CHAPTER 52
Aprilis 1787
WHEN HELENA WOKE, SHE FOUND HERSELF IN a large bed, in a large room, and through the windows, the Novis Mountains were arrayed around them, gilded by a golden sunrise.
She was tangled in juniper-scented sheets and wrapped up in Kaine’s arms, and she had no memory of how she’d gotten there.
She glanced around the room again. From the angle of the city, she could tell she was on the West Island. Probably one of the towers so immense they often disappeared into the clouds.
She’d always imagined Kaine on an estate or in one of the old houses in the city. Why would he be somewhere like this?
He lay, arms wrapped possessively around her as though he were keeping her from being stolen, features relaxed in sleep. She studied him.
What had she done?
Kaine Ferron was a dragon, like his family before him. Possessive to the point of self-annihilation. Isolated and deadly, and now he held her in his arms as if she were his. The temptation to give in, to let him have her, and to love him for it terrified her.
Her need to love people and her desperate longing for them to love her back—she had given that up, locked it away and buried it, giving its place to the coldness of logic, realism, and the necessary choices of war. This could
only lead to ruin.
She had to be gone before he woke.
She tried to slip away as she had before, but this time his eyes snapped open. He pulled her back immediately but then caught sight of her terrified
expression.
His eyes flickered, and he let go.
She went still.
The fear and anger that he’d inspired a year earlier had all but disappeared.
The danger was still there, cast in sharper relief now that she had seen how lethal he was. Yet somehow knowing it made her less frightened. Now she knew how much he was holding back. Despite everything he’d achieved, this was Kaine Ferron using restraint.
“This was a mistake,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
His throat dipped as he looked away.
“Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “This won’t complicate anything for you.
You wanted someone to be with, and I was available. I know it didn’t mean anything.”
Helena’s breath caught, and she swallowed. He wasn’t just someone. To them, gildedher, he was— That was the mistake of it, what she was so scared of.
Kaine’s arms,Before she could even begin to invent a lie, something must have shown in her face. Her eyes always betrayed her.
Because his expression was withdrawn, and then, in an instant, triumph flashed across his face and he reached for her again. Hunger and heat splintered the air like lightning.
Before she could bolt, he pulled her back to him and his lips found hers, and all her fears and guilt and resolution became lost to her. All she could think of was how much she wanted to be there, being touched by him. He was fire, and she was already consumed.
“You’re mine,” he said against her lips, his fingers sliding along her throat, tangling in her hair, holding her fast as he dragged her nearer.
It was not like the previous night. It wasn’t comfort. It was claiming.
His mouth was hot on her lips, his teeth nipping possessively along her jaw and her throat, over her shoulders. She tangled her fingers in his hair, arching into his touch. She tried not to cry from how desperately she wanted him, and how grateful she was that she didn’t have to ask. He pulled her closer, arms entwined around her as he aligned himself and sank into her with a sharp thrust, his breath burning along her neck.
He was exacting. Determined to prove to her that this was where she belonged, to ensure that she could never deny what he made her feel.
She could feel his resonance along her nerves. He made no effort to hide the way he attuned himself to her, overwhelming her with sensation and pleasure all at once.
disappeared.In the moment his control slipped and his expression was laid bare again, there was no more heartbreak; he was possessive and triumphant.
He pulled her close, crushing her to his chest. “You’re mine. You swore chieved, thisyourself to me. Now and after the war. I’m going to take care of you. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. You don’t have to be lonely. Because you’re mine.”
Helena knew she should go, but she had lost herself there.
She was locked in the dangerous embrace of Kaine Ferron, and it felt like home.
She slept in his arms, nearly dead to the world, waking only briefly when his fingers trailed along her shoulder. She looked up, found him watching her, his eyes dark.
She arched into his touch and dropped a kiss over his heart. He picked up ave shown inher hand, and she felt his resonance in her fingers as she fell asleep.
When she woke again, it was nearly evening, and the mountains had turned purple with dusk, gilded a burnished red as Sol began his descent.
Kaine was dressed, but he was just sitting beside her, watching her sleep, her fingers laced in his, as if there was nothing else to do.
