Page 150 of Alchemised

The bombing was believed to be either an accident or an act of sabotage. No one even considered that the Resistance might have planted a bomb.

The miracles had begun, people were saying. The gods were on their side.

Victory Day, they were already calling it. They’d retake the whole city.

The injured combatants arriving slowed to a trickle because the battalion had pushed so far into the West Island, no one was being brought back.

The field commander was on the radio, wanting to know if they were supposed to relocate closer to the action. They’d had no instructions about whether to follow.

The current base of operations was in an old building on a mid-level of the city.

It had solid walls and small windows. It was a good place to fall back, reasonably defensible.

The air inside grew suffocating, warm from bodies and motion.

The medical transport lorry had departed for the hospital and not yet returned.

Helena was closing a deep cut along an inner thigh when someone outside yelled, “They’ve taken Headquarters!”

Everyone looked up, staring at one another in confusion.

The lorry driver stumbled in, gasping for air, his head bleeding. “The Undying have taken Headquarters!”

No one spoke for a moment as shock rippled through the room. In all these years, Headquarters had never been touched. There were so many protective measures in place. It was the most secure place in the entire city.

Everyone seemed to snap back to life. There was a clamour of furious voices, everyone descending on the driver, demanding information. Helena pushed through, checking his head. He had a graze, and his hands were torn up.

“I went through all the checkpoints,” he said, allowing Helena to tilt his head to the side and close the wound.

“Showed my papers, got waved through. Everything was—normal. Pulled in, the patients were being unloaded.” He mopped his forehead, smearing blood across his face.

“Quiet, though. really quiet. I get fuckin’ awkward when it’s too quiet.

Always rather talk, you know? Asked a guard a question.

No answer. I thought all the blood on them was from carrying the wounded.

Asked another question. They started moving towards me.

That’s when I realised. They were all greys.

Fresh killed, still warm. I drove out—ran over a few, didn’t look back.

First checkpoint, tried to report it. They weren’t talking, either.

Barricade was up. So I ran. Didn’t know where to go except come back. ”

The building was palpably silent as everyone tried to absorb this. It was beyond belief.

The Undying would have needed extensive information about their security protocols to infiltrate, a spy with a high-level security clearance to get in, and intimate knowledge to create necrothralls with the right instructions. How could it have happened? With no word? No distress signals?

The commander tried to contact Headquarters by radio, but there was only static.

“Signal to anyone you can, without setting off any alarms. You, you, and you,” said the field commander, pointing at several men. “Go check the nearest checkpoint.”

Only two men came back.

“They were all dead,” said one, holding a hand against his stomach where blood seeped through his fingers. “They were waiting for us.”

The field commander sent out anyone capable of carrying word to intercept and recall any units or lorries they encountered, and then he sat down at the radio and began uttering a string of jargon into channel after channel, arguing furiously with everyone who answered, because no one wanted to believe the report.

The door burst open, and Luc strode in, Sebastian only a few steps behind him, concealing a limp, the rest of the battalion milling in back of him.

Luc’s face was pale and streaked with blood and smoke. Although he looked skeletally thin, his eyes were blistering, a brilliant feverish blue, but rather than acknowledge the field commander, his attention went directly to Helena.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

She stood up. “I need to talk to you, Luc. Urgently.”

He blinked and finally turned to his field commander. “Who let her in here?”

Before anyone could respond, Helena spoke again.

“It’s about Lila,” she said.

The words worked like magic. Luc’s attention snapped onto her, and his throat dipped as his eyes darted around the room.

“Fine,” he said after a beat. “Let’s talk. Sebastian, get everyone ready to move. We’re retaking Headquarters.”

“No, bring him, I’ll heal him while we talk,” Helena said. “It’ll save time.”

Luc eyed her warily but nodded. He seemed so familiar, and yet—there was something off about him.

You should have known. You should have noticed.

He turned to the field commander, who looked lost. “Take everyone who can fight and start moving back towards Headquarters. Sebastian and I will follow.”

There were rooms deeper in the warehouse that connected to the next building, and as they walked there, Helena slipped one of the obsidian knives into the waistband at the back of her skirt, hidden under her jacket.

