CHAPTER 46
Decembris 1786
A MONTH. THE DAYS FELT BRANDED INTO HER bones. Helena couldn’t sleep that night. The future haunted her. There was an Ember Service before first light as Falcon Matias consecrated the coming year to Sol’s guidance, and then Helena began her hospital shift.
She felt cornered, as if the world were closing in, and there was no escape.
No one to turn to.
She tried to push her dread down using animancy, but it consumed her utterly; every thought led to the same despair.
When her shift was over, she went to the desk to see if she could perhaps stay on for the next one. Surely someone would rather celebrate solstice, and Helena could keep busy.
Purnell was on duty at the hospital desk, wearing a pin with SOFIA P etched into it. Helena tensed at the sight of her, and before she could speak, Purnell held out a slip of paper.
“The steward said to give you this when your shift was over.”
Helena hesitated a moment before reading it.
There were only a few words. As thanks for all her hard work, Ilva had ensured Helena could have a few hours off to attend the solstice celebrations at Solis Splendour. Luc would be present and happy to see her. Rhea was expecting her.
Helena stared dully at the obvious manipulation.
Ilva was losing her touch. Or perhaps Helena was finally getting wise to her.
She put on the green wool pullover that Rhea had gifted her over her uniform and made her way to Solis Splendour. It was already dark, the year
and the sun both preparing for rebirth.
In four weeks, Kaine would be dead.
She barely knocked on the door, but it swung immediately open, and warmth and light, music and laughter all spilled out. She squinted, dazed.
Had she knocked at the wrong house?
“Marino? I didn’t know you were coming.” It was Alister, one of the boys from Luc’s unit. He held the door for her. “Come in. We’ve got loads of food.”
Helena entered, feeling as if she’d somehow stepped out of reality into a dreamlike version of Solis Splendour. The house was lively, decorated with tinsel and streamers and bits of evergreen, and the children ran through like a pack of feral puppies. n’t sleep thatShe knew the faces, recognised people, but everything felt different.
Wrong.
Why was everyone so happy?
There was music from a gramophone and drunken laughter filling the next room. A mug of mulled wine was shoved into her hands before she’d gotten across the room, and she sipped it on instinct. It was warm and sweet, instead of sour and watery from being stretched.
The signs of their access to the ports and river trade were everywhere, but all she could think was Kaine did this, remembering the wounds lacerating his back, the dead tissue rotting and poisoning him. He’d been gaunt and grey, paper-thin, and he’d just wanted to know if it worked.
The room blurred. She wandered in a daze until she caught sight of Titus Bayard sitting cross-legged on the floor, peeling oranges. They must have come all the way from the southern coast. There was a small mountain of peeled fruit on the table beside him.
Helena searched for other familiar faces.
Lila was sitting crammed in an armchair with Soren, who was wearing the expression of a beleaguered cat.
Ever since her injury, Soren let her get away with anything. Lila had made a complete, and stunningly rapid, recovery and acted as if the entire thing had been overblown. When she’d learned about Luc’s attempts to disregard orders, they’d had an explosive argument. Helena had only heard gossip, but it had been bad enough that the entire unit had been held on reserve for several weeks until things simmered down.
Things seemed better now but Helena couldn’t help but feel that somehow Soren was the one most irrevocably damaged by the attack.
One of the unavoidable bits of Bayard lore that Helena had heard many times over the years was the fact that Soren was older than Lila. Twenty minutes the elder twin. The disparity of age was treated as gravely significant in matters of hierarchy in times past.
It was mostly a joke, but Helena suspected that Soren took it more seriously than he let on. Paladin primary or not, Lila wasn’t only his twin, she was his younger sister.
Luc was playing cards with a group of convalescent soldiers, and Lila and Soren both watched him, Lila’s leg swinging back and forth, the gears making a soft click, click, click.
Helena knelt down next to Titus, trying to complete her list of obligations quickly so she could leave. The mood of the house was so dissonant it made her feel ill.
“Hello, Titus,” Helena said, following the script she always did. “Do you mind if I look inside your head a little bit?” weet, insteadHe didn’t react. She slipped a glove off, touching the scar along his temple.
She closed her eyes as she reached with her resonance, and it was all the same except Helena was not the same. Her techniques and understanding of the mind had changed in a year. There were patterns of energy that she had not understood the intricacies of before.
Now she could sense where her errors lay. She had transmuted tissue without knowing how to follow the currents of energy that carried the mind through the brain matter.
