Page 139 of Alchemised

He was breathing unsteadily. “Crowther, with his endless demands, has the High Necromancer taking a myriad of precautionary measures. Only three people knew about that bombing before it happened. And I wasn’t one of them.

When I got word, I thought I was being paranoid sending my thralls in.

Surely, they’d understand that I can’t stop every fucking thing.

This was for my peace of mind, I told myself.

To see the fallout, so I’d know how bad things were.

You wouldn’t be there, of course. I told myself you wouldn’t be there, you’d be safe in Headquarters, because that is the damned deal.

Isn’t that what you promised? That they wouldn’t punish you? I knew —I told you this would happen—”

His voice broke.

“Wasn’t … Crowth—” Speaking moistened her tongue at least, but she was dying for water. Her mind was still foggy. She couldn’t understand how she was there.

“Don’t defend them!” Kaine looked feral with rage. “Do you have any idea how close you came to dying? It took an entire medical team to keep you alive. Why would they leave you alone in that fucking hospital if they weren’t trying to kill you?”

“Were … evacuating,” she said slowly, pacing her words, her tongue gradually complying.

“Alone?”

“I was—in charge.” She felt eerily lucid. “Soldiers—didn’t deserve to die alone.”

She tried to get up. She felt as if she’d be able to think more clearly if she could just sit up for a minute and figure out what had happened to her.

“Well, I didn’t see anyone there while you were dying.”

She wasn’t sure why she was trying to reason with him, but she wanted him to calm down so that she could reorient herself.

“It’s a war, Kaine. People die. Given your personal death toll, you should know that better than anyone else. You know that I’m not going to prioritise my survival over everyone else’s.”

He stared at her for a long terrible moment, the rage stark on his face.

“Well, you should.” He was suddenly ice-cold, and his eyes gleamed so silver that they were almost white.

“Because I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order of the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat, it’s a promise.

Consider your survival as much a necessity to the Resistance as Holdfast’s.

If you die, I will kill every single one of them.

Given that the risk to their lives is the only way to make you value your own. ”

Helena stared at him, dumb with shock that slowly twisted into rage.

“How dare you? How—dare you!” Her voice rose so high, it cracked.

If she could have moved, she would have thrown herself at him and tried to beat him to death with her bare hands. She wanted to scream at him.

But beyond her fury was an even greater sense of horror at what this meant.

He’d become the very threat that Crowther had feared.

Once he would have been loyal to them for the sake of avenging his mother, but Helena had usurped that, given him a new and uncontrollable source of obsessiveness and rage.

She closed her eyes, unable to look at him, and the ouroboros flashed through her mind, that image of endless self-annihilation. A dragon forever consuming itself.

She gave a rasping sob that rattled her lungs violently, and as she fought to breathe, the room went still.

The surface beneath her shifted. Fingers tucked a stray curl behind her ear before brushing across her cheek.

“I know your face too well.” He sighed. “You’re thinking you’ll have to kill me now, aren’t you? That I’m too much of a liability.”

She said nothing, refusing to open her eyes.

“Would you really do it?”

She looked at him. “You know—you know I will not choose you at the price of everyone. It wouldn’t even save you if I did.”

He looked away then. “You’d never forgive yourself.”

Her jaw trembled. “No. I wouldn’t—” Her throat grew thick. She struggled to swallow, unable to lift her head. “But it wouldn’t be the first unforgivable thing I’ve done. What’s one more line for the history books?”

He was silent for a long time.

“What will you do when I’m gone?” he asked, as if that was all that mattered.

“I’m sure you can imagine.”

The ceiling blurred at the thought of a world where Kaine was gone and she was alone, with no one to blame but herself.

She hated this war. She had thought she could do anything. That she was strong enough for it. That there would be no limit to what she was willing to do or endure. Apparently, Kaine had become her limit.

She couldn’t imagine herself without him. She didn’t think she’d even exist anymore.

She gave a choking gasp, struggling for air, lungs rattling.

Suddenly Kaine was over her, holding her face in his hands, tilting her head so she could breathe. That was all the embrace possible.

“Just live, Helena.” His voice was shaking. “That’s all I’m asking you to do for me.”

Helena gave a low sob, lungs whistling as she fought to breathe. “I can’t promise that. You know I can’t promise that. But I can’t risk what you’ll do if I die.”

