Page 173 of Alchemised

S HISEO WAS DEAD.

His return had hung over Helena like a raised sword, so long a foregone conclusion. He would return and she would go. That fact had felt immutable.

Kaine was shaking his head slowly, as if he could scarcely believe it himself.

“Is it confirmed?”

“They sent his head. Novis is claiming they had no direct part in it, that it’s a surviving faction of the Eternal Flame, but—there isn’t one.

Not with those kinds of abilities. This was an experimental salvo.

The queen is calculating, and she wants to see if the allying countries will distance themselves if pressured to choose a side, and whether New Paladia has any recourse.

” He lowered his head, and the air warped with his resonance, but then he laughed.

“The irony is, this is what we orchestrated, this was our plan, except they weren’t supposed to do it until I was gone. ”

He threw his helmet against the wall. “Now they’ve given Morrough warning and time to assemble forces and recall the necrothralls from the mines, and I am still here and I can’t refuse orders. Fuck!”

So they were all going to die, then. Kaine was going to die, she would die, their daughter would die. Spirefell was a cage and a tomb.

She reached out to him, her fingers almost numb. “It’s all right, Kaine. You did everything you could.”

I’d rather die in your arms.

His eyebrows knit together for a moment. “You’re still leaving.”

Helena stared at him, not understanding. The escape plan had hinged on Shiseo.

He pulled off his gloves. “There are other ways, they’re just …

not as clean. There’s more risk of being tracked down if they move quickly to pursue, which is likely to happen.

Morrough will do anything to recover you.

If you can reach the coast in time, you’ll disappear into the islands long before they can catch up.

But—you’ll have to get to Lila alone. Unless you think you’re strong enough to take Amaris by yourself. ”

“How—alone?”

Even before, during the war when she’d been stronger, not prone to fits of panaphobia, flying on Amaris was something she’d endured only out of necessity. The height and speed had always terrified her, and Amaris had known where to go, requiring no guidance from Helena.

Flying at night as Lumithia’s crescent shrank out of sight was almost unimaginable. It would be black as pitch, the world an abyss beneath her. Her head felt light just thinking about it.

“I’ll take you as far as I can, and there will be a ship downriver that will sail to the coast. I’ll show you maps and the route you’ll take inland to find Lila.

I can arrange transportation, but it would be safest if you travelled at least part of the way on foot, if you think you’d be able to manage the distance.

Just before the Abeyance, you’ll go to the ports; there is passage booked and false identification papers waiting.

You’ll take a ship to Etras. I’ve arranged a place there. ”

Her heart stuttered, tripping over itself as she tried to think.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Kaine said, his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll arrange for both, and you can choose. I know it’ll be hard, but it will be worth it. Lila’s been waiting for you a long time.”

She nodded shakily.

Everything had to move fast. The Abeyance wouldn’t wait, and if there was a war about to break out between Paladia and the surrounding countries, Kaine did not want her there for it.

After all the years spent hoping that Novis or any of their neighbours might intervene on their behalf, they now acted at the worst possible moment.

“I have to go,” he said after a bit. “I’ll come see you when I can.

Try to eat and rest as much as you can. Keep the doors barred.

Fortunately, with Aurelia gone, the door is more secure.

Crowther had no iron resonance to speak of, despite my father’s efforts to plumb some from the decrepit depths of his corpse.

As long as the door’s locked, he can’t open it. ”

He was rambling, because he was nervous; things were slipping out of his control. All his carefully laid plans destroyed by the very intervention the Resistance had been waiting for when annihilated.

S HE BARELY SAW K AINE AFTER that. For days, he was gone; she didn’t think he slept at all. She tried to do her part, to eat and perform callisthenic exercises inside her room to build up stamina and get a little stronger so that preparations were not so limited by her.

Atreus returned to Spirefell, apparently no worse off for having murdered Aurelia, assuming it had become known.

He seemed to have run out of prisoners; instead he prowled around the house.

She heard his footsteps in the hallway outside her door and spotted him entering and leaving the chantry several times.

