Page 172 of Alchemised

She reached up towards her neck as a line of blood gushed from a slit across her throat.

She blinked once, mouth opening, but no sound came out, only a blood-filled gasp, and then her head toppled backwards, slit throat opening, body following, and she collapsed onto the white gravel.

Her pink dress turned redder and redder.

Helena had to cram her hand against her mouth to smother the sound that nearly escaped her.

The side of her neck burned as her heart began pounding, but she couldn’t move as Atreus glared down at his former daughter-in-law, the fish knife dangling once more from his fingertips, a drop of blood on the curved tip.

“Do not ever compare yourself to my wife, ” he said, staring down at Aurelia.

Kaine made no move except to step forward and block the sight of Aurelia’s slit throat from Helena’s view.

“I hope you intend to deal with the Ingram family,” he said. “Given that you contracted me into marrying her.”

“What can they do?” Atreus said with a sneer that Helena knew well. It was eerie seeing Kaine’s traits in Crowther’s dead face. “You clearly had no intention of ever putting an heir inside her.”

Atreus leaned down, pulling Aurelia’s body up off the ground by an arm.

“I’ll deal with this, but once this matter is resolved, you will give me the name of a woman you will cooperate in marrying and producing a guild heir with.

Otherwise, once I’ve found the last member of the Eternal Flame and gifted them to the High Necromancer, I will request that he order your cooperation in producing an heir, and I will choose the bride. ”

Atreus turned and disappeared into the house, dragging Aurelia with him. The scent of the roses mixed with the coppery tang of fresh blood.

Helena turned and walked away, heading towards the far wing of the house. Once they were inside, in a hallway where they couldn’t be watched, she stopped. Kaine was only steps behind her. She knew he was about to ask if she was all right, but she spoke first.

“You planned that.”

He froze for an instant. “What makes you say that?” His voice was light.

“Because she’s a loose end. If you’ll let Amaris die, you won’t let Aurelia live.”

His expression hardened. “What did you expect? She tried to gouge out your eyes.”

Helena flinched at the memory of Aurelia’s talons hooking behind her eyeball. Her terror of being blinded, left in the dark forever. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“I would have killed her then, but it diverted suspicion to have a pretty wife in the house. Living here alone with you could have attracted attention. That was the only reason I let her live.”

Helena nodded listlessly. None of that surprised her, but it didn’t change anything, either. “I hate it when you kill people because of me,” she said.

She reached up, pressing her left hand against the scar on her neck, remembering her father’s face and the horrible gash below his jaw. That mockery of his smile as her last memory of him.

There was so much easy, indifferent death.

It had bled together. The quantity had grown beyond a tragedy, into a figure so large it was almost abstract.

Even for her, after so many years of fighting for every life, pouring herself into preserving them, eventually she had ceased to bleed.

There was so much now, it was scarcely comprehensible.

She and Kaine stood in the centre of it.

“There’s so much more to you,” she said, “but sometimes I feel like all I do is bring out the worst. You would never go so far if it weren’t for me. You wouldn’t be like this. I did this to you.”

“You’re right. I don’t imagine I would.”

“I used to have so many dreams for us,” she said, voice thickening.

“When I’d worry about you, when I’d do things I didn’t want to, when the war felt so heavy that I was sure I’d break under it, I’d tell myself: Someday you’re going to run away with him.

Somewhere quiet. You won’t ask for very much, just you and him, and that will be enough.

” A lump welled up in her throat, and she shook her head.

“That was all I wanted. It was my whole dream, to see what we could be away from the war. I thought it would all be worth it for that.”

She exhaled, right hand clenching, feeling the scars from the amulet across her palm. “But look at everything we’ve done, and it’s still not enough. I guess in the end, I am like Luc. I thought that we could suffer enough to earn each other.”

He said nothing, and she was so tired of his resignation.

“Why are you always so ready to die?” she said, whirling on him even though she’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t be angry anymore.

“Even at the beginning when you made your offer to Crowther, you were already planning to die, like it didn’t matter to anyone.

But why are you still like that now, when it does? ”

Kaine sighed, jaw jutting forward. His thumb pressing against the ring on his hand.

“I didn’t have anyone, Helena,” he said quietly.

“After my mother died, I was alone. My life was blown apart when I went home at sixteen, and everything I did from that point on was to keep from losing the only thing I had left. When she died—it didn’t matter.

Revenge was all I could do to make up for it, and dying for that didn’t matter to anyone—not until you came along. ”

His voice grew bitter.

“I didn’t make plans past the war because there were never any plans to make. Holdfast, the Eternal Flame, they were never going to win, and I always knew that. Falling for you didn’t change that—it just … it just made knowing worse.”

The lights flickered, and a distant buzzing came from the main wing.

Kaine tensed, his head snapping right. “Something’s wrong. He never uses that to call for me anymore. Go to your room and bar the door.”

He left quickly. She watched from the window as he emerged in uniform, including the helmet that concealed his hair. He led out Amaris, swinging onto her back, and then they were gone, flying towards the city.

Helena waited. In less than an hour, a motorcar came. She watched it pull up, knife in hand. Had Ivy been captured or betrayed them? Was the summons meant to lure Kaine away from the estate?

Instead Atreus emerged in uniform, sliding into the rear. The motorcar pulled away.

What had Ivy done?

It was the middle of the night when she heard the door disbarred from the outside.

Kaine entered, still in uniform, his helmet in his hand.

His expression was unreadable.

“We received word that while the Eastern envoy was passing through Novis, the train was attacked. Everyone on board was killed—including Shiseo.”