Page 48 of Alchemised

I T WAS A PUNISHING KISS.

The moment their lips touched, he crushed her body against his.

The hand on her throat slid into her hair, tangling in the curls, gripping them tight as the kiss deepened, angling her head back so that he could consume her.

He kept kissing her, hard enough to hurt but not bleed, like a storm poured down her throat.

When she was gasping for breath, he pulled away from her lips, kissing along her jaw and the side of her neck. His other hand curled around her waist.

Helena stood frozen in shock. Pliant and stunned in his possessive hands.

He pulled at her dress until the buttons snapped, giving way. Her back was against the wall, his knee pressed between her legs, pinning her by her skirts while his hands worked quickly, fabric ripping open, and she was stripped to the waist.

Cool air bit across her skin for an instant before the warmth of his hands and mouth erased it.

An ache shuddered through her. His face was buried against her throat, lips pressed below her ear, kissing down the length of her neck to the juncture of her shoulder, nipping, and he reached a spot, and she—moaned.

The sound shattered the quiet.

They both froze. Ferron wrenched himself away.

Helena stared at him, too dazed to move. Moonlight poured through the window, a stark and damning silver path to where she was slumped against the wall, half stripped and—aroused.

Ferron’s eyes were wide with shock, his pale hair falling across his face.

As he stood staring at her, his eyes developed that eerie light to them that seemed to illuminate him from within.

He ran a hand across his face, combing his hair back, and his jaw tightened, rolling, a look of derision spreading across his face even before he opened his mouth to speak.

Before he could say anything, a sob of horror tore from Helena. Her fingers scrabbled, trying desperately to pull her dress back on. It was rent open, buttons gone, so she clutched at the fabric, using her arms to cover herself, backing away until she reached the door.

She bolted, fleeing through the house as the reality of what she’d done nearly ripped her legs from beneath her.

She’d been receptive to Ferron.

He’d come towards her and kissed her and she had let him. In the moment, it hadn’t even occurred to her to push him away. Instead, she’d melted at the warmth of being held.

Trapped in Spirefell, she was latching on to any glimpse of kindness, any sense of tenderness her mind could fabricate.

But it wasn’t kindness.

He wasn’t kind; he simply wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t as monstrous as he could be.

And for Helena’s fracturing mind, an absence of cruelty was sufficient solace. For her starved heart, it was enough.

She fled to her room, tearing off the ruined dress in the damningly bright silver light, pulling on new clothes as if they could hide what she’d done.

She was better than this. She clutched at her chest, nails biting into her skin as if she could claw the resolve into herself.

“I’m so—sorry, Luc.” Her voice was strangled with guilt.

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.

She wasn’t going to let her mind trick her into wanting the attention of the person responsible for starting the war.

His harm was incalculable. Everything. All of it.

It was all his fault, but she could feel herself eroding, desperate to have something in her life that was not pain. That was not dead and gone.

But she couldn’t.

She could bear the horror of being betrayed by her body, but she wouldn’t let herself be betrayed by her mind.

She’d sooner break it.

She stared out the window at the enclosed courtyard, her inescapable prison, pressing her trembling hand against the cool glass and iron lattice, reaching for the power that was no longer there. There was nothing.

It was gone, like everything else.

She gave a broken, despairing sob and then drew her head back and smashed it against the glass and iron as hard as she could.

She did it again.

And again.

There was blood streaming into her eyes, but she kept going.

An arm closed around her waist, and a hand clamped over both wrists as she was dragged away from the window. A wash of red ran down the glass.

She fought, trying to twist her hands free, ignoring the pain that shot through them, digging her toes into the iron bars in the floor trying to lunge free.

“Don’t—don’t.” Ferron’s voice was in her ear.

Her vision had gone red as blood flooded down her face, and she was screaming. All the guilt and anguish that she had pressed down swallowed her whole. She screamed as if she could shatter the world with it.

She wanted to be done.

She couldn’t betray everyone. Luc. Lila. Soren. Matron Pace. Her father …

“I can’t—” She strained again to get free, clawing empty air as she grasped towards the window.

His hand around her wrists let go, and then his palm was pressed against her forehead.

