CHAPTER 30
Aprilis 1786
BEFORE THE NEXT MARTIDAY, HELENA SUBMITTED FOR and received a standard- issue alchemical knife. Because of the chimaeras, she skipped foraging and went directly towards the Outpost, casting a wistful glance over the wetlands as she turned towards the dam.
There had been more than ten chimaeras spotted outside the city, mostly wandering the banks of the West Island. There were no deaths reported yet, but many of the people trapped in the city and on the Outpost relied on the river for food. It was only a matter of time.
Several units were being assembled into hunting parties. Predictably, Luc had immediately volunteered his battalion.
Inside the tenement, the door to the unit had been replaced. Helena hoped it was a good sign as she let herself in.
Her cloak and jacket, both abandoned by her flight, were on a table, neatly
folded.
Ferron was not there.
She walked around the room, inspecting it. There were remnants of a kitchen, and a far door revealed a filthy bathroom, the sink chipped and stained as if there’d been chemicals poured down it. At least it had a bathroom. Some of the tenements in the low districts were so old, they didn’t even have that.
She sat, fingers curling against her palm, using her resonance to tamp down her rising unease and keep her thoughts from anxiously spiralling. It
was fine, Ferron was just late.
The minutes dragged on.
She hadn’t told Crowther or Ilva what had happened. She’d passed it off as a brief meeting; Ferron had warned of the chimaeras and she’d hurried back, no mention of anything else.
But if Ferron didn’t show up, she would have to tell Crowther, explain what had gone wrong. Her chest grew so tight she could barely breathe.
When ten minutes had passed, she forced herself to accept that Ferron was not coming, but as she pulled her satchel up onto her shoulder, the door clicked and he walked in.
He didn’t seem at all surprised to find her still waiting there.
He closed the door and stood in front of it, his expression unreadable, body eerily still. It was strange how empty his posture was.
Helena had relied heavily on body language after moving to Paladia. Etras was culturally expressive; words, expressions, gestures were all part of d a standard-communication. Northerners were canny, and they often communicated more through subtext than their actual words.
That was why Helena had been so drawn to Luc: He wasn’t like that; he didn’t say things he didn’t mean. With other Paladians, Helena had learned to decipher what they meant through their bodies instead of their mouths.
However, Ferron’s body said almost nothing. He reminded her of a gambler, hiding his tells. There was nothing about him that indicated his current mood.
“I’m sorry,” she said, breaking the tense silence. “I shouldn’t have said that last week. I lost my head. I’ll do—whatever you want to make it up to you.”
Ferron didn’t react beyond his eyes flickering briefly.
“It’s fine,” he said after a moment, his voice void. “When I specified willing, that meant you were allowed to say no. Although, perhaps try saying it next time, instead of provoking me.”
Helena looked at him in astonishment. From the moment Ilva and Crowther had told her the terms, she’d assumed her willingness, once given, was irrevocable.
Anything that happened after, she’d already agreed to.
She didn’t believe him. He’d mentioned looking forward to her regret.
That didn’t imply any permission to change her mind or refuse what was demanded. No, he was altering the terms of their agreement because of what
she’d said to him.
Her eyes narrowed appraisingly.
Her suspicion seemed to anger him. Irritation flashed across his face. ssed it off asShe averted her eyes; best not to provoke him again. Given time, he’d be sure to change his mind, to redefine the terms to suit his ends, but in this
moment, he wanted to believe he had some kind of moral code, that there
were things he was above.
She nodded as if she believed him.
“I have an alchemy knife now,” she said, hoping the change of subject would distract him.
He held out a gloved hand. “Let me see it.” adable, bodyHe took it carefully, his gloves not even grazing her skin. He now seemed overly aware of her.
He inspected the knife, testing the balance. Despite his gloves, the blade morphed, the knife edge spiralling around the inner core. nicated moreThe purpose was to stab when the blade was flat, transmute, and pull out, leaving a massive wound. The larger a wound, the longer it took the Undying to recover, and the quicker necrothralls were rendered immobile. The blade ad learned tocould also be manipulated into a range of lengths, but that took effort and required familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of the alloy to keep it from being shattered.
Because it was standard-issue, the knife had been forged using lumithium emanations to increase its resonance. That way, alchemists with limited steel have said thatresonance could still transmute it. Helena’s natural resonance didn’t need supplementing—it made the alloy resonance feel uneven—but she was assured that she’d get used to it.
