CHAPTER 51
Aprilis 1787
KAINE CRADLED HER FACE IN HIS HANDS as he returned her kiss, pulling her closer, his arms wrapping around her.
She was half crying as she kissed him, tracing her fingers along his face and under the curve of his jaw, trying to memorise every detail: his pulse under her fingertips, his lips pressed against hers. The taste of him.
Her eyes fluttered shut, trying to savour it all. This one moment. She could
have this.
She’d earned it.
Then, all too soon, she forced herself to step back, pulling away. “I have to take care of the others.”
He didn’t try to stop her again, but the rest of the team wasn’t outside the door as she’d expected; Kaine’s necrothralls had moved them deeper.
Her fingers trembled as she checked for pulses. They were still alive, although Luc’s skin almost burned to touch.
“How do we get out?” she asked as she started checking for injuries, trying to work out how hurt everyone was, how much work it would take to get them conscious and moving.
“Down this tunnel. Go right, then right again, and then straight. There’s an upper floodgate in the far north.”
“Where they released the chimaera?” She remembered the place.
“You’ll have to break it down, but it’ll get you out.”
She nodded. “You have to go before I wake them.”
“I know,” he said, but he didn’t leave, lingering until she looked up. His eyes shone in the dark, as if there were moonlight underground.
He touched her cheek, tilting her face up and kissing her. “Use the ring, call me, if you ever need anything.”
She wanted to say she would, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
He was a spy that they depended on. And she was— Not his handler. No, that role belonged to Crowther.
She was— A prison.
“Go,” she said instead. He disappeared down one of the tunnels, his necrothralls following him, as silent as wraiths.
She woke Sebastian first, hoping that he’d be calm and easier to manage.
He’d also know what to do. She searched what supplies they had. She’d lost both her daggers, and everything in her satchel was contaminated with floodwater. Only one of the electric torches still worked, providing dim light in the darkness.
When he woke, Sebastian just sat silently staring at Luc’s still face while she gingerly fixed his dislocated shoulder and several shallow wounds that had already stopped bleeding on their own. Finally, he looked at her.
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Everything went black. When I woke, nt. She could you were all unconscious. I was afraid more of the Undying would show up, so I brought everyone here.”
His eyes swept pointedly over her. “Helena, I know you used necromancy. ay. “I have to There’s no chance you moved us all here on your own.”
She started to shake her head in denial.
“You reanimated Soren. There was no surviving the blow he took.”
She went still. She didn’t know if it would be better or worse to tell Sebastian that Soren had asked her to.
“That was why he brought you, wasn’t it? I did wonder.” juries, trying Helena said nothing. Soren’s death felt like a wound too deep to even wrap her mind around. She didn’t think she could even say his name without choking.
“Is he still—nearby?” Sebastian’s voice was wistful.
Helena’s throat ached. “No. He—he’s gone. I’m sorry.”
There would be no holy fire to liberate Soren’s soul from his body.
Somewhere downriver, he would decay into the earth. Lila would never see her twin again. Not even in the afterlife.
Sebastian said nothing for a long moment. “We’ll tell the others we brought them here together.”
There was blood crusted around Alister’s eyes, ears, and nose from the strain of all the transmutation he’d done. She woke him slowly, but he seized
into consciousness, clawing at his neck, his eyes wild as they locked on
Helena.
“What happened?” he gasped.
“We’re not sure,” Sebastian said, leaning over him. “Are you all right? We need to move before we freeze. Luc’s sick.”
“Where’s Soren?”
“Killed in combat,” Sebastian said shortly. “Marino, can you get Penny up?”
Penny’s leg was wrecked, the tendons ripped out with teeth. There was no saving it. Helena blocked the nerves and fused the bone so she could limp on it. Penny didn’t even cry when she woke, just scrubbed at her face and struggled to her feet.
Wagner was unscathed. Of course he was. Coward. At least she didn’t have to waste any of her energy healing him.
Helena tried to wake Luc. His fever was searing. He’d somehow gotten hotter in the minutes after she’d left him. She tried to cool him, but his body kept fighting it, pushing the fever higher and higher. She’d drugged him too much.