When the windows rattled from the wind of Amaris’s wings, she knew Kaine had returned at least briefly. He was busy with more than merely preparations for her escape. He was the High Reeve; he’d be expected to coordinate the response to the attack.

She was surprised when only a few minutes later, the door opened and he walked in.

His eyes were so bright, they seemed to actually glow. He was the furthest from human he had ever appeared. He walked towards her as if he sensed but did not actually see her.

“Kaine?” she said, her heart in her throat.

He didn’t respond. The wrongness of whatever had happened to him was visceral. Cold swept through her. The instinct to run frayed her every nerve, but she went towards him.

She touched his face. “What happened?”

He blinked, and a little humanness seemed to seep into him. She held his face, tilting it down towards hers.

“Kaine?”

“I’ve never killed so many at once before …” he said softly.

“How many?”

His eyes flickered, darting as if trying to calculate the number. Then he shook his head.

“What happened?”

He was looking through her, as if he still wasn’t quite there.

“I was ordered to make a show of strength. A warning.” He swallowed. “There were rows and rows of prisoners. I don’t know where they got so many.”

As he spoke, his expression slowly thawed, growing younger and younger until he looked painfully boyish, his eyes huge. He was going into shock. He didn’t seem to be talking to Helena so much as trying to explain it to himself.

“I didn’t know there’d be so many,” he said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen until I was gone.”

She pulled him closer, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. He felt cold, even though it was nearly the peak of summer, and his skin was clammy.

It seemed impossible that he could continue much longer. As if he were trying to outrun fate, but every time he managed to outpace it, Morrough demanded something else.

And she couldn’t do anything. The impotence burned inside her. “Have you seen Ivy? Has she said anything to you? Is she still trying? Maybe if you both—”

He blinked and seemed to come back to himself. He shook his head, straightening. “Don’t. I’m fine … just tired. I’ll be fine. Almost over now.”

He meant it as reassurance, but the words left her empty as he vanished back through the door.

S HE WAS SO ON EDGE after Kaine left again that when she felt a sensation in her lower abdomen, her first reaction was pure panic.

She went utterly still, heart faltering, and it came again. Fluttering.

She stared down, pushed her dress flat so she could run her hands over the swell between her hips.

She still forgot sometimes that she was pregnant.

As unbelievable as Lila getting pregnant during the war had been, she had always liked children; they were drawn to her, and Lila knew exactly how to make them laugh.

Helena had never had that kind of allure. She didn’t know if she could be a good mother, or if wanting to keep this baby wasn’t just her selfishness rearing its head. Her inability to let go.

To love someone. To be needed.

Her hand trembled violently as she pressed it against her stomach, letting her resonance reach hesitantly inwards, sensing the tiny bones softer than cartilage, veins like threads.

Soon this would be all that was left of Kaine in the whole world.

“I’m going to take care of you,” she whispered. “It’s—our way.”

She’d barely spoken the words when the door opened and Kaine strode in. It had been nearly a day but his colour was still unsettling, his eyes too bright.

“Stroud’s coming,” he said, his voice tense. “I came as fast as I could, but I have to—”

As soon as he reached her, he was removing the manacles and sliding the nullium tubes into place. Helena winced as her resonance vanished like an extinguished light.

Kaine was barely done fastening them when his eyes lost focus. “She’s here. Make sure everything’s hidden.”

When Stroud arrived, it was clear that the current tensions disagreed with her. There were hollows beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were red from split capillaries.

“Central is specifically designed to accommodate gestation,” she was saying in a strident voice. “Marino is our most crucial subject. She should be there, where I can keep a close eye on the foetal development and we can move quickly once viability is achieved.”

“And you think that the ‘gestational environment’ you’ve set up is conducive for someone with a heart condition agitated by stress?

You might as well ask her to attempt a spontaneous abortion,” Kaine said, sneering at Stroud.

“Marino is my prisoner. The High Necromancer entrusted her to me, and he has not changed his mind on that point. I will not have you tampering with my assignment just because you’ll no longer have Shiseo’s work to legitimise yourself with. ”

Stroud turned a furious shade of red, as if a fresh wave of capillaries were splitting beneath the surface of her skin. “I will be appealing this.”