Page 171 of Alchemised

She looked around. She didn’t even feel any sense of hope or trust that this could work; she simply couldn’t sit in idle despair any longer.

“Then I’ll die knowing I tried everything, which is more happily than I’ll live if I leave you here.

She has nothing to gain from betraying us. She’s already lost everything.”

He shoved the obsidian knife back into its sheath. “Well, I imagine we’ll find out in short order.”

He left and returned with two knives, one the obsidian and the other a part of her old set he’d recovered from the bombing, and a suicide pill. If Ivy betrayed them, and he couldn’t reach her in time, she’d have a chance of a quick escape for herself and the baby.

The day passed with a relentless intensity. Night came, and nothing happened except word that Shiseo’s envoy was crossing into Novis. A few days were all that was left, and time would run out, regardless of what Ivy did.

When the house was dark and silent, Kaine came to her. They took every moment together slowly. There was no time left; they couldn’t waste it by rushing.

She lay in his arms, listening to his heart. When she tried to picture home, this feeling was all she could imagine. She rolled onto her back and found his hand, pressing it against the swell between her hips.

“That’s her,” she said. “I’ll—” Her throat grew tight. “I’ll probably be able to feel her move within the next month. The book says it feels like fluttering at first.”

She had to swallow hard to keep speaking.

“It’s called quickening—when you first feel a baby move.” She drew a deep breath. “If you use your resonance, you’ll be able to feel her now. If you want.”

His hand twitched and he hesitated.

“We can do it together,” she said. “You should meet her.”

T HE NEXT DAY, RATHER THAN walk the hedge maze, Kaine took her back to the courtyard.

She froze, heart in her throat at the smell of old blood and decomposition trapped there in the still summer air. Her stomach threatening to upend.

At least thirty prisoners had been brought to Spirefell since Atreus had returned. Helena didn’t know if it was better or worse if any of them were still alive.

“Do we have to walk here?” she asked.

Kaine looked at her. There was a risk they were being watched, and so his expression was chilly and indifferent, but his voice was soft. “Just this once. It won’t take long.”

She forced a nod.

The courtyard was much more beautiful in summer. The vines that had covered the house like blackened veins in winter had bloomed into climbing roses.

There were still two necrothralls stationed at the front of the house, barely more than bones now, and Helena eyed them warily as Kaine led the way across the courtyard garden.

“You don’t need to worry about them,” he said under his breath. “Morrough is too preoccupied with himself to waste effort on his necrothralls. Their senses are nearly gone, and he hasn’t noticed. Come. There’s a reunion that’s rather overdue.”

It dawned on her then where they were going.

“Amaris …”

Kaine unlocked the stable door. “She had a hard time when you first arrived.”

The door swung open, and in the dim light of the stable, an enormous black shadow unfurled itself from the corner and stood, wings arching and stretching. The chimaera came forward, the heavy chain dragging behind her.

“I was afraid she’d give us away if I let her near you. She has quite the reputation nowadays,” he said. “You were the only other person she’s ever taken to.”

Helena considered that a rather generous description of her relationship with Amaris.

Her mouth went dry. Amaris had grown. She was several hands taller, and her immense yellow eyes glowed in the low light.

Helena remembered the chimaera being so careful and gentle around Kaine when he was injured, the way she used to curl against Helena’s back, blocking out the cold, but she had a far starker memory of entering the stable and being nearly bitten in half.

She took a nervous step back. “I’m not sure that she remembers me.”

Kaine held up a hand, and Amaris stopped. “Oh, that. That wasn’t you. That was the necrothralls. She can’t stand them.” Amaris was bobbing her head impatiently. He stepped closer and rumpled her fur. “She tolerates the staff, but any of Morrough’s reanimations that get close—well.”

He glanced at Helena. “She very much remembers you. Howled for half the day when you arrived.”

Helena stepped hesitantly closer and let Amaris sniff and nuzzle at her fingers. When she didn’t lose her hand, she took a step closer.

“You and Shiseo will take her with you when you go,” Kaine said when she hazarded to rest a hand on Amaris’s head.

“Fly at night. It’ll take a few days to reach Lila, but you’ll be hard to track down that way.

” He rubbed Amaris’s shoulder just beneath an immense wing.

“You’ll leave her, when you take the ship. ”

Helena’s hand stilled. “Leave her?”