“How are you here?” she asked, dazed with exhaustion. She somehow felt more tired than she ever had before, as if her body had finally remembered how to sleep and now intended to recover all the years of deprivation.
He raised an eyebrow. “I live here. Did you think my primary residence ng her throat,was the Outpost panic room?”
She shook her head, rolling onto her back. Her hands didn’t hurt at all anymore. “No, but how are you able to spend a whole day in bed with me? along her jawAren’t you a general or something? Don’t you have meetings, or crimes to hair, archingcommit?” nted him, andRather than answer, he leaned over her until she was stretched out beneath him. His longer arms pinned her hands above her head, and he kissed her.
“I’m off duty,” he finally said when she was breathless. “A concept I fear no one has ever acquainted you with.”
She rolled her eyes. “But why do you live here? I thought old families had property.”
He let go then and sat up, looking out at the view. “My mother was tortured at our country estate, and all the staff murdered. We moved to the city residence, and that’s where she died. I wanted somewhere else to go, away from it all.”
Helena sat up.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked, I just never imagined you high like this,” she said, reaching up and resting a hand on his cheek. He dropped his head against her palm and closed his eyes for a moment, the strands of his hair falling across her fingertips.
Then he abruptly lifted his head. “Well, it’s mostly practical. Amaris flies better from the roof. She’s better at it now, but it used to be hard for her to
get airborne.”
“Amaris?” Helena repeated slowly.
“The chimaera. You saw her last night.”
She blinked at him, a memory of an impossibly enormous, winged wolf resurfacing. “I thought … I’d hallucinated.”
He gave her a look. “I told you I was getting a chimaera.”
“Well, yes, but I assumed it was something—smaller, and you never ns had turnedmentioned it again. I assumed it had died.”
He shrugged. “Well, she was small at first. About the size of a foal when
she arrived.”
“What is she?”
“Bennet isn’t forthcoming about such things. A lot of Northern wolf and some kind of destrier. I don’t know where he got the wings, though.”
“And she’s—tame?”
He shook his head. “No. Just fond of me, but you should meet her. I meant to introduce you, but the moment never seemed right. Come on.”
Helena didn’t move, not wanting to go anywhere yet. Everything was so different between them now. The tension and wariness finally absent.
She’d never known him outside of that context, even as children.
Secreted away from the rest of the world, she felt that she could finally see him for his own sake, rather than only through the lens of the Eternal Flame’s interests.
Glancing around the impersonal rooms, she could see them for what they were, a place to exist. There was not a single item of personal significance.
Temporary. Uncommitted.
“When did you realise that I didn’t know you were supposed to die?” she asked rather than stand.
He released a long breath. “The first time you arrived on the Outpost. I could tell by the way you looked, you thought it really was forever.”
Her throat tightened.
He looked away. “It was—funny at first. I kept waiting for you to catch on.”
Heat spread across the back of her neck.
“I thought that when I pointed out that you should’ve known about my punishment, you’d realise it was a setup, but you didn’t. Then I assumed that it would have been explained to you by that evening or the next day, but you just kept coming back. I figured there must be something else they wanted, but it was clear by then they weren’t going to tell you. I almost did, a few times, but—” He sighed. “—I suppose I enjoyed the way you wanted to save me.”
She nodded slowly, fingers running along the seam of the linen sheet.
“Crowther talked so much about the long term and making sure you didn’t lose interest, and how I had to keep it secret, that no one could know. I thought they trusted me.” She was quiet for a moment. “Ilva told me just before the solstice. You probably realised.”
She took his silence for confirmation.
There was a pause as she remembered something. “Kaine, I don’t think
your father’s dead.”
Kaine looked at her sharply. “What?”
“When we rescued Luc, there was a lich. He told Sebastian that he was Atreus. He was guarding the door to the room Luc was in.” her. I meant“No,” Kaine said, his voice shaking. “No. He died. If he were still alive, he would have come back. For my mother.”
His pupils had shrunken into sharp points of black, the denial stark.
