Page 21 of Alchemised

As if interest had anything to do with it. Her mind raced. Why now? Why today? Had Stroud mentioned that Helena was sterile, and he’d seen that as an opportunity? Something he could exploit without consequence?

A whimper crept up her throat. She wished she could sink through the surface of the mattress and suffocate there. Wished she could scream. Her fingers managed to flex, but in the place where her resonance should be, there was nothing but a gaping wound.

His right hand pressed into the mattress by her head, and he turned her chin until she was looking straight up at him.

Her heart shuddered.

His pupils were contracted, the grey of his irises like a storm.

His cool fingers followed the curve of her jaw to her temple. She lay, viscerally aware of the almost-weight of his body as his resonance pierced her mind.

Her mind was like an upturned snow globe, all her thoughts whirling like snow flurries through her consciousness.

It wasn’t transference, but she could still vaguely sense his mind through the connection.

Endured his amusement at all her ideas for killing him—it had grown into a veritable constellation of fantasies.

He skimmed through them all without concern, and then sank deeper into her mind, watching her tentative explorations of the house, the courtyard, the necrothralls, the newspaper she’d stolen, Stroud.

The only moment in which she felt any glimmer of a reaction from him was at her constant thoughts of Luc, the scale of her grief.

Then she was in her room reaching for her cloak, and he was closing the door, and she knew what was about to happen.

The memory evaporated like fog beneath bright sun, and she found herself lying on the bed, Ferron staring down at her with a scathing expression on his face. He snatched his hand away.

“I have no desire to touch you,” he said, sneering. “Your presence here is offensive enough.”

“Small mercies,” Helena said in a dry voice. It wasn’t a very clever retort, but her head was throbbing again, as if the scab on a wound had been peeled off while the skin was fresh.

He straightened, and she thought he’d walk out in offence, so she quickly asked the question haunting her.

“Did you kill Principate Apollo?”

He paused and leaned against the bedpost, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side. “Not … officially.”

“But it was you. Wasn’t it?” The more she’d thought about it, the more convinced she’d become.

“You don’t remember?” He shook his head.

“Did you even do anything during the war? The way the Holdfasts used to parade you around, you’d think you would have at least tried to be useful, but you have the most unexceptional personnel file I’ve ever seen.

” He scoffed. “How many years of your life did you spend in that hospital? And for what? Saving people who would have been better off if you’d let them die.

But no, you put them back together and sent them right back out to suffer a bit more.

” He gave a slow smile. “Perhaps Stroud’s wrong, and you were sympathetic to our cause. ”

He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d struck her.

All those years. All the people she’d healed, her resonance knitting them back together so they could live to fight another day, and for what? So they could be tortured to death, or enslaved, or—worse?

Until that moment, healing had been the only thing she hadn’t felt guilt over. Luc might be dead, but she had done some good. Now Ferron had ripped that shred of comfort away from her, turning the act into its own form of atrocity.

She clamped her hands over her mouth until she could feel the outline of her teeth, curling onto her side.

He laughed. “You Resistance fighters are always easy to break.”

He turned to leave.

The grief swelled inside her lungs, but she fought it back. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said through gritted teeth.

He paused.

“Right … Well, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you.

The High Necromancer personally requested that I kill the Principate.

He’d been in Paladia for some time already, quietly gathering followers, but with Apollo in power, the Guild Assembly would never have garnered enough public support.

The country needed to be destabilised, the future made to feel uncertain.

The Principate was impossible to target in public with his paladin, guards, and everyone else flocking around, worshipping his radiance.

But the Holdfasts were always careless at the Institute, convinced that anyone who walked through those gates would be too dazzled by their magnificence to lay a finger on them. ”

She watched from the corner of her eye as Ferron held up his left hand, studying it.

“I’m sure you know what a fascinating resonance vivimancy is.

Sinking my hand into his chest cavity was like breaking the surface of water.

Slipped right in”—his fingers curled—“then I pulled out his beating heart. You should have seen the shock on his face. I hadn’t realised he’d still be alive for a moment, but he lived just long enough to know exactly who killed him. ”

Principate Apollo had been a warm, generous man with an easy smile, jokes ready for any nervous student who approached. Luc had been so much like him. The same crooked smile. Being near them felt like standing in the summer sun.

“I suppose your master was quite pleased with you,” she said dully, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of witnessing her horror.

“He was indeed. They were all waiting for me when I returned. We had a celebratory dinner with him, my mother and I. I was declared a prodigy …”

Helena glanced up. His eyes were locked on the window, as though his mind had gone elsewhere.

He roused himself, glancing down.

“Any other questions?” He arched an eyebrow as if daring her.

“No,” she said quickly, looking away. “You’ve done enough.”