Of course, Titus was often unresponsive, his mind limited; she’d hemmed him inside his own consciousness.
The connection between them snapped as Titus suddenly shoved her hand away. His face was contorted, the orange in his hand crushed into pulp. He shook his head several times as if trying to clear it.
Helena stared at him, her eyes searching as he scooted away from her, his ire thing hadexpression unsettled. She pulled her glove back on automatically.
Was it possible that she could cure him? She was almost afraid to think it.
She had to be certain before she brought the possibility to Rhea. She couldn’t break her heart again.
She was startled from her thoughts at a burst of laughter.
She slipped into another room that was quieter and less crowded, trying to collect herself in a window alcove that was cooler, the drapes creating a barrier from all the noise.
“Helena.”
She looked up to see Penny Fabien slipping into the alcove with her. y significant“I thought it was you slipping in here,” Penny said. “Are you all right?
You looked upset.”
Penny was a year older. She’d been the dorm monitor for Helena’s room his twin, sheduring their Institute days.
“Just a bit close in there,” Helena said, looking away. “Did something happen?”
Penny looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Why is everyone so happy?”
Penny blinked with surprise. “We’re happy because the war’s almost
over.”
Helena stared at her in bewilderment.
The war wasn’t almost over. They didn’t even have a plan to win. Six years of fighting for survival while waiting for a miracle that would never g his temple.come.
“Weren’t you at the Ember Service?” Penny asked. “Falcon Matias was talking about the stages of transmutation, how each one correlates to a period in the war, and how we’re nearly at the final transformation where the soul becomes truly purified. Think about it. A year ago, we were hemmed in around Headquarters, no supplies, barely enough rations to keep fighting, and now we’ve retaken the entire East Island. The ports. All because we had faith.”
Helena had not paid any attention to Matias during the service. All she’d heard was Ilva’s voice in her ears, saying a month over and over.
“What?” Helena’s voice came out strangled.
A look of sympathy swept across Penny’s face. “I guess you’re not really out there at the front, are you? You must not have any idea. Things have been going so well this year.” Penny’s face was alight. “It’s because we passed the test. We held firm and didn’t let our fears corrupt us, and now Sol is bestowing his favour. We can’t lose now.”
She couldn’tHelena flinched as if she’d been struck and stared at Penny in such abject shock that Penny’s smile faded, and a look of comprehension and discomfort suddenly swept across her face.
“Oh, right …” Penny said, wringing her hands. “I heard about what happened with you and the Council. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything about your soul—”
Helena’s jaw started trembling uncontrollably, and then it spread until her whole body was shaking.
Penny stepped towards her, stroking her arm. “Don’t feel bad. I’m sure you —meant well. We’ve all hit points when we think anything would be worth it to make it all stop. Just think of how much things turned around after that.
Maybe you were—a final test for us.”
Helena was going insane. She was about to start screaming right there in the alcove. She had never imagined this possibility.
They thought the war was being won because her proposal of necromancy had been so sharply reprimanded that the Resistance passed some final spiritual test, and all the success of the last year was a reward for it?
Without even realising it, she’d proven their mythos. No matter what happened now, no one would ever listen to her. She was cast forever into the role of doubter, of tempter. Standing there, she suddenly remembered the odd expression in Ilva’s and Crowther’s eyes as she was censured and dismissed.
What a perfect opportunity she’d given them in that moment.
No wonder Ilva had told her the truth about Orion. She knew that no one s to a periodwould ever believe Helena’s claims.
Now Ilva wanted one last trick.
Kill Kaine. Bury the evidence, the true means of their success. Create one fighting, andmore miracle.
Helena forced herself to breathe. It came out as a choking gasp. Penny pulled her suddenly into a tight hug.
“It’s all right,” Penny was saying, as if Helena were a child who needed soothing. “We all make mistakes. Don’t feel bad, it’s all right now.” Penny patted her back. “You know what, the real trouble is that you’re too isolated.
With everyone at the front and you always in the hospital, you never get to gs have beensee how it really is.” we passed the“I guess so,” Helena said dully. “That must be it.”
Penny was nodding as she stepped back. “It’s all right. You just stay with me. I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”
Helena was too dazed to resist as Penny pulled her out of the alcove into another room, where Alister was currently playing the piano. Soren was now playing a card game in the corner, and Lila had disappeared. Several people, including Luc, were crowded around the piano singing. Penny installed Helena on a sofa and then, after trying to coax her into joining, went over to the piano, too.
