Page 398 of Alchemised

He blinked and seemed to come back to himself. He shook his head, straightening. “Don’t. I’m fine … just tired. I’ll be fine. Almost over now.”

He meant it as reassurance, but the words left her empty as he vanished back through the door.

SHE WAS SO ON EDGE after Kaine left again that when she felt a sensation in her lower abdomen, her first reaction was pure panic.

She went utterly still, heart faltering, and it came again. Fluttering.

She stared down, pushed her dress flat so she could run her hands over the swell between her hips.

She still forgot sometimes that she was pregnant.

As unbelievable as Lila getting pregnant during the war had been, she had always liked children; they were drawn to her, and Lila knew exactly how to make them laugh.

Helena had never had that kind of allure. She didn’t know if she could be a good mother, or if wanting to keep this baby wasn’t just her selfishness rearing its head. Her inability to let go.

To love someone. To be needed.

Her hand trembled violently as she pressed it against her stomach, letting her resonance reach hesitantly inwards, sensing the tiny bones softer than cartilage, veins like threads.

Soon this would be all that was left of Kaine in the whole world.

“I’m going to take care of you,” she whispered. “It’s—our way.”

She’d barely spoken the words when the door opened and Kaine strode in. It had been nearly a day but his colour was still unsettling, his eyes too bright.

“Stroud’s coming,” he said, his voice tense. “I came as fast as I could, but I have to—”

As soon as he reached her, he was removing the manacles and sliding the nullium tubes into place. Helena winced as her resonance vanished like an extinguished light.

Kaine was barely done fastening them when his eyes lost focus. “She’s here. Make sure everything’s hidden.”

When Stroud arrived, it was clear that the current tensions disagreed with her. There were hollows beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were red from split capillaries.

“Central is specifically designed to accommodate gestation,” she was saying in a strident voice. “Marino is our most crucial subject. She should be there, where I can keep a close eye on the foetal development and we can move quickly once viability is achieved.”

“And you think that the ‘gestational environment’ you’ve set up is conducive for someone with a heart condition agitated by stress? You might as well ask her to attempt a spontaneous abortion,” Kaine said, sneering at Stroud. “Marino is my prisoner. The High Necromancer entrusted her to me, and he has not changed his mind on that point. I will not have you tampering with my assignment just because you’ll no longer have Shiseo’s work to legitimise yourself with.”

Stroud turned a furious shade of red, as if a fresh wave of capillaries were splitting beneath the surface of her skin. “I will be appealing this.”

“You’re welcome to try, but I did tell him of your interference and its contribution to her current state. She might not have a heart condition at all if you hadn’t rushed her interrogation by injecting her with a nearly lethal dose of stimulants and threatened to cut her tongue out if she didn’t get pregnant. Now get on with whatever pretence brought you here.”

Stroud’s entire face was nearly beet red as she performed a perfunctory check of Helena’s heart condition and pregnancy. She’d seemingly hoped to sneak into Spirefell and commandeer Helena while Kaine was busy.

In a few minutes, she was done and furiously repacking her satchel so that Kaine could escort her back out.

Helena watched from the window as Stroud climbed into a motorcar and pulled away. The car was barely through the gates when the lights in her room flickered, and she heard the distant buzzing from the main wing. Kaine was already being summoned again.

She watched through the window as Kaine emerged from the house, swinging up onto Amaris’s back. The chimaera ran half the length of the courtyard and was airborne.

Helena pressed her hand on the window, the nullium tube pressing against the tendons of her wrist.

The day’s paper arrived with lunch. The photograph on the cover was enough to turn her stomach.

It was taken from the main gates of the Institute, which opened directly across from the steps of the Alchemy Tower. There on the steps stood Kaine, no helmet, nothing concealing his identity; his face was visible for all to see, his eyes so bright they distorted the photograph. Between him and the gate, covering the commons, were rows of bodies.

She kept waiting for Kaine to come back, but hours passed and he didn’t. It wasn’t like him to leave her in the house with Atreus unless she could secure the door.

Night fell and Lumithia was little more than a sliver of light, as if the night sky were a black curtain concealing the daylight, and someone had pierced it with a knife.