Page 60 of Alchemised

She should have felt relief but instead she was horrified by his proposal.

This wasn’t what she wanted. She was supposed to begin her mission at once; the longer it took to start, the more likely it was that Ferron would lose interest before she had a hold on him.

But how was she supposed to say that without making her intentions obvious?

He seemed to notice her discomfort at the offer and gave a slow, wolfish smile. “In the meantime, I’ll let you go running back to your precious Eternal Flame with my information and find other means of enjoying your company.”

The thought of consenting to whatever awful thing he wanted was bad enough, but being forced to remain dreading it was worse.

She slid a hand behind her back, curling it into a tight fist until her nails bit into her palm, the almost healed cuts all throbbing, threatening to split open again.

“That’s—generous of you,” she said in what she hoped was a convincingly meek voice.

“Yes, I am generous. However.” Ferron suddenly looked appraising. “I do think you should give me something, at least.” The smile he flashed was viperine. “After all, I did have to give up some rather precious information to earn you. Surely I deserve something in return, to warm my cold heart.”

Helena’s stomach dropped, her equilibrium vanishing.

“What—what do you want?” she asked in a stiff voice.

She tried to calculate the likely options, but she was already drowning in possibilities. She didn’t like to think about the kinds of things men considered a favour.

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.” He pulled an expression of mock grief, pouting and looking so young that she almost physically recoiled.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked through gritted teeth. “Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

He gave a barking laugh. “My gods, Marino. You are desperate.”

“I’m here. I assumed that was obvious,” she said in a deadened voice, unable to look at him anymore.

“Well, since you’re a void of creativity when it comes to gratitude: Kiss me like you mean it,” he said, and then as if it were an afterthought, he added, “Based on your performance, I’ll decide how much information I feel inspired to part with.”

A kiss? Just a kiss? That was better than she’d expected, but she still didn’t want to go anywhere near him.

He was goading her. That was obvious. From the moment she’d knocked on that door, everything he’d done was intended to keep her on edge.

This kiss was intended to compound that.

To seal her sense of humiliation and cement her resentment towards him, the belief that she was only being spared further shame through his leniency.

He expected her to hate him, to be so distracted by her emotions that she was easy to manipulate into fuelling her own misery.

It was a game. None of this was real. She was a toy, something he’d thrown into his list of demands as a diversion tactic. She wasn’t a part of his real plan.

She had to remember that.

She stepped towards him.

Ferron was meticulously composed, from his smoothly manicured nails to his ageless face, all hiding the monster that lurked beneath his skin.

His pupils were contracted, his eyes flat with disinterest.

She gathered her resonance until she could feel its hum in her fingertips and tempered it faint as spider silk.

She wouldn’t manipulate him yet—it was much too early—but the kiss was an opportunity to touch him, to discover what he felt like. And what he felt for her. It would give her a starting point.

She slid her arms around his neck, not letting her bare hands touch his skin yet. Her fingers skimmed across the fine dark wool of his coat, pulling him forward.

He smirked as he leaned in, like it was fun.

When their lips were almost touching, she hesitated, almost expecting him to shove his hand straight into her chest and rip her heart out, the way he’d killed Luc’s father.

She trembled, and she knew he felt it.

His breath smelled like juniper: peppery, sharp, and fresh-cut.

His eyes were languid again, lashes low as he met her eyes. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her.

Murderers are still men, she told herself. And he was merely a boy.

So she gave him a slow, sweet kiss, the way she could imagine herself kissing someone she was keen on. She didn’t try to make it enticing or seductive. She let it be tentative. A first kiss, because it was her first kiss.

As she kissed him, she let her fingertips brush the back of his neck, fingers sliding up through his hair, following the curvature of his skull, and then she let a whisper of her resonance slip beneath his skin.

Ferron was not human.

She knew that the Undying were unnatural, but she hadn’t been prepared for how unnatural he would feel.

She could sense him, map him as she might anyone else, the beat of his heart, his nerves, veins, the currents of energy, all the interconnected facets of a body, but it felt wrong. Like trying to touch a mirror’s reflection rather than a person.

Ferron was there, physically. And he was alive, technically. But he was immutable in a way that her mind simply refused to comprehend.