When he regained consciousness, he screamed. The noise reverberated through the tunnels.
“Knock him out!” Sebastian said, lunging forward. “Keep him cold. We’ll carry him back.”
It was fortunate they could smell clean air ahead, because Helena couldn’t have explained how she knew the route out.
Sebastian had an entangled medallion like Helena’s ring. He used it to send to even wrapa pulse code to Headquarters.
A few times, they heard sounds echoing through the tunnels. Screams.
Roars. Splashing. They moved quietly. Helena worried first whether Kaine could have gotten clear and then began to wonder if the reason they did not run into anyone was because he was lurking in the shadows.
When they reached the locked floodgate, Alister broke through the stone wall to get past it. A torrent of icy water rushed by. They struggled through, fighting to find stable footing as they clambered out.
A dense fog hung in the air, and a slim smuggling boat shot into view, moving silently across the water towards them.
Sebastian sighed with relief. “Althorne.”
General Althorne glared at them from the boat as it pulled to shore. His men silently slipped into the water, not even splashing as they came towards the straggling unit. all right? We“Where’s Soren?” Althorne asked, his expression hard as Luc was carefully lifted into the boat.
“Killed in combat,” Sebastian said quietly.
One of the men was lifting Penny into the boat. Alister scrambled aboard himself, smearing away the fresh blood around his eyes with shaking hands, clearly on the verge of burnout.
Althorne looked at Luc, his expression a mixture of concern and relief.
“We’ll need to keep him restrained until he’s cleared.”
Helena gestured towards Wagner. “We found him in a cell. I think Crowther wants him. Don’t trust him, he killed Sofia Purnell.”
Althorne jerked his head, and two of his men came over and seized Wagner’s arms.
He grumbled but didn’t resist, clearly preferring Resistance captivity to the Undying.
“You are all currently in custody for your violation of orders,” Althorne said, once the boat was pushed off. There was no bite to his words.
They’d rescued Luc; any censure for that would be a formality.
Helena slumped against the side of the boat. The journey passed in a blur —docking on a concealed wharf, being herded up a staircase and into the back of a lorry.
When they arrived at Headquarters, Penny, Alister, and Luc were taken sed it to sendaway to the hospital ward. Wagner was placed in a cell. Helena and Sebastian were checked, cleared of serious injury, and escorted to their rooms to be locked inside with guards stationed at the doors.
Helena was glad not to be kept in the hospital, even though she could have used the saline and plasma expanders. She stripped out of her wet, ruined clothing, hands shaky and trembling, and took a shower, washing away the filth of the tunnels and spring melt.
As the traces vanished, she grew eerily removed from what had happened, as though at some point during the battle, she’d left her body and couldn’t return to it. Back in her room where everything looked familiar, it felt as if it
had been a dream.
Soren wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be.
She would go out and see him sitting next to Luc in the hospital.
The memory of him, dead in her arms, felt like a tear in the fabric of her mind, as if the way she’d tethered him back to life had been ripped out when the connection between them broke. The person she knew and the body she’d reanimated had been tied together, and now there was a wound left.
He couldn’t be dead.
It was a horrible dream.
She stared down at her hands. Somehow she’d expected them to be stained or blackened by her necromancy.
What would Sebastian tell the Council? He’d have to tell the truth in a report. Once the truth came out, there’d be consequences.
It would have been a lesser crime to have murdered Soren. Murder was only a mortal crime; necromancy was a crime upon this life and the afterlife.
She packed away all her possessions in her trunk and sat waiting.
There was a loud banging on the door. She stood, ready.
“Helena! Helena! There’s something wrong with Luc!” It was Elain ptivity to theoutside. “We need you in the hospital!”
All thoughts of arrest vanished.
“What’s wrong?” Helena opened the door, and the guards stepped back to let her out. She rushed towards the lifts with Elain.
“We’ve done all the examinations and doubled-checked for talismans, and he’s clear. But his organs—they’re all poisoned. I don’t know what they could have done. We tried reversing the damage, but they won’t regenerate.
We were trying to get his fever down and Pace had me wake him, but he started screaming. Now he won’t stop, and he doesn’t let anyone near. He’s nd Sebastianhurting himself.”
