Page 49 of Alchemised

He crouched in front of her, and she had never seen his face this vicious.

There was a raw malice in his eyes. “No, the thing eating you alive isn’t surviving or some subconscious instinct to appease me.

What you can’t bear is the isolation. The Eternal Flame’s lonely little healer, with no one left to save.

No one needs you, and no one wants you.”

He smiled at her, his grin almost fanged.

“That’s all this is. You can’t bear being alone.

You’ll do anything for the people who’ll let you love them.

” He raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t that what the war was?

You wanted to fight, but when they realised what you were, Ilva Holdfast decided you were better suited as Holdfast’s sacrificial lamb.

They put you on death row before Holdfast even saw combat. ”

“That’s—not—how—it—was.” Helena’s hands were clenched into fists, the punctures in her palm beneath her fingers.

“That is exactly how it was. You know, Falcon Matias left his quarters almost entirely intact. He had a whole stack of correspondence from Ilva dated from when you were in training. She knew all she had to do was dangle Holdfast’s life over your head, and you’d do whatever she asked.

” He tilted his head back. “You would have done anything for your friends: made all the hard choices, paid the price without complaint, whored yourself for the war effort. But tell me … because I am sincerely curious, what did Holdfast ever do for you to deserve it?”

She glared at him through burning eyes. “Luc was my friend. He was my best friend.”

“So?”

Helena drew a shuddering breath, looking away.

“My father gave up everything so I could study at the Institute, but—it was—it was hard. I—I didn’t want him to know how hard it was.

” There was a feeling like a stone lodged in her throat.

“But I was—so afraid I’d fail and I—I didn’t know anyone.

Luc could have been friends with anyone, but he picked me.

I wouldn’t have had anyone without him.”

“So, what now?” Ferron said, straightening his coat, erasing the divots in the fabric where Helena’s fingers had crumpled it. “I’m your replacement Holdfast, is that it? If anyone makes the mistake of speaking to you, you can’t help but latch on to them?”

Helena shrank away, but Ferron wasn’t done. “Let me be very clear, then. I don’t want you. I never wanted you. I am not your friend. There is nothing I want more than the moment I’m finally done with you.”

He turned and left.

W HEN S TROUD RETURNED TWO WEEKS later, Helena sat wordlessly for examination. The time had passed in such a dull haze, she’d scarcely even been aware of the days. Like a ghost, she’d let the world slip by around her while she remained frozen in time.

“You’re looking rather grey,” Stroud said, her mouth quirking. “How did the High Reeve’s efforts progress?”

Helena’s throat closed and she said nothing, staring down at her lap, rolling the thin linen fabric of her slip between her fingers.

“Lie back,” Stroud said, setting her satchel on the bedside table.

Stroud pulled Helena’s slip up and aside, setting a cold hand on the lowest part of her abdomen. “It might be too early to tell, but sometimes I’m able to. In your case, the sooner we know, the better.”

Helena’s head pulsed with her heartbeat.

Stroud’s eyebrows furrowed her face into rows of wrinkles as her resonance prodded deeper. A look of surprise swept across her face. “You’re pregnant.”

Helena felt nothing at first. The words were abstract. Conceptual.

Then they ran her through like a longsword.

There were no emotions built up inside her, though; Ferron had ripped them out, and she was still empty.

So she fell inwards.

It was like being forced deep under freezing water: no air, simply unending pressure that crushed her on all sides. Her heart surged until the roar of her blood was all she could hear.

Stroud was still speaking. Helena couldn’t make out the words.

No.

Please, no.

No. No. No.

This was her fault. She’d complied, she hadn’t struggled.

Stroud was still talking to her, speaking more loudly. The words muffled away, the sounds rounded and indecipherable.

The room blurred, threatening to dim. Helena’s throat compressed, strangling her. A sharp stabbing pain ripped through her chest, something tearing open inside of her.

No. Please. No.

Stroud reached out, fingers pressing against the side of Helena’s neck, and Helena started screaming.

Not with anguish as she had with Ferron, but shattering screams like a dying rabbit. Sharp, quick, repetitive. They kept bursting out of her.

Stroud seemed bewildered. She slapped Helena hard across the face.

Helena couldn’t stop screaming.

