Page 166 of Alchemised

A GIRL.

Helena had not even considered seeking out the gender. She remembered Lila trying to figure it out, but there were so many other things to worry over, it hadn’t occurred to her.

The pregnancy was suddenly so real, it was jarring. Before, the baby was a concept, little more than an ephemeral possibility. Now it was a girl.

Stroud pushed more firmly against Helena’s lower pelvis, the lines in her face darkening.

“Well, this is disappointing. We wanted a male,” she said, glaring down at Helena as if she’d purposely conceived the wrong gender. Helena kept her face blank, staring dully up at the canopy, as if she were too weak to have an opinion.

Stroud turned to Kaine. “The High Necromancer will not be pleased. A female is—out of the question. Practically unthinkable.”

“It was always a fifty percent chance,” Kaine said, appearing unconcerned. “I was under the impression that any animancer child would do at this point.”

“Yes, but a female. ” Stroud sounded as if she were referring to some kind of rodent. “He will not be pleased.”

She pressed a hand against her forehead, exhaling loudly.

“Too late now, though. There’s no time to start over.

And with the state of her, she might not survive a second attempt.

We’ll have to proceed. Once we have the process perfected, I’m sure we can manage a boy.

This will be temporary. You are keeping a close eye on her? Keeping her calm?”

“Yes,” Kaine said through gritted teeth, gesturing towards the door. “So let’s talk elsewhere, why don’t we?”

“Yes, yes,” Stroud said impatiently, packing her bag and heading out, followed closely by Kaine. Helena sat up as the door closed.

She looked down at her stomach, pressing her hand against the bump between her hips. Without resonance she could only feel stillness; it was too early for movement.

A girl.

Kaine still barely acknowledged the pregnancy beyond how it related to Helena’s health. It was her pregnancy. Her baby. He refused to treat it as having anything to do with him.

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder: Would he mind that it was a girl? It was sons who carried the name and inherited within the guilds. A girl child with talent for alchemy was often considered a waste, only good for a marriage alliance. Not that it mattered either way with an illegitimate child.

Her stomach twisted into a tight knot.

When Kaine returned, his expression was wary. He came over, his hand resting on her shoulder. She could feel his resonance through her nerves and knew that he was looking for something.

“I’m fine,” she said. “The baby’s not doing anything to me, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

He studied her face carefully. “It could get worse later. And you—”

He touched the side of her head with his fingertips. She could see him estimating her years in the hospital, the number of patients, how it added up, how much time she might have left.

She shook her head, catching his hand in hers. “You said vitality doesn’t get taken like that. With your mother, the vivimancer said it was because she didn’t realise she was doing it. Lila’s a vivimancer and Rhea never had any trouble.”

Kaine still looked as if he were watching her slip away before his eyes.

“Besides, you did something to me, didn’t you?” She studied him. “I thought it was a dream, but you used the Stone somehow.”

“I don’t know how much it did, though,” he said, “you were so far gone, and then you slipped into that coma. I won’t be there at the end if—”

“I’ll be careful,” she said. “I’ll be able to feel it. The Toll has signs. It’s not like it happens suddenly.”

He nodded slowly, but she knew any risk was too much to him.

“It’s a girl,” she finally said, trying to draw his focus elsewhere.

He just nodded absently.

Her heart sank. She’d spent so much time worrying about this baby when it hardly existed, because it was all she’d had to care about. Kaine had been right when he’d called her desperate to love someone. It seemed to be her fatal flaw.

Now there was so much to care about, she’d stopped worrying about the pregnancy at all, thinking it could wait. But it couldn’t. It had been there all this time, and now it was a girl that no one wanted, except her.

Faced with indifference, Helena felt herself grow reactively possessive. She slipped her hand away from Kaine and went to the wardrobe, getting dressed slowly.

“What are you doing?” Kaine said as she buttoned her dress.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” she said without looking at him. “It’s good for the baby.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted him to if he was just going to brood and scrutinise her, but she nodded.

He removed the nullium from her manacles, and then instead of going into the courtyard, he took her to the rear of the house, with the hedge maze and the overgrown gardens. There was a pathway canopied with climbing roses.

Helena hesitated. “Won’t Morrough notice?”

