stocked with medical tools and bandages and all kinds of different medicines. As the nullium grew increasingly effective, the injuries often required surgery. She grew adept at manual surgery with only an electric torch for light.

He wouldn’t let her knock him out, wanting to keep watch in case someone came, but he’d often be half delirious, his eyes nearly glowing silver, muttering under his breath, “I’m all right—I barely feel it. Don’t worry. We’ll go soon … Got it worked out. Just—a little longer …”

She’d sit with his head on her lap, singing softly to him while he stabilised, holding his hands in hers.

Nullium slowed his recovery so much. He’d have lost so much blood, he’d float on the edge of consciousness or begin trembling and go into shock.

She’d run her fingers and resonance across his palms, and murmur apologies.

You’re killing him. You’re killing him. This is because of you.

She’d only let herself cry over him when he wasn’t conscious to see it. She gripped his hands in hers, trying to fix him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said over and over.

She’d wipe her eyes and then clean up the blood before he regained consciousness. She’d feel the tension tear through his body the instant he came back to himself and feel him breathe when he looked up and saw her.

On the long nights, Amaris would curl up behind Helena, nuzzling at Kaine’s limp hands. Helena would sit, tracing her fingers along Kaine’s face, following his every heartbeat and promising, “I’m going to take care of you. I promise, I’m always going to take care of you.”