Page 410 of Alchemised

Helena wanted to comfort him, but they were running out of time. There was so much to do.

She began working across the array on the floor. The array she’d etched had been melted and destroyed by the fire, but she had every detail memorised. She only needed the central part of the original array, but the defacement had to be repaired and altered. She needed it to hold Kaine’s soul in place until she could secure it.

The new array was laid in iron. It was perfect for their purposes and readily available.

She and Kaine knelt on opposite sides. He closed his eyes and when they opened, they were glowing. Unsteady as his hands were, his resonance was stronger than hers. The air shivered as the house groaned, and iron began to flow towards them like water. When it reached the array, Helena used her own resonance to direct it, sending it morphing down certain pathways carved into the floor, moving towards the containment circle in the middle.

Industrial guild arrays could be as big as buildings, but Helena had never worked with an array larger than she could hold. The array on the floor was too large to see at once, and she had to crawl across it, verifying that every line and symbol was correct. It had to be perfect.

Her heart was in her throat, its jerky unsteady rhythm taunting her.

One chance.

“It’s ready,” she said at last, standing up in the centre of the array. “We can begin.”

Kaine nodded but then went towards the door. The remaining servants were gathered in the hallway beyond, Davies standing in the front.

“Is Amaris ready?” he said.

One of them nodded.

Kaine stood there, not moving. “I never—I never told you—I’m sorry I couldn’t save any of you.”

Davies took a hesitant step forward, mouthing his name as she often did. She smoothed his hair back the way a mother might and then placed both hands on his chest and pushed him back. Away from them.

Helena went over to where Kaine had left Morrough’s arm. The stench of it was like a kick in the stomach each time, and she worked quickly, disassembling it. The thing was repulsive. Holding it, she could feel all the power it contained, the lives of so many running through each bone. In the section of the ulna nearest to the hand, there was a horrible sense of familiarity. The piece used to bind Kaine. She removed what she needed and discarded the rest.

Kaine was standing in the centre of the room, stripped to the waist, covered in violent scars, the array on his back the starkest of all. Atreus was staring; it was obvious he’d never seen it before.

Kaine’s focus was entirely on her.

There was no platform over this array. She would be in it beside him.

“Lie on your back,” she said.

She knelt, guiding his hands to places she needed them on the array and then met his eyes. Her heart was struggling, threatening to grow uneven.

“This will work,” she said. “I promise. I’m going to save you.”

She pressed her hands on the cold iron and let her resonance flow into it.

She had never poured her animancy into an array except for small experiments on the etching plates. It took so much more power than she’d expected. As the array activated, a glow crept slowly along the iron until the entire array was humming. Kaine seemed to grow so translucent that she could see through him, his bones and organs and the talisman tangled beside his heart.

She pulled out the phylactery. The bone was so old it threatened to dissolve into dust, and she had to focus to feel the energy in it. It was like a package bound with thread, so tangled up it was hard to tell the strands apart. But she had to work carefully or risk causing damage. She unwound and unwound with her resonance, and the threads seemed to go on forever, until there was a sudden thump, and she looked up as one of the servants in the hallway collapsed to the ground.

She looked away.

She kept going, flinching as another hit the floor. And another. And another. And of course the last one, which meant she’d been the first to die, was Davies. She met Helena’s eyes the instant before she fell.

There was a rush of energy as the bone shard crumbled, the convulsion before the energy altered into that cold death surge, but instead of transforming it was dragged down into the array.

The air illuminated, and Helena’s hair lifted from her shoulders.

Kaine began to scream.

His eyes went stark, wide, and unseeing. His back arched up, his hands clawing at the floor until his fingertips and nails were torn bloody. Helena leaned over him.

“No. Don’t do this. Hold on,” she said, struggling to pin him down. He had to stay in the centre.