Page 31 of Alchemised

H ELENA OPENED THE DOOR, A PIECE OF crystal clutched in one hand, and found Lila sitting on the floor, curled up like a child trying not to be found.

She was out of her armour. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her long pale hair cropped short, and when she turned to look at Helena, it brought the right side of her face into view.

A roping scar tore through the side of her face and throat.

“Lila. Lila, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Lila stared at Helena without responding for a long time.

“I made a mistake,” Lila finally said, her voice barely a whisper, “I’ve made such a mistake.”

“It’s—all right. I’m sure it’ll be all right. Whatever you’ve done—I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”

“No.” Lila shook her head. “I’ve been lying to everyone—”

Helena woke abruptly, lurching up as the dream was cut short.

The withdrawal from the tablet hit like a brick wall, and she collapsed again, emotions crushing her. Even breathing hurt.

She tried to ignore it, to focus on the memory.

What had Lila been about to say? And what had happened to her? The injury had looked recent, the scarring reminiscent of what was on Helena’s own chest, no vivimancy used.

Helena couldn’t imagine why. Lila wasn’t someone who’d ever refused healing. As Luc’s paladin primary, there was a tremendous pressure on her to keep him safe, to prove that she deserved her rank.

She would often grow short-tempered when she wasn’t allowed to recover as quickly as she wanted to, brushing off Helena’s warnings about the balance of things, that healing took a much greater toll on the body than natural recovery did; too much and it could kill her.

That there was a price that had to be paid, somehow, by someone.

Lila never cared about any of that. Protecting Luc was all that mattered to her.

M OUNTAIN SNOW BLANKETED THE ESTATE a few days later, cutting Spirefell off from the rest of the world, and life fell into a monotonous routine until the third session of transference arrived.

Once again, Helena’s consciousness was crushed down to the brink of oblivion, all the way to that moment of singularity as Ferron enmeshed his mind with hers.

This time, she felt him blink, and her own eyes closed. She was being puppeteered not physically but across her now shared mental landscape. She could feel his mind orienting itself within the patterns of hers, his consciousness attempting to sway her.

With his presence, she could finally feel the strange shape of her thoughts, the unnatural ways they swerved.

Much of it was seamless, smooth channels of evasion that refused to veer from their course, but there was a fault line, as if one part had been constructed separately.

She felt Ferron notice it, and before he could push towards it, she reacted.

A self-destructive wave of desperation exploded from inside her, like a bomb going off in her head.

Ferron vanished. Everything vanished.

When she regained consciousness, she could barely form thoughts. The vibrations of her own breathing hurt like the tongue of a whip lashing through her mind.

She wasn’t particularly feverish, but she also didn’t get better after several days.

In her dreams, there were people crowded around her.

Dozens of them. Each time she slept, they’d drag her underwater and drown her.

Bloodless hands grasping at her. Icy water filled her lungs.

Her arms and legs were twisted and wrenched at.

Splintered nails clawing at her skin. Fingers hooking inside her mouth, pulling down on her jaw until it came loose.

Fingernails sinking into her eyeballs, and she never died.

She just kept drowning.

She’d wake, choking and gagging as her body tried to expel the phantom water from her lungs. She couldn’t make her mouth work. Her vision was upside down.

She recognised the voice of the stuttering mind specialist, saying things about the mind being complex and not fully understood, that Helena’s condition was unprecedented, and there was little to be done but wait and see what would happen.

When she finally began to recover, she felt as though a part of her had died.

Ferron’s encroachment was inevitable, progressing a little further with each month, the cracks in her mind widening to accommodate him. She had neither the strength nor the will to keep resisting.

The war was lost. Her suffering would not bring anyone back, not any more than Luc’s had saved them.

When she was no longer bedridden, she braved the cold and went out to the stables. The side door was unlocked, and she entered quickly before the thralls could stop her.

It was empty. Death slipping from her fingers again.

The winter deepened, sinking into an oppressive cold that crawled into the recesses of the house, the iron acting like veins, carrying the midwinter frost into every hallway and inner room, leaving the house frigid no matter how much the radiators hissed.

