Page 32 of Alchemised

He seemed tired. A sense of exhaustion hung about him, but he grew sharp and focused once Helena was in his sights.

“Stroud will be here tomorrow,” he said at last. “She’s concerned about your physical condition.”

Helena stiffened. “I’ve been walking. There’s been nothing different.”

“She’ll arrive after lunch,” was all he said before leaving. “Make sure you’re in your room.”

Stroud arrived without Mandl and made Helena strip to her underclothes and stand shivering in front of her. Stroud walked around her, fingers trailing over Helena’s shoulders, resonance sinking into her skin.

“Don’t they feed you?” Stroud finally asked, sucking her teeth as she paused, squeezing Helena’s arm and then pushing two fingers against her stomach. “You’re showing signs of malnutrition. What are you eating?”

Helena’s skin hurt from the cold, the air piercing straight to her bones. “K-Kitchen scraps,” she said, shivering.

“What?” Stroud drew back, looking Helena up and down. “Describe exactly what you’ve been eating.”

Helena swallowed, trying to concentrate. “Um. It’s all boiled together, some grains, vegetable peels, cores, and sometimes meat trimmings. When they’re here, I think what’s left on the plates is put in, too. But they haven’t been, so there’s not been much meat lately.”

“That’s what we feed the thralls. Why are you eating that?”

Helena blinked at this revelation. It made sense, but she was too cold to muster emotion at the news. “Because I’m a prisoner. I don’t think they thought it necessary to feed me well.”

“You are a”—she paused as though debating what to call Helena—“an asset. The Ferrons are supposed to be feeding you properly. That is not nearly enough nutrition, it’s no wonder you’ve been so sickly.

” Stroud’s expression grew irate. She turned and went to the door.

One of the necrothrall maids was waiting outside.

“I want the High Reeve. Here. In person. Now.”

Ferron entered a few minutes later wearing a scowl, barely glancing at Helena, who was still shivering in her underclothes. “You summoned me?”

“Is there a reason you’re starving her?” Stroud said, her hard fingers digging into Helena’s arm, lifting it and turning her. “Look at her. You complain about her fevers while feeding her little more than kitchen scraps.”

Ferron finally looked at Helena properly. “Pardon?”

“She isn’t a necrothrall,” Stroud said sharply. “She needs real food. You can’t expect her to handle transference if you’re starving her.”

Ferron said nothing, but Helena could have sworn he’d somehow paled. “I assumed she’d been eating as Aurelia and I do.” His fingers flexed. “Aurelia has always managed the menu. I will make enquiries.”

“I want her eating full meals. As much as she wants, with proper cuts of meat and vegetables. And porridge or broths in between until she’s healthy.”

Ferron gave a tight nod. “She’ll be fed properly. I will ensure it.”

“Thank you, High Reeve. See that she does.” Stroud turned back to Helena.

Ferron didn’t move, still looking at Helena until Stroud glanced over her shoulder at him. “Perhaps go see if there’ll be a proper meal tonight.”

He blinked, gave a short nod, and left.

“Lie down,” Stroud said as soon as the door closed. “I want to examine things more closely.”

Helena was so cold, she was grateful to climb onto her bed. Even Stroud’s cold fingers felt warm as she appraised Helena’s limbs and then worked up to her abdomen, pressing down with the heel of her hand, feeling at Helena’s organs.

Helena hadn’t really considered malnutrition as something happening to her. Food had often been in short supply during the war, and those who fought were prioritised; they needed consistent and high-quality food. Noncombatants made do with what was left.

After the Resistance lost the ports, there’d been shortages of almost everything.

Stroud’s resonance made Helena’s stomach lurch. She gagged and tried to sit up.

“None of that. Lie still.”

Before she could protest, Stroud’s fingers were digging in against the base of her skull, and Helena’s eyes rolled back, unconsciousness swallowing her.

W HEN H ELENA WOKE, S TROUD WAS gone. She felt terrible with a heavy sense of disorientation throughout her body, her vision blurring, and there was a sharply painful bruise near her left hip as if she’d been stabbed with a needle.

Helena rubbed at it, trying to think what kind of injections might be necessary to treat malnutrition, but her mind was too foggy for much coherence.

That night, there was a knock, and the maid brought in a tray with a full meal. Meat in a red wine sauce, two different vegetable dishes, one with cheese, and thick slices of soft fluffy bread with butter spread in a generous layer across each one, and even a stewed pear for dessert.

Helena gorged herself, despite knowing she might end up sick from it. She was starving.

She was still eating when Ferron walked in, standing over her to inspect her meal.

“It would seem that I’m obliged to personally see to everything,” he said with a scowl as he stepped back. “You could have mentioned it.”

“If I were to start complaining, the food would not be the first thing I’d bring up,” she said, dragging her spoon down the side of the pear and eating it in tiny savouring bites, refusing to be hurried by him.

He inclined his head, expression still irritated, and went over to the nearer window. Helena deliberately took slower bites, chewing luxuriantly.

When she was finally finished eating, she thought she might pop. She wanted to curl up and sleep, but Ferron nodded pointedly at her head. She sighed and seated herself on the edge of her bed, hating how routine it had all become. Even her dreams felt routine.

She kept dreaming of Ilva and Crowther. And Lila crying. Over and over, the memories seemed to haunt her.

Ferron also seemed to find them interesting. He watched them several times before he moved on to the time she’d spent spying on Lancaster, wondering if he might be there to save her.

