Page 161 of Alchemised

“I looked for you everywhere. In the wreckage first, then Central and the Outpost, but you’d disappeared.

There was a transfer slip about a person of interest captured near West Port, and you’d been listed as too injured for rehabilitation and culled.

I went through all the dead trying to find you, but you weren’t there.

I went through every prison, every file, but you’d disappeared, so I volunteered to track down anyone missing.

I thought eventually something would lead to you.

” His jaw clenched. “I had to bring them all back. If I’d failed, the job would have been reassigned. ”

He didn’t meet her eyes as he said this, staring across the room. “I went to Hevgoss quite a few times. Thought maybe you’d somehow ended up there. I was even in that warehouse once, checking all the files there for anyone who might match your description. But I didn’t open the tanks so—”

His jaw trembled visibly, and he didn’t say anything else—just turned back to sorting through the tray.

“Why didn’t you assume I was dead?” she asked.

His hands stilled. “I had to know.”

He drew a deep breath. “This room is safe, but Morrough has eyes in the house. He watches from the hallway sometimes. Now that you’re pregnant, he’s unlikely to have you brought in again, but as long as it was a risk, there was always the chance he’d see anything that happened here.”

Understanding slowly dawned on her. All these months, Kaine had been performing for Morrough through Helena’s eyes, knowing that any moment that passed between them might be seen.

What had been real, then? Any of it? None?

A wave of exhaustion struck. She felt as if all her memories had been shaken and lay jumbled and upended, out of order. It was hard to even think clearly.

She wanted to sleep, to sink back into the abyss, but she was afraid that her memories might slip away again. That Kaine would vanish, and when she woke it would be Ferron again, ice-cold and cruel.

Try as she might, the two were categorically separate in her mind.

Kaine, she knew.

But Ferron was a monster. Her fear and hatred of him were rooted in her bones. That horrific chair of bodies, his pile of victims. She couldn’t forget that.

Her head throbbed, her skull threatening to crush her eyes out of her head. She squeezed them shut. The bed dipped, and Kaine took her arm. She felt her veins swell, and there was a prick of a needle as he put in a new intravenous drip.

“Don’t pull this one out,” he said as he worked. “All your years in a hospital, and you’re still a terrible patient.”

He laid her arm down and began going through the vials again, finding one and adding it to all the tubes that joined with the saline running into her arm.

“You should sleep now,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“What if I forget again?” Her voice was small, nearly trembling with fear.

He didn’t answer.

“Will you—will you go back to being the way you were, if I forget?”

“It’s almost over now,” he said, not answering the question.

She could feel the drugs in her veins, a heavy shroud bearing down on her. She fought to keep her eyes open, to stay awake, to remember.

“Then what?”

The room seemed darker.

“You’ll take care of Lila, the way you promised you would.”

T HERE WAS A CRACK OF faint light cast between the curtains when her eyes opened again. She could see the room, her prison. Kaine was gone.

She was only awake a few minutes before the door opened, and one of the necrothralls entered. Helena stared.

“I saw you before …” Helena said as the necrothrall set down a tray with a bowl of soup on it. “I was here, before.”

Why would she have been here?

“Shhhhh …” The necrothrall released a soft, hissing breath through her teeth, shaking her head as if in warning.

She reached into a pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, holding it out to Helena.

There was only one word, written in clear strokes.

REST.

The paper slipped from her fingers and the necrothrall took it immediately, returning it to her pocket before offering soup.

Helena forced a few spoonfuls down, but her body recoiled, trying to hurl them back up. She tried not to think, to stop trying to remember, but it was like trying to ignore Lumithia in Ascendance.

All that time, Kaine had known her. From the moment she’d arrived.

The transference process … it was her idea. The procedure she’d wanted to use on Titus Bayard.

And Shiseo …

She looked down at her wrists in renewed horror.

Transference, the manacles—those weren’t things that Kaine had known of. It was Shiseo who’d known. Transference was the reason Morrough had wanted the repopulation program started.

Her throat convulsed, and she vomited all the soup onto the floor beside the bed.

She tried to stop thinking about it. To remember herself from before, to reconcile who she was with the person she’d forgotten. In the process of forgetting, she’d flattened herself, forgotten all her anger. Her capacity to be monstrous.

That was the person Kaine wanted. Who he’d done all this for.

But that Helena didn’t exist anymore. All that was left now was a shadow.

It was dark when Kaine returned.

Her heart rose with relief, but dread rushed through her at the sight of him. She stared at him in the dark as he stayed by the door, clearly not intending to linger, coldly appraising her from across the room.

She didn’t know what she wanted him to do. She didn’t want him there, but not seeing him was worse because when he was gone, he might be dead; she’d never see him again.

“Are you angry with me about something?” she asked when he didn’t speak.

His lips vanished into a line, and he entered, shutting the door. “No.”

He went to a window, pushing back the curtains enough to let in a soft gleam of silver light. He was in uniform.

Helena watched him, trying to pinpoint what it was about him that was so different now.

“You are,” she said. “I feel like I know you are, but I don’t remember why.”

He didn’t look at her. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past.”

“Why look for me, then, if the past doesn’t matter?”

His jaw clenched. “Do you remember how you were captured?”

She nodded. “I blew up the West Port Lab.”

He gave a short nod, still staring out the window. “Do you remember why?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. The answer felt obvious, but she couldn’t remember exactly.

“Don’t push if you can’t recall,” he said, glancing towards her sharply when she was silent.

“It was because of you, wasn’t it?” she asked, somehow sure it had to have been, although she didn’t remember anything except the fire, her ears throbbing, trying to run.

He looked away again but nodded.

Helena wasn’t sure why he’d be angry about that. She closed her eyes. She felt so tired now that he was there, as if she’d waited for him in order to rest.

