Page 164 of Alchemised

A S SOON AS HE’D AGREED, K AINE STOOD, letting go.

“It’s late. You should rest,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll see what I can find. I think Shiseo collected some things for you.”

“Wait,” she said quickly, grasping at him, the equilibrium threatening to vanish as the physical space between them reopened. “Don’t—don’t go.”

He looked at her sharply before that feigned look of detachment slid back into place. “Why?”

Her fingers curled into a fist. “Whenever you leave, I never feel sure of what—what version of you will come back. My memories—they’re all out of order, and it gets confusing. You’re always so—so cold when you’re out of reach.”

His hand spasmed as it vanished behind his back. “What would you like me to do, then?” he asked, the words seeming forced.

“I want you to stay,” she said, her voice a whisper.

She stood up and went towards her bed. It was as she passed him that she slid firmly back into the present, but not this present.

She was going to the bed, and he was taking off his coat to drape over the sofa. She would lie down and look at the canopy and try to stay still …

She froze midstep, lungs closing until she was suffocating and her head throbbed, threatening to split it apart.

How would they ever fix this?

“Helena …”

His voice snapped her out of her reverie. She looked back at him.

He shook his head. “Let’s not do this,” he said. “I’ll come back tomorrow, and I’ll—try to—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I need to get used to you again. I need to remember it.”

He exhaled and sat on the edge of her bed, as he so often had before, her hand laced in his, staring across the room.

His fingers kept spasming. He was trying to keep them still, but tensing only made it worse. She couldn’t understand why he’d have tremors.

“Why don’t you heal anymore?” she asked.

He didn’t look at her. “With so few of the Undying left, Morrough pulls more heavily on those remaining. Regeneration takes longer now. But—I don’t know why my hands won’t stop. Price of hubris, I suppose.”

All these months, she’d watched him crumbling. He’d been slowly eradicating the Undying, despite knowing that with every kill, the punishment he’d be subjected to would grow as his ability to recover from it diminished.

“I’m so sorry, Kaine,” she said softly.

He flinched and nearly ripped his hand away from her.

“Don’t apologise to me,” he snapped, glaring down at her.

“But you’re angry with me, aren’t you?”

He looked back across the room, throat working. “That doesn’t mean you have any reason to apologise.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” His voice failed him, and he looked down. “I have to apologise first and I—I … don’t know how to begin. I’d hoped you’d never remember any of this. If I’d just lied to you about how I got Bayard out. If I’d just let you go, none of this would have happened.”

Helena sat up. “It would have killed me. If you’d sent me away and I’d found out later you were discovered because I made you go back for Lila, it would have killed me. I’d do it all again, every second, to save you.”

He turned to look at her, shock and rage sweeping across his face.

“You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.”

If he’d struck her, it would have hurt less. The blood drained from her face, her body going ice-cold.

“I tried to come back—” she said, her voice shaking. “I really did.”

His expression had turned regretful. “I know. I didn’t mean—”

She drew away from him, feeling like she might throw up if she looked at him then.

“You shouldn’t have assumed I’d be willing to lose you,” she said. “Did you think I cared less because I had other obligations? That I don’t feel things as much as you? I did everything I could to keep you safe. You don’t know all the things I did.”

“I just meant—”

“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”

H ELENA WOKE TO A CRUSHING pain in her head. She lay in the dark, trying to find her bearings. She could feel Kaine’s fingers, still entwined with hers. She searched for him and found him on the floor, sitting beside the bed, his head slumped to the side.

She shifted closer, studying him in the dim light.

It was the in-between spaces she struggled with, when her memories spun like a flipped coin, warring between past and present. But this close, despite the alterations of time, he was hers. Still. Just as he had been.

He’d loved her, even though he never expected them to be anything but doomed. He’d loved her all the same.

“I’m going to take care of you,” she mouthed silently.

She felt the moment he woke. Tension shot through his body, eyes snapping open, fingers spasming. He went rigid and then relaxed for a moment when he saw her. His eyes narrowed and he stood, leaning over her. “Are you all right?”

“Just a headache,” she said.

