Page 226 of Alchemised

“What did you do?” Ilva had become impossibly more tense. “Did you—” Her lips thinned, her eyes flickering to the chain around Helena’s neck once more. “Did you use something to manage it?”

Helena squeezed her hand into a fist. “I assumed that if you had to choose between the two of us, you’d want him.”

Ilva’s face went white.

“So I used the amulet you gave me, I thought it—”

“You gave the amulet to him?” The question was almost a shriek.

Helena had never heard Ilva raise her voice. “No, I—”

“Do you still have it or not?”

Helena’s stomach twisted into a tight knot as she reached up, pulling the chain over her head. “I have the amulet, but the sunstone is gone.”

Ilva snatched it from her so quickly, the chain ripped open Helena’s kidskin glove. Ilva pressed her thumb against the centre where the stone was missing, staring in horror before looking at her. “What did you do?”

Helena swallowed nervously. “It broke and this—substance came out. Like quicksilver, and—it—it fused with Ferron.”

There was a ghastly silence. Ilva looked so stunned she said nothing, just looked at the amulet again, as if the stone could magically rematerialise. Finally, Helena couldn’t bear it anymore.

“If you didn’t want him healed, you should have told me.”

Ilva didn’t reply, just stared at the amulet in her hand. “Do you know the story of the Stone of the Heavens?” she finally said, still running her thumb over the empty setting.

Dread swept through Helena like a tidal wave.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a myth. Everyone knows that was a misinterpretation. Luc said it wasn’t real.”

“Every choice I have made was to protect Luc,” Ilva said. She wasn’t talking to Helena so much as speaking aloud or perhaps to the amulet in her hand. “I was never trained to be a steward, to bear the weight of this legacy. I was happy with my role, but Luc was too young for all this. I’ve tried to make the best choices I could.”

Ilva looked up at Helena. “When your—vivimancy made its appearance, I thought I’d been given my way forward. That Sol had provided a fail-safe so that I could protect him. Of course there was still the politics of it to contend with. Matias did not make it easy. With all the concessions he demanded, I was concerned about the Toll taking you too prematurely. That amulet had been locked away for centuries, lying idle as generations of Holdfasts protected it. I’d hoped this war might rouse it to do something.”

“What was it?” Helena asked.

Ilva stood, seizing her cane so tightly that her swollen knuckles showed white as she walked past Helena to the window, looking out towards the Alchemy Tower.

“My family built this Institute and this city to ensure that necromancy would never come to power again. They gave their lives to that cause and kept countless secrets to that end.”

Ilva fell silent for a long time. Helena didn’t dare speak.

“Have you heard the stories of Rivertide?”

Rivertide was the name of Paladia back before the first Necromancy War. It had been wiped out by a plague, and when the Necromancer found it, he’d used the corpses for his army.

“There was no plague,” Ilva said, still not looking back. “Orion called it a plague because it was kinder than immortalising what truly happened to them all.” She pressed her hand, still clutching the amulet, against her chest. “The Necromancer realised the alchemical potential of the area and came to Rivertide specifically because of the people living here.”

“He killed them?” Helena couldn’t understand the purpose of that secret. That the Necromancer massacred Rivertide was even more believable than a story of finding a convenient town of corpses.

Ilva shook her head. “No, they’re still alive, to this day.”

Helena stared at her, not understanding.

“The Necromancer was a vivimancer, just like you, but the ability was even more mythical back then. He came to Rivertide performing miracles. They thought he was a god. They built him a temple on the plateau, gave him everything he asked for, and he promised them immortality if they only had the faith for it. Then one day, he brought them all together in a great assembly, in a secret place he’d carved underground, and declared that if they trusted him fully, utterly, he could make them live forever. I’m not sure of the process, but afterwards, his temple was full of corpses, and their souls were bound together, synthesised into this—substance. He used it, the power, to reanimate them all.”

Ilva began to pace, her steps jerky, her cane trembling in her hand; she was too agitated to be still. “When Orion fought the Necromancer, the souls were still conscious, aware of the betrayal exacted upon them—that the gift of ‘immortality’ came at the price of eternal enslavement. During the battle, the Necromancer’s control slipped, and the Stone turned on him. There was a light as bright as the sun. It filled the valley, destroying the Necromancer and all the necrothralls in a wave of fire. When it was over, Orion and his followers were all that remained.” Ilva shook her head. “If the truth of the Stone’s nature were known, Orion feared that others might be inspired to rediscover the methods, and so, when those who’d witnessed the battle called the Stone a gift from Sol, Orion had no choice but to let them believe it.”

Ilva paused, her expression mournful.