“He only watches the courtyard.”

They walked in silence until they reached a gnarled apple tree, blossoms all faded, covered in fresh green leaves. Kaine stopped short and stood staring at it.

“I used to climb this tree when I was a boy,” he said. “It’s bigger in my memory.”

He’d never spoken of his past without prodding before. All she knew of his childhood was the loneliness of it. An absent father, a sick mother, and the servants whose ghostly memories still lingered around him.

“I got stuck right here once,” he said, reaching out and touching a large branch that barely reached Helena’s waist. “I was sure I’d fall and break my head if I moved.

I stayed there half the day, shouting for my mother.

She wasn’t supposed to get out of bed, but I wouldn’t listen, I wanted her to come for me.

Wanted her to see how high I’d climbed. Eventually she did.

” His hand dropped. “When I was older, I felt so guilty about it. All those stupid things you do when you’re young and don’t understand. ”

Helena could scarcely imagine Kaine that young.

He pointed to a break in the hedges. “If we go that way, there’s a pond. Used to be all kinds of frogs and newts there. I used to think I could tame them, teach them to do tricks.”

He said all of this without any emotion, a flat recitation. He looked around.

“I should take you up to the spires,” he said at last. “I’d remember more from up there, I think. It’s strange … I don’t know why I have so much trouble remembering moments.”

He started to walk back, his eyes wandering as if he was searching for something there in the gardens. He paused, his lips moving several times before he finally spoke.

“My mother’s name was Enid.”

Helena nodded. She remembered that.

He looked towards the garden, fingers curling into a fist. “I always liked that name.”

Slowly Helena realised what he was doing.

This was his attempt at giving her what she wanted.

For him, ac knowledging that he would have a child, a daughter, meant acknowledging that he wouldn’t live to meet her.

He was telling the stories so Helena could tell their daughter about him, about what he’d been like, before the Institute and the war.

He stared towards the city where it rose above the trees. “I’m not sure what will happen to the estate and inheritance. I’ve transferred as much as I can to a foreign account, but if you did ever come back, I’m not sure if she’d be able to claim it. I can look into it, if you want.”

Helena’s throat closed and her shoulders started to shake, and she couldn’t make herself breathe.

Kaine looked over. “I’ve brought you too far.”

She shook her head but couldn’t move. There were so many things she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to without having them break her open.

He stepped closer. “Can you walk back?”

She managed to shake her head.

Moving slowly, he slipped his arm around her waist and lifted her into his arms.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder.

“Enid is a good name,” she finally managed to say, her voice hoarse. “I like it, too.”

K AINE LAY ON THE BED beside her, her head resting on his chest as she watched the hands on the clock. She was running out of time. Always. She never had enough. The Abeyance was less than a month away.

Kaine was awake, too, fingers tracing patterns along her arm.

She sat up, leaning forward, and kissed him slowly, memorising the sensation of their lips meeting, the tip of his nose tracing against her cheek.

She slid her fingers through his hair, deepening the kiss, wanting to lose herself in the familiarity of it. She had felt this before.

Kaine’s hand rose up to curve around her neck, sending a shudder of heat through her, her blood alight in her veins. She’d buried the memories of this in the deepest recesses of her mind.

She leaned closer, her hand sliding down his chest.

His hand closed instantly around her wrist, stilling it. “What are you doing?”

She sat up, drawing a deep breath. “I want to have sex with you.”

The tips of her ears burned at saying it so baldly, but she watched him as she spoke. Searching for his reaction.

There was a hard, flintlike look to his eyes, visible even in the dimming moonlight.

“No.”

She tugged at her wrist again, and he let go. She pulled her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Her heart was pounding a hard, unsteady tempo.

“I don’t want the last time to be when you were—” She swallowed. “—when we were being forced.”

“No,” was all he said.

Her fingers spasmed, but she nodded, and sat, staring at the deepening shadows across the room.

“Why?” he finally asked.

“I just told you.”

“There’s never only one reason with you,” he said.

She didn’t answer for a long time. “I can’t remember what it was like. Before. I know it happened, but when—when I try to remember any details, I’m always here. If it never comes back—that’ll be all I’ll remember.”