Page 148 of Alchemised

Helena looked down, playing with the ring on his hand. It had been so long since she’d seen hers.

“You know me, I’ll be in the hospital. There will be a lot of injuries, so I wouldn’t be ready right away—so you just go, and I’ll catch up.”

He scoffed. “If I survive, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

She pressed her fingers to his lips, hushing him. “No. You can’t risk getting caught.”

He pushed her fingers away from his mouth, but she wouldn’t let him interrupt.

She had thought about this in circles, and there was little chance that Crowther would let her slip away without paying for her necromancy.

If she was lucky, she’d just be expelled from the Eternal Flame.

It would be the quickest and quietest resolution, but even that might take weeks or months.

“Go south, towards the sea. When I can, I’ll come, I’ll look for you, and it’ll be just like we said—we’ll disappear.”

His eyes narrowed into slits. “And how long do you expect I’d be waiting?”

Helena’s eyes dropped. “I don’t know. It might be—a little while.”

“Why?”

“Because—there will be a lot of things that will happen once it’s over. But I’m sure once it is, they’ll rather I just disappear, so then I’ll come look for you, all right? I think it would be good that way. For you. You might realise you want other things once you have real choices—”

His fingers curled around the back of her neck, pulling her close until their faces were nearly touching.

“You’re mine,” he said almost against her lips. “Mine. You swore it. Your Resistance sold you to me. I’m not going anywhere without you. And if anyone touches you, immortal or not, I will kill them.”

He didn’t wait for a reply; he kissed her as though his lips were a brand on hers.

S HISEO WAS THE ONLY OTHER choice for delivering the bomb.

He and Helena coated the very exterior of it with a fine layer of mo’lian’shi which Shiseo had extracted from nullium dust. After that, it was coated in Helena’s mirroring elixir.

Shiseo had tinkered with the composition and made it workable on larger surfaces.

Once it was all assembled, it would be difficult to notice, and the exterior inertia would make it invisible to anyone searching by resonance.

As they finished, Helena slipped her ring off, studying it. The mirroring was rubbing off. If she was arrested, she’d be searched, and any metal removed. That would include Kaine’s ring.

“Would mo’lian’shi interfere with an entanglement?” she asked.

Shiseo studied the half-visible ring. “If you left a small part exposed, you could probably still use it.” He eyed her knowingly. “That would keep it hidden if someone searched you using resonance unless they were very thorough.”

That was all she needed to know. Muttering an apology to Kaine for the burn he was about to get, she coated all but one section. Once it cooled, she dipped her ring into the mirroring elixir, refreshing the concealment, watching it vanish.

W HILE S HISEO WAS DELIVERING THE bomb, Helena went to check on Lila. If the hospital ended up inundated, it would be a while before she’d come again.

The bump between Lila’s hips had grown undeniable, but Lila was almost manic with regret, questioning her decision for the first time.

Her nails were all bitten to the quick. “I can’t believe that the final battle is happening now,” she said, watching the combatants as they milled below. “I should be out there.”

“It’s not as if you knew,” Helena said, tiredly. It was too late for Lila to change her mind now.

“Do you think this’ll be it?” Lila asked. “Are our chances good?”

“As good as they can be,” Helena said.

Win or lose, all she felt was dread, but it had to end now. It could not go on.

“He’s awake,” Lila said, holding out her hand for Helena’s. “Come feel. Right here.”

Lila caught Helena’s hand and pressed it on her stomach, just above her hip bone. There was a pause, then, without using resonance, Helena felt a strange flutter against her palm.

“Feel that?” Lila asked.

Helena nodded, letting her resonance sweep through Lila to the baby, finding the heartbeat quick as the flutter of a bird’s wings.

There were no more kicks.

“He probably went to sleep,” Lila said. Helena still didn’t know where Lila got the conviction that the baby was a boy, but she’d named him Apollo and referred to him as Pol. “You should feel him at night—I think he does somersaults. Gets his feet all the way up to my ribs.”

“I can’t imagine where he gets his athletic troublemaking genes from,” Helena said in a dry voice, pulling her hand away.

“He’ll have all the fun we missed,” Lila said, letting her shirt fall over her stomach.

“You know, I think I’ll be happy for him to be a peacetime baby.

I bet there will be a lot of babies in the next few years.

They’ll all go to the Institute together like we did. D’you think you’ll ever have children?”

Helena shook her head without a word.

“You might change your mind someday,” Lila said coaxingly. “Just have to find the right sort for you. You’d be a good mum.”

“I’m a healer; we don’t do things like that,” Helena said.

“But you only became a healer because of the war. No one’s going to expect you to keep doing it once it’s over.”

For all of Lila’s exceptionalism and understanding of the perilous role she occupied, somehow she didn’t seem to realise that most people never had the chances she did, whether by birth or by ability.

Lila was a once-in-a-lifetime talent, with the beauty to match, and a name with centuries of legacy behind it.

The rules did not bend like that for anyone else. Especially not Helena.

She changed the subject.

“I really think you should tell Luc. He should know before this battle starts. That way if things go wrong, the Eternal Flame will know the importance of getting you to safety.”

Lila was silent for a surprisingly long moment.

“He already knows,” she finally said quietly, averting her eyes from Helena’s.

“What?”

“He broke in, through the window, when I was first placed in quarantine. He was so worried that I told him the truth. He said if people knew, they’d make me leave. Send me to Novis. He needed me, so I kept saying I wanted it to be a secret. He made me promise not to tell anyone.”

Helena was struck dumb for several moments. “He’s known this whole time? That you’re pregnant, and I’m the one caring for you?”

If Luc knew and allowed this, why was he so opposed to her healing Titus? It made no sense.

Lila flushed. “Sorry. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want him upset. He’s still not doing very well.”

“I need to go,” Helena said, standing up unsteadily.

Lila tried to stop her, blocking the door. “No. You’re angry, I can tell. Please, let me explain.”

Helena stared at her. Lila looked so much like her father, cast in a feminine mould—the height, the pale hair and blue eyes, even a scar on one side of the head.

“I don’t need an explanation from you,” Helena said. “I need to talk to him.”

She searched everywhere for Luc. Everyone she asked gave a different location: He was in a meeting, he was asleep, he was in the commons, the mess. Everywhere she went, he was always a few minutes ahead of her.

Finally, she tracked him down in the hospital, but he was in a private room, under guard, no admittance.

Helena stood waiting, and finally Elain emerged carrying a tray with several syringes and empty vials on it, and a tense furrow between her eyes.

“I need to see Luc,” Helena said.

Elain started at the sight of her. “He’s resting.”

Helena looked down at the tray, and Elain tried to turn it from her view.

“Why are you giving him all that?” Helena asked, eyes flicking from vial to vial.

“These shouldn’t be combined, and he’s too young to need half of them.

And these—” She snatched up a syringe with her writing on it.

“—these are for dire emergencies only. If you overuse them, you’re going to give him heart failure. Who approved this?”

Elain’s eyes flashed indignantly. “I’m his healer.”