CHAPTER 59
Junius 1787
HELENA LAY SQUINTING, STRUGGLING TO SEE, BUT everything was dim, blurring.
When she tried to breathe, pain radiated through her, so sudden it jolted her back into consciousness. She clutched her chest, trying to draw breath, but she couldn’t.
What had happened? She couldn’t remember. She fought to breathe, and a low whistling sound came from somewhere. Then it all rushed back. The
lorries, they crashed and— There must have been another bomb.
She struggled, trying to pull herself up.
She tried to spot the explosion, but the landscape was wrong. Where was the road? There was just fire and a crater.
Agony bloomed through her. Her vision turned red.
A whistling sound like a boiling kettle kept coming from somewhere. She tried to find it and realised it was coming from her throat.
She moved cautiously. If she’d damaged her spine— Calm down. Focus. Assess your condition and act from there.
She forced herself to look down and gave a strangled whimper.
There was a piece of metal buried in the centre of her chest, splitting her sternum.
She kept staring at it, too shocked to move at first. She was going to die.
She was going to die in a field hospital, just like her father. All that vivimancy just to run into the same fate.
She closed her eyes, struggling to stay calm as feeling crept back over her.
She could sense her fingers. Toes. Her spine was intact at least.
She kept trying to breathe, but she wanted to scream with every hitch of her lungs. It was worse than a knife wound; the agony seemed to radiate
outwards, seething like cracks through every rib. It consumed the whole of
her consciousness.
Get up. You have to get up.
She could barely make herself move. She looked towards the road again.
There was just a hole. The road was gone, but there were still people in the hospital.
She managed to get her hand up and peel the mask off. She didn’t think that lung damage from dust mattered anymore.
The air was so much cooler. She managed a half breath.
She couldn’t die. im, blurring.She fought to her feet, managing shallow, panting breaths, and nearly fainted when she got upright. Every movement was agony. The need to breathe warred with the excruciating misery of forcing her ribs and lungs to shift. She bit down on her lip as she tried to shuffle towards the doors. One step at a time.
Her lungs kept agitating her with the urge to cough, but she fought it back.
Pain exploded through her each time, bright white, so searing she’d waver, unable to see.
If she coughed, she would faint, and she’d be dead before she regained consciousness.
She would not die. She would wait. Someone would come back and find her. Maier could operate. Shiseo would work night and day to find the right chelator, and she would make herself recover quickly.
She’d promised Kaine that she was safe, that nothing would happen to her.
She could not die.
She made it through the doors. There was a tray with a few discarded instruments and bottles on it. She fumbled through them until she found a vial of laudanum.
She managed to unscrew the lid and forced down a sip of the tongue-biting contents.
Not too much. She had to stay lucid. She searched the rest of the supplies, looking for something, a stimulant to keep herself going.
She’d kill for a cough suppressant.
She forced herself to look down at her chest. She was wearing so many layers, she couldn’t see exactly where the shrapnel went in to tell if it was nullium dissolving into her blood or just a stray piece of the lorry.
She wanted to pull it out but knew better. If it had punctured her heart or aorta, she’d bleed to death in seconds. It might be keeping her alive.
Someone would come. She could wait until a lorry came back.
She made herself keep moving, because it was easier than sitting, feeling the injury.
She checked the remaining patients. The nearest was a boy who’d been cut out of his armour. He was missing an arm. There was an intravenous drip in his remaining arm, but there was so much blood pooled beneath him.
Reaching feebly for a pulse and finding none, she drew his eyes closed and moved on.
Most were dead, several unresponsive; only a few were still conscious. She checked all of them, noting where they were.
The laudanum had managed to numb her enough that she could move a little easier.
“Mum …?” one of the soldiers moaned, catching her wrist as she passed.
Pain ripped through her chest and up her spine, shattering the relief. Her legs nearly gave out, and she bit down on her tongue so hard her mouth flooded with blood.
His helmet was crushed around his skull. Through the openings, one side of his face was mangled. There was thick blood oozing from his head onto
the pallet underneath him.
“Mum …” he said.
“She’ll be here soon.” appen to her.He wouldn’t let go of her wrist. He tugged again. Her vision flashed white.
“Mum … sorry. Forgot to say goodbye. Sorry.”
“It’s all right, d-don’t worry,” she said.
His fingers relaxed enough for her to slip her hand free. She looked down.
He was dead. ongue-bitingShe took another sip of laudanum. It was growing harder and harder to keep from coughing. She couldn’t tell if the blood in her mouth was from her lungs or her tongue.
She tried to listen for any sound of the lorries. The sounds of fighting were fading. She headed for the doors.