“Are you trained with a knife?” he finally asked.
She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask that. “No.”
“You’d do better with something longer, then.” He flipped it in his hand, catching it deftly; slicing through the air, it morphed into a curving blade. “If anything gets close enough for you to use this, you’re already dead.”
The Resistance was not going to give a noncombatant anything but a basic weapon. “But … anything bigger is more noticeable. I’d be more likely to get stopped.”
“Mmm,” was all the answer she got as he transmuted the blade back to its
base form.
“Any news about the chimaeras?”
He handed back the knife. “Four are already dead. They don’t tolerate the cold very well.” His mouth twisted with amusement. “Bennet’s in high dudgeon.”
“Where did the animals come from?” Crowther had told her to ask.
“He’s using whatever he can. Domestic animals are the most easily accessed, but larger predators are preferable. I believe there’ve been a few hunting trips into the mountains. There was also the zoo.”
“It seems a lot of work just to have them die in the wetlands.”
Ferron gave an absent shrug. His eyes avoided her, instead looking almost anywhere else in the room. “There’s not much else that they’re good for.
They’re not manageable. There are rumours the High Necromancer feels misled about the project’s potential and the resources involved.”
He pulled out an envelope, but rather than handing it over, he set it on the table and left without another word.
It was the same routine for the next several times. Ferron would arrive, the Undyingoccasionally answer a few questions, and then leave. Sometimes he was there for less than five minutes.
There was no more mention of any training. Each time, Helena had to admit to Crowther that she had no progress to report. Ferron’s information continued to be good, but Helena was little more than a glorified mail carrier.
She kept training the other healers, and working in her lab, where she now had an unofficial assistant. Shiseo was a small, balding man with dark eyes.
He could read and understand Northern dialect fluently but spoke very little.
He caught on to the techniques of chymiatria quickly but kept to himself, shadowing Helena at a conscientious arm’s length. Helena knew she should appreciate him—after all, she had asked for help—but with the trainees and now a lab assistant, there was nowhere left for her to go where she wasn’t reminded that the accommodations were there because her priority was supposed to be Ferron.
Everything else was theatre now, a cover for a mission she was failing.
e likely to get FERRON WAS LATE AGAIN. HE was often late, but he’d never left her waiting this long. She dreaded the thought of going back empty-handed, but at least the trip hadn’t been a complete waste of her time.
She’d resumed foraging. The chimaeras had mostly died, and it felt criminal to miss the entire spring harvest. The river was rising, the floodwalls were marked to track the steady creep of Lumithia’s Ascendant phase, and the mountain wind was losing its icy edge, which meant that soon the snowmelt would come rushing into the basin and the wetlands would be left underwater until nearly summer.
She opened her satchel and started sorting her harvest, blinking to concentrate.
She’d been so tired lately. Hospital shifts sometimes left her so exhausted, she could barely make it to her room.
She knew it was a sign she was over-expending herself healing, but she’d always healed that way, and it had never bothered her before. She couldn’t understand it. The Toll wasn’t supposed to take effect so suddenly, but she couldn’t think of what else it could be.
She stared stupidly at the bundles of gathered herbs. Eventually, she leaned forward, resting her head on her arms. Her eyes fluttered shut.
The mechanism in the door startled her awake. She jolted upright. How he was therelong had she been asleep?
A gear in the door spun, but the lock didn’t click and the door didn’t open.
There was a pause.
Helena shot to her feet as she heard the gear begin moving again, grinding mail carrier.slowly, as if the lock were being picked.
She fumbled for her satchel, digging for her knife. As her fingers wrapped around the hilt, the door swung inward. A stripe of red ran down the centre of
it, topped with a scarlet handprint.
Ferron stood, swaying in the doorway.
His face deathly pale, his eyes out of focus.
The knife slipped from her fingers. “What happened?”
He looked at her as if confused to find her there. “Ss-nothing.” He waved her off with his right hand as he got clear of the door, more blood spattering on the floor. There was a trail running down the hallway.
“You’re … you’re injured?” It was half a question. She didn’t know he could be injured. Wasn’t he supposed to be instantly regenerative? How could he be bleeding like this?
She started reaching for the clasp on his cloak, trying to see the extent of the wound.
