Page 427 of Alchemised

After the children were in bed one night, Lila came into the kitchen where Helena was working on a chymiatria project that she hoped might help to manage her heart.

“I need to talk to you,” Lila said. She was very pale; she’d been quiet and withdrawn ever since the Abeyance passed. She sat down and stared at the fire for a long time. “I have to go back.”

Helena had known this day was coming, but her stomach twisted at the announcement. Lila was not made for a quiet life. She was never going to be happy on an island. She’d stayed because of Pol and Helena. But from the moment they’d read the bulletin on the ship, Helena had known that if Lila hadn’t been a mother to a toddler, she probably would have jumped off and joined the Liberation Force.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I can’t let them do this. They’re erasing everything. Everyone. They’ll bury everything that happened. They don’t care; they just want the manufacturing back. It’s like watching vultures close in after they spent all these years watching us die.”

Helena sighed. “What does going back do, Lila?”

“I’m going to kill Morrough,” Lila said. “I’m going to go in, and I’m going to kill him. And then I’m going to make sure that no one ever forgets about the Resistance.” Lila’s throat worked repeatedly, the scar twisting her face. “So I need you to take care of Pol for me. And I need to learn how to fight using vivimancy, and get whatever obsidian’s left. And, Helena, I need you to teach me how to build a bomb.”

“Morrough might be dead in a year.”

“I know. I won’t wait that long. I’m going to go during the winter Abeyance.”

“That’s an incredibly dangerous voyage,” Helena said sharply.

“I have to go!” Lila’s voice rose. “They killed my family, they killed Luc, they killed—everyone. I can’t tell Pol about how brave and wonderful his dad was and know that the person who killed him is still out there. No one cares about the way Luc fought and suffered trying to save us”—she gestured furiously—“because he didn’t win. They’ll forget all about him if I don’t go back.”

“You could die. Don’t leave Pol an orphan.”

Lila was staring at the fire, the expression on her face so intense, so yearning, she looked as if she might slip her hands into it if it would let her touch Luc again.

“I made an oath that I would die before I let Luc come to harm, but he died and I’m still here. I’ve tried to bear it, for Pol, but I can’t. Not anymore.”

HELENA RELUCTANTLY COMPILED HER RESEARCH on bomb-making. The technique used to bomb the West Port Lab had the most potential, especially if they could find the sources of oxygen feeding into the underground.

She’d thought about the design over the years. She’d been in a rush and improvised, using the materials available. With time, and resources, it could be far more effective.

In the meanwhile, Kaine trained Lila in combat vivimancy. To the surprise of no one, Lila had been training in secret. Objectively she was a better fighter, except that Kaine did not follow any rules. He switched from vivimancy to combat alchemy to sheer underhandedness constantly, so that the instant Lila had an advantage, the fight became something different. He was brutal with her, exacting and impatient to a degree that he’d dramatically softened with Helena. He gave Lila no such consideration. He beat her weaknesses out of her.

Helena hadn’t realised how much time and consideration Kaine had devoted to thinking about killing Morrough. The strategy it would require. As if he’d spent the years on the island waiting for Lila to ask. Perhaps he had. Or perhaps he would have gone and tried to do it himself if he’d been physically able to, but he wasn’t. He’d never fully recovered from the torture Morrough had last inflicted on him. Under stress, his tremors were worse than Helena’s.

“You should put your name on this,” Lila said when Helena finally gave her a design for the bomb. “Even if people think you’re dead, you should get credit for your work. Luc always used to say you’d be the one to outshine us all.”

Helena shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to wonder about me or to look too hard. It’s not worth the risk. Just say you took the design when you escaped, and you don’t know who developed it.”

Pol came to slowly understand that his mother was leaving. He was five by then, and he and Enid had birthdays close together. As an early gift, Lila and Pol went to one of the larger islands and returned with a leggy white shepherd puppy named Cobalt, named for his father’s horse.

“He’ll keep you company and keep you safe until I come back,” Lila said. She’d let the dye in her hair fade, letting it grow blond again. It was braided and pinned around her head, because this was how she wanted Pol to remember her. “I won’t be able to send letters, but I’ll send messages sometimes, all right? And whenever you see Lumithia, that means I’m thinking about you, and when you see the sun shining, that’s your dad, watching you for me.”

Lila’s eyes shone with tears. “And you’ll look out for Enid? She’s your best friend. You have to stick together, because that’s what best friends do.”

THE HIGH NECROMANCER, MORROUGH, ONCE known as the first Northern alchemist, Cetus, died on a spring day.

According to the newspapers, the underground stronghold was breached by an elite team of Novis and Hevgotian military, accompanied by Paladin Lila Bayard, the last surviving member of the Order of the Eternal Flame. A mysterious pyromancy bomb was used in the initial attack.

The blast caused the famed Alchemy Tower to collapse, and the wreckage was painstakingly excavated and infiltrated as the team was mobbed by necrothralls.

Many were killed in the attack. Lila Bayard was nearly killed. The general leading the attack ordered that everyone fall back, but Lila had refused. She went on alone.

Newspapers across the continent featured a photo of Lila Bayard emerging from the rubble of the Alchemy Tower, helmet gone, face filthy, her armour streaked with blood. The brutal scar across her face was starkly visible, sharpening the look of cold triumph as she dragged the remains of Morrough’s mutated and rotting corpse behind her.

There was no denying Lila Bayard’s heroism. She had done what a dozen countries had failed to do.

Having a living, breathing member of the Eternal Flame who had done the impossible made it harder for the allied nations to treat Paladia as an utterly failed nation that needed external control. Lila was offered all sorts of ceremonial roles, but she refused them.

She had not come back to rule. She wanted those lost remembered, and she wanted the tragedy of the war confronted, not buried, so that it could not happen again.