Page 283 of Alchemised

He let go then and sat up, looking out at the view. “My mother was tortured at our country estate, and all the staff murdered. We moved to the city residence, and that’s where she died. I wanted somewhere else to go, away from it all.”

Helena sat up.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked, I just never imagined you high like this,” she said, reaching up and resting a hand on his cheek. He dropped his head against her palm and closed his eyes for a moment, the strands of his hair falling across her fingertips.

Then he abruptly lifted his head. “Well, it’s mostly practical. Amaris flies better from the roof. She’s better at it now, but it used to be hard for her to get airborne.”

“Amaris?” Helena repeated slowly.

“The chimaera. You saw her last night.”

She blinked at him, a memory of an impossibly enormous, winged wolf resurfacing. “I thought … I’d hallucinated.”

He gave her a look. “I told you I was getting a chimaera.”

“Well, yes, but I assumed it was something—smaller, and you never mentioned it again. I assumed it had died.”

He shrugged. “Well, she was small at first. About the size of a foal when she arrived.”

“What is she?”

“Bennet isn’t forthcoming about such things. A lot of Northern wolf and some kind of destrier. I don’t know where he got the wings, though.”

“And she’s—tame?”

He shook his head. “No. Just fond of me, but you should meet her. I meant to introduce you, but the moment never seemed right. Come on.”

Helena didn’t move, not wanting to go anywhere yet. Everything was so different between them now. The tension and wariness finally absent.

She’d never known him outside of that context, even as children.

Secreted away from the rest of the world, she felt that she could finally see him for his own sake, rather than only through the lens of the Eternal Flame’s interests.

Glancing around the impersonal rooms, she could see them for what they were, a place to exist. There was not a single item of personal significance. Temporary. Uncommitted.

“When did you realise that I didn’t know you were supposed to die?” she asked rather than stand.

He released a long breath. “The first time you arrived on the Outpost. I could tell by the way you looked, you thought it really was forever.”

Her throat tightened.

He looked away. “It was—funny at first. I kept waiting for you to catch on.”

Heat spread across the back of her neck.

“I thought that when I pointed out that you should’ve known about my punishment, you’d realise it was a setup, but you didn’t. Then I assumed that it would have been explained to you by that evening or the next day, but you just kept coming back. I figured there must be something else they wanted, but it was clear by then they weren’t going to tell you. I almost did, a few times, but—” He sighed. “—I suppose I enjoyed the way you wanted to save me.”

She nodded slowly, fingers running along the seam of the linen sheet. “Crowther talked so much about the long term and making sure you didn’t lose interest, and how I had to keep it secret, that no one could know. I thought they trusted me.” She was quiet for a moment. “Ilva told me just before the solstice. You probably realised.”

She took his silence for confirmation.

There was a pause as she remembered something. “Kaine, I don’t think your father’s dead.”

Kaine looked at her sharply. “What?”

“When we rescued Luc, there was a lich. He told Sebastian that he was Atreus. He was guarding the door to the room Luc was in.”

“No,” Kaine said, his voice shaking. “No. He died. If he were still alive, he would have come back. For my mother.”