Helena sat tense, waiting for Penny to grow distracted so she could slip away, but before she could, Luc caught sight of her and immediately left the I’m sure yougroup. d be worth itHe dropped onto the seat next to her. “I’m glad you’re still here. I was
afraid you’d snuck out already.”
She gave a mute shake of her head.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Tired is all.”
He leaned forward. “Your trainees not pulling their weight?”
“No, they’re fine. Just—always seems to be something new to do.”
“I don’t know, I think you like being busy.” There was a teasing note in his voice.
Helena’s stomach clenched into a hard knot. “Maybe so,” she managed to bered the oddsay.
Soren slunk over and slid across the arm of the sofa into the space on the other side of Helena. “You two have to hide me. Someone told Mum we were gambling.”
“You’re dead,” Luc said with a laugh. “Did you manage to win at least?”
Soren shook his head mournfully. “Fuck me, why’s Lila coming over here?”
“Language in your mother’s house,” Luc tsked, “and as your precious
sister approaches.”
“Fuck off.”
Lila was headed in their direction with a large, intricate box hanging from her neck. She stopped in front of them. “Mum has me on photo duty.” She
tapped the contraption.
Soren groaned.
“Sit up and hold still. This thing is finicky.” Lila was peering into the apparatus, adjusting lenses, shifting back and forth. “Soren, don’t you have a spine somewhere? How do you manage to slouch in armour? You’re folded up behind Helena like a wet noodle. Luc, poke him, would you?”
Luc reached behind Helena and obliged.
“Much better.” Lila grinned, and Luc instantly did, too. “Right. No serious faces, it’s solstice. Be cheery.”
They stared at the contraption, and just before the click, Luc’s arm wrapped around Helena’s shoulders, squeezing tight. Helena tried to force the corners of her mouth up as the camera flashed.
Luc moaned, shielding his eyes. “Sol’s light, I think I’m going blind.”
“Soren, Mum wants a picture of you and Dad.” Lila peeled a reluctant Soren off the sofa and dragged him into the next room.
Helena watched them go and felt as though her chest were being crushed.
Her hands were clenched into fists so tight, the leather bit at her knuckles.
“Are you thinking about your father?” Luc asked quietly.
She hadn’t been, but perhaps that was what was wrong with her. She should think more about all the people who were dead, whose common trait was the way their life had overlapped with hers.
Whether or not vivimancy was a curse, she was becoming quite sure that ng note in hisshe was one.
“Hel, what’s wrong?” Luc touched her arm.
She looked at him and realised that she was being forced to choose. Luc or Kaine? She could only save one. She had to choose Luc, but it was going to kill her to do it.
Mum we were“I have to go.” She started to stand.
“No, you don’t.” He wrapped his fingers around her hand. “You always say that, but I’m not letting up this time. Stay with us.”
He gave a teasing, pleading smile.
He’d always had a terrible talent for persistence. From the very start, when he’d found her crying after her first class because the lecturer’s Northern dialect was thick and spoken so quickly.
He’d coaxed the whole thing out of her in a dusty corner of the library. The next week, the lecturer had talked slower and wrote all the key terms on the board so Helena could copy them down and look them up. Having Luc in her life had always felt like magic.
There’d been no reason for him to go out of his way for her, but he had, and then he kept doing it. He’d just picked her out on that first day and decided she was the friend he wanted. And if that required sitting for hours in the library while she did homework, even though he hated homework, that was what he’d do.
She couldn’t imagine her time at the Institute without him. It was like imagining the world without the sun in it.
“Come on now, what’s wrong?” he asked, leaning in so their heads were together. d to force theEverything. Everything was wrong and it was going to be wrong forever, and it wasn’t their fault but they were paying for it. She couldn’t tell him that;
it would be too cruel to rip everything away, to expose the lie that was his whole life when it was all he had.
“Everyone seems so happy,” she finally said. “It makes me afraid.”
He nodded slowly, his worry clearing. “I know, it’s hard to believe it might be over soon. Doesn’t feel real.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “That’s why it’s so important to have people that ground you.” He glanced towards the next room where Lila and Soren were kneeling beside their father as Rhea snapped a photo. “When it doesn’t seem possible, it helps to think about everything I’m waiting for.”
Helena’s chest clenched, wondering what fantasy Luc had spun for himself to get up each day.