She was growing increasingly certain that her injury was beyond the Resistance’s means. The bone and potential heart damage would require extensive manual surgery beyond what Maier could manage without
alchemy. One of her lungs was likely punctured. She’d need at least two surgeons, possibly three.
If triage protocols were in place, which they would be given the mass injuries, no one except Luc or Sebastian would qualify for three surgeons.
She leaned her head against the wall. o’d been cutEven with a successful surgery, her likelihood of survival would be low.
She’d be at high risk of complications and infection, a drain on their limited supplies. The hospital would save far more people if they passed her over.
Any half-rate medical assessment would realise that.
Whether the lorries arrived or not, she was going to die. She looked down onscious. Sheat her hand, wishing she had the resonance to send a pulse code to Kaine.
Some way to tell him she was sorry. That she had tried.
The edge of her vision was beginning to fade, unravelling like fabric, slowly shrinking smaller and smaller.
When she blinked, there was someone standing in front of her. Her mind stumbled through the fog of pain before realising it was a necrothrall. It stood studying her as if confused about whether she was dead or alive.
Her lungs seized, trying to force a cough, to clear the fluid inside her chest.
A rasping whimper escaped her as she tried to hold it back.
Movement caught her eye. There were more necrothralls. The sounds of fighting had ceased. Althorne and his men had died or fallen back. The necrothralls were coming for the hospital. For the dead and the survivors.
She couldn’t let them take the survivors. ashed white.She stepped back, trying to find a scalpel, something sharp, something that would be quick and painless. She wouldn’t let them be taken to West Port.
All she could find were filthy bandages and empty bottles of medicine. She needed one scalpel.
Something under her clothes bumped against her leg. It took her a moment to remember what was there. The obsidian. She had been holding it when the was from herbomb went off; she’d shoved it in her pocket without thinking.
She fumbled for it and slit her finger open. The piece must have shattered ighting werein the explosion, but it was sharp at least.
She was too slow. The necrothralls were already inside. There were bodies by the door, and several necrothralls had stopped there, dragging them away, while the rest moved deeper.
They weren’t moving fast, but they were faster than Helena. They reached the survivors before she did.
“No!” Helena rasped out, her raised voice splitting her chest.
One of the necrothralls moved towards her. She tried to fend it off. All she had was the obsidian. She slashed at the necrothrall with it. The soft, deteriorating skin split easily on contact, and then the tip hit bone.
She’d used barely any force, but that pressure alone caused enough pain that her legs failed her.
When her head cleared, she was on the ground—and so was the necrothrall.
Blood dripped from her fingers where she was gripping the obsidian, the edges of the black glass buried in her skin. There were still so many necrothralls.
They moved towards her, bodies blotting out the reddish light filtering through the door. Wind fluttered across her face.
Her eyes slid shut.
hrall. It stood WHEN SHE TRIED TO OPEN her eyes again, they were heavy, as if her lashes had tangled. When she tried to move—her body wouldn’t.ide her chest.
She tore her eyes open. There was glaring light, and everything was blurred until she found a vague dark shape near her. She recoiled, then squinted.
Kaine was standing beside her, pale and wide-eyed, his face impossibly
haggard.
“You …”mething that The word emerged cracked and croaking. Her tongue was thick and dry, as if she hadn’t touched water in days. She couldn’t feel anything below her neck.
She tried to look down but couldn’t move.er a moment She was paralysed.
Her eyes crossed as she tried to look down her body. All she could make out was an intravenous drip in her arm. When she squinted, she could see saline and other things in upended glass vials all running down into the tube.
“What?” she asked. The words crackled in her throat and slurred across herwere bodies tongue. “What’d you do …?”
“What did I do?” Kaine repeated slowly. “I saved your life.”
He was breathing unsteadily. “Crowther, with his endless demands, has the High Necromancer taking a myriad of precautionary measures. Only three
people knew about that bombing before it happened. And I wasn’t one of them. When I got word, I thought I was being paranoid sending my thralls in.
Surely, they’d understand that I can’t stop every fucking thing. This was for my peace of mind, I told myself. To see the fallout, so I’d know how bad things were. You wouldn’t be there, of course. I told myself you wouldn’t be there, you’d be safe in Headquarters, because that is the damned deal. Isn’t that what you promised? That they wouldn’t punish you? I knew—I told you
this would happen—”
His voice broke.
“Wasn’t … Crowth—” Speaking moistened her tongue at least, but she was dying for water. Her mind was still foggy. She couldn’t understand how she was there.
