Page 53 of Alchemised

“Yes, just now,” Helena said, even though she knew that wasn’t what Rhea was really asking. “You take such good care of him.”

Rhea’s smile faded when Helena added nothing else. She looked down, twisting her fingers.

“Good. Good. Yes. That’s good to hear.” Rhea cleared her throat as she stepped over to a shelf and took a package down, holding it out. “I’m glad you came. You missed the earliest festivities, but this one’s for you.”

Helena stared at the outstretched gift, her face growing hot. “Oh, but I didn’t—I didn’t realise there’d be—presents. I didn’t bring—”

“You keep my children alive. We’ll call it even.”

Helena sat down and pulled off the paper string, opening it. Inside the package lay a knitted green pullover, intricately made with raised patterns reminiscent of alchemy symbols. “Oh. This is beautiful. This is too much; I can’t take something like this.”

Rhea seemed pleased by how stunned Helena was. “I wasn’t sure about your colours, or your resonance aside from titanium, but Lila mentioned you like the barrens, so I thought the green would suit.”

“This must have taken so much time.”

Rhea sighed. “Knitting keeps my hands busy. My parents are from the lowlands in Novis; lots of sheep there. My mother always sends me skeins along with her letters, trying to convince me to bring Titus to live with them.” She pressed her lips together.

“He would like the sheep. But the twins are here. Besides, there’s not much chance of a cure for Titus if we go. ”

Helena ran her fingers along the patterns nervously. “I’ll try to do some more research, see if I can find anything new.”

“Thank you—” Rhea began but then broke off. “Titus, no! We don’t do that.”

Helena watched as Rhea hurried over and tried to pry someone’s crutch from Titus’s hands.

“Helena, can you find Sebastian?” Rhea said, her voice forcefully cheery as she half wrestled with her husband, who, while usually gentle, was twice her size and sometimes threw tantrums.

Helena hurried from room to room, looking for Sebastian. He was in the little entry at the front door, avoiding everyone under the pretence of acting as a welcoming committee.

Helena barely opened her mouth before he seemed to know. “Titus?”

He was gone in an instant. Helena stood, clutching the knitted pullover in her hands. Her opportunity to exit was clear before her. No one would notice if she slipped away.

“You’re already going?”

She looked around guiltily and found Luc standing behind her, two mugs of mulled wine in his hands.

“I have another shift soon,” she said, grateful that it was the truth. Luc had always teased her for being a terrible liar. Her face, he’d once said, was disastrously honest.

His eyebrows knit together. “They have you back-to-back like that today?”

“Not usually, but everyone wanted the solstice off,” she said. “And they know it’s not really a tradition in the south, so they just assume I don’t have any plans, and—they’re right. I don’t really have people like they do.”

His eyebrows rose. “Am I not people anymore?”

She managed a smile. “Of course you are, but you’re busy. Everyone wants you.”

He dropped down on the slender bench by the door and held out one of the mugs. “Stay. You haven’t even been here ten minutes.”

She glanced towards the other rooms to see if anyone had noticed, knowing they undoubtedly had because Luc would always be immediately missed. If Soren and Lila weren’t shadowing him, that was only because they already knew where he was and were giving him the space he’d asked for.

She could hear Lila in the next room, her voice raised dramatically, telling the story of Orion and the great battle against the Necromancer during the first Necromancy War. The children were scampering in from all corners to listen.

Lila had a mysterious allure when it came to children; she could be in armour and covered in blood, and toddlers would still want her to pick them up. And she would, and a minute later she’d be playing peekaboo with her helmet visor.

Soren was standing near the doorway, wearing a look of grave interest in a story he’d heard a hundred thousand times. Helena caught the corner of his eye for an instant before he pretended not to notice her or Luc.

This interception was carefully coordinated.

“I miss you,” Luc said as she took the mug, resigning herself to Ilva’s impending lecture. Luc nudged her with his elbow as she sat beside him. “Every time I look for you, you’re busy or slipping off somewhere.”

She gripped the mug tighter. “Well, my job starts when yours ends. That’s probably why,” she said. “But I’m always here when you need me.”

She sipped the wine. It was warm but also sour and barely spiced; the shortages were eating into all the supplies.

“Same goes for you. Just because you’re a healer doesn’t mean you don’t get breaks. If you’re getting called in for too many shifts, tell me. I’ll get it fixed.”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry, Ilva always looks after me.”

After all, Ilva considered Helena a vital asset. The Eternal Flame had only one healer, and while they couldn’t afford to lose her, they also couldn’t afford not to use her. They couldn’t take any more losses.

“That’s good. It’s nice knowing there’s one person I never have to worry about,” he said, eyes fluttering closed for a moment, exhaustion visible in his face.

Lila’s voice rose, deep and dramatic. “The dead surrounded them on all sides. Orion and his faithful paladins stood back-to-back. Darkness all around, the only light the fire in Orion’s hands …”

Luc sighed. “You’re going to clear Lila, aren’t you?”

Helena peered into her mug. “She’s ready. There’s no reason not to, and she’s the best at what she does, which is keeping you alive.”

