Page 96 of Alchemised

“You think it started then? You’ve always been expendable. Do you really think this war is about necromancy? That any of the wars have ever actually been about necromancy?”

She shook her head warily. “No. It’s always about power. And what people will do without caring about the cost.”

He tilted his head, studying her. “Have you never wondered why it was so easy for the High Necromancer to recruit the guild families? After all, plenty of them were devout, or owed their fortunes to the Institute.”

She shrugged. “Because you’re jealous and petty and wanted more than the plenty you already had.”

He raised an eyebrow as he pulled his blood-drenched clothes back on.

“Well, I suppose that was a part of it, but no, what Morrough did was widen a crack that the Holdfasts have been growing for centuries. Since the moment they founded this city, they set themselves up as kings while claiming not to be. They weren’t the lowly sort who’d ‘pursue’ power; no, they were divinely destined for it. Called, you might say.”

“That’s because they didn’t want to rule,” she said fiercely. “Luc certainly never did, and Apollo always cared most for the Institute. He hated politics.”

Kaine’s mouth twisted. “Yes. Funny how often people in power hate politics, as if what they really want is to do as they please and be praised for it, and if they aren’t, then it’s all beneath them.

Considering how much they despised it, they certainly were unwilling to part with it.

Only handed the minutiae of governance over to those of faith, let the Falcons and Kestrels and Shrikes manage all that tedium.

The Institute was founded on the idea of pursuing the heights of alchemy, but that began to crumble the moment the science began contradicting the Faith.

You should have seen the crisis when new metals were first discovered.

The Faith spent years insisting there could be only eight, calling them compounds or alloys, and refusing to formally acknowledge those guilds because religiously, celestially, the number was limited to eight.

So much for all those ideals of uniting the world through the study of alchemy. ”

He eyed Helena. “Of course, they couldn’t go back on all those promises completely, Orion’s legacy had to endure, so they’d import someone from time to time.

Some prodigy from a distant land that they could show off as proof of their magnanimity, to serve their ends while beholden to the Principate. ”

Fury rose in Helena like a volcano. “That’s not what they did!”

He flicked his eyes over her derisively. “You were a desperate scholarship student who nearly cried every year when your exam scores were listed because it bought you one more year of education, and your father lived near the water slums because he couldn’t get a job.”

“Yes, but if they’d been any more generous, you guilds would have thrown fits about it.”

“Why would that have mattered? We already hated you. It would have cost the Holdfasts a pittance to find your father some menial job, but if you’d ever been able to stop struggling, you might have realised what a web they had you trapped in.

I hear Ilva Holdfast was particularly talented at that kind of thing.

Always knew just how much pressure a person could take. ”

A sick feeling swept through her, but she shook her head.

“So all you guild students were just—what? Playing along?” she said scathingly.

He laughed. “No. We did hate you. Consider it from our perspective: You were the line the Holdfasts drew between the Eternal Flame and all the rest of us. Some little nobody plucked from obscurity and given the attention and praise that none of the guilds could ever earn. We built ourselves from the dirt and emptied our pocketbooks annually buying certification and lumithium from a family that could make wealth from nothing, and we were expected to be grateful to do so. When we looked up at what we wanted, you were the first thing in the way.”

A chill ran down her spine.

Kaine looked across the room. “When Morrough came here, he didn’t even have to offer immortality or riches.

He just offered to remove those who would never let us rise further.

With the Holdfasts gone, the Faith’s grip on Paladia was supposed to crumble.

An easy takeover. The city should have barely been affected.

Even the Institute was intended to be left intact. ”

“But then your father was arrested.”

He nodded, his eyes flat. “But then my father was arrested, and it was all a lie anyway, but by the time those who’d object realised that, it was too late for them.”

“There were Undying who objected?” Her pulse sped up, thinking about potential sympathisers. This was critical information. This could change everything.

He nodded idly.

“Who?” She leaned in. “Who objected?”

“You really want to know?”

She nodded, fervently.

He reached out, fingers wrapping around her throat, and pulled her close. “Basilius Blackthorne. Recognise that name?”