“Don’t defend them!” Kaine looked feral with rage. “Do you have any idea how close you came to dying? It took an entire medical team to keep you alive. Why would they leave you alone in that fucking hospital if they weren’t trying to kill you?” er lashes had“Were … evacuating,” she said slowly, pacing her words, her tongue
gradually complying.
“Alone?”
“I was—in charge.” She felt eerily lucid. “Soldiers—didn’t deserve to die alone.”
She tried to get up. She felt as if she’d be able to think more clearly if she could just sit up for a minute and figure out what had happened to her.
“Well, I didn’t see anyone there while you were dying.” k and dry, asShe wasn’t sure why she was trying to reason with him, but she wanted him to calm down so that she could reorient herself.
“It’s a war, Kaine. People die. Given your personal death toll, you should know that better than anyone else. You know that I’m not going to prioritise my survival over everyone else’s.”
He stared at her for a long terrible moment, the rage stark on his face.
“Well, you should.” He was suddenly ice-cold, and his eyes gleamed so silver that they were almost white. “Because I have warned you, if something ed across herhappens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order of the Eternal Flame.
That isn’t a threat, it’s a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the Resistance as Holdfast’s. If you die, I will kill every single one of ands, has thethem. Given that the risk to their lives is the only way to make you value your own.”
Helena stared at him, dumb with shock that slowly twisted into rage. my thralls in.“How dare you? How—dare you!” Her voice rose so high, it cracked.
If she could have moved, she would have thrown herself at him and tried to beat him to death with her bare hands. She wanted to scream at him.
But beyond her fury was an even greater sense of horror at what this meant. He’d become the very threat that Crowther had feared. Once he would have been loyal to them for the sake of avenging his mother, but Helena had usurped that, given him a new and uncontrollable source of obsessiveness and rage.
She closed her eyes, unable to look at him, and the ouroboros flashed through her mind, that image of endless self-annihilation. A dragon forever consuming itself. ideaShe gave a rasping sob that rattled her lungs violently, and as she fought to breathe, the room went still.
The surface beneath her shifted. Fingers tucked a stray curl behind her ear before brushing across her cheek.
“I know your face too well.” He sighed. “You’re thinking you’ll have to kill me now, aren’t you? That I’m too much of a liability.”
She said nothing, refusing to open her eyes.
“Would you really do it?”
She looked at him. “You know—you know I will not choose you at the price of everyone. It wouldn’t even save you if I did.”
He looked away then. “You’d never forgive yourself.”
Her jaw trembled. “No. I wouldn’t—” Her throat grew thick. She struggled to swallow, unable to lift her head. “But it wouldn’t be the first unforgivable thing I’ve done. What’s one more line for the history books?”
He was silent for a long time.
“What will you do when I’m gone?” he asked, as if that was all that
mattered.
“I’m sure you can imagine.” med so silverThe ceiling blurred at the thought of a world where Kaine was gone and she was alone, with no one to blame but herself.
She hated this war. She had thought she could do anything. That she was strong enough for it. That there would be no limit to what she was willing to do or endure. Apparently, Kaine had become her limit. ou value yourShe couldn’t imagine herself without him. She didn’t think she’d even exist anymore.
She gave a choking gasp, struggling for air, lungs rattling.
Suddenly Kaine was over her, holding her face in his hands, tilting her m and tried tohead so she could breathe. That was all the embrace possible.
“Just live, Helena.” His voice was shaking. “That’s all I’m asking you to do for me.” nce he wouldHelena gave a low sob, lungs whistling as she fought to breathe. “I can’t promise that. You know I can’t promise that. But I can’t risk what you’ll do if I die.”
He kissed her. She could taste the plea on his lips.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying again and again, “I’m sorry I did this to you.”
A harsh buzz broke the air. Kaine went rigid and jerked back with a curse.
Another buzz. Two long and two short. Each time the noise came, the lights she fought toin the room dimmed, flickering ominously.
He looked around, his teeth gritted. “Fuck. I’m being called back to the city.” He stepped away but kept staring down at her. She could see the calculation in his eyes as he seemed to hesitate over something. Finally an expression of despair flashed across his face.
“Davies,” he said. His voice barely carried, and his eyes went out of focus for a moment. “Come here.”
The door behind him opened, and a woman entered. Helena didn’t know enough about servants’ uniforms to place what she was, but she recognised the name.
Enid Ferron’s lady’s maid stood beside Kaine, looking down at Helena She struggledwith rheumy blue eyes. A faint whiff of something dry but organic drifted into the room with her. She was dead but so expertly reanimated, she looked almost lifelike.
Helena looked around the room and towards the window, realising that she couldn’t see any buildings, just sky and trees.
