Page 69 of Alchemised

“Your meaning was incredibly clear,” he said in a cool voice, his jaw set.

“Ferron,” she said, the idea abruptly occurring to her, and she wondered why she’d never thought to ask before. “Was it a punishment for you—being made Undying?”

He glanced at her, his face empty. “How could immortality be a punishment? It’s what everyone wants.”

H ELENA FELT HAUNTED BY F ERRON when she returned to Headquarters—not only by his answer, but by everything about the interaction.

For months, he’d been something bloodless and soulless. Not a person, but an evil to endure and an obstacle to overcome. Seeing him injured, stripped of the shell of a uniform that he hid inside, had altered her perception of him.

There was a fragility that she had been unprepared for.

He’d seemed so human, and she didn’t like thinking of him as human.

Undying. Murderer. Spy. Target. Tool.

That was how she needed to view Ferron.

Not as someone who could be hurt. Not as someone who didn’t understand blood loss and who rambled explanations. Not as someone who assumed a hand extended was meant to hurt him.

For so long, all she’d seen was his pride and anger. Now she couldn’t help but feel that there was something terribly tragic about him, straining beneath the surface.

She felt an urgent need to smother that feeling.

Kaine Ferron was the enemy. The war was his fault. He’d murdered Luc’s father.

She washed his blood off her hands, getting ready for her shift in the hospital before remembering that she was off that day. She sat on her bed, staring at her notes, trying to make sense of the tangled contradictory emotions inside her.

The door opened, and Lila strode in, decked out in practice armour. She stopped short at the sight of Helena.

“You’re here.”

Helena closed her notebook. “Pace is having one of my trainees cover my shift today. She wants to see how they’ll perform on their own.” Her lips pursed. “I’m not allowed to be there because apparently I glare and it makes people nervous.”

Lila nodded, propping her weapon against the wall and then straightening her braid and cracking her neck in both directions as Helena winced.

“You do glare,” Lila said, unclasping her armour. “You’re going to get loads of wrinkles right here.” She touched the spot between her eyebrows.

Helena rolled her eyes and dropped her notebook casually into her trunk, her fingers bumping against the amulet. It felt strangely warm. A familiar solace. She almost picked it up but then turned her hand, staring at the scars on her palm instead.

“Not really something I worry about,” she said quietly.

“Hel … you all right?”

Her head shot up. “Yes. Why?”

Lila shifted, her unfastened armour clanking. She was always in armour. She even slept in a light mesh set, saying she felt naked without it, but Helena knew she was afraid of making the mistake her uncle Sebastian had as Principate Apollo’s paladin, of believing that anywhere was safe for Luc.

“You’ve seemed off lately. I thought you’d be glad about the new healers, might relax a little bit, but you seem—” Lila hesitated. “Withdrawn. You’re always disappearing. Luc’s noticed.”

“I just worry, is all,” Helena said. “Any luck killing the chimaeras?”

“No. We did go out yesterday, but they’re freakishly fast. I had one almost cornered, but it smelled atrocious. Worse than the greys. I could have killed it, but my gods, I couldn’t even see straight and then—” She shook her head abruptly. “Why are we talking about chimaeras?”

Helena averted her eyes.

“Screw you.” Lila gave a huff of exasperation.

“Don’t distract me by changing the subject.

I don’t want to talk about chimaeras.” She walked over, her right leg clicking with each step until she was standing over Helena.

“You’ve been off and you haven’t been in meetings lately.

I finally pried what happened out of Soren yesterday.

So good job to you all, that was an impressive amount of secret keeping. ”

Helena went tense. “Does Luc know, too?”

“No.”

Helena released a breath. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lila said nothing for a moment. “Couldn’t help but notice you picked a day when Luc and I weren’t there.”

“I would have said it anyway,” Helena said, picking at her cuticles.

The skin around her nails was cracked and ragged from constant washing, and there were still traces of Ferron’s blood under them.

“But I was glad Luc wasn’t there. I didn’t want him trapped in the middle of something.

I knew they’d say no. I just—I needed to say it.

Soren said that was a good battle for all of you, but in the hospital—we ran out of everything.

Beds, bandages, laudanum, and antiseptic.

And bodies kept coming, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t make up the difference. ”

Lila sat on the edge of Helena’s bed. “Are you—” Lila wasn’t looking at Helena and seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “Are you not all right anymore? Is that why you spoke and why there’s all the trainees now?”

There was a pause. Helena looked sharply at Lila, but Lila was focused on unfastening a buckle and didn’t meet her stare. It had never occurred to Helena that Lila might know of the Toll.

It was more than she could handle thinking about just then.

“No. I’m fine. The trainees are because Matias hopes to get rid of me.”

“Oh, good. I mean, not good, but that makes sense,” Lila said, and cleared her throat. “I can see why you’re not thrilled about them, then.”

Helena forced a laugh. But the tension, the new undercurrent between them lingered. It was Lila who spoke next.

“You know, you can talk about—anything with me, if you want.”

“No,” Helena said. “I don’t need to talk. There’s—no point in talking, and as I have now been reminded publicly, I’m not a fighter. I don’t know anything about what war really is. So—what would I even have to say?”

Lila’s prosthetic leg clicked as she shifted and then said, “I think the hospital’s worse than the battlefield.”

Helena went very still.

“I realised it when I was in there for my leg.” Lila’s gaze was faraway, eyebrows furrowing.

“At the front—everything’s so focused, you know.

The rules are simple. We win some. We lose some.

You get hit sometimes. You hit back. You get days to recover if it’s bad.

But—” She looked down, her fingers tapping absently along the place where her prosthetic was joined to her thigh.

“—in the hospital, every battle looks like losing. I can’t imagine what that’s like.

” She looked at Helena. “All you see in there is the worst of it.”

Helena said nothing.

Lila sighed and unclasped more pieces of her armour, leaving them all over Helena’s bed. “When Soren told me what you said—I don’t agree, but I get it.”

Helena didn’t answer.

Lila nudged her with her elbow and stood. “Even if the trainees are just because of Matias’s meddling, I’m glad you’re getting more time off. I think you’ve needed that—some space from it all.”