Sebastian had cracked ribs and a gash to the leg where a knife had gotten through a weak point in his armour.

Helena gave him one of her last vials of medicine to help sustain the amount of tissue and blood she was about to regenerate. Before she could stop him, he unfastened and began removing his chest plate.

“What’s wrong with Lila?” Luc asked the instant the door was shut and the three of them were alone.

“Nothing,” Helena said. “She’s fine.”

Anger lit Luc’s face.

“I just didn’t realise you knew about the baby,” Helena said, meeting his eyes.

Sebastian started. “What baby?”

Luc tensed enough that his armour clicked, but his expression was controlled. He didn’t even look at Sebastian.

“What baby?” Sebastian asked again.

“That’s why you came here?” Luc asked, his blue eyes glinting cold. “Because of that?”

Helena’s heart was beating so fast, it was a thrum in her chest. “No, I came because I don’t understand why you wouldn’t let me heal Titus but you’ve been letting me take care of your heir.”

“Luc, what did you do?” Sebastian said.

Luc ignored his paladin; all his focus was on Helena. “Lila can protect herself. You’ve already done enough to Titus.”

Helena’s throat closed, but in that moment, she knew: This was not Luc.

She should have realised sooner, but she’d spent so much time fearing his rejection, dreading the inevitable schism, that she had not questioned its happening.

She looked away. “You know, I was in one of the field hospitals during the massacre. When the liches infiltrated using living bodies. Apparently, a living body won’t accept another soul; it’s like an infec tion, the body tries to burn it out.

That’s why they came in sick with brain fevers, screaming and clawing at themselves, saying, ‘Get him out,’ until they died. ”

She drew a slow breath as she finished healing Sebastian’s leg. “Do you know anyone who suffers from fevers like that, Luc?”

Sebastian had gone very still.

Luc shook his head. “Can’t say I do.”

He said it calmly, but there was a growing pressure in the air.

Helena found the cracks in Sebastian’s rib.

“You surrendered yourself to save Lila. You knew it would cost everything, but you did it anyway. You told me that you chose her as your paladin because you wanted her by your side, so you’d have a chance of protecting her, even though you knew you weren’t supposed to.

I know how it killed you every time she got hurt.

You didn’t even want me to clear her for combat again after she lost her leg.

” She kept looking for any glimmer of the person she knew.

“Now she’s the mother of your child, and instead of getting her to safety, you’ve kept her in isolation for months.

And right this minute, you have every reason to think she’s been captured, that she’d be one of the first people they’d kill, but instead of running to her, you’re here with me. Luc would never do that.”

“Luc, what have you done?” Sebastian was staring at him in horror.

Helena asked, “Who are you?”

It was like watching a curtain being pulled back.

One moment, the expression and characteristics were still there, and then Luc sighed and seemed to vanish beneath his own skin.

“Well.” He grinned at them both, a smile like a slit throat. “I thought you’d realise months ago, but you’re all such fools when it comes to the Holdfasts.”

Sebastian trembled beneath Helena’s fingers as they both stared at this thing standing in front of them.

Helena’s hand slipped to her back. “Who are you?” she asked again.

“I’ve gone by so many names, I don’t even remember them all,” said the person in Luc’s body. “Once, long ago, my brother called me Cetus.”

Helena’s eyes widened.

“Cetus?” she said.

He inclined his head, but she shook hers.

That would make him older than Paladia, older than the Holdfasts, older than the first Necromancy War. No one could live that long. Cetus was an invention, centuries of alchemists pseudonymously writing under one name. Not a person.

It had to be a lie, an attempt to distract her.

“I checked Luc,” Helena said, trying to keep her voice steady. “There was no talisman. How is this possible?”

“Cetus” tilted his head to one side so that Luc’s neck popped, as if Luc’s body were a suit of armour that didn’t fit properly.

“My brother and I were born entwined. We entered the world as one when we slid from our mother’s womb.

We’d sucked her dry from within, and the fires of her pyre licked across our skin, branding us from birth.

Cursed children, they called us, when they called us anything at all.

Our shared blood has endured for centuries and now we’re one again, as we always should have been. ” He gestured down at himself.

“You’re—related to Luc?” Helena said in disbelief.

The smile split Luc’s face again.