“Where are we?” she asked abruptly. She didn’t even know how long she’d been unconscious.
“Spirefell. My family’s country estate,” Kaine said, pulling on his uniform, the black coat and cloak. “I’ll explain more later. I have to go. Don’t be afraid of Davies. She won’t hurt you.”
Helena kept staring at the necrothrall. One of the servants who’d died when Kaine became Undying, whose life was responsible for his immortality and immutability. He’d reanimated her?
“I’m sorry,” he was saying, “I thought I had more time to explain. You’ll be safe here. No one will find you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
“Davies, take care of her.” He leaned over Helena one last time, stroking her hair. “You’re safe. I promise.”
Then he was gone. She could hear something in the walls and floor moving but couldn’t see what it was as she was left paralysed, in the care of a at you’ll do ifnecrothrall.
She looked at it—her—again. Davies stood watching Helena, her gaze vague but constant.
“Can I have water?” Helena finally asked.
Davies poured a cup of water from a pitcher on a table nearby and then brought it over to Helena and helped her sip enough to wet her mouth. It was bitter; Helena recognised the taste of laudanum.
She had no idea it was possible to reanimate necrothralls to this degree.
The woman seemed alive.
“You were Enid Ferron’s lady’s maid, weren’t you?” Helena asked, fighting the wave of exhaustion the drug brought upon her.
Davies nodded slowly as if she understood the question. Helena struggled
to focus.
“You’ve been here, all this time?”
Another nod. Davies mouthed a word silently. Kaine.
If that were true, it meant she’d been reanimated for nearly seven years without showing any signs of decay. Helena hadn’t known that was even
possible.
“Why? Why would he do that to you?”
If the necrothrall answered, Helena wasn’t conscious enough to see it. sing that sheShe slipped in and out of lucidity, in more pain each time she came awake.
Davies was sitting in a chair beside her, knitting what appeared to be socks.
The numbness was wearing off. Pain was shifting from a distant impression to a weight steadily bearing down harder and harder. his uniform,Her throat was bruised and raw inside; she must have been on a breathing on’t be afraidapparatus at some point.
When the pain grew oppressive enough to wake her again, she found that Kaine had returned. He was standing beside her, replacing several of the vials immortalityconnected to the intravenous drip.
“What happened to the medical team?” Helena asked, her tongue thick and dry again. “The people you had save me. What did you do to them?”
He stared down at her. The room was dark; his black uniform made him blend into the shadows, but his pale hair and eyes almost glowed.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”
“Did you kill them?” Her voice sharpened. floor movingHe flicked a switch, filling the room with dim orange light.
“No, I didn’t kill them. An entire medical team turning up dead would have raised questions. They think they saved a woman who died under interrogation yesterday. And they do not care at all that they spent hours saving you for the ostensible purpose of my torturing you to death afterwards.
They were proud to be of service. You are, after all, a terrorist, they said.”
She knew he was trying to distract her. “So you would have killed them but didn’t because it would have raised inconvenient questions.”
His eyes flashed. “Yes, I did all of this for convenience, which you know I have so abundantly in my life with my two mutually exclusive masters.”
Guilt caught in Helena’s throat like a stone. “I don’t want you to kill people because of me.”
He gave a barking laugh. “What exactly is it that you think I do with all my time? I kill people. I order other people to kill people. I train people to kill people. I sabotage and undermine people so that they will be killed, and I do it all because of you. Every word. Every life. Because of you.”
She gave a ragged gasp as the room tilted, swimming as the blood drained from her head.
The viciousness in his expression vanished. “Wait. Helena, I didn’t—”
“No,” she said harshly. “Don’t even try to take it back.”
“I—” His voice was soft. Pleading.
“No,” she said again. “It’s true. What you said is entirely true. Everything came awake.you do is on my head, too. Every life …”
“Don’t.” He sat on the edge of the bed, picked up her right hand. “Don’t carry it. It’s not yours. Stop trying to carry a whole damned war on your shoulders.”
“This is all my fault, though,” she said. “I did this to you. I made you like this. Someone should regret that, and you can’t. But if I do—maybe that will be enough to make you stop someday.” al of the vialsHe looked away and said nothing. She watched his fingers move across hers, wishing she could feel it. gue thick and“What’s happening in the city?” she asked.
He was silent for a few seconds. “Althorne’s dead. There were several units trapped in one of the buildings; they got them out, but he died during the retreat. From our estimates, the Resistance has lost at least half their active forces. We retook the ports two days ago.”
There was nowhere for the despair of that information to go but to lance into her mind. No twisting horror in her gut; no sense of emptiness. She could not feel her body. She could only think.
