Page 183 of Alchemised

Helena slept beside him for the first week. She hadn’t thought she was tired enough to sleep for consecutive days, but it was as if a relentless tension had finally released and this was the first time she’d ever truly rested.

They woke to eat, and Kaine would go out, and she’d watch him walk along the edge of the cliff and survey the island and wander the house, and then he’d come back and pass out again.

But he only slept if Helena stayed near him. When she got up and went to peruse the various shelves to see what kinds of books there were, he immediately sat up.

“I can get up now,” he said.

“No. I’m still tired,” she lied. “I just want to read a little.”

She brought a few books over and laced her fingers with his as she read, and he was asleep again in minutes. When she touched him with her resonance, he’d ceased to feel like something on the verge of unravelling.

He’d been sleeping almost two weeks when the door opened and Lila peeked across the room at them. “Pol’s napping. Can I come in?”

Helena closed her book, nodding. They’d seen each other only in passing since their arrival.

Lila came over and stared at Kaine for a moment before she turned and sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from him. “I wanted to talk to you, but there’s never been time. The people in the village say the tide will be rising past the sea road soon.”

Helena nodded.

Lila inhaled. “You know, when he told me about you two, I didn’t believe him.

He said that Luc and everyone else was dead.

He brought newspapers to prove it, and he said the only reason I was still alive was because of you.

I believed him about most of it, but not what he said about you.

” Lila was staring hard at the floor as she spoke.

“I couldn’t believe it could have happened—that you wouldn’t ever—but then I thought about how withdrawn you got, right when things started getting better.

We used to talk about it, Luc and Soren and I, and none of us could understand why.

When Ferron told me when everything started, I realised it was right around that same time.

But I was sure you’d tricked Ferron into thinking you cared about him.

Thought he was so pathetic for believing it. ”

Helena’s fingers, entwined with Kaine’s, spasmed.

“At first, he used to come check on me almost every week. It was like watching someone starve to death, him looking for you. I think he went mad for a while. He started threatening me, saying it was all my fault. If it weren’t for me, you’d be safe, and he started telling me that when he found you, it’d be my job to take care of you for a change.

Eventually he stopped saying anything about what would happen once he found you. ”

Lila pressed her lips together tightly. “Then I got word that you’d been found, but he said you’d forgotten everything, about him and me and Pol, that they’d try to smuggle you out before the Abeyance, but it had to be just before, because you’d be hunted when you escaped.

Then I started hearing rumours about the repopulation program. I didn’t think you’d be part of that—”

“He didn’t have any choice,” Helena said. “If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else. It was that or kill me.”

Lila drew an unsteady breath. “Well, I am glad that you’re alive,” she finally said.

“But I still hate him, and I hate that you’re trapped with him.

Because you were right, and no one listened to you; you stayed with us despite knowing the whole time.

You didn’t deserve any of this. You shouldn’t have to spend the rest of your life trapped by all the promises that people forced you to make. ”

Helena stiffened, and Lila noticed, her mouth tensing.

“I don’t just mean Ferron. I mean with me and Pol, too.

Luc made you promise, and I know you’d stay with us for the rest of your life without ever complaining, but you don’t have to.

You’ve already done more than anyone should have ever asked from you.

You deserve to make some choices for yourself.

Don’t spend any more of your life chained to old promises.

Not for anyone. Not Luc, or me—or Ferron. ”

Lila closed her eyes and exhaled. “I just—I had to say that once, before we’re all trapped on this island.”

She stood up and left the room as quietly as she’d come in.

Helena sat in silence for a moment and finally looked down. “You can stop pretending to be asleep.”

Kaine’s silver eyes slid open, and he stared up at her, his expression carefully closed.

Helena raised her eyebrows. “Do you really think I went to all the trouble of saving you just because of an old promise?”

He said nothing, but she knew he did.

She shook her head, throat aching. “That’s not fair. You said that I’m the worst promise keeper you’ve ever met. You can’t have it both ways, you know.”

