Page 82 of Alchemised

K NOWING THAT HER DAILY HEALING PILGRIMAGE WAS coming to an end, Helena found herself taking a sense of proprietary pride in her work.

She hadn’t been sure a full recovery was possible, but now the wasted, skeletal version of Kaine had vanished completely.

When he was dressed, a person might not even realise he’d been injured.

When the Abeyance arrived, Crowther still had not sent word or issued orders. The choice to heal Kaine, and whatever consequences arose from it, would rest entirely upon her.

Helena packed her satchel in preparation, and she was applying the finishing touches on what she hoped would be the last batch of numbing salve when there was a knock at the door.

She turned just as Luc entered.

“I didn’t know you had a lab,” he said, pausing and looking around the small room. What had once been a ramshackle workstation had been transformed into a true alchemist’s workshop, filled with crucibles, flasks, and shelves stocked with a variety of alembics and cucurbits.

“I wanted to help make ends meet during the supply shortages in the hospital,” she said, eyes darting past him to see if there was anyone else with him.

She used to dream about Luc visiting her lab, seeing her work, and realising everything she was doing for him, but instead of elation, all she felt was worry.

She couldn’t be late tonight.

Luc smiled, but it was one of the broad ones he made when performing. “Sol always provides, doesn’t he? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It just—never came up, I guess,” she said, twisting the jar of salve in her hands.

His smile vanished. “Well, I guess there’s a lot I don’t know, isn’t there?”

Her spine went rigid.

He wasn’t looking at her. “I went to see Falcon Matias. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t have talked about you like that in the meeting, that you’d only done what you’d been asked.

And he told me that you were censured, months ago, and that’s why he doesn’t trust you, and why there are new healers.

Because you proposed using necromancy on our dead soldiers. ”

He gave a dry laugh. “Apparently everyone knew about it except me.”

Helena’s mouth went dry. “Don’t be mad at Lila,” she said. “She wasn’t there, either.”

Luc’s jaw clenched. “I know she wasn’t. But she still found out. Soren told her, but no one told me. You could have told me.”

She blinked hard. “I was afraid you’d think it meant I didn’t believe in you, and I do, I just—want this to be over.”

“Hel …” He looked down, fidgeting with the ignition rings on his fingers. “This isn’t your war.”

She flinched. “What do you mean, it’s not my war? I’ve been here from the start. I promised you—” She shook her head. “You’d never say this to Lila. To anyone else.”

He looked pained as he shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t, because everyone else knows that in the battle between good and evil, it gets worse before it gets better. That it’s our job to stay the path and not give into the temptation of doing what’s easy.”

Her throat closed, and she stepped back, her eyes burning with hurt. Easy?

“Look, I know you meant well, you were just trying to help, and to you it seems like there’s a solution right there that we’re wasting, but we’re— I’m held to a different standard than that. Sol expects more. And—if you want to be a part of this, you have to believe that.”

She could see Matias’s plan now, making Luc think it would be better and kinder to send her away. That she didn’t belong, someone like her couldn’t understand the Northern Faith and Northern ways. Then Luc would see it as a sacrifice, as giving her up, not punishing her, if he sent her away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was wrong, I know that now. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

He exhaled. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.

This is all my fault. I leave you here alone all the time and assume you’ll be fine, but that’s not fair.

I’m going to fix this.” He nodded. “Starting tonight. The unit’s on reserve because of the Abeyance.

How about I show you that array? We can catch up and do—anything you want.

You can show me what mad genius things you’re up to in here.

” He smiled his crooked smile. “What do you say?”

He held out his hand.

“I have work tonight,” she said, her voice painfully small. “Abeyance is alchemically significant for—things.”

“Oh. Right … well,” he forced a smile, “next time, then.”

She managed a nod and a tight smile back. Her eyes returned to the clock, gauging the distance to the Outpost, the fastest she could get there. Even if she ran the whole way, even if the checkpoint had no line, she wasn’t going to make it in time.

Luc was still standing there, clearly hoping she’d change her mind.

She turned away awkwardly and started measuring things, pretending she’d forgotten him, but it took more than a minute of painful silence before he quietly left.

Before the door shut, she heard Lila’s voice say, “I’m sorry, Luc.”

Helena’s hands went still, and she waited, trying to guess how long it would take for them to reach the stairs or the lifts so that they wouldn’t see her leaving. While she waited, she pushed the conversation away, down within her mind and memory, trying to make it stop clawing her heart open.

H ELENA RAN ONCE SHE REACHED the bridge. She was still ten minutes late.

Kaine raised an eyebrow when she burst in, so breathless she doubled over.

“I thought you were finally standing me up,” he said.

She braced her hands on her knees, catching her breath. “Someone—wanted to talk. Couldn’t—rush off.”

There was an atrocious stitch in her side. She pressed her hand against it, trying to soothe the ligaments. Her lungs were burning.

Still winded, she got to work, pulling out all her supplies from the medical satchel strapped over her shoulder and belted at the waist.

“Do you always carry this much in that bag of yours?” Kaine asked as he watched.

“Usually it’s empty, so I can fill it up in the wetlands.” She looked at him more closely. “How do you feel?”

He tilted his head, considering. “My regeneration is slower right now, and the array doesn’t feel like a screw being twisted through my consciousness. It’s lovely.”

He took a sip of something amber, swaying, and she realised that he was slightly drunk. Slower regeneration indeed.

“That’s good, because I think it’s best if I keep you conscious for this,” she said. “I’ll need you to move as I work, to make sure the new tissue won’t tear or heal rigid, because it might keep regenerating that way.” She drew a deep breath. “This is probably going to hurt a lot.”

“You wouldn’t believe how often people say that to me.”

“I’m serious.” She sterilised her hands. “Drinking is probably for the best tonight.”