He shoved her away, recoiling. “What are you doing?” No pride now, he moved like a stray expecting to be beaten, the whites of his eyes glaring. he floodwallsHer fingers where she’d touched him were wet with blood. “You’re hurt.”
He slumped, looking down slowly. “Be fine—” His words slurred. “Jsst— need a minute …”
He slumped against the wall. Blood was trickling in a constant stream from his left sleeve, forming a pool on the floor. Just the sight of it threatened to
send Helena into a frenzy.
Blood loss was dangerous. The Resistance lost more people from exsanguination than anything else. Staunching a bleed was something everyone was expected to know how to do properly and efficiently. Too much blood loss and even plasma expanders and saline wouldn’t be enough.
How much blood could Ferron lose? Immortal or not, surely it couldn’t be infinite.
She held her hands apart, palms showing, her voice placating. “I’m a— y, she leanedmedic, Ferron. Let me help.”
He stared at her, dazed, as if he needed time to process the information.
“What happened?” she asked, risking a step closer.
Blood was still flowing at an impossible rate.
Finally, he shook his head. “Just lost my arm.”
As if to prove it, he unclasped his cloak. Both it and his grey coat fell off, revealing that there was nothing but scraps of burned fabric beneath, and a haemorrhage of blood where his left arm should have been.
He swayed, his eyes losing focus. “It’ll grow back. But it’s—taking a the centre ofwhile.”
Helena had never seen the Undying regenerate in person. Combatants described it as nightmarish and rapid, bones shooting out, muscles and tendons wrapping around, and then pale skin emerging from the raw tissue like mould.
All her time in the hospital testing the bounds of regenerated tissue, it was hard for her to believe that anyone could regrow an entire limb.
She’d tried growing back fingers once, but the amount of spontaneous regeneration it required was simply too much. Healing had hard limits. The Undying seemingly did not.
Ferron’s arm looked as if it had been torn off. She stepped towards him, but he tensed again. She halted, mind spinning. Maybe she’d try talking again first. He seemed responsive to questions.
“I thought regeneration happened right away.”
“Sometimes—takes longer,” he said through gritted teeth, walking over and dropping into a chair. His head lolled back. “Lot of damage …”
“There was more?”
His face, tight with pain, pulled into a taut smile as he looked at her. “I stream fromhave command of a new district …”
His voice trailed off. He straightened as if trying to rouse himself, blinking several times. “Previous commander—rather attached to it.” He gave a lopsided shrug. “Insulted his mother—few times. Insinuated some unfavourable things about his wife and a certain horse.” His head lolled back again. “Didn’t like that. Duelled to the death. Well—close as we can get. I won, so now I get his command posts.”
The last words were garbled. He was mostly talking inside his mouth.
He gave a barking laugh so abrupt that Helena jumped.
“He was a pyromancer, though. The arm’s nothing compared with the burns. They were—worse. Gone now. Usually I can—” He gestured at himself. “But I’m—”
Whatever he was, his voice trailed off before he could specify.
She never would have thought that pain and chronic blood loss would be the trick for making Ferron talkative, but that was far more words in succession than she’d heard from him in weeks.
His eyes went out of focus. His breathing had grown shallow, almost stopping. He was going into shock.
“Why are you here? You didn’t have to come.” She stepped tentatively closer, prepared to be shoved away again.
He blinked slowly, staring up at her. His pupils had dilated so much, the black nearly swallowed the irises.
“Marino …” He sighed, as if it were obvious. He was still talking inside his mouth, lips barely moving. “Once I’m done here, I intend to drink so much I won’t remember my own name for the next three days. I have a map —somewhere.” He patted awkwardly at himself with his remaining arm and only then seemed to realise that his clothes were ashen scraps. “Fuck …”
Helena steeled herself and stepped closer.
“Ferron,” she said gently but firmly, “I have medical experience. I’m going talking againto check you and see if there’s anything I can do to help.”
He didn’t seem to hear her, and didn’t resist as she pressed fingers against his neck under the pretence of taking his pulse, cautiously using her resonance to find out what was wrong with him.
However unnatural he had felt the first time she’d used her resonance on him, it was a thousand times stranger this time. He was losing so much blood, he should be dead, but somewhere in his chest, a power source like a beacon was radiating out, regenerating him faster than he could die.
self, blinkingThe lumithium talisman. That must be it. The source of the Undying’s power.
Nonetheless, his body was trying very hard to die anyway.
Helena could recognise newly regenerated tissue, and he was covered in it.