“She’ll be fine,” he said, but his voice was gruff. “She can hunt for herself, and she doesn’t like most humans, so she’ll avoid populated areas. With luck, she’ll head back to Paladia looking for me. End up in the mountains.”

“But doesn’t she need someone to—the transmutations on her have to be maintained if she’s still growing.”

His jaw ticced. “There’s only one surviving chimaera from the war, and everyone knows who it belongs to. If she’s sighted, that will be enough to give an ambitious Aspirant a direction to hunt you down. You have to leave her.”

He rested his head against Amaris, and her wings fluttered. She turned her neck to nip at him.

“We’ll go out together, won’t we, old girl? Bennet’s last two monsters.”

The air in the stable was burning her eyes. Helena turned and walked out.

The air near the house was fresher, and she drew several forceful gasps, her hand pressed over her heart until she heard quick steps and looked up to see Aurelia storming down the stairs towards her.

Aurelia was pale, her eyes flashing with rage. She was wearing a pale-pink dress splashed with scarlet detailing. As she got closer, Helena noticed that the hem and her shoes were also scarlet.

“Where is Kaine?”

“Aurelia.” Kaine’s voice emerged from the dark interior of the stable. “What did I tell you about speaking to my prisoner?”

Aurelia whirled towards the stable. “I need to talk to you! How am I supposed to stay away from her and ever talk to you when you’re always with her?”

Kaine stepped out of the stable, eyes glittering. “What do you want?”

Aurelia’s throat worked several times. “I need you to talk to your father. He’s ruining the house.”

Kaine raised an eyebrow, looking unconcerned. “I thought you were pleased that he’d come to stay.”

Aurelia’s eyes bulged in her head. “That was before he turned the house into a torture chamber. It was one thing when it stayed in the storehouse, but he’s bringing them inside!

There are piles of body parts all over, and I walked into a pool of blood because he flayed someone in the middle of the foyer. ”

Helena realised then that Aurelia’s dress was not scarlet-detailed at all.

“I advised that you stay in the city,” Kaine said, appearing indifferent to all this. “But you refused because my father said something about domination livening the blood, and you thought, what?” He leaned towards her, lip curling. “That I might set my sights on you?”

Aurelia had gone white as a sheet with two scarlet blotches staining her cheeks. “I am your wife.”

Kaine cocked his head to one side. “I didn’t ask for you.”

“What’s this?” Atreus had emerged from the storehouse. There was blood up to his elbows, and a long knife used for gutting fish in his hand.

Aurelia started, clutching at her throat with her iron-ringed hands, shrinking towards Kaine, but Kaine drifted away from her, just happening to insert himself between Helena and his father as they faced each other.

“I’m afraid Aurelia doesn’t care much for what we’ve done to the house, Father,” Kaine said. “I believe she finds us rather—uncivilised.”

Atreus stared at Kaine for a moment, Crowther’s narrow nostrils flaring in a way that Helena recognised as suppressed anger.

“Does she? I suppose it is rather excessive. I was waiting for you to object. I thought at some point surely you’d feel a sense of ownership.

You did grow up here …” His voice trailed off as he turned to stare at the immense house which towered around them.

“This was your mother’s house. She planted those roses the summer we wed. ”

Atreus’s grip on his knife tightened, and for a moment Helena felt Kaine’s resonance in her teeth.

“I’m afraid the estate has never had much sentimental charm for me,” Kaine said. “Perhaps if you’d come back sooner, you might have made the effort of maintaining it.”

“Yes, you seem intent on destroying everything this family has ever built,” Atreus said, his face contorting so much, it seemed the dead grey skin might tear as he glared at his son. “What sin did your mother ever commit to deserve such a son?”

Kaine leaned forward, a razor-thin smile spreading across his face, pure contempt in his eyes. “I believe it was when she married you.”

Fury seemed to ignite inside Atreus, but Aurelia broke in.

“See? See? I told you. It is all his doing! I have been a perfect wife. You should have seen this hideous mouldering place when he brought me. I’ve done everything to be a proper wife that I have had means to, trying to restore this house, to get rid of all the ugly, fussy old-fashioned things everywhere, and to make it the heart of society.

Everything decent in this house is because of me. I’m just like your wife, I—”

Atreus turned sharply. There was a wet snick and a gasping burble as Aurelia stopped speaking.