“Helena …” He said her name gently.

She wouldn’t let him finish.

“We said always, didn’t we?” she asked, her voice strained. “Always. Well, if you don’t want that promise in full any longer, I’ll give it to you in increments.” She clutched his hand tighter. “Every day. I’ll choose you. That way you’ll know it’s still what I want.”

She looked out towards the rising sea. “I’m sure there will be good days and bad days for us. Too much has happened to ever really put it behind us, but if you choose me, and I choose you, I think we’re strong enough to make it.”

A BUNDLE OF OLD NEWSPAPERS from the North had arrived just before the tides cut off the island from the rest of Etras.

A full article had been written about the High Reeve’s death.

Spirefell had been burned to the ground.

A skeleton of warped iron was all that remained.

Countless charred bodies had been recovered from the wreckage.

Kaine Ferron, his wife, Aurelia, and Atreus Ferron were listed as dead.

The killer had been identified as Ivy Purnell; she’d committed suicide nearby using one of the obsidian weapons developed by the Eternal Flame.

Purnell was one of the Undying, but her family had ties with the Eternal Flame prior to the war.

She was believed to be responsible for all the assassinations during the last year.

There were also articles about the Liberation Front, a confederation of armies organising against Paladia. It seemed only a matter of time before they attacked, but as Etras was once more cut off from the continents, the declaration of war had still not been made.

On the island, time warped. There was so much of it. Other than the tidal shifts, everything grew nebulous and unhurried.

Alchemy. Paladia. The war. It all barely existed in Etras.

Helena began to forage again, and soon the kitchen was strung with herbs, and she had decoctions and oil infusions, extracts and distillations. It was more medicines than four people would ever need, and so Lila—who was more sociable than Kaine or Helena—would take them to the village.

Kaine disliked the idea. He did not want Helena becoming responsible for a village of strangers, but he relented because having things to do kept Helena’s anxiety from gnawing through her.

Instances of upper-class Northerners fleeing south to escape scandal were apparently relatively common. The previous owners of the house had been a minor Novisian noble family, and the arrival of new Northern strangers was predictably a source of curiosity on the island.

Kaine, Helena, and Lila frequently discussed the risks and the proper balance of keeping to themselves without seeming like they were trying to hide.

A few careless rumours escaping the island might be enough to discover them.

However, once Helena, an Etrasian herself, proved to be useful, the village grew protective and tight-lipped about their strange neighbours.

Kaine struggled the most to adapt. He was always paranoid, planning for the worst. When he wasn’t with Helena, he was constantly walking the property and going to the village to bring back any news that came from the main islands, watching for signs of newcomers.

Late one evening, Helena sat working on a brace design for her left hand. The purpose was to make her two paralysed fingers bend and open with a transmutational device connected to her other fingers.

A low wind howled, and the shutters rattled. She thought nothing of it at first, until she noticed that Kaine had gone unnaturally still. She looked up as another gusting howl wafted through the house.

Her eyes went wide, and they both bolted to the front door. Running back and forth outside the house, wings outstretched, nose to the ground, was Amaris.

She looked up as Kaine came out the door and immediately dropped to her belly and crawled across the ground to him, wings and tail flapping, whining and whimpering all the way. He pulled her enormous head into his arms.

“You mad thing—how did you get here?” He could barely get the question out, because Amaris was licking his face over and over, her wings sending up a dust storm.

“I guess she couldn’t let you go,” Helena said.

Amaris was set up in the stable, which she was only allowed out of at night.

It was the best solution they could come up with given her size and unusual qualities.

She didn’t seem to mind. In the evening, she would burst out and run in circles for a little while, and Kaine would take her flying out across the sea.

Helena was glad that he finally had something to do with himself. Until Amaris’s reappearance, he had floated. He would read and keep Helena company, but he didn’t seem to know how to want anything. He’d spent his whole life with a collar around his throat.