Most of his torso and face had been regenerated all the way down to the bones. Several of his organs seemed new as well.
However, it was the nonstop blood loss that was the problem. The body was not made to produce blood at even a fraction of the rate he was losing it.
It was stripping him of resources to pull blood out of nowhere, all so that he could dump it out on the floor. A nonstop destructive loop. His body was so preoccupied with making more blood, it couldn’t expend the resources necessary to regrow his arm and thereby end the blood loss.
Apparently somewhere in his anomalous regenerative abilities, the concept of blood clotting had been lost.
Helena drew a careful breath and spoke with as much assurance as she could manage.
“Admittedly, you’re the first immortal person that I’ve treated, but you really need to stop bleeding this much.” She pulled at the remaining tatters of his shirt. It crumbled away.
She didn’t think that staunching the blood loss would cause regeneration issues.
“Let’s get you onto the table,” she said, pulling his existent arm over her shoulder and dragging him to his feet. It was fortunate that he was all limbs, because he was a deadweight to get up and onto his back. His eyes had fluttered closed, and he was nonresponsive, his chest barely rising.
She doubted he was conscious, but she maintained the charade of being a medic just to be sure. Using the heels of both hands, she pressed down on his ce. I’m goingshoulder to conceal her resonance as she constricted the veins and arteries in his arm.
It was remarkable how quickly that alone stabilised him.
Once he was no longer bleeding to death, his arm immediately started regenerating. She watched, mesmerised, as the bone burst out, expanding, muscles wrapping around it, regenerating his biceps, the elbow, the radius, much blood,and the ulna.
She couldn’t help but release her resonance a bit more as she watched, trying to get a feel for—whatever he was. Wanting to understand how it
worked. His body had already stopped feeling like it was on the verge of death.
The bones in his hand unfurled, and the veins and muscle tissue wove covered in it.around them, and by the time it was done, she would never have known he’d lost the arm.
She eased the pressure of her hands off his shoulder as she reopened the arteries and veins, letting the blood rush through all the new tissue. The muscles in Ferron’s arm rapidly evolved into established tissue.
She’d never considered regenerating more than new tissue, but as she felt Ferron’s body reverting itself to its former state, she wondered if she could.
There was no reason she had to stop there at basic regeneration.
The power radiating from inside Ferron’s chest faded until it was barely , the conceptdiscernible. A vague knot of energy and lumithium. It felt tiny for something with so much power.
She didn’t dare push deeper, but she didn’t pull her hands away.
Of all the contexts in which she’d imagined Ferron half naked in her presence, healing or medical care had not crossed her mind, although it was ing tatters ofinfinitely preferable to kissing him.
She was comfortable with this kind of physical contact.
She studied him as his heartbeat finally dropped to a steady rhythm, colour slowly leaching back into his body as the blood loss faded away.
He was—even in the most generous terms—gangly. There was hardly a trace of body fat on him. She could see his ribs, the jut of his sternum, bony shoulders. He had long limbs and knobby elbows. Stripped down, he looked so young.
It was no wonder Ferron wore a good three layers of uniform in an effort not to look so overtly juvenile.
Her fingers traced absently across his now unmarred skin.
She couldn’t imagine being trapped in the body of a sixteen-year-old for eternity.
“Do you leer at and fondle all your unconscious patients, or am I special?”
Ferron’s voice was as unexpected as a bucket of ice water.
Helena started, her heart slamming into her throat as she snatched her hands away, her face scorching hot.
“I was not,” she said, her voice tight and rising, even though she had no excuse for touching him that way. “I was just wondering about your body fat ratio.”
“Of course you were,” he said, sitting up with a suggestive smirk.
She could probably heat the entire tenement with the amount she was blushing.
“I wasn’t leering at you,” she said forcefully. “You look scarcely grown. I don’t fancy boys.”
The smirk vanished. He stared at her for a painfully long moment and stood up. “As I recall,” he finally said, his voice clipped, “I never asked you to look at all.”
He went over and picked up his cloak, which was the only part of his clothing that wasn’t nearly burned to ashes, and pulled it on. It smeared him
all over with blood.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“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.”
ythm, colour HELENA FELT HAUNTED BY FERRON 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.
a person, but“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, ’t understandmight 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, but HelenaIt 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. walked over,“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.” picked a dayHelena 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.”
u not all right
between them
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.”