Page 286 of Alchemised

His hands slid up around her throat, warm and possessive, thumb covering the scar below her jaw as he kissed between her eyes. “You’re a far better person than I am. This world doesn’t deserve you at all.”

She shook her head. “I could survive without having to go as far as you did. That doesn’t make me better.”

“You keep people alive. You touch them and your instinct is to save them, no matter who they are or what they’ve done to you. That is not a trait we share. It’s far more difficult than calculating all the ways to kill someone. And it costs you more.”

Their foreheads touched, and she closed her eyes. It was as though their souls were touching, too.

She wanted to spend her life lost in that moment, but she’d been gone for a day, and no one knew where she was. She couldn’t stay.

“I have to go back.”

He didn’t let go. “You should eat.”

“I have to go,” she said firmly, trying to rise.

“Take a bath,” he said, catching her waist. “I’ll order something to be brought up. Anything you want.”

“Kaine.” She pulled his hands off. “You can’t keep me here. I have to go.”

His expression flickered, just enough to reveal a shard of possessiveness, something ravenous and desperate. Then it vanished and he let her stand, resignation sweeping across his face.

She reached out, her fingers brushing back his hair. “Don’t worry. I’m always going to come back to you.”

CHAPTER 53

Aprilis 1787

KAINE’S CHIMAERA WAS SOMEHOW EVEN LARGER WHEN encountered lucid. When Helena was dressed and ready to leave, rather than be smuggled through the city, Kaine led her to the high open roof. The creature stood, stretching and yawning, baring fangs longer than Helena’s fingers, wings spreading so wide they nearly blanketed the rooftop.

The chimaera cantered stiffly towards Kaine, eerie yellow eyes watching Helena, the whites showing, muzzle curled in warning.

“Be nice, Amaris,” Kaine said chidingly, scratching the chimaera behind her ears.

Amaris drooped her head, her lip still curling to the gums, eyes fastened on Helena. It was for the best that Helena had been delirious the night before; she would never have climbed on that animal knowing it was real.

Kaine patted the wolfen monster and then knelt, running his hands up and down a foreleg. Helena could see the horse shape of the leg, but it ended in a paw with huge talon-like claws.

She backed away, giving more space. Despite Kaine’s desire that they all be friends, it was obvious that Amaris did not like anyone but him.

“She’s not growling at you,” Kaine said before Helena could take another step back. “Bennet spliced the legs wrong when he made her. Whenever she grows, the nerves get stretched out, and I have to fix them.”

“What do you mean?” Helena watched. She could tell he was using his resonance as his fingers brushed along the length of the foreleg.

“Bennet only cares about the aesthetics when it comes to the chimaeras. He forces things to fit together even when they shouldn’t. The reason the chimaeras are so dangerous is that they’re all rabid with pain. They usually die because the stress kills them. When Amaris arrived, she bit me about fifty times during the first week. You may recall that my back was still in tatters at the time. I nearly snapped her neck after the tenth time, but I thought, I’m in so much pain I’d love to bite someone. Why would it be different for her? She was all puppy then, but legs like a foal. Constantly tripping and breaking her wings.” He glanced back at Helena. “I had a notion of the taming capacity of pain relief, and you’d mentioned how flawed the transmutations were, so I tried to fix what I could. Once she realised I wasn’t there to hurt her, she stopped biting.”

He straightened and patted Amaris just below a huge wing. The feathers were as long as Helena’s arms.

He rubbed his knuckles between Amaris’s eyes. “She warmed up to me after that. She’s the only survivor of the whole batch. Bennet tried to take her back, wanted to see why she’d worked. She nearly took his head off. Didn’t you?”

He rumpled the thick fur.

“Come meet her, she’ll be nice now.” He gestured Helena over. He took her hand and let Amaris sniff it. Her teeth remained bared, but her tail slowly began to swing and her wings relaxed. He guided Helena to bury her fingers in the thick fur and scratch behind an enormous, pricked ear.

Helena could feel his eyes on her as she tentatively let her resonance creep in. Amaris trembled but didn’t move or snarl.

She could feel how haphazardly assembled Amaris was, bones and tissue not meant to be combined but forced together nonetheless. Unlike the chimaeras she’d examined in her lab, it was clear someone had tried to correct the excessive flaws, to properly join the muscles, smooth the bone fusions and misjoined ligaments, to block off nerves that caused nothing but pain.

She tried to imagine this monster as a puppy, a foal, a hatchling. Innocent and juvenile and then—