“He was a lich,” she said as gently as she could. “Would he have wanted her to see him like that?” d finally seeHe started to speak several times as if to protest but then stopped. “What ernal Flame’shappened?”
“Soren and Sebastian killed him. He was between us and Luc. We didn’t have time to find the talisman, though. You didn’t know he was Undying?”
He shook his head. “I thought he was arrested before all that began.” He drew a scoffing breath, his expression growing bitter. “So in the end, he
didn’t even manage to die for her.”
“Your mother?”
He nodded slowly. “It was all because of her. I know what people said about them, about why he married her, but he—adored her. She was life itself to him. When I was born and she was sick, he grew obsessed with keeping
her well, not allowing visitors or any potential disease near her. Morrough claimed he could cure her, that she’d live forever.”
“He must not know what happened after he was arrested,” Helena said.
There was a strained look in Kaine’s eyes. “Likely not.”
“If he knew, do you think—?”
Kaine shook his head. “I’m sure he’d blame me. He always did.” There was a pause, and he looked over at her. “Speaking of dying, or rather, not dying … would you mind telling me why I haven’t?”
Helena suddenly found the thread count of the sheets fascinating.
“It was a failed experiment. Bennet spent weeks trying to heal it, and everything he did made it worse. When it was finally deemed a failure, he tried to scrap my body, but the array was pulling so much energy from the talisman, he couldn’t touch it. He assumed that eventually the energy would run out, or my body would incinerate around it, so they sent me home, because they didn’t want the potential fallout to contaminate the new lab.
“Since my miraculous recovery, Bennet’s tried to repeat the experiment.
Every subject has died, slowly and terribly, and Bennet cannot find any explanation for why I alone survived. You are the only person who has never questioned my survival, and I would like to know why.”
There was a long pause. Helena cleared her throat. “I had this amulet of the Holdfasts’. A holy relic, you could say. Ilva gave it to me when I became a still alive, hehealer, and it helped.”
“Helped?” The scepticism in his voice was heavy.
“I could—work longer.” She avoided his eyes. “I didn’t get tired or—burn out when I had it. When you were injured, you’d deteriorated so much that the array was using more energy and resources than you had. I thought since it had helped me maybe it would work for you, too, give you enough strength to recover.”
His eyebrows rose. “What kind of relic would have the power to do that?”
She coughed. She should probably lie, given that telling the truth was possibly treason.
But she couldn’t think of a lie to tell. She’d already committed treason anyway.
“The Stone of the Heavens,” she said. “I didn’t know that’s what it was, and it’s not—really what the stories said. It was something made by the was life itselfNecromancer, but Orion ended up with it, and people just assumed it was heaven-sent.”
“And they gave it to you?” Kaine’s eyes were narrowed.
“Apparently, it—chose me. It doesn’t work for most people.”
Kaine had his hands on his hips. “And that’s how you healed me?”
She gave a tight nod. “That’s how I healed you.”
He was silent for a long time. She couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t
tell if he believed her.
“Where is it now?”
“Gone,” she said, averting her eyes. “It’s gone now.”
He sighed. “Well, I suppose it makes sense they wouldn’t let you keep it, if I’m what you used it on.”
She forced a self-deprecating smile. It was probably best he thought that.
“Ilva wasn’t pleased.”
“I imagine not. Were there any other repercussions?”
“Well, I was supposed t—” She swallowed. “—to kill you, but I got out of that. So I guess it all worked out in the end.”
She managed another smile, but he did not return it.
His expression had gone cold and empty. “This is your idea of things working out?”
Her face fell, and just as suddenly it was all back: the reality of all that amulet of theexisted between them. That he would have preferred it if she’d killed him; that that was what he’d wanted. Instead she was sitting on his bed, smiling over how it had worked out so nicely for everyone else now that she had him
on a leash.
“No, no, of course not. Sorry.”
She drew back, turning, trying to find her clothes.
“What are you doing?” Kaine leaned forward and caught her by the ankle ugh strengthbefore she was halfway across the bed.
“I think I should go now,” she muttered, her throat tight, trying to slip free.
“Why?”