The Ferrons fled to the city, leaving Helena behind. In their absence, the meals were improved by the lack of table scraps, and the bread was less stale, although the inclusion of protein was scarcer.

For several weeks, newspapers became her only glimpse into the world beyond.

The repopulation program, which had initially been treated as an economic necessity, was gradually reframed as the new scientific frontier.

New Paladia would forge its own future; no longer would alchemical repertoires be left to chance.

Parentage in the program was to be selected based on the strength and variety of resonance.

Tests were being done to discover the ideal combinations.

The guild families, editorials effused, had the right ideas about marrying into resonance. Without the interference and backwards notions of the superstitious, there would be a new world order. Resonance-based abilities would achieve heights never before seen.

Scientific terminology and the overuse of words like genius and groundbreaking tried to frame the program as if it were an obvious next step.

There were never any explanations about where these assets would go, or who’d raise them, or that they were people, just that they would exist and be industrially and economically valuable resources.

New Paladia sounded more like a factory than a city, intended to produce exactly the variety of alchemists the guilds wanted.

The society pages, which Helena had taken only a passing interest in, gradually became the sections that she read most avidly as she noticed a pattern.

Over the course of several weeks, several familiar names vanished.

Paladian guild society only had so many visible members, which made their abrupt disappearances noticeable, especially when pages usually brimming with gossip were reticent to speculate about their whereabouts.

Helena couldn’t help but wonder if it was a sign of a growing insurrection. Perhaps New Paladia’s cracks were finally beginning to show.

She began having dreams of herself sitting across from Ilva Holdfast, with Crowther beside her. Her eyes darting back and forth between Ilva’s strained expression and Crowther’s appraising stare.

She could feel that they were waiting for her to say something, but she always woke before she’d answered.

As Helena was left to her own devices, Spirefell became her domain.

With Aurelia gone, she spent little time in her room, accustomed to ignoring the necrothralls’ constant orbit around her.

She avoided the largest rooms and spaces with deep shadows, and it became an ingrained habit to open the doors and pick things up gingerly so that it didn’t agitate the manacles.

Her familiarity was fortunate, because when Aurelia returned from the city, Helena knew every hidden alcove and servants’ passage to hide in.

Aurelia had not come alone. She’d brought a companion, the same broad-shouldered man Helena had glimpsed during the solstice party.

The first time Helena encountered them together, Aurelia was entirely naked, splayed out across a bearskin rug, giggling beneath the body of her paramour.

Ferron was still in the city, and they seemed to be taking liberal advantage of his absence.

It was more than a week before Helena finally saw the pair of them fully clothed.

At the rear of the house sprawled an enormous hedge maze.

Helena would sometimes pass the time trying to navigate through it with her eyes.

She was nearly to the centre when Aurelia exited the maze, her companion close behind.

Aurelia was speaking animatedly, the first time Helena had ever seen her happy, while her companion seemed absorbed by the house, peering up and giving Helena a clear look at his face.

Lancaster.

Helena shrank from sight instantly.

Lancaster was Aurelia’s lover? The same person who’d just happened to find her room during the party.

That couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

Could he—

Helena was afraid to even allow the possibility to exist in her mind where Ferron might return and discover it, but she couldn’t stop herself from wondering.

Could Lancaster be a spy? What if he was from the Resistance and that was why he’d looked for Helena? Was that what he’d been trying to communicate to her?

Was he a piece of her hidden memory? He must be. It would explain his surprise when she didn’t recognise him.

She went back to the window, but he and Aurelia had moved on.

Helena began watching for Lancaster, growing increasingly convinced that he had ulterior motives in visiting. He’d often try to slip away from Aurelia, eyes and attention constantly wandering.

Helena weighed the risk of approaching him. If her suspicions were correct, it would be vital that she escape before Ferron returned. If she acted prematurely, she might doom them both.

Better unconfirmed suspicions than anything concrete for Ferron to discover.

She was grateful for the choice when Ferron returned without warning.