Luc was in a quarantine room at the far end of the hospital. She heard him before she saw him.
His eyes were deranged, his face gaunt with scarlet stains in the cheeks.
There was a ripple of heat coming off him as if he were molten gold.
Ilva was standing helplessly in the doorway, along with Althorne, Maier, Pace, and several medics. Ilva kept trying to talk to him, but Luc didn’t seem to hear anything. The screaming faded as his throat stripped itself raw. He’d seemingly forgotten how a body worked. He seized, his arms and legs and fingers and head all tilting into bizarre angles, and then he slammed himself into the wall.
“I brought Helena,” Elain said breathlessly.
Luc’s head swivelled. He stared at Helena. His eyes seemed to grow, bulging from their sockets, head weaving like a snake. e body she’d“Hel—” he croaked. He reached for her. His fingers looked broken, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Hel—”
“Careful, he’s been violent,” she dimly heard Pace say. She paid no mind.
She reached out, laced their fingers together, and touched the side of his to be stainedface with her knuckles. His skin was so hot, it almost burned. He somehow bent his fingers, not seeming to notice the pain, clutching her hand, pulling her close.
“I’m here. What’s wrong?” She numbed his hand, setting his fingers quickly.
His eyes had gone out of focus, and he started shuddering. “Out—” he moaned, shaking his head. “Inside—”
She pressed her hand against his forehead, ignoring the way his skin scalded her hand, letting her resonance flow into him, trying to find the source of what was wrong. What was she missing?
“Hel—” Luc was saying again.
Pain exploded through her chest.
The world went careening, spinning. Vicious red burst across her vision, slamming into the back of her head. An endless ringing filled her ears.
She struggled to focus her eyes. She couldn’t breathe.
She clutched at her chest. Noises were elongated. Faces loomed over her.
Something grabbed her. She gave a panicked scream, going for her knives, but they weren’t there. She clawed wildly to free herself.
“Calm down, Marino,” Matron Pace was saying. “You’re all right, just a bad scare. Knocked your breath out.”
The raw terror ebbed. The room came slowly back into view.
She was on the floor, breathing raggedly, pain consuming her chest as she tried to make sense of what had happened.
Luc was on the other side of the room. His expression had turned scorchingly lucid.
“You—” His eyes were suddenly clear and burning. “You used necromancy on Soren.”
The accusation hung in the air like the lull between lightning and thunder.
Everyone froze.
Helena pushed herself upright.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped, struggling to speak. Her lungs were seizing for air, sending jolts of pain through her ribs. She knelt and almost doubled over on the floor of the hospital. “I tried to heal him. I’m sorry.”
“He was alive. Why didn’t you just heal him?” Luc’s voice was racked with grief.
She couldn’t breathe enough to explain herself, to describe how quickly Soren was gone, that he’d known he’d die, and that he’d asked her to do it.
“I’m sorry, Luc.”
“Get out …” He wasn’t looking at her anymore. His gaze lost focus, and
he swayed.
“Luc, you’re sick—”
“Get out!” He closed his eyes, starting to shudder again, his breathing coming faster and faster as if being in the same room with her was about to drive him mad. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
He started clawing at his chest, screaming, tearing grooves into his skin as
if trying to tear his own heart out.
“Luc?” another voice broke in.
Lila stood in the doorway, a crutch under one arm. Rhea was beside her, helping her walk.
The scars on Lila’s face and chest showed vividly where she was stitched together.
Luc’s eyes shot open at the sound of her voice. r her knives,“Lila …” he said, his voice both grief-stricken and filled with relief, as if he hadn’t believed she was still alive until that moment.
Several people tried to hold her back, murmurs of Careful, but Lila let go of her mother, reaching desperately towards Luc. She let her crutch fall and toppled into his arms, clinging to him.
“I told you to run,” Lila was saying, clutching him close. His hands were shaking as he touched the laceration running down her face.
Lila brushed across the gouges he’d clawed in his chest. “What did they do to you?”
He just shook his head and pulled her closer, burying his head against her shoulder, arms wrapped around her.