When she said nothing, he gave her a sidelong grin. “We’ll finally go on oose. Luc orour trip. Once everything’s over and settled, Ilva can manage a bit longer. It won’t be the big trip like we said, but if we wait for the Abeyance, we could take a fast ship to Etras and spend at least a week there before the tides come back. I’ve always wanted to see the lost cities. I’ve still got your map on the wall.”
“That’s not going to happen, Luc,” she said, her voice low. Even if he had to believe in this lie, she couldn’t be a part of it. She couldn’t live as a prop in
y start, whenthis deceit.
“What?”
She looked down at her gloved hands, as emptiness hollowed her lungs. e library. TheShe swallowed hard. “When this is all over, I don’t want you to think of us as friends anymore. I think it will be better that way for both of us.” ng Luc in her“Why?” He looked horrified.
“Because I’m not your friend anymore. Your friend Helena Marino died in a field hospital six years ago. She doesn’t exist anymore. I need you to let her go.” g for hours inHe didn’t, though. Luc caught her hand again. His face was stricken, and he was so beautiful.
Even in the depth of winter, he looked limned in sunlight. Divine or not, the Holdfasts had a look as if they were born to be immortalised in marble.
Like the sun, born for eternity.
Helena was not a planet or any celestial thing. She was just a human bound tight to the present, to the brevity of existence, and she could feel time
running out. tell him that;
“No. I won’t let you go,” he said. “I can’t. Hel, just tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll fix it. You and me, we’re friends forever.”
She pulled away from him, shaking her head. lieve it mightAll Luc knew was Paladia, alchemy, and the Eternal Flame, with their ideals about the refinement of fire, of trials and sacrifice, the purity of suffering. That it would be worthwhile eventually, in the next life if not this ather as Rheaone.
Maybe if Helena were at the front, she could believe in all that, too. But she’d spent every day of the last six years watching people die. She lived in n for himselfthe aftermath of every battle, breathed in the devastation until she was drowning in it. Nothing and no one would ever convince her that anything noble or purifying could come from this scale of suffering. That any rewards could ever be worth it.
To trick people into embracing it was cruelty. But how could she tell Luc that? That none of it had ever meant anything. That the miracles he believed in were mere sleights of hand, bought and paid for with betrayal. She couldn’t.
“If I was ever your friend, let me go now.” She jerked her hand free and e as a prop infled the house.
Her heart was beating so hard, it hurt. The blood pounded in her ears until she could barely hear the wind, the cold slicing across her cheeks.
Snowflakes fell, spiralling onto the street. o think of usShe paused and looked up at the sky.
It was supposed to be good luck, snow on the solstice. A brightening of the longest night. arino died inShe stood watching it fall until her hands and feet were numb with cold. you to let herShe wanted to stay there and freeze to death. She’d read it was a gentle way to go, like falling asleep.
The beacon of the Eternal Flame burned overhead. She turned, putting her back to it, wandering without destination. There was nowhere to go. Her life was so small. Beyond the gates of the Institute, she was homeless.
She followed the only route she knew by heart.
It was eerily still on the Outpost. The snow-heavy clouds had a dim silver human boundglow from the moons. She’d always found the Outpost so ugly next to the elegant, natural lines of the islands’ architecture, but now she found the brutality of the towering steel, concrete walls, and jutting smokestacks fitting.
She didn’t want to be somewhere beautiful.
There was no pretence on the Outpost, no ornamentation to distract the eye; it didn’t hide what it was. Which was more than she could say about the city or Institute.
A lie. All of it a lie, the celestial emblems that decorated the island, all those murals and paintings of the Holdfasts, the sun always rising with them.
All lies.
Her face grew numb, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn back. She went towards the tenement.
The door unlocked easily even though her fingers were stiff. The wind rattled the windows.
She sat at the table, resting her head on the edge, and closed her eyes.
The door banged open.
Her head shot up, and she stared in astonishment at the sight of Kaine in the doorway.
There was ice flecking his hair, lashes, and eyebrows, as if he’d come through a blizzard.
His eyes found her instantly, scanning her from head to toe. She stared back at him, a feeling like hunger rising inside her.
“What is it?” he asked as the door closed behind him. “Did something
happen?”
“How did you know I was here?”
He levelled her with a hard stare. “I keep an eye on this place.”
Of course. Just because she hadn’t seen necrothralls didn’t mean they tening of thehadn’t seen her.
“Why are you here?” he asked again, scanning her from head to toe once more. “And unarmed, I might add.”