“No—!”

It was too late. His resonance poured through her. It was as if she were a tapestry. He found the threads of emotion and ripped them out.

He didn’t sedate or paralyse her. It was worse, more violating than that. He took away all the things she felt, leaving her mind scrambling, trying to reconcile the dissonance.

It was like the tablets, except he only used his resonance to keep her there for as long as it took, until her body finally lost all the drive of those now vanished emotions.

The fight drained out of her. She hung limp against him.

There was blood streaming down her face, dripping from her chin.

His hand was stained with it when it fell away.

He used just the tips of his fingers to heal the splits and gouges across her forehead.

She could feel his resonance in her skull.

“Slight fracture,” he said, and the remaining pain had mostly seeped away before he finally let her go.

She stood, empty and lost. He’d gutted her emotions so deeply, it was like trying to reach into the bottom of a well.

She looked towards the bloodstained window and considered a second attempt, but there was no point. He’d just do it again until she was hollowed out and compliant. A statue worn featureless.

Ferron turned her to face him, his eyes still silver-bright. “Why?”

She stared dully back at him; her head was still throbbing. At least something hurt.

“Why what?” she asked.

“Why this sudden need to go so far?” There was movement behind him. One of the necrothralls entered the room, both hands full, the door left open behind her. It was the older woman, but for a moment there was something strangely lifelike about her.

She was not as stilted and blank as Helena was accustomed to; she moved more like a lich.

Under Helena’s scrutiny, she slowed and grew more mechanical as she brought a bowl and cloth over and began wiping Helena’s face clean.

“Why not?” Helena said in a dead voice. “I’ve always been trying to kill myself. You know that.”

His eyes narrowed. “You know as well as I do that that wouldn’t have killed you.”

She made no response.

“If you won’t tell me, I’ll look for myself,” he said when she refused to reply.

Helena recoiled, jerking her face away from attempts to get the remaining blood from the corners of her eyes.

She opened her mouth several times before she could speak. “I think there’s something wrong with me,” she said at last.

He gave her a sidelong glance which communicated that this was obvious.

“It’s a survival instinct or”—her body was so taut with humiliation that the words choked her—“a coping mechanism, maybe.”

She looked away. “I read this research proposal once at the Institute. The author had an idea of trying to make test subjects emotionally attached to their—superior.”

Her voice was straining, threatening to fail.

“He believed that with his methods, he could make subjects proactively compliant. That if they were conditioned with a sufficiently strong sense of dependence, they would begin to rationalise and justify any—any harm they suffered, and even try to form an emotional connection or even feelings towards the person controlling them, as a sort of survival instinct.”

She felt as though she might pass out. She could feel the weight of Ferron’s eyes on her.

“It was just a proposal, I don’t know that there was any truth to it, but lately, I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said, her voice straining.

She stared across the room to the bloodstained window. “I would rather spend the rest of my life being raped in Central than spend a minute of it having feelings for you.”

The air in the room seemed to freeze.

“Well,” Ferron said after a long silence, “with luck you’re pregnant, and there will be no need for either choice. You’ll be left to yourself.”

He turned away, and Helena’s resolve shattered. Her hand darted out, catching hold of his coat to stop him.

Her body was shaking but she couldn’t let go. She gripped harder. She didn’t want to be alone; she couldn’t bear it.

His hand rose, resting on her shoulder, and that was all it took. She crumpled, huddling closer. She could barely feel his fingers on her arm, but breathing no longer felt like a rope burn dragged through her lungs. She dropped her head against his chest.

She was so tired of the space around her always being cold and empty and endless.

Ferron’s head suddenly whipped around as he shoved her away. Helena stumbled back, falling against the bed. His eyes had gone wide and there was something strained in his expression, his gaze flicking around the room and then towards the open door.

Then he gave a soft, bitter laugh.

“Oh, you’re pathetic, aren’t you?” he said. “Survival? Really?”

She didn’t know what he meant.

He laughed again. “You expect me to believe that you suddenly care about surviving? When everyone in the Resistance has always been so rabid to die for their cause? But you’re different? Even though you’ve been fantasising a grand murder-suicide for the two of us for months?”