CHAPTER 53
Aprilis 1787
KAINE’S CHIMAERA WAS SOMEHOW EVEN LARGER WHEN encountered lucid.
When Helena was dressed and ready to leave, rather than be smuggled through the city, Kaine led her to the high open roof. The creature stood, stretching and yawning, baring fangs longer than Helena’s fingers, wings spreading so wide they nearly blanketed the rooftop.
The chimaera cantered stiffly towards Kaine, eerie yellow eyes watching Helena, the whites showing, muzzle curled in warning.
“Be nice, Amaris,” Kaine said chidingly, scratching the chimaera behind her ears.
Amaris drooped her head, her lip still curling to the gums, eyes fastened on Helena. It was for the best that Helena had been delirious the night before; she would never have climbed on that animal knowing it was real.
Kaine patted the wolfen monster and then knelt, running his hands up and down a foreleg. Helena could see the horse shape of the leg, but it ended in a paw with huge talon-like claws.
She backed away, giving more space. Despite Kaine’s desire that they all be friends, it was obvious that Amaris did not like anyone but him.
“She’s not growling at you,” Kaine said before Helena could take another step back. “Bennet spliced the legs wrong when he made her. Whenever she grows, the nerves get stretched out, and I have to fix them.”
“What do you mean?” Helena watched. She could tell he was using his resonance as his fingers brushed along the length of the foreleg.
“Bennet only cares about the aesthetics when it comes to the chimaeras. He forces things to fit together even when they shouldn’t. The reason the chimaeras are so dangerous is that they’re all rabid with pain. They usually die because the stress kills them. When Amaris arrived, she bit me about fifty times during the first week. You may recall that my back was still in tatters at
the time. I nearly snapped her neck after the tenth time, but I thought, I’m in so much pain I’d love to bite someone. Why would it be different for her?
She was all puppy then, but legs like a foal. Constantly tripping and breaking her wings.” He glanced back at Helena. “I had a notion of the taming capacity of pain relief, and you’d mentioned how flawed the transmutations were, so I tried to fix what I could. Once she realised I wasn’t there to hurt her, she stopped biting.”
He straightened and patted Amaris just below a huge wing. The feathers were as long as Helena’s arms.
He rubbed his knuckles between Amaris’s eyes. “She warmed up to me after that. She’s the only survivor of the whole batch. Bennet tried to take her back, wanted to see why she’d worked. She nearly took his head off. Didn’t
you?”
He rumpled the thick fur.
“Come meet her, she’ll be nice now.” He gestured Helena over. He took her hand and let Amaris sniff it. Her teeth remained bared, but her tail slowly began to swing and her wings relaxed. He guided Helena to bury her fingers in the thick fur and scratch behind an enormous, pricked ear.
Helena could feel his eyes on her as she tentatively let her resonance creep s fastened onin. Amaris trembled but didn’t move or snarl.
She could feel how haphazardly assembled Amaris was, bones and tissue not meant to be combined but forced together nonetheless. Unlike the chimaeras she’d examined in her lab, it was clear someone had tried to correct the excessive flaws, to properly join the muscles, smooth the bone fusions and misjoined ligaments, to block off nerves that caused nothing but pain.
She tried to imagine this monster as a puppy, a foal, a hatchling. Innocent
and juvenile and then— Pain and mutilation.
Of course the chimaeras were savage. How could anything endure so much hurt and not learn only to bite?
“You’ve done remarkable work on her,” she said, her mouth dry. “Is this
himaeras. Hehow you learned to heal?”
“I suppose it was some good practice.”
He looked out over the city, spread below like a glittering crown. Lumithia me about fiftyhad yet to rise, leaving whole swaths of the East Island in darkness, but the ll in tatters atAlchemy Tower stood above it all, its beacon ever burning.
“We should go now. It’s dark enough to fly without being sighted.”
IT WAS ONE THING TO pet Amaris; it was quite another to mount her. Helenaming capacity was certain the wolf could bite her in half if so inclined. Kaine stood at Amaris’s head, scratching her ears, while Helena grasped the leather harness and clambered up.