She’d hidden the knives in the lab. It would raise more questions than she could possibly answer if anyone saw them, and after Ilva’s reaction, they felt too personal to let anyone see them.
“I—didn’t know I was coming here. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“If it wasn’t on Resistance business, you shouldn’t have come.”
She nodded jerkily. Of course he was right. She should have just gone to
the bridge.
And jumped.
No. She blinked the thought away. The whole reason Ilva and Crowther stacks fitting.had lied to her for so long was because they knew Kaine would see straight through her. Her feelings were always stamped right on her face.
“You’re right. Sorry,” she said, her voice so hoarse it was barely more than a whisper. “I’ll go.”
She moved slowly, careful not to look at him, but as she passed, his fingers hooked her arm, swinging her around. Her back was against the wall as he
stared her square in the face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She looked down quickly. His gaze was like a brand on the top of her head. “I just came because I was—worried about you.”
He scoffed. “Since when have you worried about me?”
She looked up without thinking.
His expression was hard. Defensive. The ice in his hair had melted into tiny droplets of water that trembled, glittering like stars on his face.
“I don’t know,” she confessed. The habit had crept up on her without her realising.
He scoffed. “And now—what? You suddenly can’t help yourself?”
“I came because I wanted to see you.” She realised only as she said it that it was the truth. That was why she’d come.
His throat dipped. “Why?”
Her chest tightened. “I’m afraid that someday I’ll come, and you—you won’t be here.”
He went still, his eyes darting across her face. His expression wavered, something she couldn’t decipher flickering in his eyes. He gave a low laugh.
“Is this goodbye, then, Marino?”
The question jolted through her, and she reached out, grabbing hold of
him. “No! No.”
A month.
She swallowed hard. “I got worried, and I—didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
She’d said that already. She felt so stupid, so blindly trusting. And she was too late, too slow; there wasn’t enough time left.
His right hand rested on her shoulder, heat seeping through her. She bit down on her lip, swallowing hard.
“You always have to come back,” she said. “All right? Don’t die. Promise
—”
Her voice failed.
“Marino, what’s wrong?” He tried to step back, but she wouldn’t let go.
ly more than“Nothing! I just spent a lot of time making that medical kit for you, and I did spend an hour teaching you how t-to use it, so—I think it would be really d, his fingersungrateful if you—d-died.”
He gave a hollow laugh and stepped closer so that his chin grazed the top of her head. His sigh was almost despairing.
“All right …” he said, “but only because you asked.”
The words ran through her like a knife through the chest.
She’d thought for so long that she could do anything. For the war. For Luc.
That she had it within her to pay any price. Now she’d found her limit.
Kaine wasn’t innocent, but he wouldn’t deserve what would happen to him if he was caught. Even if she could rip out his talisman and take it back with her, he wouldn’t be dead. He’d just be in some cursed limbo inside Morrough.
His hand slipped away from her shoulder. He stepped back, and there was a strained look in his eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “I thought there was an emergency. If you show up like this for no reason, you risk my cover. I have to guess whether or not I need to respond.”
It wasn’t until he’d told her about Blackthorne that she’d even begun to consider the magnitude of the risk Kaine was taking. Crowther and Ilva had kept her so focused on the danger that Kaine represented to them, she’d never considered the threat they were to him.
The blood drained from her head. She’d always thought of him as so much safer than her, that she was the one taking all the risks, venturing out into enemy territory, mortal as could be. That wasn’t an accurate way to view it at all. The Resistance spies and scouts often carried cyanide pills to escape interrogation if their capture was inevitable. That wasn’t an option for him.
Even if he ran, hid, it wouldn’t matter, because Morrough had the And she wasphylactery. He’d be far safer if he only ever sent the necrothralls, but he was here right now. He’d come because she had.
Why couldn’t Ilva see the significance of that?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t do it again.”
He looked doubtful.
“I swear,” she said. “If I ever come back, it’ll be legitimate.”
He gave a sharp nod. “You’ve given your word. I’ll trust you to keep it.”
Her stomach clenched. Don’t trust me. Don’t trust the Eternal Flame.
We’re all liars.
She gave a small nod.
When he was gone, Helena stood alone. The windows were rattled by the wind, but she lingered, growing colder and colder, wondering what to do.
war. For Luc.
appen to him
, she’d never
m as so much
to view it at
She gave a small nod.
When he was gone, Helena stood alone. The windows were rattled by the wind, but she lingered, growing colder and colder, wondering what to do.