CHAPTER 60
Junius 1787
BEING INJURED WAS HORRIBLE. HELENA WAS ACCUSTOMED to the efficiency of healing to circumvent the slowest and more unbearable aspects of recovery; having to suddenly endure the natural speed of healing was utter misery.
She spent much of the first week in a drugged stupor, feverish with an infection. When she finally grew lucid again, she found Kaine still beside her.
He had a large stack of books and folios that he was flipping through.
“What are you doing?” she asked after watching for a little while.
His eyes flicked up. “Studying human anatomy for my future career as a healer,” he said in a dry voice.
She knew that the real answer was that he would have to be her healer once the nullium was cleared from her system, but she played along. “We can open a practice together, like my parents did. Up on a cliff. We’ll be able to look out the windows and see the tides.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do I get any say about this future life of ours, or
are you making all the decisions?”
“Do you have ideas?”
There was a pause. “Can’t say I do.”
She drew a slow breath. She could move her fingers now. As her fingers flexed, she realised her right hand was bandaged, the fingers splinted, and she remembered the last moments in the field hospital.
“I almost forgot,” she said. “I think I discovered something in the
hospital.”
He looked up.
“The obsidian I told you about. I had some in my pocket when the necrothralls came. I think—I think I severed a reanimation with it.”
“Are you sure?”
She squinted, trying to remember more details, but all she recalled was the red-orange light, and the pain. “Not entirely, but I think we should test it again.”
“Well, don’t worry about that right now.” He snapped his book shut and came over to change the bandages.
She’d regained enough mobility that as he peeled off the gauze, she lifted her head, determined to see. Running like a ragged seam down the centre of her chest was a huge incision, sewn closed with black thread and bone wire.
The skin was swollen, yellow, and white and pink.
Helena had seen more wounds than she could count, watched innumerable people grieve over the loss of who they’d been before and what their bodies had become. She knew all the things to say, the encouragement and reassurances, that it would be all right, that it would get better.
Staring at the wound, she forgot all of it. ill beside her.“My gods,” she said, head dropping, her throat convulsing, too horrified to keep looking.
“It’ll heal. Give it time,” he said quietly as he checked for signs of infection.
She knew from treating Lila that she would scar. Even if she tried to heal r healer onceherself afterwards, organised all the matrices, there was a limited time frame We can openfor preventing scars, and something about nullium seemed to have a mild
keloid effect on the tissue.
She drew several sharp breaths.
She was lucky to be alive. A few scars were nothing compared with the injuries others in the Resistance would carry for life. She still had all her limbs, both eyes and ears. Even all her teeth.
She was very lucky by any metric. What did a scar matter? It would be fine. nted, and sheShe could feel Kaine watching her and forced herself to speak. “I think your scars are prettier than mine,” she finally said.
“I have a better healer.”
IT TOOK THREE WEEKS JUST for the nullium in Helena’s blood to reduce enough that Kaine could use resonance to monitor her healing, although actual transmutation was still far off.
Her own resonance was barely a hum in her veins.
Whenever Kaine was absent, Davies stayed with her. Helena’s head was finally clear enough to notice more of her surroundings.
The room was sterile. Almost bare. There was a bed, a towering wardrobe, a desk, and a chair. Falcon Matias had more indulgent quarters, and he was supposed to be an ascetic.
When she teased Kaine about it, he grimaced. “This is my room.”
Helena fell silent, looking around again, abashed. “Oh. I thought that a country house would have bigger rooms.”
He nodded. “There are larger ones. I moved in here because it was closer to my mother’s room, then never left.”
“I’m sorry I brought you back,” she said.
He shook his head. “You didn’t. I come back to check on the servants.”
She hesitated but then asked, “Are they all dead?”
He nodded. o horrified to“Why did you—?”
He looked away, his throat dipping as he rubbed his hands together. “It was just after. I don’t remember everything. I could feel them screaming inside me. I found their bodies piled up in a corner like discarded rags. They were still warm. I’d never—I didn’t even realise what I was doing. I was
trying to put them back.”
“So they’re—them?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what they are. I like to think I was able to put a part of them back, that it’s why it got easier after that, but it’s more likely that they act like themselves because I want them to. I just—can’t seem to let go.”
When Helena was finally able to have a pillow, Davies would prop up books for her to read during the hours when Kaine was absent. She was curious about the kind of library that existed at Spirefell, but Davies unfortunately did not seem to be literate, at least not anymore. The books Helena received were largely at random. One day, she received an encyclopaedia of butterfly species, the next a florilegium of Cetus’s earliest writings.