It took an embarrassingly long time, like scaling a furry mountain. Helena was worried about kneeing or elbowing Amaris and struggled to get a good grip. Kaine swung up behind her in one easy movement.
He was barely seated before Amaris leapt off the roof.d to take her They plummeted straight down and then the huge wings spread out, catching the air and carrying them skywards.
Kaine flew Amaris so high, the air grew thin. They kept their distance from the city and towers, flying near the mountains until they reached the dam.
Amaris banked sharply, so fast the Outpost blurred and the wind from her wings rattled the windows as they sped past. One of the factories had a large open roof that they landed on.
Helena’s legs scarcely held her as she slid off, desperately grateful for solid ground and convinced that humans were not meant to fly, and it was an abomination for them to do so. She tried to appear grateful and not look too green as she scuttled away from the chimaera.
Kaine followed her. Now that the introduction to Amaris and the journey were over, there was an undeniable look of resentment in his eyes again, as if letting her return to Headquarters was not yet something he was convinced of.
Helena pretended not to notice as she headed for the gate, but it only made his mood darken. Finally, she stopped. “What is it?”
“Don’t go,” he said softly.
“You know I have to.”dure so much He shook his head. “No, I don’t. They don’t care about you.”
The words were like a raw nerve being plucked. The pain hummed inside her. Before, she would have denied it, because Luc was there and he would never turn on her, but that was no longer true.
Still, she was unmoved. She shook her head. “We can’t let the Undyingwn. Lumithia win. There is too much at stake. I have to go where I can do good.”
A look of fury joined his resentment. “No, you don’t. It doesn’t matter how many times you break yourself, the gods don’t care. There’s no reward.
This”—he threw his hand out, gesturing at the city, the mountains, and the black sky that Lumithia now radiated down from—“is the Abyss. We’re already in it. None of it matters. Sacrifice and pain, the universe does not
care.”
“You’re wrong,” she said.
He opened his mouth to argue, to offer an endless list of examples of how cold and uncaring the world was, but she didn’t need to be told.
“You’re wrong because I’m part of the universe,” she said. “A tiny piece, I admit, maybe never an important or mathematically significant one, but still a piece. You and I are not separate from it. No one is. It matters to me, everyone who’s died and everyone who will, and everyone who suffers. As distance fromlong as I exist, I will always care. And that means that part of the universe does.” She smiled at him. “Doesn’t that make it all a little brighter?”
He looked despairing.
She gave a helpless shrug. “I want to do good in the world. That was what my father wanted most for me.” She looked down at her hands. “I know most people won’t think I have. I’ve done things now that I don’t think I’m supposed to be forgiven for. But I want to be remembered as someone who
tried at least.”
She stepped back, but he caught her.
“Helena—” s again, as ifShe pulled free. “Be careful, Kaine. Don’t die.”
“CROWTHER’S LOOKING FOR YOU,” THE gatehouse guard said as he let her in.
Helena nodded and headed to the Tower.
Crowther was seated in his office, his right arm strapped to his body as if it were paralysed again, and he looked at Helena with a degree of disgust unlike anything she’d ever seen before. It reminded her of how the guild students used to look at her, but intensified by magnitudes.
The fingers of his right arm were squeezed into a fist. Which meant it still worked and he was intentionally depriving himself of it.
It took her a moment to understand. This was because she was a necromancer now.
’t matter how“I was told you wanted me,” she said, pretending not to notice his expression.
“Hours ago,” he said through clenched teeth.
“I’m here now.”
Crowther snapped the ignition rings on his left hand, and a deep red orb of flames filled his hand before his fingers squeezed into a fist, skin glowing for a moment before the light extinguished. “The prisoner you brought back refuses to cooperate without you, and Ilva …” His expression twisted with fury. “Ilva insists on a light touch until we know who he is. I have wasted an tiny piece, Ientire day waiting for you. Where were you?” ne, but still aHelena avoided his eyes. “Ilva said it would be best to keep out of sight until the official story had circulated.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Helena set her jaw and met his eyes. “I was with Ferron, but I’m sure you already worked that out.”
He gave a scathing laugh that made her scalp crawl. The venom in his expression was so shocking, it was as if she were not even human anymore.
