Page 162 of Alchemised

T IME DID NOT HEAL ALL WOUNDS, BUT it did make a difference for Helena’s mind. With each day, her memories seemed to settle, falling into a semblance of order.

She gradually remembered tricking Kaine and finally understood why he’d been so deeply paranoid from the moment of her arrival. Why he had checked her mind, wanting to know even her most inconsequential occupations.

He’d underestimated her once; now he would never trust her again. He was still lying to her.

She’d suspected, but it was difficult to rely on her judgement or interpretation of anything.

Lacunae were scattered across her consciousness.

Her thoughts still compulsively turned away from their conclusions, and her mind was habitual in its tendency to overlook what was missing.

But as time passed, she grew certain of his deceit.

He was managing her, “maintaining her environment,” and trying to trick her even now.

What the deceit was, she wasn’t sure. She mulled over it, trying to sense the holes in the carefully crafted narrative he’d begun feeding her from the moment she’d regained consciousness.

She needed more perspective, a stronger sense of what was real and what was not.

She went out into the hallway, staring down the passages. It used to terrify her, the hallways, the house, the ghastly sense of death and mourning that permeated it.

She stood there, watching the space around her disappear into shadows. It was haunted after all.

She had been the ghost.

She wandered slowly down the hallway, her feet bare. The cold iron in the floor kept her present, sure of what was real.

Kaine appeared on the landing below her as she reached the stairs.

He was all in black except the pristine white at his throat, and the barest edges of his cuffs visible at the wrists.

His colouring was so stark now, he looked almost like an ink drawing, the sharp lines and contrast of black and white.

“I thought you’d be out,” she said when he didn’t speak.

“I noticed you were up. Do you think you could manage a trip to the main wing?”

No, but she nodded, curious where he’d take her.

He maintained a conscientious distance as they made the journey, warning her quietly of the places where Morrough could be watching.

She kept looking at him, noticing the edge to him, the over-precision. He was exacting to a degree that left him nearly inhuman. It was the array, she realised with slow horror. He was more than distilled. It had transmuted him until there was nothing left but the qualities it permitted.

In his search for her, he’d let it consume him.

They stopped outside a large pair of doors that had always been locked during Helena’s exploration of the house. Opened, they revealed a library.

“I would have brought you here earlier, but I worried Aurelia might be suspicious if you were in this wing too often,” he said, stepping to the side so she had space to enter. “I’ll be gone until evening, but I thought an incentive to exercise and a way to pass the time might suit you.”

Helena didn’t move, peering into the cavernous space. On the far side, she could see a few north-facing windows. Even in late spring, the light in the wing was feeble, the aisles shadowy, and the ceiling so high she could scarcely make it out. The darkness threatened to drop down and swallow her.

She’d just disappear.

“Aurelia might notice now,” she said, not stepping through the doorway.

“She’s gone.”

She looked at him sharply.

“Staying in the city at present. I doubt she’ll come back, but you’ll be warned if she does.”

Helena swallowed. “Maybe—maybe we could come back later.”

Kaine had clearly expected this to tempt her. After all, she had been desperately bored in captivity, and now he was offering a world of preoccupations. His eyes ran over her in a rapid catalogue.

Helena rested her fingers on the wall, feeling the texture of the wallpaper as she wet her lips.

“It’s just a bit dark—in there,” she said.

“The ceiling. It wouldn’t be very good if I had a fit …

and there’s the—the baby.” She tripped over the word.

It was the first time she’d managed to acknowledge it since she’d regained consciousness.

Her mind swerved hard around that reality, unable to face its implications.

Kaine flinched, too.

“I’d rather not go in. If that’s all right,” she said.

“Hel—” He started to move towards her, but she tensed, and he stopped short.

He stood, staring at her, one hand barely outstretched. Her cheeks burned, and she looked away.

What must it be like to be stuck with this version of her when she used to be so much more? She couldn’t even fully remember and still found it intolerable. Her jaw trembled.

“I know it’s illogical—being scared of the dark. I know,” she said, and her voice shook. “I’m trying—I know …”

He stepped back, pulling the doors shut, and her heart dropped as the distance between them grew larger. Even though she didn’t want him to touch her, she felt desperate for him to hold her again. Her mind and body were at perpetual odds.