It was painfully intimate. If there had been any doubts about whether or why Luc had handed himself over, they were all gone now.
There was a touch at Helena’s elbow. She looked up and found Ilva, who nodded towards the door.
eizing for air,Helena pushed herself to her feet and slipped out before Luc noticed her again. When she passed Rhea, she looked away.
It was Lila who coaxed Luc into bed, who persuaded him to let Pace and Elain examine him again, to accept an intravenous drip in his arm, and take the medicine needed to bring his fever down.
Helena sat on a hospital bed in the main room, an intravenous drip in her arm, while Elain fixed a fracture in her sternum and spread a salve across the bruise that spanned most of her chest, then treated the back of her head, where she’d hit the far wall.
It wasn’t the first time Helena had been injured by a patient, but it felt different.
Luc was never going to forgive her for what she’d done to Soren. She’d broken him.
The curtain around the hospital bed rustled, and Ilva stepped through. Elain lingered until Ilva glared, and then the healer fled. Helena closed her shirt and didn’t look up.
“We’re taking reports on what happened,” Ilva said, her tone unreadable.
Helena sat numbly. Would they put her on trial now? Or would it wait until after the war?
“What have you heard?” she asked in a dull voice.
Ilva cleared her throat. “Luc is delirious, his version of events hardly reliable given that he was not only severely injured but also heavily drugged.
Alister and Penny both gave statements that Soren Bayard died protecting them. Sebastian Bayard—” Ilva paused for a moment. “Sebastian corroborates this, and claims that the two of you managed to drag the others to safety after the rising floodwater washed away a large number of the
attacking forces.”
“And?” Helena asked.
“Lucien—hallucinated Soren Bayard’s alleged reanimation. Perhaps Soren t did they dofell briefly. In the confusion of a battle, it is impossible to know. The point is, this was a heroic rescue. The Principate was saved though the price was great. Sol’s will was done.”
Helena knew she was supposed to be grateful, but she also knew the lie wasn’t for her sake. It was all for the story. It didn’t matter what had really happened, only what people believed.
“The obligations of Soren and Sebastian’s vows supersede any orders by the Council,” Ilva said. “Alister and Penny were obeying the orders of their
direct superiors. You would have a reprimand on your military record for your participation, but as a healer you’re not part of the military. Matias will be the one to decide what sort of reprimand you deserve. Until then, you’ll be off duty. I believe it would be best if you stay out of sight until the official story has circulated.”
Helena went back to her room and collapsed into her bed, exhaustion rolling over her like a wave. It was dark oblivion at first, but then the landscape of her mind morphed.
She was sinking, down, down. There were teeth sinking into her. Hands clawing, curling around her limbs, tearing her apart. She kept fighting. Cold fingers carving gouges through her flesh, stabbing into her bones. She tried to fight. The weight bore down on her.
Her bones cracked. Teeth sank into her flesh. The tendon behind her knee hrough. Elainripped out. Wet hands found her mouth, clawing in so deep she couldn’t bite her shirt anddown. Her jaw gave way, ripping until her throat tore open. She was still fighting as water closed over her head.
Helena started violently awake, gasping to breathe, hands clutching at her d it wait untilopen throat.
Just a dream, just a dream, she tried to tell her pounding heart.
Not really a dream, though. A memory. Soren’s memories postmortem were lodged inside her consciousness as though they were her own. Bright and lurid in all their details.
She hadn’t known necromancy was like that. That she would never be free of the person she brought back. No wonder necromancers went mad. Who could stay sane with the minds of the dead inside them?
The place where Soren had been was like a pit of festering guilt. Her body and mind had been cored, and now something dead and rotting was left there.
Everyone always talked of what a curse necromancy was. Warned against it erhaps Sorenand its consequences, but Helena had been so convinced of its necessity, and The point is,so distracted by the eternal consequences, that she’d never paused to consider there being immediate ones.
She lay there, still feeling phantom fingers tearing her apart; her body was unutterably cold, reliving the cold, snowmelt water. She pulled more blankets onto herself, stealing Lila’s bedding, and huddled, trying to sleep, to escape from the deadness Soren had left inside her. Every time she closed her eyes, Soren’s final memories and sensations flashed through her mind.