Her heart was in her throat. “I know you didn’t want any of this; I didn’t mean to act like it was all fine.”
His expression hardened, and he dragged her back across the bed.
She tried desperately to get free. “Can I—at least put my clothes on before you get angry? Please.”
He stared at her. “I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about you.”
“Me?” She was confused enough that she stopped struggling.
“Yes. You. The Resistance has latched on to you like a parasite, and you think it’s all worked out because they’re kind enough to keep you alive while
they eat you?”
“It’s not like that,” she said sharply.
“Six years in a war hospital. How many people have you saved for them? I doubt you know. But was that enough for them? No. The moment there was another advantage to gain, they sold you for the ports. I’ve seen workhorses treated better; they would have turned you into glue once you weren’t good you keep it, iffor anything else.” He sneered. “But I suppose that’s how it’s always been.
It’s only the war stallions like the Bayards who are retired to the countryside.”
“Shut up,” she said, kicking sharply and freeing herself. Her face was hot with anger. “You think I don’t know I’m expendable? When you see fit to remind me of it at every turn? Well, you don’t have any right to be angry about that, when you’re just as much a part of it as any of them. You knew what was happening, and that I didn’t, and you still chose to be as cruel as you were. At least Ilva and Crowther manipulated me for a reason.” She looked away from him. “When were you even that kind?”
He was silent. She looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.
She gave a mirthless laugh. “Yes, you’ve apologised before, but you don’t change, so it doesn’t really mean anything.”
“You’re right.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed his face into his hands.
“I’m sorry for that, too. I never meant for any of it to go so far. I knew the mission you’d been sent with, and I was sure I’d be immune, but realising it was all real for you—when it would work, and I’d find myself falling for the g to slip free.trap I’d chosen—I’d do whatever it took to make you stop. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wouldn’t tell you.”
She bit the inside of her lip. “They thought I’d be more convincing that way.”
He nodded slowly. “I thought if I was just cruel enough, you’d give up.
That you’d have a limit, that once I found it, you’d stop—finding ways to emotionally blindside me.” He gave a low sigh. “I spent such a long time waiting to be betrayed, I didn’t want to care when it happened. I was trying to hurt you, but I am so sorry that I did.”
She stared out at the horizon, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t know why u alive whileI kept trying. You just had these moments when I could see how little of you was real. When you’d forget to pretend, you always seemed so lonely. And I was lonely, too.” She looked down at the scar in her palm. “I used to think d for them? Ithat we were the reverse of each other. Now—” She looked at him and extended her hand. “—I can’t help feeling like we’re mostly the same.”
He entwined his fingers with hers and pulled her close, and this time she let him take her into his arms, his face buried in the curve of her neck.
Life was not cold.
Then he sat back enough to look at her. She watched the way his eyes moved, taking her in piece by piece as if he didn’t want to miss a single detail.
His hands slid up around her throat, warm and possessive, thumb covering the scar below her jaw as he kissed between her eyes. “You’re a far better person than I am. This world doesn’t deserve you at all.”
She shook her head. “I could survive without having to go as far as you did. That doesn’t make me better.”
“You keep people alive. You touch them and your instinct is to save them, no matter who they are or what they’ve done to you. That is not a trait we share. It’s far more difficult than calculating all the ways to kill someone.
And it costs you more.”
Their foreheads touched, and she closed her eyes. It was as though their souls were touching, too.
She wanted to spend her life lost in that moment, but she’d been gone for a day, and no one knew where she was. She couldn’t stay.
“I have to go back.”
He didn’t let go. “You should eat.” dn’t occurred“I have to go,” she said firmly, trying to rise.
“Take a bath,” he said, catching her waist. “I’ll order something to be brought up. Anything you want.”
“Kaine.” She pulled his hands off. “You can’t keep me here. I have to go.”
His expression flickered, just enough to reveal a shard of possessiveness, something ravenous and desperate. Then it vanished and he let her stand, resignation sweeping across his face. trying toShe reached out, her fingers brushing back his hair. “Don’t worry. I’m always going to come back to you.”
en gone for a