He could not occupy the impossible in-between where she wanted him because there was no distance large enough to erase what had happened that still left him within her reach.

“It’s fine,” he said without looking at her. “I thought you might want to, but of course, you’re not familiar with the space. If there’s anything you want, I’ll bring it to you.”

She gave a stilted nod.

“I’ll walk you back,” he said.

“No, you should go,” she said, pressing her hand against the wall until the manacle twinged inside her wrist. “I’ll slow you too much. I know the way.”

His eyes flickered. “If that’s what you want.”

He turned away, and she reached out on instinct. “Kaine …”

He stopped, and she instantly withdrew her hand.

She forced a tight smile. “Be careful. Don’t die.”

He stood unmoving for a moment, staring at her, and then turned away. “Right.”

I T WAS PAST NIGHTFALL WHEN he returned. Helena was sitting on the sofa in her room, staring at the pattern on the rug as she waited. She had spent the whole day trying to be sure of the lie, piecing everything together again and again.

He paused in the doorway, not entering, as if to make clear that it was to be a brief, impersonal visit. She watched him carefully. He’d always been prone to being still. She remembered that about him.

“Do you know what books you’d like?” he asked at length.

She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking today.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Your plan doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said.

“Well, not all of us have your exceptional intellect,” he said lightly, but he didn’t move from the doorway.

Helena studied the space between them. If Morrough were watching, what would he see? Nothing. There was nothing to see, there was only emptiness between them.

“Today, you didn’t say you’d always come for me,” she said. “You used to say that when I had to go. When I—” She blinked, one hand spasming. “I think. Didn’t you?”

Kaine’s face twisted into a grimace, and he stepped into the room, shutting the door, and leaning against it. “I thought it a rather empty promise at this point.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. You looked everywhere. Mandl—”

He gave a harsh laugh. Helena started, her heart slamming into her throat.

“Right. Thank you. Of course,” he said, the sarcasm bright in his tone. “Everywhere. Yes, I looked everywhere, didn’t I?”

She stared at him as his voice turned musing but his eyes remained hard and glittering.

“Through wreckage, and piles of corpses, through prisons and mines and laboratories, and across a damned continent. I looked everywhere—except the one place that mattered.” His voice cracked, but he grinned. “Thank you, truly, for crediting my exceptional efforts.”

There was something familiar about the way he was speaking. Her stomach curdled, and her vision flickered. His face suddenly loomed and she wasn’t sure where she was. Past? Present? Both?

He gave another laugh, startling her back into the moment.

His expression had warped. “Not my fault?” he was saying; his teeth showed, bared at her. “Is that what you expect me to tell myself?” He laid a pale hand over his heart. “Do you think embracing eternal victimhood will make me feel better?”

He was seething with so much rage, she could feel it in the air. She looked down, trying to breathe slowly.

There were so many things she was trying not to think about, struggling to keep her face above the surface before she drowned in the morass of her mind.

But she knew that he was lying to her. There was something he didn’t want her to know, that he was determined to keep her from realising, and if she could remember more clearly, she’d know what it was.

“That’s not my point,” she said. “I’m not trying to talk about that. What I don’t understand is why you’re waiting until I’m gone. Morrough will know you’ve either betrayed or failed him if I escape.”

He drew a breath, composing himself, sharp and cruel as a steel trap. “As I said, there is very specific timing to it all, but none of it concerns you.”

He was trying to wound her into silence, but she refused to let him.

“If I’m gone, Morrough will know you’re the traitor,” she said stubbornly.

“Even if he doesn’t, he’ll blame you for letting me escape.

He’s desperate, and this—this baby is his best chance.

If you could hurt him enough to topple the regime, you would have already done it unless there’s something holding you back. ”

Now Kaine said nothing.

She drew a deep breath. “You said things are unstable, and that’s true, but there’s one thing that’s keeping everything together, one thing preventing a collapse.

The High Reeve. That’s who everyone is afraid of.

They all assume that if anything happens to Morrough, the High Reeve will take over. And now the world knows that’s you.