She hadn’t brought back his ability to feel pain or emotions, but her own mind dutifully tried to fill in those blanks, phantom sensation and terror en, you’ll berippling through her until her mind threatened to fissure, splitting between two realities.
It was only pain that drew her back into herself. She kept pinching at her skin, scratching at it. It wasn’t intense enough. She needed something stronger.
She blinked and found herself holding one of Lila’s knives, a second away from shoving it through her left forearm.
She dropped it and fled the room, wandering half blindly through the . She tried toempty hallways of the Tower. It was night, quiet; almost everyone was asleep. It was so eerily still. She was consumed with a sort of mania.
She stumbled outside, hoping that the clear air would help centre her.
Lumithia hung overhead, bright as a white sun in the black abyss.
Helena’s eyes throbbed just looking up at her. The Ascendance always put everything on edge, but Helena was already on edge. Ascendance had shoved her right over.
She closed her eyes and she was drowning again, nails dragging welts
across her skin.
Kaine.
Kaine would know what was wrong. He’d understand. He used necromancy; he must know how to deal with this.
Without pausing to think, she headed for the Outpost. The destination was deliriously urgent. Curfew would be soon. She had to get through the checkpoints.
The streets of the city were like silver ribbons gleaming under full was left there.Ascendance, the shadows like teeth.
Just a little farther, she kept telling herself with every step. Until she was across the bridge, the river high and roaring beneath her, the tenement d to considerlooming in front of her.
It was only when she reached the steps that she stopped to think.
She’d promised Kaine she would never come to the Outpost unless there more blanketswas a Resistance emergency. He was a spy. It was dangerous for him. She’d
given her word.
She’d risk his cover—endanger him.
She turned away.
Without a destination, her focus fractured.
Soren. Helena. Soren.
She felt her jaw give way, cold air and blood as her oesophagus tore open.
Fingers gouging into her eye sockets. Water closing over her head. She was drowning but couldn’t die, so she just kept drowning.
When her consciousness found her again, she was lying on the ground. The black sky, dark as ink, loomed overhead as Lumithia bore down, a scorching cold in Helena’s resonance.
“Marino, what have you done to yourself?”
She was barely conscious of being lifted off the ground. Hot hands touching her face and forehead, driving away the drowning cold. She burrowed into the heat.
She was delirious. Truly delirious now, because Kaine was there with a giant winged dog standing behind him.
She’d never had a hallucination before, but all things considered, it was oddly pleasant. Kaine was like a furnace, and when she buried herself in his e had shovedarms, face pressed against his chest, she could scarcely feel the cold dead fingers anymore.
“Soren Bayard died and I—I brought him back, but the other necrothralls tore him to pieces. I can’t stop remembering how it felt. I think he took part of me with him. How do you do it again and again without going insane? Is it like this forever?”
One of his hands tilted her head back so she could see his eyes. In the moonlight, the grey glowed almost as bright as Lumithia, his hair gleaming
that same colour.
“Had you ever used necromancy before?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t suppose anyone told you how to do it, did they?” He exhaled, the back of his fingers pressing against her forehead. “You had the shit luck of knowing him, too. You’re going into shock.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up from her. Of course no one had told her how to perform necromancy.
He shushed her, pulling her back against his chest, warding off the way her skin crawled with the memory of decaying fingers burrowing into it. “You tried to bring him back, didn’t you? Idiot. You’re freezing cold.”
She didn’t struggle as he half carried her towards his giant dog.
On closer inspection, it wasn’t a dog, but a wolf with bright-yellow eyes, and it was the size of a warhorse, with wings the size of—
She didn’t know of anything on earth with wings that large.
Kaine pushed her up and set her on a saddle cinched behind the wings, and then swung atop behind her. Helena’s eyes fluttered shut as she sagged against him, tensing at the sensation of icy-cold fingers tearing open her skin. ground. TheThe creature hunched down, muscles rippling beneath thick fur. There was a lurch, then a sickening jerk that nearly threw Helena off.
Without warning, they were airborne.
Wind stung across her face, and her eyes rolled back. She was barely conscious of anything except Kaine behind her and the cold wind screaming in her ears.