I know most“It’s not as if I wanted to use necromancy,” she said, deciding to drag the unspoken source of his fury into the open. “There was no other way. Soren wasn’t near recovered enough for a mission like that. What was I supposed to do? Let Luc die?”
“What were you supposed to do?” he repeated slowly, standing. “You were supposed to stay in Headquarters. You have one job, Marino, and that is to stay alive and intact so that Ferron can have his weekly proof of life. But it seems I have expected too much of your skills of deduction, so let me be crystal-clear: Unless you are liaising, you will not set foot outside of Headquarters ever again. The only reason I am not having you thrown in prison to stand trial for necromancy is because you now exist to keep Ferron s body as if itin line.” disgust unlikeHelena’s throat closed. “It was your plan. I was working with what I had.”
Crowther’s eyes bulged. “My plan?”
“It was your informant from the hospital who gave Soren all the information. Where else would Purnell—”
Before she could finish the question, the door burst open, and a boy flew into the room.
“Where’s Sofia? I tried to find her, but no one will talk to me. Where is she?”
It was Ivy, her face dirty, hair tucked up in a cap.
Crowther’s gaze slid to Helena. “Marino, perhaps you’d like to tell Ivy here where her older sister, Sofia Purnell, is?”
Ivy turned, and Helena noticed then the resemblance between the hospital orderly and Crowther’s little protégée. A few years apart, different colouring, glowing forand Ivy’s features were sharp and foxlike where Sofia was soft. But as she looked, Helena could see the likeness.
“Your sister?” Helena said, her voice straining. “Sofia was your sister?”
Beneath the dirt, all colour drained from Ivy’s face.
“Sofia was part of the rescue team that saved Luc. She showed us the route through the tunnels to the prison, but during the escape, she was caught in the flood current. I thought—I thought”—Helena looked at Crowther—“you sent her. You didn’t send her?”
Ivy stared at Helena for a moment and then screamed. Helena had never heard such a sound from anyone. It exploded out of the girl, so sharp it felt as though the lightbulbs might shatter. White rage swept across Ivy’s face.
Helena braced herself, but Ivy whirled on Crowther. “You promised to protect her if I did everything you said! She wasn’t supposed to work for you.
She was just supposed to be safe!” supposed toShe lunged at him, going right over the desk, as if she intended to claw his eyes out, but before her fingers reached him, a burst of flames materialised g. “You wereand slammed her into the wall. Ivy hit the floor, and books toppled from the shelves onto her, catching fire as they rained down.
Crowther had moved, darting like a cat. His years of combat experience showing as he closed in on Ivy.
“I never told her about tunnels or waterways, or any prison,” Crowther said as his hand clenched in a fist, the fire vanishing. “If she knew that information, it was from your indiscretion. I warned you to tell her nothing, but you had to talk about all the ways you could travel through the city unseen. Are you glad you impressed her now? I’m sure you made it sound so easy.”
Helena expected Ivy to spring up, but the girl just stayed there on the floor.
“I wanted her to know the ways out. I showed her the map and told her about the prison so she wouldn’t go that way,” Ivy said, her voice a whimpering sob.
“If you had listened to me, she’d be alive,” Crowther said, his voice callous. “I upheld my end of the deal; none of this is my fault.” He kicked
her. “Now get out of my sight. If Lucien Holdfast had been killed in that ridiculous rescue, I would have blamed you.”
Ivy picked herself up off the floor without a word, but as she slipped through the door, she looked back for an instant, and there was murder in her nt colouring,eyes.
When she was gone, Crowther stepped over and pulled out a radio from inside his desk, holding the transceiver up as it crackled to life. Helena recognised the voice of the guard. One of the higher-ups.
The string of jargon that Crowther muttered was nearly incomprehensible, d us the routebut Helena did pick up two phrases: “extremely dangerous” and caught in the“neutralised.” r—“you sentHe set the transceiver down and looked around his charred office.
“Is that really necessary?” Helena asked.
Crowther looked up. “You’ve seen what she’s capable of. Without her harp it felt assister keeping her in check, Ivy is of no use. Bear in mind, that rule applies to Ferron as well.”