There came a series of gasps from the children in the next room as Lila described the paladins battling horde after horde of necrothralls while Orion fought the Necromancer alone.

“What if the reason is that I don’t want her cleared?” Luc said, his voice barely audible.

Helena looked over. Now he was the one avoiding her eyes, his jaw jutting stubbornly forward.

“You know,” he said, “when she took the vows, I thought, at least if she was always there to protect me, it meant I’d be there to protect her, too.

” He rubbed the ignition ring on his thumb against the rim of the mug.

“But I’m not—not always. She acts like that’s the job, getting chopped into bits in front of me.

She’s already saved my life more times than I can count, and that’s supposed to be fine”—his eyebrows furrowed together—“because I’ll win the war, so it’ll all even out in the end.

Just like Orion. Except I don’t know how to do that.

And she just keeps getting hit and I’m supposed to keep letting her. ”

He swallowed hard.

There were too many people, too many lives, balancing on his shoulders. Everyone was always watching, waiting for him to intuitively manifest a miracle like the one Lila was presently describing in vivid detail to gasps and cheers.

Luc’s sense of failure ran through him like a fault line, waiting to rupture. Every death and every scar that Lila and Soren bore adding to it.

He spoke again. “Everyone keeps saying, We’re almost there, and It has to get worse before it gets better, and It’s a crucible, and I just have to prove true … but what if I can’t? What if that’s why things are like this?”

He looked at her, his face stricken, guilt written across it, all the doubt he was not supposed to feel. The Principate was supposed to be unwavering, faith manifest, Sol’s divinity come to earth.

Everyone went out ready to die for him at any moment, so how could he betray their faith by doubting himself.

“Holy white flames rose everywhere, consuming every necrothrall,” Lila’s voice boomed grandly.

Sitting there beside Helena, Luc was an orphan with centuries of legacy resting on his shoulders, and no more idea of how to single-handedly win a war than anyone else.

Helena shook her head. “Luc, I don’t believe in you because anyone ever said I should.

I’m here because there’s no one braver or kinder than you.

You’re all the good things that anyone ever hopes to be.

We’re not here because you tricked us.” She touched his wrist with her gloved fingers for just a moment.

“The reason we believe in you is because if you’re not good enough, then no one is. ”

He shook his head. “Orion was. All my forefathers were. Nothing like this ever happened to any of them. A necromancer showed up, and they stopped them, simple as that, but I’ve tried everything, and I can’t—”

“Their wars were easier than this one,” Helena said forcefully.

“None of them were anything like this, except maybe Orion’s, but even then, it was simpler, because, like Lila just said, he could fill the valley with fire that reached the mountaintops and burn down everything.

Even if you could do that, there’s a city with thousands and thousands of people around you.

Orion only fought one necromancer in his whole life.

There’s no reason to think any of them could fight this war better.

You’re doing your best, and if the gods don’t see that, they’re blind—”

“Don’t say things like that,” he said, cutting her off. “That’s not helping.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and she didn’t know what else to say; nothing ever seemed to be right.

“Where the Necromancer had stood, there was nothing but ashes,” Lila said in a climactic voice.

“What was the Necromancer’s name?” came a small piping voice.

“No one knows,” Lila said with an air of mystery. “Anyone who knew, he’d killed. Where was I? Oh yes, even now, Orion’s whole body was arrayed in holy sunfire, and using his pyromancy, he took that fire and lit a brazier.”

“I thought you said everything was burned up in the great waves of fire except the paladins and Orion,” the little voice interrupted again.

There was a mixture of laughter and shushing.

“Well, as it happened, this iron brazier was not burned away in the great waves of fire,” Lila said in a mock-solemn voice.

“And so Orion placed the holy fire into it, and before his paladins and the dawning sun, he swore a solemn oath that so long as he and his descendants drew breath, the fire would not go out, and the flames would be carried to destroy the rot of necromancy wherever it festered, and—”

“I thought there was a stone,” came the piping voice once more, ap parently revolting against the shushing. “When my dad tells the story, his version has a stone in it.”

“Well, this version doesn’t have a stone,” Lila said quickly, trying to finish the story. “Anyway—”

“I like it better when it has the stone,” contributed another small voice.

Helena set the mug down, glancing at Luc, who was clearly distracted by Lila’s squabbling over his family history with a pack of children.

“Luc, I have to go now,” she said. “Don’t lose hope, though. We’re always here for you. The days will get brighter.”

He gave a wan smile and a listless nod. “I know.”

The nearly moonless sky loomed overhead as she stepped outside, bright with winter stars. She let out a harsh breath which rose like a fog, blotting them out.

She turned her eyes to the Alchemy Tower ahead, still and always illuminated by Orion Holdfast’s Eternal Flame.

Luc was the only Holdfast left now to keep that promise and sustain the fire, but after five years, the war had become a battle of attrition. No amount of healing, or fire, or paladins was enough to win against the ever-growing army of necrothralls.

She stared at the beacon of light, heart clenching at the thought that it might go out, that Luc would be the last because no one could save him from his destiny.

She looked down at her hands, curling her fingers inside the gloves and slowly opening them, drawing a deep breath.

“You promised you’d do anything for him.”