“When you were asleep, I used to promise I’d take care of you,” she said.

“No.” He said it harshly. “That was me. I was the one who used to say that.”

She opened her eyes. “I used to say it back. I guess you didn’t know.”

His expression grew stricken and then he looked away, flicking the curtains closed so that it was too dim to make out his face anymore.

“What’s the plan?” she asked into the darkness. “You said it was almost over? What does that mean?”

His eyes seemed to glow. “We’re just waiting for the summer Abeyance. Get you as far away as possible. You’ll blend in if you go south.”

“Is that where Lila is? South?”

“Yes, she’s still on the mainland, near the coast. She stayed at a midway point while we tried to find you.”

“We?” Hope rose in her chest. There were survivors.

“Shiseo.”

Helena recoiled at the name.

Kaine was closer now, she could tell by his voice, but the room was so dark that she couldn’t see him.

“He turned himself in, providing papers and a seal identifying him as a member of the imperial family, and offering research. He designed those manacles in the hope that if you ever showed up, he’d be the one called in to put them on. ”

“Well, he certainly managed that,” Helena said hoarsely. “This is all his fault. If he hadn’t told them about transference—”

“Morrough would have vivisected your brain the day they found you if Shiseo hadn’t intervened,” Kaine said. “He had no way of knowing what Morrough would do with the method.”

She fell silent.

“It was the only thing he could come up with that would give me access to you and buy enough time. He’ll be the one to take you to Lila.”

“But what’s the plan for Paladia?”

Kaine was silent for several moments. “Morrough’s weakening.

He tried to use Holdfast for spare parts, but it wasn’t enough, even though he mutilated himself adding his bones.

Enough of the Undying are gone now that he can’t move or breathe without that monstrosity of his.

That’s why he’s so desperate for an animancer—he thinks it’ll let him start over. ”

Luc’s bones. He’d used Luc’s bones.

“It’s all about striking at the right moment,” Kaine was saying.

“Morrough’s activities and the extent of the slaughter here have begun to impact the continent.

The surrounding countries will intervene soon.

There are rumours of an alliance that even Hevgoss is cooperating with.

Paladia’s a critical source of lumithium, and it’s an industrial power that isn’t easily replaced when so many alchemists are dead.

The other countries may not have cared when it was a civil conflict, but now they’ll act to secure their interests.

Once they’re confident Morrough’s weak, they’ll move quickly. ”

There was an assurance in the way he said it, as if it was all arranged, every detail already in place. Helena brightened with interest, trying to remember what she’d read in the papers.

“How will you—?”

“You don’t need to worry about the specifics,” he said, cutting her off. “You’ll be gone before then. If you want to help, eat and get strong enough to travel.”

He left without another word.

He didn’t come back again for several days.

It made her anxious as evening after evening passed and he failed to even briefly appear.

She couldn’t stop herself from trying to remember, to piece together answers of why he was angry and why he didn’t come back.

Memories would burst open, staining her vision red, upending her thoughts, leaving her drowning in disjointed spurts of emotion and snatches of conversation.

She had fits all through the day. Davies added vials of various drugs to the saline drip until Helena lay in a stupor, unable to think.

It was dark when the mattress dipped and a cool hand brushed back the curls clinging to her face, tucking them behind her ear. Her hand was picked up, long fingers entwining with hers. Kaine’s thumb stroked across her knuckles, finally stopping at her ring finger, spiralling something there slowly.

The ring.

She’d forgotten all about it.

Once the fits stopped, Kaine withdrew again, but he didn’t disappear entirely. At first she thought she was imagining it, but it was undeniable that he was distancing himself.

He’d stand, hands clasped behind his back, not even looking at her, giving only short answers to her questions. She rarely knew what to say; everything felt either trivial or too devastating to put into words. She didn’t know where to begin.

Hold on, she’d told herself over and over inside the tank. Don’t break. She’d thought she’d succeeded, but now she knew, there were only pieces of her left.

She sat in bed, watching him stare out the window. It was night and there was nothing to see; he simply didn’t want to look at her. She knew he’d leave in a moment, if she didn’t say something.

“How—have you been?” she finally asked in desperation, then winced because it was a stupid question.

“Fine,” he said.

She blinked down at her lap. “You’re married.”

He went rigid at that, and she watched him inhale. “Yes, to Aurelia Ingram.”

She nodded. She didn’t know why it mattered, given everything else. She’d never at any point imagined Kaine marrying her. Yet her mind couldn’t move away from the detail. He had a wife now. Which made her—

She wasn’t sure what she was. What she’d ever been.

“Morrough ordered it,” he said, even though she hadn’t said anything else. “The Guild Assembly wanted a high-profile event, proof that things were back to normal. I didn’t have any choice.”

She nodded again wordlessly.

“I—” He looked towards her and started to speak again but then stopped.

The space between them was like a chasm filled with every sin they’d ever committed against each other, but even from that distance, she could feel his anger.

No matter what he said, she knew he was angry at her.

“You’re able to travel now?” she asked. “You said you went to Hevgoss lots of times.”

“Yes.”

She twisted the linen hem of the sheet between her fingers. “Then … after things here are done, will you—will you come south, too?”

“Lila has a rather abiding hatred for me.”

Helena kept waiting for an answer. We’re supposed to run away together. You promised.

He glanced back out into the courtyard. “With luck, I won’t be in Paladia for long afterwards.”

“So you’ll come—eventually?” Her voice was hopeful.

It felt impossible for things to ever be repaired within the suffocating confines of Spirefell, but if they went somewhere far away, maybe it could be done. They’d found each other once, after all. With time, they could do it again.

His eyes glittered for a moment, and she saw the briefest curve of his lips as he quietly said, “If that’s what you want.”

It felt like a lie.