His eyes raked over her in disgust, as if he could see every place Kaine had work for you.touched her. “I would strongly advise keeping yourself alive, Marino.”
WHEN HELENA SAW WAGNER, HE smiled at her, but all she could think of was the terror in Sofia’s face as he shoved her towards the necrothralls.
A translator had been found, a rheumy old man named Hotten who worked in the kitchens. His son had been a graduate of the Alchemy Institute and died early in the war.
“Now then,” Crowther said as they entered the cell. All his anger hadCrowther said vanished, and he was almost convincingly convivial. “Why are you so important?”
Hotten translated. Hevgotian was a low West dialect that had a folky cadence and very round-sounding words. Wagner gave a few long-winded answers that Hotten summarised after trying and failing to keep up.
“He knew Morrough in Hevgoss. Morrough was given a prison unit, sectoron the floor. four criminals. Wagner was a guard,” Hotten translated slowly.
The only thing Hevgoss liked more than expansionist war was their prison population. It was vast, multigenerational, and the source of their labour force and the bulk of their military. Sector four criminals were usually political prisoners, sentenced to four generations of imprisonment, lifetime after
lifetime of indentured servitude that only their great-great-grandchildren would have a chance of escaping.
Labour sentences were passed down for almost any infraction, lasting anywhere from days to generations. Much of their low-ranked military was composed of sector one and two criminals, who were promised pardons in exchange for a successful military record. Whenever there were labour shortages, or rumours of political or economic instability within the country, Hevgoss had a habit of going to war, stretching their borders to encompass some new population to refill their prisons.
Officially Hevgotian prisons were all state-run, but that didn’t prevent the “rental” of prisoners when it suited them to whoever could pay. Slavery was illegal on the Northern continent, so Hevgoss had reinvented it.
“Morrough had made a deal with the militocrats. He was trying to find a way of controlling the power of life. He said that mastering it, harvesting it, ule applies towas the key to immortality. He promised the leaders that he’d teach it to them if they provided him with the materials to test it, but the prisoners”—Wagner ce Kaine hadshrugged—“were resistant. They didn’t want to cooperate. They knew they would die.”
Wagner smiled as he recounted this, as though the story evoked fond memories.
“My job was to deliver the prisoners each day and take them back at night, but there were never any to take back when he was done with them. who workedMorrough was friendly to me. He would talk to me, tell me his frustrations.
The energy, you see, could not be taken by force; it had to be given willingly.
He had already found many tricks to get it, but when the prisoners were dead, the energy, he said, remembered. They would lash out. Resist, so that it was difficult even for him to control.”
Helena and Crowther shared a quick glance. Clearly Crowther was also acquainted with the true story of Orion’s victory against the Necromancer.
“It was my idea that solved it.” Wagner thumped his chest. “My father, he was a warden, so was my grandfather. Prison uprisings are a dangerous thing. n unit, sectorThere are prisons the size of towns. To keep order, it is important that the guards are not the enemy. Instead, you make the prisoners think their trouble is other prisoners, a different unit or sector. Those prisoners are the reason r labour forcethis prisoner has less; the rules they hate are those prisoners’ fault. By making privileges always at the expense of others, the prisoners forget who has made those rules. Morrough liked this idea. To take the souls, he must
make the prisoners blame someone else. Even after the energy was taken, the blame must continue to be misdirected.”
Wagner looked from Helena to Crowther, seeming to expect their awe.
“He succeeded in this, I presume,” Crowther said.
Wagner nodded. “He stopped trying to contain or bind the energy to himself. Instead he used another prisoner inside the array.” He spread his hands wide. “He had a strange alchemy. With his power, he pulled the energy out and bound them to the soul of a chosen prisoner. The other prisoner would suffer all the anger, and Morrough took the power.”
“But how would he control it,” Helena said, “if the souls—the energy is bound to someone else?”
“With his bones,” Wagner said, raising his eyebrows. “I saw it. He used his alchemy to contain all the souls inside pieces of his own bones. It was strange, but if a piece stayed with the prisoner in the array, they could not die, ach it to themeven if they tried. Then Morrough could keep the power.”
