Page 44 of Alchemised

E VERYTHING AROUND H ELENA BLURRED. S TROUD REMOVED THE paralysis after Ferron icily excused himself, but Helena still didn’t move.

The grating, scratching sound of Stroud’s pen on paper was the only sound in the quiet room.

Helena’s mouth had gone parched, but she struggled to swallow, trying to think of some way to reverse what had so suddenly happened.

Her fingers flexed, running across the linen sheets as she tried to focus on external sensations. A half-whimpering rasp escaped her throat.

She thought she might scream. Just scream and scream and never stop.

“What’s wrong?” Stroud asked, glancing up from Helena’s medical file.

Helena stared at her.

“I would have thought you’d be pleased to have a break from transference.

With the way you’ve been resisting, you’d likely have liver failure before the year’s out.

” Stroud tapped absently on Helena’s file.

“I’m very particular about the alchemists in my program.

The war cost us so many priceless lineages.

You should be grateful to still provide something with such lasting significance. ”

“You’re having me raped, and you expect me to be grateful about it?” Helena’s voice was dead, coming from far away.

Stroud’s expression soured. “I’m giving you an opportunity for your life to mean something.”

Helena’s rage was the only thing keeping her from losing her mind. “If it’s such a great thing, it’s a wonder you don’t volunteer yourself.”

Stroud froze, anger flashing like lightning across her face, darkening every line. Helena braced herself to be struck, but Stroud’s mouth pressed into a thin-lipped smile and she leaned over Helena almost tenderly.

“The High Reeve has been married for more than a year without any children to show for it. His Eminence insists Ferron be your first candidate, but I doubt anything will come of it. After everything Bennet did to him, he’s scarcely what I’d call human.

After he’s made his attempts, you’ll come back to Central, and I’ll be the one to decide who goes next. For however long it takes.”

Helena’s blood ran cold.

Stroud touched Helena’s chin with the tip of her finger. “With that in mind, I think you’d best learn to watch that tongue of yours. I don’t have to let you keep it.”

Helena did not make another sound until Stroud was gone. Dread welled up inside her like poison, corroding her organs, burning her lungs. She went through the house, every unlocked door, searching the rooms in a desperate frenzy to find something, anything. There had to be something.

Ferron did not reappear until the following evening. When he did, his expression was hard, but his eyes seemed to slide off her, as if he couldn’t bring himself to look at her anymore.

Her hands started spasming over and over, nerves twinging.

“It’s not tonight,” he said abruptly. “I’m told”—he was still not looking at her—“you won’t be fertile for three more days.”

She wasn’t surprised—

He was a murderer and a necromancer. What reason did she have to think he’d be above this?

Yet somehow, irrationally, she’d thought he was … safe.

Stupid.

“Come here,” he finally said.

She walked mechanically, staring at the buttons on his coat and shirt. He reached out, leather gloves pressing against her jaw, tilting her face up until her eyes met his.

“How much can you see?” he asked, gaze flickering from one eye to the other in comparison.

Helena laughed.

She had no idea when she’d last laughed. A lifetime ago. But the question was funny. Hilarious even.

Every good thing she had ever had in her life was destroyed, every scrap of solace ripped away as though there was nothing left of her now except hurting.

She had been imprisoned and violated in almost every way imaginable, and now he would inflict this final atrocity upon her, but he was worried about her eyesight.

She laughed and laughed and then she wasn’t laughing anymore, she was crying. She was crying until she was rocking, back and forth, half screaming, and Ferron just stood there.

She didn’t stop until she was hollow, as though she’d sobbed out everything inside her and now the only thing left was a shell. She was so tired of existing.

“Feel better?”

She swallowed, her throat aching. “No.”

His fingers spasmed, and she watched him curl them into a fist, tucking it behind his back. She knew that trick.

She looked up at him, noticing then the odd pallor and haggard set of his jaw.

Well, at least they were both suffering.

“What were you tortured for this time?” she asked dully, relieved to wonder about something, anything else.

He gave a slight hum. “It was for a few things. As I am frequently reminded, I am a constant disappointment, and now the public, through their vast collective intelligence, has deduced that I’m the High Reeve.”

The news piqued her curiosity. “Was it because you killed Lancaster?”