Everything was bleeding together, the edges of her vision fading.

Ferron was in front of her, his hands on her shoulders.

“Calm down.” His voice was hard, but his hands weren’t. He pulled her close until the world narrowed into the space between them. “Breathe.”

He squeezed her shoulders hard enough to reach through the numbness.

“Come on. You have to breathe.”

Helena managed one ragged breath and burst into tears.

“No …” Her voice rose staccato. “No, no, no. Please. No ! ”

“Keep breathing, that’s all you have to do. You breathe,” Ferron said, his expression drawn. The muscles in his jaw were taut.

He turned to glare at Stroud without letting go.

“You know she is prone to fits. You cannot spring something like that on her,” he said in a low voice.

Stroud straightened. “You said she was afraid of shadows. If she’s going to keep adding things perpetually, you should make a list and put them up on the wall somewhere.” She rolled her eyes, arms crossed at her chest. “Shouldn’t she be glad to know the conception efforts are over?”

“No. And you should have known that. I’m beginning to think you’re purposely torturing her. Why is that?”

“I’m not,” Stroud said, too quickly.

Ferron’s eyes narrowed. “Do be honest. You won’t enjoy the way I take answers.”

Stroud paled, eyes darting towards the door, as if measuring the distance. “The High Necromancer says that she’s the one who bombed the West Port Lab. We’d won. It was our victory day, and she—she killed Bennet! His years of work. My work. All our experiments. She destroyed all of it.”

There was a long pause, and Ferron’s eyes turned to slits.

“I appreciate you have a fanatical devotion to his memory, but psychologically torturing a prisoner does very little when she has no memory that it even happened. Neither your program nor your rank grant you personal revenge on my prisoner.”

He let go of Helena, turning on Stroud, pulling off his gloves.

“You appear to have forgotten that I do not suffer fools tampering with her. I have gone to considerable expense and effort to maintain her environ ment, regardless of how inflated your sense of importance is over being outside of the lab when it exploded. The only reason you hold any rank whatsoever is because those more suited to the task are all dead. If anything, you should be grateful to her. You’d be no one now if anyone else had survived. ”

Stroud went white, nostrils flaring. “I worked at Bennet’s side. My repopulation program is—”

“A farce. A convenient cover for the High Necromancer to achieve his ends and sate the endless appetites of his loyalists,” Ferron sneered at her.

“The only reason you survived was because you were a glorified lab assistant, sent off to retrieve new subjects. Without Shiseo, you’d have nothing to show for your time running Central.

You think it isn’t noticeable how little you’ve produced since his departure?

It’s no wonder you were so eager to launch your repopulation program. ”

Ferron had that same scathing, unrelenting intensity that he’d levelled upon Aurelia.

“After you threatened to commandeer my assignation, I investigated your little project. You boast so freely to the papers, I was curious to see what remarkable data you must have to show for it. I was something of an academic myself once. Do you mind telling me about your controls? Or the statistics and historical data? No matter where I look, I can only find anecdotes in unsubstantiated newspaper articles.”

“Things—are st-still in the early stages—” Stroud stammered, her face now a stark combination of white with red-stained cheeks. “I am a legitimate—”

“Your ‘program’ is a spectacle.” Ferron’s voice grew low and taunting. “Your lab assistants are better qualified than you are. Vivimancy is the only unique skill you possess, and I am far more competent in that field than you.”

Ferron gestured towards the butler, standing near the door. “Show Stroud out, and don’t ever let her inside this house again unless I’m present to personally escort her.”

Stroud huffed, muttering about speaking to the High Necromancer, but her hands trembled violently as she gathered her files. When the door shut, Ferron turned back to Helena.

She could feel his stare without looking up.

He reached towards her, and she went stiff. He didn’t touch her face; instead, his fingers slid along the nape of her neck, finding the dip of her skull.

She looked up then, but there was no emotion on his face. He could have been marble.

“I don’t trust you to be conscious right now,” he said.

She felt his resonance, delicate as the prick of a needle.

Heaviness swept through her like a black tidal wave, dragging her down.

“No …” she choked out, not sure what she was protesting. Everything.

But the world slipped from her grasp. She was dimly aware of her legs being lifted onto the bed, the duvet pulled over her.

“I’m so sorry.”