The phylacteries. It was exactly what Kaine had described.
“The souls of the others, they would feel that life, they would try to resist, but the prisoner could not be killed. Still … slowly their mind would—”
Wagner touched the sides of his head, pulling invisible strings as though unravelling something. ack at night,“Are you saying that the Undying are just a power source for Morrough?”
Helena said slowly.
“Yes! That is what he called them. Undying. Not living or dead.” en willingly.Crowther placed paper and pen down in front of Wagner, indicating that he rs were dead,sketch as much of the procedure and array as possible.
It was clear that Wagner was no alchemist, or artist, but he’d seen the process done at least a few times. He sketched a massive array unlike anything Helena had ever seen. Neither celestial nor elemental, it had nine source points, and in the centre a platform was suspended by which Morrough could access the body of the prisoner designated to survive. gerous thing.The sacrificial victims were placed on the nine points. Morrough would open the chest cavity of the chosen recipient prisoner and place a piece of one of his own bones inside as the final component of the array. After somehow tethering their life force to that bone, he would activate the array.
The array created a pull so terrible that the sacrifices shrivelled into husks, stripped of life until it was drawn into the recipient, trapping their soul
beneath the layers and layers of the others, like an insect trapped in a spiderweb.
Morrough would cut off a shard of the bone, coat it in lumithium, and leave it inside the prisoner’s body. Then he’d place the rest back inside his own.
The information fell in line with what they knew, but Helena’s mind ed the energyrefused to believe that such a thing could be possible.
Ilva’s story about the first Necromancer had been horrifying enough, manipulating and deceiving a multitude, but the scale made it impersonal.
This process was so intimate and intentional. The repetition. The scope. Nine victims, over and over, tearing bone shard after bone shard each time. For
. He used hispower. For immortality.
This was how Kaine had been made. could not die,“How did you survive so long, knowing all this?” Crowther asked Wagner.
Wagner smiled. “He was a selfish man. The lives of others were, to him, a resource. I am no fool. When it was a success, I ran. I knew he would try to find me someday. He would not share credit in his great discovery. I thought he had forgotten, until I woke up in Paladia. Now the world will know of me.”
He smiled craftily at Crowther, clearly anticipating being used by the Resistance to counter Morrough’s claims of power and scientific genius, but Helena couldn’t imagine anyone caring whose idea it was; Morrough was the one with the power and ability. cating that he“How are all the Undying able to use necromancy?” she asked.
Hotten translated the question.
“Accident,” Wagner said with a barking laugh. “He never knew why.”
ONCE THE INTERVIEW WITH WAGNER was over, Helena was left at a loose end.
Headquarters security was thrown into chaos after the guards failed to apprehend Ivy.
Any information Ivy knew was now considered compromised. Crowtherpiece of one immediately moved the prisoners under the Alchemy Tower to a different location, somewhere south of Headquarters, and a team of alchemists went down into the warren of tunnels, trying to seal them off to keep Ivy from sneaking back in.
But when Ilva and Althorne went with Crowther for a follow-up interrogation, Wagner was found dead, hacked to bits by the reanimated corpses of the two guards stationed outside his cell. The remains had been assembled to read: CROWTHER NEXT.
Luc was still in the hospital, under constant watch. Information about his condition was kept carefully controlled. According to the daily reports, he was recovering and only needed a few more days before he’d be transferred to his rooms.
Elain was the only healer allowed to go in to see him. She was tight-lipped for the first time in her life. She would hurry in and out, retrieving medicine from the supply room, talking to Pace in a hushed voice, and then hurrying back.
Helena covered Elain’s usual shifts. Among those patients was Penny, ked Wagner.whose leg had been too damaged for healing and had been amputated at the knee. Alister was sitting at her bedside, keeping her company when Helena pushed back the curtains.
Helena was surprised at first that Penny had so few visitors, but then she remembered that, aside from Alister, Luc and Lila were the only ones left. All the rest were still being searched for beneath the rubble.
“I should go,” Alister said, standing up. “The tribunal has follow-up questions.” ough was thePenny nodded wordlessly, her fingers clutching the blankets on her lap.