He kissed her. She could taste the plea on his lips.

“I’m sorry,” she kept saying again and again, “I’m sorry I did this to you.”

A harsh buzz broke the air. Kaine went rigid and jerked back with a curse. Another buzz. Two long and two short. Each time the noise came, the lights in the room dimmed, flickering ominously.

He looked around, his teeth gritted. “Fuck. I’m being called back to the city.” He stepped away but kept staring down at her. She could see the calculation in his eyes as he seemed to hesitate over something. Finally an expression of despair flashed across his face.

“Davies,” he said. His voice barely carried, and his eyes went out of focus for a moment. “Come here.”

The door behind him opened, and a woman entered. Helena didn’t know enough about servants’ uniforms to place what she was, but she recognised the name.

Enid Ferron’s lady’s maid stood beside Kaine, looking down at Helena with rheumy blue eyes. A faint whiff of something dry but organic drifted into the room with her. She was dead but so expertly reanimated, she looked almost lifelike.

Helena looked around the room and towards the window, realising that she couldn’t see any buildings, just sky and trees.

“Where are we?” she asked abruptly. She didn’t even know how long she’d been unconscious.

“Spirefell. My family’s country estate,” Kaine said, pulling on his uniform, the black coat and cloak. “I’ll explain more later. I have to go. Don’t be afraid of Davies. She won’t hurt you.”

Helena kept staring at the necrothrall. One of the servants who’d died when Kaine became Undying, whose life was responsible for his immortality and immutability. He’d reanimated her?

“I’m sorry,” he was saying, “I thought I had more time to explain. You’ll be safe here. No one will find you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

“Davies, take care of her.” He leaned over Helena one last time, stroking her hair. “You’re safe. I promise.”

Then he was gone. She could hear something in the walls and floor moving but couldn’t see what it was as she was left paralysed, in the care of a necrothrall.

She looked at it—her—again. Davies stood watching Helena, her gaze vague but constant.

“Can I have water?” Helena finally asked.

Davies poured a cup of water from a pitcher on a table nearby and then brought it over to Helena and helped her sip enough to wet her mouth. It was bitter; Helena recognised the taste of laudanum.

She had no idea it was possible to reanimate necrothralls to this degree. The woman seemed alive.

“You were Enid Ferron’s lady’s maid, weren’t you?” Helena asked, fighting the wave of exhaustion the drug brought upon her.

Davies nodded slowly as if she understood the question. Helena struggled to focus.

“You’ve been here, all this time?”

Another nod. Davies mouthed a word silently. Kaine.

If that were true, it meant she’d been reanimated for nearly seven years without showing any signs of decay. Helena hadn’t known that was even possible.

“Why? Why would he do that to you?”

If the necrothrall answered, Helena wasn’t conscious enough to see it.

She slipped in and out of lucidity, in more pain each time she came awake. Davies was sitting in a chair beside her, knitting what appeared to be socks. The numbness was wearing off. Pain was shifting from a distant impression to a weight steadily bearing down harder and harder.

Her throat was bruised and raw inside; she must have been on a breathing apparatus at some point.

When the pain grew oppressive enough to wake her again, she found that Kaine had returned. He was standing beside her, replacing several of the vials connected to the intravenous drip.

“What happened to the medical team?” Helena asked, her tongue thick and dry again. “The people you had save me. What did you do to them?”

He stared down at her. The room was dark; his black uniform made him blend into the shadows, but his pale hair and eyes almost glowed.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”

“Did you kill them?” Her voice sharpened.

He flicked a switch, filling the room with dim orange light.

“No, I didn’t kill them. An entire medical team turning up dead would have raised questions.

They think they saved a woman who died under interrogation yesterday.

And they do not care at all that they spent hours saving you for the ostensible purpose of my torturing you to death afterwards.

They were proud to be of service. You are, after all, a terrorist, they said. ”

She knew he was trying to distract her. “So you would have killed them but didn’t because it would have raised inconvenient questions.”

His eyes flashed. “Yes, I did all of this for convenience, which you know I have so abundantly in my life with my two mutually exclusive masters.”

Guilt caught in Helena’s throat like a stone. “I don’t want you to kill people because of me.”