Then she was sliding down, her legs giving out, and Kaine caught her before she hit the ground. They were standing somewhere so high up, the night so bright, that she could see beyond the mountains. She’d never been so high.
She looked around. She was on a balcony and alone with Kaine. For the first time in years, she felt a sense of distance from it all, looking down onto the East Island, cratered by years of war, cast in moonlight.
The air was thin, as if she were back in the mountains, the world dreamily still. insane? Is itShe held out a hand, letting the silver coat her skin.
“Do you think this is what my subconscious thinks I want?” she asked, peering towards the light of the Alchemy Tower’s beacon gleaming like a small golden sun. “To run away from the war with you?”
Kaine’s expression was unreadable as he pulled her back from the railing.
There was a dark doorway, and he led her through it and into a hallway. After the silver brightness of the city, her eyes struggled to adjust.
“What do you want?” he asked.
His voice seemed to come from the darkness.
Her eyes burned and she reached, feeling the wall under her fingertips. told her how“I don’t want to always be alone,” she said. It was easier to be honest in the dark. “I want to love someone without feeling like if they know, it’ll end f the way herup hurting them. People who love me always die. No matter what I do, it’s never enough to save them. I have to love everyone from a distance, and I’m so lonely.”
Her eyes blurred, and then the darkness fell away, revealing a large room with a roaring fire. The place was lavish. The Holdfasts’ city residence had once been like this, filled with gilded furniture that glittered in the firelight.
It was elegant but impersonal. There wasn’t anything to make the place e wings, andfeel lived-in.
She looked back; Kaine was standing behind her. His black clothes were pen her skin.limned by the glowing firelight, adding a flush of gold and ember red to his almost monochrome appearance. He still had that otherworldly glow about
him.
“You don’t have to be alone,” he said.
She looked down, wanting to fall headlong into the fantasy of believing that; to feel good for a little while, and tell herself it would do no harm.
But she knew that was a lie. Her mind was never quiet enough to let her enjoy anything without thinking about its consequences.
“Why? Because of you?” she asked bitterly, going towards the fire instead, never been sosinking onto her knees in front of it. She couldn’t think she was drowning here. She shook her head. “I don’t get to care about you.”
Her chest clenched, fingers curling into fists. “If I care about you—I won’t be able to use you. And you’re the only hope I have of keeping everyone else alive.”
She curled in on herself, staring at the dancing flames. Somewhere on the Outpost, she was lying on the ground, going into shock, possibly freezing to death.
“Then use me,” Kaine said. He was right next to her. He pulled her close and tried to kiss her.
She jerked away. “No! No, I can’t.” She shook her head. Wake up, Helena.
“I don’t want to do that to you. You don’t—deserve that. I can take care of
allway. Aftermyself.”
He wouldn’t let go.
“You don’t have to push me away to protect me,” he said in a hard, familiar voice. “I can take it. You can stop being lonely. I won’t misunderstand. I know you just want someone to be with.”
She looked for a door. An escape.
He didn’t let go. “Helena …”
She stilled at her name.
“I’m alone, too,” he said.
A lump rose in her throat, her heart pounding. “But I don’t want to hurt you, you don’t deserve—”
He kissed her, swallowing her objections. She didn’t struggle when he pulled her into his arms. The heat of the fire faded until there was only the
heat of him, his lips warm against hers, his hands cradling her face. Then there was the softness of a bed beneath her back, pillows and sheets, and she pulled him closer, fingers seeking the buttons on his coat and unfastening them, but he caught her hands in his, holding them captive against his chest, and drew back. He tilted her face into the light.
She stared dazedly at him as he pressed the back of his hand against her forehead and tucked her in as if she were sick and needed nursing.
When she tried to sit up, he sat down next to her and let her huddle close, face buried against his chest.
“Necromancy doesn’t—bring someone back …” he said, “but that can be hard to remember in the moment. When it’s someone you know, when you fire instead,can feel the span of their loss, it’s instinctive to think it costs that much to bring them back. What you did with Bayard was put a part of yourself into reanimating him. In other circumstances, you could have reversed it, ou—I won’tuntethered yourself, but he took all of it with him when he was destroyed.” veryone elseThere was a pause.