“I imagine that played a part, and Aurelia’s little fit didn’t help.

I had to leave suddenly, and the High Reeve was supposed to be in attendance.

International papers are less reluctant to print such theories, so word’s gotten out.

I’ll soon be acknowledged as the High Necromancer’s successor.

” He gave a grimacing smile. “This previous anonymity was all for my protection, you see.”

“Of course,” Helena said. “So you were only tortured a little bit.”

“It was nothing,” he said, but his hands were both behind his back.

He shifted, as if he was about to leave. Even though she didn’t want to be anywhere near him, the alternative was being alone with her thoughts.

“Why’d you kill Lancaster?” she asked.

“He endangered my assignment. I would have done a formal execution, but I was busy, and I wanted him taken care of.”

“So you killed him in the middle of the hospital?” she said, eyeing him doubtfully.

“I was going to kill him in his hospital room, but he tried to run.” He shrugged. “I improvised.”

The image of Lancaster lying split open while Ferron gutted his remains was seared into Helena’s mind.

Ferron rolled his neck. “If you have no more questions, we should get this over with. Sofa, or bed?”

The words were like a steel rod rammed down the length of her spine, and it took her a moment to realise he intended to check her memories.

She’d assumed that was over now. “I thought—”

Thought what? That she wasn’t still a prisoner and that in exchange for her body, she’d now be permitted her mind? She swallowed her words and went to the sofa.

He followed her, expression unreadable as he extended his hand, fingers barely grazing her forehead before his resonance slid through her skull.

By the time he stopped, Helena felt as though she’d collapsed inwards upon herself. Reliving all the recent days made her jaw clench until her teeth threatened to crack.

She lay slumped back on the sofa, Stroud’s threat echoing in her head.

She pressed her face into the fabric of the sofa, smelling the age and dust, and tried to shut out the surrounding world. Ferron left without a word.

H ELENA’S EYE HAD RECOVERED ENOUGH to finally handle light again, so she pushed the curtains back, her new room revealing a view of the courtyard rather than the mountains.

Outside, the world had metamorphosed, showing early signs of spring.

The deadened grey she was accustomed to now showed pricks of colour amid the toppled grass and the tree branches.

A few weeks before, she would have been comforted by it, but there was a pit inside her now, even beauty turned to horror.

Two days. Her thoughts circled relentlessly, like a trapped animal ready to gnaw off her own limbs to escape.

In war, rape had always loomed as a possibility.

There were stories about the prisoners in the laboratories, warnings of what could happen to women captured from Resistance territory.

But rape for the purpose of pregnancy was a layer of intention that she still had not fully wrapped her mind around.

Her experiences in the matter of pregnancy had never been favourable.

Precautionary measures were in short supply during the war. Girls would show up at the hospital from time to time, nervously asking to talk to Matron Pace. Oftentimes, that was the end of it, but other times, they’d keep coming back.

Helena had been an only child. As an apothecary, her mother mostly prevented pregnancies.

It was the village midwives who handled the rest. Mothers only came to a surgeon like Helena’s father when things had gone wrong.

Most of the babies Helena saw growing up were deformed, or deathly sick, or stillborn.

That pattern continued during the war. As a healer, Helena was only summoned when a baby was born too early or had gotten stuck in the wrong position, or the milk wouldn’t come in because there wasn’t enough food.

She would be asked if she could do something.

Most often she couldn’t. The babies were tiny and fragile, and even vivimancy couldn’t fix everything.

She’d watch the mothers break, something seismic inside them rupturing. They’d scream sometimes. Others would be silent, and that was often worse in the end.

Helena had been grateful that it would never be her. She would never marry or have children, so would never have to endure losing them.

It was the one thing she’d thought herself safe from.

She lay in bed unable to sleep. Lumithia was nearing her biannual Ascendance, waxing so full that the night glowed silver, the light stark against the black shadows. The air had a nearly constant feeling of resonance.

Helena flexed her fingers, wishing she could shove her hand inside her body as easily as Ferron had into Lancaster’s belly. She’d rip out her organs right there in the bed.

The thought of her body’s forced complicity made her sick, and yet the idea of not becoming pregnant left her frozen with fear. Stroud’s threat kept ringing in her head.