He drew his hand away.

As her vision returned, she found herself lying flat on her back in the bed, his face just above hers.

“Lancaster will be one of the Undying soon,” he said. “In belated recognition for his exceptional services during the war.”

There was something sneering in the way he said it, but if he meant to plunge Helena into despair, he failed.

If Lancaster wasn’t one of the Undying yet, that made it even more likely that he might be a spy for the Resistance.

He’d have to seem trustworthy to get this close to Helena without raising suspicion.

“Are you one?” she asked. She’d assumed for so long, but she’d begun to wonder if he might be something else entirely.

He gave a slow smirk. “What do you think?”

She shook her head, uncertain.

The smirk faded, but he kept looking at her, and his eyes grew darker than she’d ever seen them.

She realised then that she was lying on a bed beneath him. Heat flooded under her skin, and her spine prickled as she sat up quickly, folding her arms.

He stepped back, straightening. “If you have any hopes involving Lancaster, you should let them die.”

L ILA WAS SEATED ON THE edge of Helena’s bed, eyebrows knit together, studying her. No scar on her face.

“Are you—” Lila looked away and seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “Are you not all right, anymore? Is that why you spoke and why there’s all the trainees now?”

Helena looked sharply at Lila, but Lila was unfastening a buckle and didn’t meet her stare.

“No. I’m fine. The trainees are because Matias hopes to get rid of me.”

“Oh, good. I mean, not good, but that makes sense,” Lila said, and cleared her throat. “I can see why you’re not thrilled about them, then.”

Helena forced a laugh.

“You know, you can talk about—anything with me, if you want.” Lila looked over at her.

“No.” Helena shook her head. “I don’t need to talk. There’s—no point in talking, and as I have now been reminded publicly, I’m not a fighter. I don’t know anything about what war really is. So—what would I even have to say?”

Lila’s prosthetic leg clicked as she shifted and then said, “I think the hospital’s worse than the battlefield.”

Helena went very still.

“I realised it when I was in there for my leg.” Lila’s gaze was faraway, eyebrows furrowing.

“At the front—everything’s so focused, you know.

The rules are simple. We win some. We lose some.

You get hit sometimes. You hit back. You get days to recover if it’s bad.

But—” She looked down, her fingers tapping absently along the place where her prosthetic was joined to her thigh.

“—in the hospital, every battle looks like losing. I can’t imagine what that’s like.

” She looked at Helena. “All you see in there is the worst of it.”

Helena said nothing.

Lila sighed and unclasped more pieces of her armour, leaving them all over Helena’s bed. “When Soren told me what you said—I don’t agree, but I get it.”

Lila nudged her with her elbow and stood. “Even if the trainees are just because of Matias meddling, I’m glad you’re getting more time off. I think you’ve needed that—some space from it all.”

H ELENA SPENT DAYS REPLAYING THE conversation. She bitterly missed having people to talk to, who cared about what she said.

She’d had trainees?

She remembered Stroud mentioning there being other healers like Elain Boyle, but Helena had assumed they’d come from somewhere else.

She couldn’t imagine Falcon Matias approving the addition of more healers.

Ilva Holdfast had worked very hard to make Helena’s vivimancy palatable to the Resistance.

She’d declared that it was the gods’ will that the Eternal Flame had a vivimancer in their ranks, and that Helena had been born, found, and brought to Paladia destined to become a healer, so that if Luc was struck down in battle, vivimancy might save him; a resonance of corruption purified by Sol’s will.

Helena had needed to leave the city and go into the mountains to train with an ascetic monk. Matias had been a Shrike at the time, living in a hut near the Holdfast estate, acting as a spiritual advisor for the family.

He’d disliked healers on principle and hated Helena the moment he laid eyes on her.

Nothing about her fell in line with what he regarded as appropriate for a healer. He’d been more an obstacle than a teacher, but Helena was stubborn, and familiar enough with medicine to manage her own training. She was determined to become a healer, whether he wanted it or not.

When Ilva began demanding that Helena be sent back to the city because Luc had gone to the front lines, Matias tried to resist, denying Helena’s suitability until Ilva practically bribed him with the offer that Luc would make him Falcon, a religious rank high enough to join the Council, and even then he agreed only on the condition that if Helena was to be the Eternal Flame’s healer, then she would heal all who served Sol’s sacred cause.

The Principate, after all, was not above others, but first among equals.

What would make Matias approve trainees?

Helena couldn’t help but think wistfully about Lila.

When Helena came back as a healer, it had been inadvisable for her to seem too close to Luc. A childhood friendship was all very well, but someone like Helena couldn’t appear to have undue influence over a figure like the Principate.

Paladia’s survival depended on the Resistance’s unwavering faith in Luc. If his judgement was questioned, all Paladia would suffer the consequences. Certain sacrifices had to be made.

Lila as Luc’s paladin primary had been the closest to Luc that Helena was allowed to be after that. Lila had been primary …

Helena blinked.

There’d been a paladin secondary. Soren. Lila’s twin brother. Where was Soren?

Helena’s head throbbed.

Why would she forget Soren? He—

A face briefly flickered in her memory. Helena’s mind swerved violently, as if recoiling. No. She tried to focus.

Soren. Remember Soren. What happened to him?

Her skin crawled, a painful ghastly ache rose through her body, her lungs seized as if there were water inside them, and her vision turned a violent red.

When her head cleared, her temples were throbbing.

What had she been thinking about?

Something about—Lila?