“You’ll recover, but it’ll leave a scar. You just have to stay grounded until your mind learns not to go there. Lucky for you, animancy should help with
that.”
“Did this ever happen to you?”
He was silent for a minute. “Something similar once, but it was a long time ago.” e up, Helena.Helena curled closer to him, listening to his heartbeat.
He was alive. She had kept him alive. She found his hand, pulling it up near her chin, holding it in both of hers, tracing the ridges of his knuckles, lacing her fingers along them. Just holding on.
She lifted her head to look at him.
He didn’t move, not even when she let go of his hand to reach up and touch his face. Or when she shifted near enough to brush her lips against his cheek. Her fingers traced across his cheekbones, and she kissed his temple and his forehead. Then, hesitantly, she pulled him closer and kissed him on
the mouth.
He was fire to touch.
She kissed him slowly until his arms slid around her back and he returned it.
She didn’t know if what she was doing was holding on or letting go.
The first thing his fingers found were the pins in her hair. Her braids tumbled down her back, his fingers combing through them until her hair was loose. His hand tangled through it as he kissed her again.
The kisses were slow. It wasn’t seething or rushed or guilty, but it was still desperate, because he always made her desperate.
She kissed him the way she’d wanted to. The way she’d secretly wished
she could.
She could have this.
Once.
She gave a low sob. He paused, but she held on, not letting him go.
“This—is the way I wanted it to be,” she admitted. “With you. I wanted it
to be like this with you.”
He went very still.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry it wasn’t,” he finally said, pulling her closer.
Had he ever actually been like this? She wondered sometimes how much of her drunken memory of kissing him was real. Or if she’d invented all the intimacy to replay when her life felt too void of any tenderness.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Yes, it does. Let me give you this now.” He drew her face to his and kissed her. Slow and intent. s a long timeLike a star, he was glittering and ice-cold from afar, but when the space was bridged, the heat of him was endless.
His lips didn’t leave hers as his hands found the buttons on her shirt and underclothes, unfastening them slowly this time. The fabric whispered across her skin as his fingers traced along her spine. His mouth followed the curve of her collarbones, fingers drawing her head back so he could taste the dip of her throat.
She fumbled at his clothes. Her fingers were unsteady, but there was no rush this time. She managed the buttons one by one.
He was unfathomably gentle. His touch light, and yet it made her feel as though a flame were kindled inside her, a desire that made her ache.
It wasn’t too fast, or too much before she was ready. He went as slowly as she wanted him to.
When he pushed inside her, his eyes were fastened on her face. “Is this all right? Is it good for you?”
She gave a gasp and nodded. Because it was good this time.
“It’s good. Don’t stop,” she said, gripping him by the shoulders, pulling him nearer. She could feel the scars of the array spanned beneath her fingers.
She didn’t know how he could be so calm with all that power humming ut it was stillbeneath the surface of his skin.
His forearms were around her head as though framing her, his fingers laced in her hair. When he started to move, he pressed his forehead against hers, their breath intermingling.
When he kissed her, it felt like the beginning of something that could be eternal.
It happened so gradually, she almost forgot that there was more to it. They could have stayed like that, lost in each other, and it would have been more than enough. She breathed in against his neck, tasting his skin with the tip of her tongue, memorising his scent, the feel of him in her arms.
The world beyond them had ceased to exist. He knew how to trail his fingers across her skin so that she was gasping, kiss her so that her legs wrapped tight around his hips, and move so slowly that, at first, she didn’t notice the coiling tension inside her. That lurking hunger.
But of course there was more, and Kaine was looking for it. All his meticulous attention to when her breath caught, what angle made her hips rise in response, when she caught her lip between her teeth to hold back a low moan, body shuddering. He entwined their fingers and noticed when she gripped him, squeezing so tight her nails bit into his knuckles, breath growing short. pered acrossThe pace and friction and contact increased, growing into something larger and deeper than comfort.
When he slid his hand between her legs, she instantly flinched away. The comfort vanished. She went cold all over, trying to twist, wanting to escape, turning her face away.