Beginning on his left shoulder, she pressed two fingers very close to one of the incisions. He tensed, but it had been a long time now since he’d flinched at her touch.

The edges of the wound looked freshly cut. The effect of the lumithium was weaker because of the Abeyance.

Extrapolating heavily on the way he’d regenerated when he lost his arm, she believed her vivimancy could guide his regeneration back on track, but she had to proceed cautiously. Make a mistake and he might be stuck with it.

She applied a thick layer of topical opium to the area she wasn’t working on.

“Ready?”

He nodded.

She began with a small section where the titanium-lumithium alloy had been fused into the bone, regenerating enough tissue to close the incision over the metal. Not too much scar tissue, but not too little.

Once formed, the tissue stayed alive. Ferron’s regenerative abilities were finally strong enough to withstand the array’s energy.

She made him fully rotate, extend, arch, and stretch his shoulder. The other incisions began to bleed. Helena winced.

The new scar tissue pulled, threatening to tear. She tried altering the tissue composition to increase its elasticity, but the regeneration was stubborn.

She used a scalpel to cut it away, and as she’d feared, it began regenerating back. She had to use her own resonance to suppress his regeneration as she sliced the healed tissue open and started again.

Kaine said nothing, but his breathing was shallow, and his resonance hummed through the air.

When she finished with the first array point, she could no longer feel the lumithium there, as if he’d internalised it.

She completed a second one before Kaine finally broke.

“I need a minute.” His voice was shaking as he stood and walked over to the bar. He grabbed the closest bottle and drank straight out of it.

She wiped her forehead with a cloth, realising only then how hard her heart was pounding.

Kaine returned, gripping one bottle by the neck and two more laced in the fingers of his other hand, dropping onto the chair and pressing his forehead against the back of it.

He drank steadily through the rest of the night until there was an accumulation of bottles littered around him.

It was enough alcohol to kill most people.

Helena’s hands began to cramp. Every time she had to pause to massage them and force her fingers back into compliance, Kaine would go and retrieve another bottle.

When it was finally over, she wiped away the remaining blood and applied a copper-based ointment.

The scars were all an angry, agitated red, but every incision was finally closed.

“There.” She felt lightheaded, as if she were high in the mountains, the air turned thin.

Kaine said nothing, finishing the bottle in his hand.

She turned, wincing at the mess of bloodstained linen and all the dirty instruments. Even with the ports open, they were always short on bandages.

She wiped the tools clean and packed everything away.

When she turned back, Kaine had stood. His shoulders were twisting and contorting as he moved.

Small movements at first, but they progressed until his arms were overhead, his back arched like a strung bow.

He gave the most indecent-sounding moan, his face slack with relief.

His arms dropped to his sides as he drew a deep breath, shoulders still rotating, giving a low shuddering sigh that Helena felt through her own nerves.

She snatched up her satchel, lightheaded with exhaustion and relief. “Well, I’ll be off now.”

He turned instantly. His eyes were dark, but there was that silvery sheen to them she’d noticed a few times before.

His movements were loose and languid, the way he used to move, except now he looked entirely different from the boy he’d been a few months ago.

Not just because of the silver threading at his temples, or because pain had reset his expression into something much harder.

He’d aged, his body seemingly lurching through time.

“Why so eager to be off?” he said.

She felt like a cornered animal. She hadn’t realised how accustomed she’d grown to his injury, to the energy he devoted to tolerating the pain.

His full attention was blistering.

“Got someone waiting for you?” he asked when she tried to sidle towards the door.

The question caught her off guard. She blinked, a lump rising in her throat.

“No,” she said.

He grinned. “Nor I. Let’s drink in celebration. What do you want?”

He went to the bar, scanning the remaining bottles.

“I think the once was enough—”

He picked up a bottle, sniffing it and holding it up in the light. “This one.”

He came over, decanter in hand, and Helena was nearly overcome with the instinct to bolt. He was intoxicated. Properly drunk, from the combination of alcohol and the euphoria of being healed.

The way he moved reminded her of a panther she’d once seen in the zoo. No bandages, no shirt. There was so much bare skin and now that she was not healing it, it was simply there.

She backed into the wall. “I’m not sure—”

“Stay,” he said softly, and his head dipped so close she felt his breath in her hair. “You know, there’s something about you, Marino, that inspires the most terrible decisions from me. I’ll know better, but then I’ll still …”

His voice trailed off as he tucked a stray curl behind her ear, finger running along her jaw.

She knew she should stay. For the purpose of her mission, staying during moments like this was her job. The point of healing him. But he was so hard to predict; he was in a good mood now, but there was no knowing how long it would last.

What kind of person was Kaine Ferron without inhibition?

Her throat closed, threatening to choke her. She wanted to leave.

His thumb tilted her chin up as he stared at her through darkening eyes.

“You have such a singular mind. Even when I’m not inside it, I can still see it churning away behind those eyes of yours.”

Helena’s pulse thrummed. He pressed the decanter into her hands, and when she looked down and tried to hand it back, he took her face in both hands, tilting it up so she had to meet his stare.

His hazel-grey eyes were gone, replaced by a silver-bright glow.

This was no mere transmutation; Kaine Ferron was becoming something altogether new. She had finalised the process with her bare hands, drawn into completion something that he alone knew the entire purpose of.

“Stay,” he said, his voice coaxing, pleasure-soaked, his face so close to hers. “Have a drink with me.”

Instead of perpetually ice-sharp and guarded, he felt like something she might drown in.

“Just—one drink,” she said, her voice barely wavering.

He smiled. The first real smile she’d ever seen from him.

“One drink,” he said.

He pressed a finger beneath the decanter she held, lifting it up, and watching as she brought it to her lips.