Page 65 of Alchemised

She averted her eyes. “I don’t know, I don’t keep track of things like that.” She shoved the knife back into her satchel; her fingers stayed wrapped around the handle, its varnish worn away but the wood smooth from use. “I’m rather busy.”

“Well, now I know what I’m doing with you next,” he said with a sigh. “I thought your mind would be the biggest danger to me, but it turns out you’re somehow still a walking liability. I’m not wasting my time training a new contact after all the time I’ve wasted on you.”

Helena sighed. “It’s not necessary. No one’s ever bothered me.”

Ferron raised an eyebrow. “You think there’s only going to be one chimaera out there? Bennet’s been working on this project for years. Now that he’s cracked it, he’ll have the barrens and low districts overrun with the creatures. What you saw is one of the early prototypes.”

“Tell us how to kill them, then,” she said sharply. “We’re not going to give up food and medicine because you psychopaths decided to set monsters loose everywhere.”

She was already being pulled in so many directions, she couldn’t stand to think about having to add combat training.

“Obviously, I’ll be working on that,” he said through gritted teeth. “That’s why I called you here, to let you know to be alert for them. If you’re going out there, you have to be trained.”

Helena gave an exasperated huff, turning towards the door. “Then I’ll drill at Headquarters.”

She unlocked the door as he spoke again.

“You don’t want me to train you?” His voice had turned slippery and dangerous. “Why not? I’d have thought you’d prefer to fill our time with training rather than with some of the other activities I could demand.”

Helena stopped short and looked back. He was cornering her.

He must have realised that she was supposed to seduce him, even if he didn’t have any idea of her vivimancy. Damn it all.

“Fine,” she snapped. “You can train me.”

She knew already that whatever physical training he chose would probably be even worse than the mental training he’d already subjected her to. Combat training hardly seemed the context in which to evoke a sense of obsessive want.

Violent want was more likely.

There was a dull pounding in her head. She could feel Luc being pulled further and further from reach. All light in her life disappearing.

“You look so bitter.” Ferron’s mocking voice drew her back. His eyes glittered. “You’d think I just demanded you fuck me rather than not. Disappointed?”

Slow rage was seeping through her. “Do you always buy your company?”

It was only a guess, but Ferron seemed the type. Guild families with a tradition of resonance-based marriages had reputations for wandering into the beds of others. Marriage among the guilds was as much a business arrangement as the silk entertainment houses on the West Island.

Ferron’s eyes gleamed. “I admit, I enjoy the professionalism,” he said with a shrug. “Clear lines. No expectations. And I don’t have to pretend I care.” His lip curled at the last word, as though caring were the most offensive concept known to man.

“Of course. How very you.”

“Quite,” he agreed with a thin smile.

She wished she could hurt him, that there was a way for her to do it that counted.

He hurt her so much, without even trying, without needing to know anything about her. He’d simply spoken her name and reduced her to property, his whims locking an iron chain around her throat.

“Do you talk to them, tell them all about the tragic life you’ve had? Or are you just in and out, quick as you can?” she asked, her voice lilting with the taunt.

His eyes flashed.

“Want me to show you?” His voice was sharp and cold as a splinter of ice.

She met his eyes and raised her chin. “You won’t.”

His expression hardened. She knew that she could goad him if she kept going.

She’d finally get it over with, stop enduring Crowther and Ilva’s search for signs that she’d been ravished or ravaged. Stop lying awake at night, cold with dread, wondering when it would finally happen. She was sick of waiting. Of wondering on and on. Like bracing for a sword to fall.

She kept talking. “It would be too real for you, wouldn’t it? If it was someone you knew. I think that’s why you haven’t. You’re afraid I’ll mess with those clear lines, so you’re making up all these excuses about needing to train me.”

The muscle in his jaw rippled.

“Testing me, Marino?” His voice was cool, like the flat side of a knife blade.

She didn’t blink. “Yes. I am.”

There. She’d done it now.

He walked towards her across that cold, filthy room, and rather than quicken, her heart slowed. Each beat heavy, drawn out as he leaned forward until their eyes were level.

“Strip.”

It was all he said.

She couldn’t move.

She knew she was supposed to do whatever he wanted. That was the deal she’d made. And she’d wanted it to be over, but now her body wouldn’t obey.

She stood frozen. The tenement was nothing but an empty room with a chipped tile floor and a wooden table, and every aspect of Ferron that she could read screamed that he was about to exact a profound degree of cruelty upon her.

“I see now.” He smiled like a wolf. All teeth. “It’s been killing you, hasn’t it? Wondering. You expected me to do this to you right off. The waiting—trying to guess when I might get around to it—that bothers you more than having to fuck me. Well, you have your wish. Take your clothes off, Marino.”

She barely managed to swallow. Her ears were ringing until she could scarcely hear herself think.

He wasn’t even aroused. She could tell. He was doing it to teach her a lesson.

Crowther was wrong. He was so desperate to get some kind of leverage on Ferron, he’d convinced himself of some kind of slowly germinat ing obsession, but there wasn’t any. Ferron had simply identified what Crowther wanted to believe about him.

The whole mission was pointless.

Her jaw began to tremble uncontrollably. “You don’t even want me. Why did you ask for me?”

He laughed. “You’re right, I don’t want you, but owning you will never get old. As long as you live. What a promise to make. I wonder how much I can make you regret it.” His teeth flashed again. “Take your clothes off, Marino. It’s time to see what I’ve been paying for.”

Her hands trembled as she reached up and began unfastening the top button of her shirt.

“It’s power that gets you off, isn’t it?

” Her voice shook with rage as she forced herself to move down to the next button.

“Hurting people is the only way you know how to feel anything. But now even that barely does it for you, so you have to find new ways to do it, make your victims responsible for their pain; making it a choice they made, a vow they consented to. That’s what thrills you now.

Using what people care about to coerce and enslave them rather than having to do the physical work of hurting.

” She scoffed in his face. “You think you’re better than us because you’re immortal, but you’re dead inside already. ”

She said it despite knowing he’d probably enjoy her attempt at bravado, because she wanted to say it at least once. He didn’t laugh at her words, though; instead the malice in Ferron’s expression vanished.

He stood there staring at her, growing paler and paler.

Then something metal inside the walls of the tenement groaned and the air hummed.

Helena could feel Ferron’s resonance in the room, an uncontrolled surge of energy distorting the room.

This was one of the many reasons alchemists were dangerous.

When they lost control, their resonance could expand beyond them.

It was a combat technique, but without stability and control, it could annihilate anything within their repertoire.

And Ferron was a vivimancer, which meant Helena was within his repertoire. She could feel his resonance in her bones.

Her skin vibrated. A thrum ran through her heart.

Ferron’s expression contorted into one of pure rage. “Get out!”

She didn’t move, terrified that in an instant she’d be atomised.

He snarled and turned away from her, and the door warped, the sharp sound of metal and mechanisms splintering as it folded in on itself and split apart, writhing as if alive.

“Get out!”

Helena did not need further invitation. She bolted through the door, leaping across the wreckage and fleeing down the stairs so fast, she slammed into the landing wall. She shoved herself back to her feet and fled the Outpost.