“No.” She tried not to panic, but this was all a mistake. “No, don’t.”
He withdrew his hand and cradled her face, kissing her. “You get this part.
This is yours.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not.” She drew in on herself, chin down, speaking rapidly. “When I became a healer, I had to promise I wouldn’t ever —I took the vows—and—and then you said—about Luc, if he knew. I can’t stop thinking about that. That—that I’m a whore—”
Her voice failed.
“I’m sorry.” His hand still entwined with hers tightened. “I’m so sorry. I ruined so much of this for you. This is how it’s supposed to be. Let me give this to you now.”
She didn’t move, her heart pounding against her ribs.
fingers laced“Please, Helena.”
She gave the barest nod.
“Close your eyes.” His breath whispered against her cheek.
Her eyes fluttered closed as he kissed her.
Without being able to see, her focus was on the sensations, the feeling of his body pressed against hers. The movement of air across her skin. When his lips brushed against the pulse-point of her throat, she moaned. His palm cupped her breast, stroking as he started to move.
He kissed her as he slid his hand between their bodies again, deepening the kiss until her jaw loosened, mouth slack, and pleasure flooded through her, so intense her spine bowed. She gave a ragged gasp against his lips.
She was being wound up, fire igniting, growing, running outwards along her nerves, through her arms and legs until her fingers twisted, tangling in the sheets. Every time he moved or his lips found some new sensitive place, the e her hips risetension ratcheted inside her, notch by notch, until she was on the verge of fracturing open.
Her breath caught inside her lungs as she struggled, trying to hold herself eath growingtogether, overcome by the terror that she would break apart. She couldn’t.
If she broke, there would never be anyone to pick up the pieces. ething larger“I can’t—” she finally gasped out.
“Helena.” Kaine’s lips brushed across her cheek and temple, his breath ragged. “You get to have this. You’re allowed to feel good things. Don’t be alone. Have this with me.”
He pulled her leg up with one arm, deepening and shifting the angle, drawing the tension higher, and crushed their bodies together, kissing her.
Her eyes shot open.
She stared up at him as her whole world shattered into shards of silver.
“Oh gods—” She sobbed the words out. Her fingernails sank into his arms.
“Oh—oh—oh …”
She came apart under him, and he watched every moment of it.
As she lay panting, trying to catch her breath, his speed increased.
Gripping her closer, tighter, his expression going tense. When he came, his
mask slipped. He met her eyes for a moment before he buried his face against her shoulder, and she saw all the heartbreak in him.
Afterwards he held her close, not letting go.
She looked up. He was watching her, his expression distant, his emotions carefully hidden away.
She reached up and ran a finger along his cheek, looking for any trace of that boy who’d first greeted her at the Outpost, but there was so little of him remaining. Even his hair was all silver now.
“I think I’ve nearly memorised you,” she said. “Especially your eyes. I in. When histhink I learned to read them first.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he caught her hand, capturing it against his chest. eepening the“I memorised yours, too,” he said after a moment, and then sighed, looking rough her, soaway. “I should have known—the moment I looked into your eyes, I should have known I would never win against you.”
She gave a small smile, struggling to stay awake, afraid it might all fade ngling in theaway if she did. “I’ve always thought my eyes were my best feature.”
“One of them,” he said quietly.
nto his arms.
mask slipped. He met her eyes for a moment before he buried his face against her shoulder, and she saw all the heartbreak in him.
Afterwards he held her close, not letting go.
She looked up. He was watching her, his expression distant, his emotions carefully hidden away.
She reached up and ran a finger along his cheek, looking for any trace of that boy who’d first greeted her at the Outpost, but there was so little of him remaining. Even his hair was all silver now.
“I think I’ve nearly memorised you,” she said. “Especially your eyes. I think I learned to read them first.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he caught her hand, capturing it against his chest.
“I memorised yours, too,” he said after a moment, and then sighed, looking away. “I should have known—the moment I looked into your eyes, I should have known I would never win against you.”
She gave a small smile, struggling to stay awake, afraid it might all fade away if she did. “I’ve always thought my eyes were my best feature.”
“One of them,” he said quietly.