Page 203 of Alchemised

She felt it scorch his fingers as he let go. She almost fell backwards.

“What’d you do—” Her tongue scarcely worked. She doubled over and nearly threw up.

He flexed his hand as if burned. “I just tried to take your vitality by force. Notice anything?”

Helena’s hand pressed against her chest, trying to erase that awful pulling sensation that seemed diffused through her entire body. “It—hurt?”

“It didn’t work,” he said. “It’s not possible to take it by force like that. If it was that easy—” He scoffed. “—Morrough wouldn’t be bothering with most of this. Try it yourself now.”

Helena drew away from his proffered hand. “No, thank you. I get the idea.”

His expression hardened. “I don’t need you to get it, I need you to believe it. You’re being driven by the guilt over crimes you never committed, that you think you deserve to suffer for, and that’s making you a liability for me.”

Of course this was all self-interest on his part. As usual.

“Take my hand,” he said.

She grasped his hand limply.

“You know what your vitality feels like when you use it; feel for mine.”

She shot him a look. “You’re not exactly normal.”

She focused on reaching with her resonance, not merely trying to get a read on his physiology but searching for the actual spark of life within him. Except it was not so much a spark as a small sun.

It was like being flung bodily into the face of Lumithia at full Ascendance, a cold searing burn that etched itself into her teeth and bones.

She tried to ignore it. Pull. She had no idea how to do that. Healing, when it required the use of vitality, worked in the opposite direction, pushing in, giving, but she knew what it felt like when Ferron did it, so she tried to imitate the feeling.

She reached with her resonance towards the overwhelming burn and tried to tug at it. It prompted an instant recoil.

Her resonance rebounded like a rubber band snapping her fingertips. An odd look of amusement flickered on Kaine’s face as she let go.

She swallowed, blinking hard. “But if that’s—if that’s true, then why did my mother die? If I didn’t take it?”

He exhaled. “My father sought treatment for my mother prior to my birth. A vivimancer they employed believed she likely possessed a latent degree of vivimancy, and didn’t realise that using her vitality wasn’t necessary.” He wasn’t looking at her. “Perhaps it was similar for yours.”

Hearing those words, Helena felt like an immense weight had been partly lifted from her. It was possible that her mother’s death, while still her fault, had at least not been her doing. She drew a shaky breath, not sure if she could believe it. Why would Kaine tell her this? Why would he care about her guilt?

“Vitality is a strange thing,” he said, stepping away. “It doesn’t take much to do things like necromancy or healing. If it did, necromancers would hardly be a threat, and you would’ve been dead in a week as a healer. Here’s what’s interesting, though: If I were a necrothrall, you could have ripped out my vitality. Reanimation doesn’t fully bond with other bodies, it just reactivates a corpse. Bennet would give almost anything to be able to transfer souls between living bodies, but it always kills them instead.” He arched an eyebrow. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“No.”

He waved a hand, and despite being halfway across the room, the lock turned and the door opened. Helena was horrified as a necrothrall entered the unit.

“Ferron!” she said sharply, backing away, but she ran into something solid. He’d moved behind her, and when she tried to escape the approaching necrothrall, he gripped her by the shoulders, trapping her in place.

She tried to kick him, her heart racing. “Let go! Let go of me.”

“You’re not going to blast it apart, and you’re not going to attack. When it reaches you, you’re going to take the vitality reanimating it.”

“Are you insane?” She tried again to twist away, but he took her by the wrist and pushed it forwards, firmly, so that her hand pressed against the necrothrall’s chest.

It was a man. He looked as if he’d been around forty. He’d been dead for a few days at least before being reanimated. She couldn’t see a visible cause of death, but she could smell it. It was probably hidden somewhere beneath his clothes. His eyes were empty, the whites yellow-stained, the skin taut.

“Feel the energy,” Ferron said softly. His hands were warm on her shoulders, simultaneously bracing and trapping her.

She’d never touched a necrothrall with resonance like this, never experienced the dissonance of life and death entwined. There was a heart beating sluggishly, oxygen-deprived blood crawling through the veins. There was no life; it was just energy.