Page 177 of Alchemised

T HE WROUGHT IRON THAT FILIGREED THE HOUSE unfurled like serpents and wound around Atreus, pinning him like an insect. He’d snap all the bones in his body long before he’d escape.

Kaine went back to Helena. His hand trembled as he touched her face. “How badly did he—”

“Just—just my back, and it’s not—too deep. The nerves are still intact.” Which was a good thing, but it was also why the pain was excruciating. She sat, leaning on her knees as she felt his resonance sweep along her back, numbing the searing pain.

“I just need to catch my breath,” she said, but she was shaking uncontrollably.

“It’s almost over now. Once you’re healed, you’re going to go on Amaris. Do you think you can?”

She wasn’t sure if she could even stay conscious much longer, but she couldn’t say no to him.

“Is that what this was for?” Atreus’s furious voice broke in from where he lay contorted on the ground. “All this because you’re trying to save her ?”

Helena thought Kaine would ignore his father, but he looked at him. “It seems I am cursed to love as you do.”

“After he has killed you, Morrough will have her hunted to the ends of the earth. There is nowhere she can hide. You’re wasting yourself for nothing.”

Kaine ignored him, his eyes going briefly out of focus. “The fire is out. Let’s get you inside.”

Before she could try to stand, a loud blaring split the air. For a moment, Helena thought it was the buzzer, that Kaine was being summoned again, but it came from the wrong direction.

They turned in time to see a lorry come roaring up the road, approaching so quickly it threatened to crash through the gates.

“They’re coming! Let me free!” Atreus shouted. “Let me free!”

The lorry stopped short, and a figure tumbled out of the driver’s side, clutching something against their chest, as if fleeing with a child in their arms.

“I got it! I got it. Take it quick.”

It was Ivy. She was pressed against the gate, her eyes wild, and she kept looking over her shoulder as if expecting pursuit.

Helena stumbled across the courtyard to the gate, grasping towards her.

“How did you—?” Helena’s voice shook with disbelief as Ivy shoved the bundle through the gate at her.

It was wet and smelled like gangrene and formaldehyde.

The fabric fell aside, revealing a rotted arm, ripped off at the elbow, missing dozens of bones as the skin sloughed off, three fingers remaining. They twitched as if still alive.

“Sofia did it,” Ivy said, her voice breathless and shaking. Her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears and smeared with rot. “I tried all kinds of ways to get close enough.” She shook her head. “Couldn’t. She did it.”

“How?”

“Morrough doesn’t watch his own necrothralls,” Ivy said, her face twisting at the admission.

“But she does what I tell her. Always does. She walked over and he didn’t even notice her there.

She ripped it off and threw it to me. He attacked her first—so I was able to run.

” Her face crumpled. “Do you think she’d forgive me now, if she knew? ”

Helena didn’t know what to say. “She loved you.”

Ivy stood trembling.

Kaine had reached them now, his expression unreadable, but he reached into his uniform and pulled out an obsidian knife.

“What are you—” Helena started, but he flipped the hilt away from himself and offered it to Ivy. She took it without hesitating.

“Through the chest, near the heart,” he said. “It’s quickest that way.”

Ivy nodded and turned, scrambling back into the lorry. In a minute she was gone, the rumbling engine fading until the only trace she’d ever been there was the dust above the road and the bundle clutched in Helena’s hands.

“Kaine,” she said, her voice hoarse from smoke. “You can come with me now. We can escape together.”

He shook his head. “Come inside.”

She stared at him in disbelief, not moving when he tried to guide her back towards the house. His jaw set, and he picked her up.

“What do you mean?” she said, still clutching the bundle in her arms, trying to get down even though she knew she was tearing open the burns on her back. “This was what we needed. This buys us a month, I’ll be able to find a way …”

“I can’t go with you,” he said, walking towards the house.

“My father is right. When you escape, war or not, you’ll be hunted.

If I went with you, we’d have a month, and I could protect you, but then I’d be gone, and Morrough would know what direction the hunters didn’t come back from.

Eventually they’ll find you. If I stay, now that we have this, and he can’t control me anymore, I can make sure that no one he sends makes it out of the city until you’ve safely disappeared. ”

She clutched at his shoulder, trying to make him listen. “But what if I reverse it—”

He shook his head as they neared the door. “You need a willing soul for that, and you’re not going to find one, because the only person who’d die for me is you.”