She couldn’t let herself focus on it. She had to pay attention to what she was supposed to be doing, which was kissing him. Yet she found his physiology far more interesting than his mouth.

She let one of her hands slide down, palm pressed against his face, giving herself more direct contact, pulling him closer. She was losing focus, but his body fascinated her.

How was this possible? She couldn’t help but press a little closer.

The tempo of his heartbeat altered and then altered again.

Her mind abruptly recalled the physical reality of what she was doing: Her arm was around his neck, one hand on his face, body arched against his to counter the height disparity.

He jerked away from her.

It startled her, but she dropped her hands immediately, trying not to breathe hard or seem as disoriented as she felt. Had he noticed her resonance? She searched for signs of suspicion or anger in his expression.

His eyes were darker, and he looked significantly less composed with his hair rumpled and falling over his face.

“Well.” He blinked and shook his head. “That was certainly—something.” He ran a gloved thumb across his mouth.

“You are full of surprises,” he added after a moment, voice lower than before.

Helena wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she just said the first thing that popped into her head. “Do you say that to every girl?”

He huffed a laugh and ran his hand through his hair to brush it off his face. “No, I can’t say I do.”

There was a pause.

He’d probably been expecting her to bite him.

Heat rose across her face. She wished she had, but his physiology was so interesting. She couldn’t just encounter something like that and ignore it.

He cleared his throat. “I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket and tossed an object to her.

She caught it reflexively, studying it. It was a tarnished silver ring; she knew it by both sight and resonance, although her silver resonance was minimal, not high enough for her repertoire to be considered noble.

However, this ring was hand-forged rather than transmutationally crafted; she could see the hammer marks that had beaten a scaled, almost geometric pattern onto it.

A bizarre thing for an iron alchemist to have.

“A symbol of our relationship,” Ferron said, and when she looked up sharply, he raised his right hand to indicate a matching band on his index finger.

“There’s a mirrored entanglement in them.

If I do anything to mine, you’ll feel it.

I’ll transmute it to warm briefly if I need to meet.

Twice if it’s urgent. I’d advise coming very quickly if it ever burns twice. ”

She inspected the ring. Mirrored entanglement was the way her call bracelet from the hospital worked.

It was a form of transmutation that was incredibly rare.

Few alchemists had the ability to manage it.

It made the pieces very valuable, but they were only useful as long as the entangled pieces were accounted for.

The Eternal Flame kept a strict tally of everyone who carried one.

She tried slipping it on the forefinger of her left hand since it was her non-dominant transmutation hand but found it too small. She resigned herself, sliding it down her left ring finger.

“My resonance for silver is only passable, but I think I can manage a temperature shift. Do I call you the same way?” she asked.

“No,” he said sharply, his voice startlingly vehement. “ You don’t ever summon me. You burn me, ever, and this deal is off. I’m not a fucking dog. If you want me, you can come here and wait or leave a note, and I’ll get around to it when I have time.”

The viciousness was startling after all his mocking calm. Crowther was right: Ferron didn’t want to be ruled by anyone. It was power he craved.

“Well, I can’t always come immediately,” she said. “It could be noticed if I’m going out at odd times. Barring emergencies, it’d be better if we stick to a schedule.”

“Fine.”

“Every Saturnis and Martiday I go out for medical supplies just before daybreak. No one will notice if I come back a little later. Would that work for you? I could do different days, if you’d rather.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s fine. If I can’t make it for some reason, come back again in the evening.”

“What if I can’t?” Helena asked, not understanding why he was so averse to using the rings for more than basic signalling. The trek to the Outpost was hardly short enough to be worth making unnecessarily.

“I’m sure I can figure it out,” he said, lip curling as he looked at her. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out two envelopes, selecting one.

“My first instalment, then,” he said as he held it out.

She took it from him. It was addressed to an Aurelia Ingram.

“Crowther has the cipher already,” Ferron said as she stood, studying the address. “I trust he has the sense not to use everything at once.”

“Your service will be one of the Resistance’s most carefully protected secrets. We’re not going to do anything that might risk compromising you.”

He gave a vague nod. “Then I’ll see you on Martiday. Now get out, and make sure you take a different route when you leave.”