“There has been considerable backlash to the bombing, though. They h afterwards.didn’t expect the dust to contaminate both islands. There’s been panic and outrage over the widespread loss of resonance, the hospitals are overwhelmed with patients needing chelators, and the death toll for the Resistance, while significant, has provided us almost no new necrothralls because Durant forgot that the nullification compound would interfere with reanimation. They have to pump fresh blood into the corpses to reanimate them. So I doubt it will happen again. At least not on that scale.”
A paltry source of comfort, but it was something. o with all my“I don’t know what to do,” she finally said. “I can’t ignore a threat to the Eternal Flame.”
He sighed, head dipping. “I was just angry.”
“You’re always angry, but you can’t make threats like that or reduce a war like this into a simplistic blame game. And you can’t hold the Resistance hostage to control me.”
His shoulders slumped. “If you die, Helena, I’m done. I won’t continue this. I’m tired.”
He looked at her, and she could see the whole war in his eyes, the toll that came from struggling with no end in sight, driven by a terror of what might happen if he ever stopped.
“I mean it. I won’t kill them—but I will be done. You are my terms of service. The contract is void if you die.”
She managed to turn her head a little. “There is a life for you on the other side of this war. You have the Stone. If Morrough dies, you might be fine, and you’d be free. You could do—all sorts of things. Don’t reduce your world to me.”
His lip curled, a flash of teeth. “Oh, and do you have a list of post-war plans that you’ve forgotten to mention?”
She averted her eyes. “Do as I say, not as I do.”
He laced their fingers together as they lapsed into a silence as empty as the future.
“You could—become a healer,” she finally said, straining to feel the sensation of his hand against hers.
A smile ghosted at the corner of his mouth. “I hadn’t considered that.” ss. She could“You should. You have a talent for it—although your bedside manner is terrible.”
“It would be something to balance out that death toll of mine,” he said, not looking at her. overwhelmed“I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not your fault.”
He shook his head, staring at the wall. “Maybe that was true once, but I Durant forgotbelieve I own it all now.”
She swallowed, willing her fingers to move so she could squeeze his hand.
“You are so much more than what the war has done to you.”
Her voice shook with conviction, but he still wouldn’t look at her.
“You are,” she said desperately. “Just—just like I am. There’s more to both of us—it’s just waiting to get out. Someday, we’ll leave all this behind.
Go far away, and you’ll see. The two of us—I think we could.”
He made no answer, but she dimly felt his fingers grip hers tighter.
“I promise—you’ll see …” Her eyelids began to droop.
“Go to sleep. You have a long recovery ahead of you.”
She resisted, trying to stay awake. “How long have I been here?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“How long?”
“… It’s been four days since the bombing.”
Four days? Blood was suddenly pounding in her ears, and her lungs rattled when she tried to breathe.
“Kaine—you have to get word to Crowther that I’m alive.”
“Don’t worry about them.” His voice was hard.
“No, listen. You have to tell him.”
He stroked her cheek. “Just rest.”
She fought to move, needing him to understand. “No. Promise me. Promise you’ll send word. Make sure he knows that I’ll come back.”
If Crowther thought she was dead, he might decide that Kaine was too
much of a risk to keep alive.
“Promise me—promise you’ll get word—”
“All right. I’ll send word, I promise. Rest.”
empty as theThe throbbing pulse of blood in her head slowed, and she relaxed. He tucked a curl behind her ear.
“You’ll be here at least three weeks unless the nullium clears from your blood before then.”
“There’s a chelator the Eternal Flame developed—”
He tapped the tip of her nose. “The Undying have chymists and are also familiar with metal-sequestering agents.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You’ll get your resonance back … but it will be a long time for you. You had several shrapnel injuries, and you inhaled a significant amount as well.
It’s hard to say how long it’ll take. You’ll have to recover the old-fashioned way. Go to sleep. Loath as I am to admit it, the war will still be here when you wake.”
lungs rattled
me. Promise
The throbbing pulse of blood in her head slowed, and she relaxed. He tucked a curl behind her ear.
“You’ll be here at least three weeks unless the nullium clears from your blood before then.”
“There’s a chelator the Eternal Flame developed—”
He tapped the tip of her nose. “The Undying have chymists and are also familiar with metal-sequestering agents.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You’ll get your resonance back … but it will be a long time for you. You had several shrapnel injuries, and you inhaled a significant amount as well.
It’s hard to say how long it’ll take. You’ll have to recover the old-fashioned way. Go to sleep. Loath as I am to admit it, the war will still be here when you wake.”