She stared at him as if he’d struck her in the throat.

“What? You’re not even going to ask me?” Atreus’s voice rose tauntingly from the ground.

Helena gasped, wrenching at Kaine’s shoulder in order to look past him at his father. Atreus still lay on the ground, bound in iron, barely able to move even his fingers.

“Would you?” Helena said.

“I’d rather die,” Kaine said before his father could reply.

“You need someone willing,” Atreus said, looking at Helena. “Isn’t that right, a willing soul? You have my phylactery there. It’s the middle bone of the index finger.”

She looked down at the rotting arm. It was oozing a thick, black slime in place of blood, but the middle bone of the index finger was among those remaining. Her heart thudded in disbelief.

“Why would you be willing?” Kaine asked, sneering down at him, his eyes scorching. “You’ve hated me since before I was born.”

Atreus looked away. “Your mother would want me to save you.”

“Well, you’re too late,” Kaine said.

He carried Helena inside, refusing to stop, even when she begged him to.

“I’m not having this conversation,” he said. “The only thing left is getting you out as quickly as possible. It’s lucky those necrothralls’ eyes have practically rotted inside their heads, or we’d already be caught.”

He passed the charred remnants of her room, stepping over a corpse.

It was one of the maids. The remaining servants were inside the room, casting water to ensure there were no residual flames, gathering the bits and pieces of things that had survived.

The windows were open, the air clearing, but it still stank of burned carpet, the sour scent of doused wood, and the tang of melted iron.

He set her down and unlocked a room a few doors down. There were medical supplies inside it, as well as packed bags. He pulled out a box.

“How do I—? For burns, I’ve never—”

“If your father …”

“We are not talking about this until I’ve healed you,” he said, his voice hard. “Now give that to me.”

He pulled the arm away from her, dropping it into a closet and closing the door to block the smell.

She doubted that he had any intention of discussing it after she was healed, but it had to be done either way.

“Cut off my dress; we’ll have to use saline to try to loosen the fabric where it’s sticking.”

He brought the crisped remnants of her hair forward and pulled out a pair of shears, carefully cutting away the back of her dress.

“I hated these dresses,” she said as he was washing her back, trying to soak free the remaining fabric.

She touched her shoulder, using her resonance to feel the damage.

The burn was deeper than she’d realised.

The nerves were intact, but given the burn’s size and depth, it would take more time than they had to heal it completely.

Kaine’s hands were spasming too badly for that kind of repetitive tissue regeneration, and Helena wouldn’t be able to contort her shoulders to reach it.

He managed the shallowest sections, but eventually his fingers grew so uncooperative that his resonance kept failing. He stepped away, breathing hard.

“It’s fine,” she said.

“It’s not.”

“Even if your hands were steady, it’ll take too long to heal all of it now,” she said. “If it’s clean and numb, it’ll keep until later.”

He nodded slowly and rummaged through a carton, pulling out a familiar jar of salve. “Would this do?”

She gave a faint laugh. “Yes, that’ll do.”

He applied it carefully and wrapped her back in silk bandages, because they were gentler than linen.

“Your poor back didn’t get nearly such luxurious treatment,” she said as he worked.

She felt his resonance across her skin in all the places that were sore from the scalding air, and a small cut across her forehead that she hadn’t even realised was there. Little things he could manage.

“Kaine,” she said as he finished. “I need to talk to your father.”

“He won’t help; he’s just trying to make you hope in order to hurt you. And even if he wasn’t, I am enough like him already, I don’t want a piece of his soul inside me.”

She turned his face to hers. “You are all he has left of your mother. When he looks at you now, he sees her. He knew the risk he was taking, coming after me. He did it because he thought it would save you.”

She inhaled. “I know you don’t want to believe it’s possible, because hoping terrifies you. But I would rather die trying to save you than live knowing there was a chance and I didn’t take it.”

She could feel him wavering.

“You promised we’d run away together,” she said. “Remember?”

He dipped his head. “Why is it that I have to keep all my promises, but you never seem to keep a single one of yours?”

She shook her head, tilting up her face so their foreheads touched.

“The first promise I made to you was that I’d be yours for as long as I live. I’m keeping that one.”