Her blood ran cold. Yes, she knew it.

“Blackthorne was—?”

“Quite the monster now, isn’t he? I told you about the phylacteries, remember?” His fingers around her throat tightened. She gave a small nod, heart rising.

“After I killed Principate Apollo, Basilius said he’d never agreed to such methods and bloodshed.

Morrough—he still went by Morrough back then—pretended to give this some consideration.

He called a meeting of us all. We hadn’t known our numbers until that night.

Morrough said he wanted us all there, to see him change Basilius’s mind.

He brought out Basilius’s phylactery in a box and reminded us that we had all entrusted ourselves to him, and then he began carving into it using a talon ring.

Basilius began to scream and tear at his own body, until there were pieces of him all over the floor, but it never stopped, he just kept regenerating.

Over and over until the floor was covered.

When Morrough was finally done, I’m told Basilius went home and ate his wife alive in their marriage bed.

I believe he had children, too. All gone. ”

Kaine described it without emotion, his fingers still wrapped around her throat.

“We are all expendable to Morrough. So you see, I am intimately acquainted with the illusion of choice.” He smiled, slow and cruel. “That’s why I recognise it.”

She shook her head, and he gripped her tighter, until she could feel her pulse against his palm. Her heart was pounding in her chest. He leaned in, looming over her, and she could tell he wanted her to be afraid of him. But she wasn’t. Not anymore.

“Luc isn’t like that,” she said. “The reason I remain loyal to him is because I know he’d do the same for me.”

His eyes turned black. “Really?”

His thumb had found the curve of her jaw. There was faint colour in the pale hollows of his cheeks. His eyes darted down to her lips, and she felt the draw between them. A feeling like a string instrument, stretched taut and ready to vibrate.

He drew her closer until their faces were nearly touching, and everything around them seemed to fade away. She watched his lips part, hesitating, so close she could taste his breath. He inhaled.

“And what would your dear Luc say if he learned how you let his father’s killer buy you like a whore?” As he spoke, his free hand found her waist and he pulled her close, hand sliding up her body, groping her as if he were about to push her down and ravish her there on the bare floor.

But his eyes were cold.

There was no desire. It was a pantomime of their kiss, now performed with rough indifference, as he reminded her of who it was she’d willingly given herself to.

She jerked away, skittering across the floor until she was out of reach.

He just laughed.

Her cheekbones ached, body going hot and cold as she curled in ward, trying to compose herself. As if there was any point. What a grotesque and pathetic creature she was.

Property. No, not even that.

She was a trinket. Something he’d thrown into his demands. So insignificant that Ilva and Crowther had looked at her and seen no reason to refuse.

He could talk all he wanted about how her education was to leverage her, how the Holdfasts were to blame. But he was the one who’d turned her into a whore.

Sometimes she wished she’d died in the hospital with her father, to be remembered and mourned for her possibilities, rather than live day by day growing ever lesser.

Now it didn’t matter if she’d been an alchemist, or a healer, or anything else.

To anyone who ever learned of it, she would only be that one thing.

Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.

But worse still was knowing all that and still craving those rare moments in which he was gentle. Because that was all she had left.

“I have to go,” she finally forced out. “Do you have—do you have any information this week?”

It was almost ironic to ask that question right then.

He reached into his discarded coat, pulling out an envelope, its edges bloodstained.

He tossed it, letting it land on the floor between them.

H ELENA WAS OUTWARDLY CALM WHEN she returned to Headquarters, but her hands were shaking as she presented the shards to Crowther and received instructions to have Shiseo analyse them. She took them to the lab and went down to the hospital for her shift.

She wished it wasn’t such a quiet day. She couldn’t stop thinking.

She returned to the empty lab after curfew and sat, left alone with herself.

It was nearly the winter solstice. The North had many feasting traditions from back when they’d slaughter the animals they couldn’t feed through the winter before the new year set in, sharing supplies so that everyone would survive until spring.

In modern times, supplies had been replaced with gifts: books, crafts, puzzles, things to while away the dark hours of the long Northern winters.