Because “Cetus” had written thousands of alchemical texts and letters, duce enoughdated across centuries, excerpts were often assembled into various collections by scholars based on which parts of his work and history they happened to consider legitimate. Depending on the florilegium’s edition, Cetus was born
in ten different countries. Sometimes he was a king, other times a priest; some letters even claimed he’d worked with Orion himself.
In the florilegum Helena received, Cetus was very taken by an ancient Khemish cult, which claimed that human resonance was the alchemisation of mankind. That alchemists were an ascendant form.
“Sounds like something alchemists would believe about themselves,”
Kaine said in the late evening while she was telling him about it. He was much more interested in Helena’s lungs than in ancient cults.
Helena tried not to wince as the bandages came off. “Do the Undying have a religion?”
“The High Necromancer is our deity,” Kaine said, tracing his resonance carefully along her ribs where several had cracked. “Our lives are in servitude to his infinite power.”
“If he’s that powerful, why doesn’t he come out and win the war?”
He glanced up for a moment. “He’s a god. You’ll notice that making humans die for them is the gods’ primary mode of operation. You’d think Sol could personally smite a few necromancers if he hates them so passionately, but somehow, it’s always the Holdfasts coordinating those efforts. Makes one wonder if he really cares.”
Ever since she’d told him about Orion and why the Holdfasts had become Principates, he seemed to think that if he just criticised the Eternal Flame enough, she’d give up on the Resistance.
Her sigh made her lungs rattle, and Kaine seemed to completely forget the —can’t seemconversation for several minutes.
“Since Holdfast started showing up in combat, Morrough has stayed far away from the front lines,” he said at last.
“But if he’s so afraid of Luc, why didn’t he kill him when he was captured?”
Kaine shook his head. “I don’t think he wants him dead. The orders have always been to take him alive. I used to think it was because Morrough feared usurpation from whoever made the killing blow, but now, after that capture, I think it’s something else. Holdfast has been at the front lines for six years. Do you really think that if Morrough wanted him dead, he couldn’t have found a us collectionsway to kill him by now?”
IT WAS FOUR WEEKS AFTER the bombing before Helena could get up without feeling like she’d shatter. Her resonance had feebly returned, and the bandages were off, but the wiring remained because her sternum was still worryingly delicate. Before lacing on a chest brace, she sat with a mirror, looking at the scar that ran down between her breasts.
It was far from pretty.
She’d always admired the way Lila wore her scars, her jokes about naming them; it was only now that she began to realise how difficult it was to be ndying haveproud of them.
The visual evidence of the injury would never go away. In a moment of intimacy it would be all there was to see. Staring at it in the cold light of day, e in servitudeshe couldn’t help but think that someday Kaine might not want someone who had the war so overtly carved into them. Surely he’d want to be able to forget
sometimes.
Now, with her, it would be impossible. u’d think SolHe was sorting the vials of medicine on the table, but she could feel him observing her from the corner of his eye. s. Makes one“It’ll fade,” she said quickly.
Her face was burning. She dropped the mirror, putting her hand over the scar to hide it. It took the span of her entire hand.
“Once I’m better, I’ll treat it every day so—it’ll fade more,” she said. She could feel a divot in the bone where it had refused to regenerate. She could attach titanium plating there to reinforce the bone, but given her repertoire, it might interfere with her work. Part of the reason titanium was so medically useful for alchemists was because the resonance for it was rare.
Her jaw trembled. “It won’t look like this forever.”
He set a vial down. His silver eyes were intent, his attention like a beam of light through a magnifying glass, suddenly focused solely on her. He stepped over and gently but firmly pulled her hand away. rrough fearedShe knew he’d seen the scar more than she had, and in far worse stages hat capture, Ithan this, but she hated having him look at it. six years. Do“Do you see my scars that way?” he finally said. “When you look at me,
are they all you see?”
She flinched. “No.”
“Well.” He met her eyes. “I don’t see you that way, either. You’re mine.”
He let go of her wrist and lifted his hand, the fingertips tracing the scarring until it was covered by his palm, warm against her bare skin, then sliding up
to curve around her neck. “You are. It doesn’t matter what happens to you, you will still be mine.”
HELENA SAW ONLY BITS OF the house. Spirefell. They took walks through the dim hallways as she tried to adapt to the way her chest ached when she moved. Breathing deeply made it feel like her sternum would snap. Thebout naming house was an old, heavy style long abandoned in the city. Everywhere was detailed in dark wrought iron, even the floors run through with it. There was a melancholy beauty to it.
In the foyer, an intricate mosaic of the ouroboros dragon was inlaid in the marble floor. Meticulously rendered in both grandeur and savagery. Sheomeone who studied it from the landing above.able to forget The Ferrons must have been so proud when the house was built. They must have thought they’d defeated god.