He touched her forehead, his resonance numbing the pressure behind her eyes.

“Can you get me the research today?” she asked.

His eyebrows knit together. “I think you should rest.”

“No. I’ll be anxious if I don’t have something to think about.”

He sighed but didn’t argue, but she could tell he was debating something as he studied her. Finally he drew a breath, picking up her hand. “I’m trusting you—begging you—not to make me regret this.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant until he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and the ribbon of metal suddenly unspooled.

She watched, wide-eyed, as he unwound it and the tube of encased nullium slid out of her wrist. The puncture was torn along the edges, scarred from all the occasions when she’d fallen or used too much force on her wrists.

She was startled how small the tube and puncture were. It had felt larger—as though it had filled all the space between the bones in her wrist. Her fingers unfurled, feeling her resonance inside them for the first time in so long.

“You’ll still have to wear the cuffs,” he said, voice strained. “But I’m trusting you to be careful and not murder the servants or run away.”

Helena managed a shaky nod, too overwhelmed to do anything else.

“I’ll have to put the nullium back in when Stroud visits, or she’ll notice. I hope you understand why I couldn’t do this sooner.”

She nodded again.

He drew a deep breath and took her other wrist, removing the manacle from that one, too. He let her have a minute, twisting her wrists and feeling her resonance reach her fingertips.

“I didn’t realise how much a part of me it was till it was gone,” she said, pressing her palms against her head and calming the frenzied inflammation of her brain. Her mind was a bizarre landscape, as if two versions of herself were overlaid with each other, her consciousness veering between them.

She looked up. “I think I can eat.”

She kept unfurling her fingers, relishing the sensation of her resonance. Kaine watched, clearly torn between his desire to keep her in a state and place that he could fully control and not wanting to be her captor any longer.

He’d had to choose, and he’d set her free.

She didn’t want him to regret that.

She spent several minutes trying to repair the muscle and tendon damage done by the tubes, but most of it was too old and compounded upon to restore.

Time and injury had left her fingers clumsy, their previous dexterity all but gone.

Eventually she gave up and held out her wrists towards him, so that he could wrap the copper ribbon around them.

Kaine pocketed the nullium tubes. “I’ll send what I can find of the research.”

He started to stand, but Helena caught his hand. She could grasp at things now without forced feebleness, and so she held on until he looked back at her.

“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t—” The word caught in her throat. She squeezed his hand. “Come back to me, all right?”

“I will.”

I T WAS MIDDAY WHEN D AVIES brought in a folio and Helena sat deciphering a variety of accumulated notes.

Most of it was written in an unfamiliar hand, using an alchemical shorthand and notation that she wasn’t familiar with, but there were some notes that she recognised as Shiseo’s flowing script, and even Kaine’s handwriting.

There were numerous partial arrays and formulas. Some felt oddly familiar. She kept staring at them, racking her mind until symbols blurred, smearing across the pages.

She curled on her side, arms wrapped around her head, and passed out.

When she woke, Kaine was sitting next to her. He had her pregnancy guide open, eyes skimming across the pages.

She winced at the sight of it.

She didn’t want to think about the pregnancy. She knew it was there, but it was too much. Other things were of greater urgency.

He closed the book immediately.

Her head still hurt, so she closed her eyes. “Where are those notes from?”

“Some are Bennet’s, I believe. Shiseo collected any non-metallurgical array work he encountered. Said it was something he saw you working on.”

A new gap in her memory seemed to rise to the surface. She’d worked on something like that?

“I don’t remember.” How much was still missing?

“I’m sure it’ll come to you,” he said.

But there was so little time. She opened her eyes, mind grinding like jammed gears. “I never used arrays for vivimancy, or animancy, I don’t think.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “Maybe they wouldn’t work with celestial or elemental formulas. Have you ever used any other numbers for an array?”

Kaine shook his head.

The conversation was painfully stilted. She was walking blind through her own memory, trying to solve a puzzle without remembering which pieces she held.

As she talked about her ideas, Kaine nodded, expression appropriately attentive, but his eyes kept glancing at the clock, and he showed no emotion when she tried to engage him in the subject.