“What tribunal?” Helena asked, sitting down when Alister had gone. “You two aren’t being punished for saving Luc, are you?”
Penny shook her head, picking at a lump in the thread of the linen sheets.
“No. We just got a reprimand. I’m even supposed to get two medals. The tribunal’s for Lila.”
Helena looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”
“They’re replacing Lila with Sebastian as paladin primary,” Penny said without looking up. “Lila’s probably going to be stripped of rank for compromising Luc’s safety.”
“You can’t be serious,” Helena said. “Lila has saved Luc’s life more times than—”
“I know,” Penny said sharply. “We all know, but they’re not going to do anything to Luc—he’s Principate. So Lila takes the fall. People have been complaining for a while—I mean, they always were, because she’s a girl and paladins are supposed to be boys—but Lila always outweighed the risk
before, but after that last time with the chimaera, and now … the higher-ups see her as a liability for him. They think that if it hadn’t been for her, Luc
wouldn’t have been captured.”
“But—”
“They’ve been doing interviews, and the thing is,” Penny continued, looking a mixture of guilt-stricken and resigned, “we all knew. I mean he tried to be subtle about it, but you could tell just looking. Especially lately, everyone thought it was all going to be over soon. I think Luc thought it’d be tight-lippedfine because no one cared when it was his dad and Sebastian. But there’s always more rules for us girls, and no one under oath can say that Luc’s not
compromised. Could you?”
Helena looked away.
Poor Lila. She’d straddled the impossibility of her role for years, rarely making a mistake, but now she was left paying for Luc’s.
What would happen?
Helena swallowed hard, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. There wasn’t anything they could do about the tribunal. “How’s the leg?” ones left. AllPenny seemed to shrink. “Fine,” she said too quickly.
Helena reached out slowly. “You know, sometimes the nerve endings don’t realise the amputation has happened, and it can make you feel like the leg’s still there and in pain. I can use my resonance to block it so it doesn’t feel that way.”
“Really?” Penny’s voice had a hint of desperation.
Helena set to work, but even this made her think about Lila.
As far as lost limbs went, it was a good amputation. Maier had been able to salvage as much of the leg as possible and perform a clean cut, without the rush of an emergency. “You know, you might be able to get a prosthetic.”
“I don’t think my repertoire is good enough for much,” Penny said with a bitter smile, but the strain in her expression was already clearing. “Maybe a basic one, though, so I can stay on, maybe man the radios. I don’t want to get sent off.”
“The forge-masters are very talented. Titanium bonds well for most people, and it’s a lot lighter than the old models.”
“I guess we’ll see,” Penny said.
There was silence while Helena worked, and then Penny spoke again. “Is it true, what Luc said? When Soren came to save Alister and me, was he dead?”
Helena flinched as if she’d been kicked through the skull, Soren’s name striking like an anvil. She was drowning again.
Penny’s leg wavered in Helena’s vision.
“When I first heard the rumour, I thought it was ridiculous. I was sure I would have noticed if he was dead. But sitting here, I keep thinking about it, the way he didn’t stop fighting no matter what they did to him. He never screamed—not even when they started tearing him apart.” Penny’s voice shook. “I think I’d rather believe he was dead.”
Helena’s skin crawled as if those cold fingers were dragging across it. She blinked, pushing the thoughts and memories of Soren back and away, again wilfully forcing her consciousness to swerve around the wound that his memory evoked.
She knew better than to outright confess. She bit her lip for a moment.
“Soren said we had to do anything, no matter what it took, to save Luc.”
Penny was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know how to feel. I know I’d be dead if he hadn’t come right then … but—” Her lips trembled. “—what if that was a test? All these years of fighting the good fight, but then in the final moment, instead of staying true, we chose the easy way.”
Helena was glad that she was nearly done working on Penny’s leg, because the conversation was making her hands shake. Easy. She hated that word.
She swallowed hard. “If one person’s actions are enough to damn everyone, then the gods are terrible, and Sol is the worst of all.”
“You don’t mean that,” Penny said sharply, catching her by the wrist, clutching at it until her fingers bit into her skin. “Look at me, Helena. You d been able todon’t mean that. It works the other way, too. Orion passed the test, and think of all the blessings that came from that.”
