Page 207 of Alchemised

She started back. “I just meant—”

“Fuck off, Marino.” His voice was deadly soft. “I’m not your pet. I don’t need you.”

Before she could reply, he ripped an envelope out from an inner pocket and slammed it down on the table beside the knife, before stalking out.

Helena stashed her knife in the outer pocket of her satchel and set out, vigilant until she passed the first checkpoint; then she let her footsteps slow, ignoring the rain.

What was it he’d said about the array? That it didn’t countermand his behaviour but wrote in new aspects. That it was easier for him to be ruthless, and harder to resist impulses and what he wanted.

She’d spent so many evenings staring at it, she could still see it when she closed her eyes.

Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.

What Kaine was driven to do was unstated and thus left to his discretion. No doubt he’d thought himself clever, leaving himself that loophole.

Except Helena was the one who’d exploited it.

The decision to refuse Kaine’s demand for a weapon had been a gamble. Ilva and Crowther wanted to see what Kaine would do if he was told no. Their excuse was within reason, but the choice itself had been a test. They were forcing him to show his hand, and he had.

Helena was making progress.

She should be proud of that, but all she felt was the treachery and danger of it.

She blinked and found she’d wandered to the rain garden. The creek was swollen, overflowing its banks. The water streamed around Luna’s pedestal, but despite it, even after months, the prayer tower she’d built still stood. All Helena’s prayers were rejected.

She reached out and almost toppled them herself.

She looked up at the buildings looming above, the rain splattering her face. It still startled her sometimes how beautiful the city could be.

Even in the downpour, the buildings gleamed.

She looked at the abandoned shrine again.

Survive, Kaine kept saying. The only goal. She was learning to fight not to win, but to escape. As if she were a prey animal.

She knew very well that if it ever came down to her and Kaine, she would die. No matter how similar their abilities, murder was exclusively within his purview.

She smiled bitterly at the difference between them.

Her death count was the numerical representation of her failures. All the lives she hadn’t saved, the ways she fell short.

For Kaine, it was a mark of power. His victims, even Principate Apollo, all represented what made him so valuable.

They were the inverse and counter to each other.

A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.

AS THE RESISTANCE RE-ESTABLISHED CONTROL of the island, their base of operations broadened. Headquarters remained most defensible, but forcing combat units and supply dispatches to travel the island from end to end was a waste of time and resources. There was now a secondary base of command near the ports, with a secondary hospital there. Matron Pace was currently stationed there to get it up and running.

It meant that Luc came back less. Even Crowther was often gone.

She took her report to Ilva, who never left Headquarters.

“Well?” Ilva asked when Helena entered her office.

“He’s asked for my alloy,” Helena said, sitting down in front of the desk and handing over the envelope. “He said he’ll take care of it.”

Ilva looked up, a gleam like sunlight in her pale-blue eyes. “Did he?”