Penny seemed desperate to convince her.
“I remember when you first came here. We were in the same dorm. You said that Paladia was the most beautiful place in the whole world. The t want to getShining City, you called it. You said that in Etras people didn’t really believe in the gods, but here in the North, you understood why they did, because how most people,else could a place be so beautiful. Don’t you remember that?”
She found Helena’s hand and squeezed it. “That’s what you said. I think you still believe that, deep down. You were just—you were just scared and e again. “Is ityou—made a mistake, but you can repent. If you talk to the Falcon, he makes was he dead?”it all so clear. The journey, all the suffering, it’s what we need. How else can
we be purified? Even—even when it’s hard, we have to be grateful for it, because that’s what makes us pure.”
Penny was smiling at Helena, fervently trying to convince her. “That’s why it’s better for all of us to die true to what we believe than to live on by betraying and corrupting ourselves. I know you meant well, saving us, but you should have trusted Sol.”
Helena pulled her hand free. “Penny, if I thought we’d all die, I wouldn’t be so afraid of losing. What they’ll do to us if we lose will be far worse than death.” She shook her head. “There will be nothing purifying about it.”
EVEN AFTER DAYS OF CHELATING treatment, Lila’s resonance failed to return.
The Council was trying to keep the news quiet, not wanting to cause a panic.
The chelators were supposed to sequester the metal in Lila’s blood to flush it out, but it wasn’t working as effectively as expected.
Shiseo had said nothing about the message Helena had sent him to the Outpost with, asked no questions, but he’d looked very relieved the first timen in the final she returned to the lab. It communicated more than words could.
They spent days analysing and re-analysing the shards and new samples ofleg, because Lila’s blood, trying to determine what they were missing. Every time Helena had to leave for a shift, she always returned to find Shiseo still working. He finally fell asleep, slumped over the workstation.
Helena sat quietly, watching a flame under the glass alembic before her, steam rising in the cucurbit, collecting in the ambix and running down the tube into a vial beside it.
Elain Boyle had been made the Resistance’s lead healer earlier that day. It was a new position that Matias had created for her. Elain had arrived in the hospital wearing a large and ornate sunstone amulet around her neck, and now her general duties were managing and scheduling the other healers’ shifts, while she worked exclusively as Luc’s “personal” healer.eally believe Helena told herself she didn’t care.because how Her chymiatria was becoming the default for the healers. Pace had quietly created a section in the storerooms for the tonics and medicines, letting Helena’s chymiatria bear some of the load of healing.
Helena curled her fingers into a tight fist. She’d built up a large supply ofon, he makes ingredients since they’d recovered the ports, but she was worried about running out now that Crowther had banned her from foraging anymore. Some
could be made using imported materials, but there were a few things that were hard to get her hands on if she couldn’t gather them herself.
She sighed. She used to love the quietness of lab work—such a stark contrast with the hospital—but now it left her to her thoughts, and everything she pushed away in her mind crowded around, suffocating her.
She missed Kaine.
Whenever she thought of him, she felt as though a piece of her was missing.
The war had drilled itself into her bones, carving away at her until there was hardly anything left except what made her useful, an ideal component in an elaborate machine, but Kaine had reminded her that she was human; that not every trait and ability and quality she possessed only mattered insomuch as it was useful to someone else. That she was allowed to breathe sometimes.
Now, in his absence, she felt herself suffocating.
w samples of
ymore. Some
could be made using imported materials, but there were a few things that were hard to get her hands on if she couldn’t gather them herself.
She sighed. She used to love the quietness of lab work—such a stark contrast with the hospital—but now it left her to her thoughts, and everything she pushed away in her mind crowded around, suffocating her.
She missed Kaine.
Whenever she thought of him, she felt as though a piece of her was missing.
The war had drilled itself into her bones, carving away at her until there was hardly anything left except what made her useful, an ideal component in an elaborate machine, but Kaine had reminded her that she was human; that not every trait and ability and quality she possessed only mattered insomuch as it was useful to someone else. That she was allowed to breathe sometimes.
Now, in his absence, she felt herself suffocating.