That night, she pulled Kaine into the bed. He’d slept in the chair beside it every night, her hand in his, ignoring her arguments that surely there were
other beds in his house.
Now he finally gave in to her.
She curled against him, having missed the warmth and comfort of his body.
A few more days and she would go back. She’d convalesced there longer than she’d meant to, but the return trip would be hard, and she’d be no use at Headquarters if she wasn’t recovered.
Everything would be different. The bombing had decimated the Resistance, wiped out their supplies. Everything they’d gained in the last year, gone, and now Morrough knew there was a spy. The Undying wereke a beam of looking for Kaine, trying to lure him out, but that would not stop Ilva or Crowther from coercing him into doing whatever they deemed necessary.
She had to go back.
She held him, her heart beating so hard it made her whole chest throb.
She pulled him closer, tilting her head back, and kissed him. His hand rose up to caress her cheek, but he began to draw away. She knew he was going to say she was still recovering. She was so sick of her convalescence. Of having so little time and never getting to spend it in the ways she wanted.
“It’ll be fine if we’re careful,” she said, not letting go. “Please. I want you before I go.”
He was careful. Slow and gentle. He touched her as though she were glass.
He pushed into her and she caught his face in her hands, pulling him close so that their noses and foreheads brushed, her fingers trembling.
I love you.
It was right at the tip of her tongue, but she hesitated, biting the words back.
There was a part of her that felt she might doom them if she said it. If there were important things left unspoken, tomorrow would come.
She kissed him instead.
I love you. She told him in the way she held him close; in the way her mouth met his; in how her hands trailed across his skin, mapping him, memorising every detail of what it was to be with him, his scars under her
fingers.
lt. They mustI love you.
I love you.
She told him in the way she let go of herself and held on to him instead.
With every beat of her heart. I love you. I will always love you. I will always take care of you.
IT WAS DUSK WHEN SHE left. She stepped outside for the first time. Spirefell was a sprawling house which curved in, connecting with the other buildings to form a large courtyard with an overgrown garden in the centre.
Amaris was there, waiting restlessly. Her wings fanned out and fluttering.
Kaine lifted Helena carefully, the chest brace absorbing the pressure of her weight. As he swung up behind her, she looked towards the house. In the summer gloaming, it looked almost like an immense slumbering dragon itself, curling inwards, the spires like spines. It was covered in vining roses which crept all the way up the front, nearly covering it.
Davies and an old male servant, possibly a butler, stood at the top of the wide flight of stone steps, watching.
When Amaris launched herself into the air, it was like being punched in was going tothe ribs. Helena doubled over, gasping from pain, and she felt Kaine tense e. Of havingand nearly turn Amaris back.
She gripped his leg. “I’m all right.”
They were airborne for longer than Helena had ever been before.
e were glass.Amaris flew towards the mountains, trying to beat the moonrise. It was close enough to the Abeyance that Lumithia was a crescent, not too bright as she rose. They landed on the top of a building dangerously close to Headquarters. When Helena looked south, she saw why.
A wall had been erected, marking off Resistance territory. It was more than halfway up the island. Beyond, she could see the gash bisecting the city aid it. If therewhere the bomb had gone off, the buildings fallen. The centre of the island
was cratered.
“We lost that much?”
“No, but you don’t have the forces to hold more,” Kaine said grimly, swinging down and helping her carefully off Amaris’s back.
She was nauseated with pain, fighting hard to breathe as she squeezed Kaine’s hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to say goodbye. She had a growing fear of anything final. She could feel it all coming to an end.
“Be careful,” was all she said.
“Helena, please—” His voice broke, stopping her in her tracks.
She turned back, and he gripped her shoulders.
She knew what he wanted to ask her, could see it in his eyes. Run away and don’t come back.
But he knew she wouldn’t. He swallowed, not meeting her eyes. “Don’t get hurt again,” he said instead. “Don’t—”
She rose up on her toes and cut him off with a kiss.
“Be careful,” she whispered. “Don’t die.”
essure of her WHEN HELENA APPEARED AT THE gates in boys’ clothes, struggling to breathe, her reception was one of far more suspicion than joy. She was placed in a holding cell for an hour before Crowther appeared to have her let out.
“You sure?” the guard said to him. “She’s been listed among the dead for almost a month.”
“Yes, she was found by one of the splinter factions,” Crowther said. “I knew they’d send her back eventually. Let her out.”
Helena didn’t know if the splinter factions of Resistance fighters existed at all, or if they were an invention to cover up all of Crowther’s illicit activities.
A great deal of Kaine’s intelligence and activities were attributed to these alleged groups.
Crowther looked as if he had not slept in weeks. His face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot, and he appeared mostly angry about having to go out of his way to get Helena released.
Helena wanted to know what had happened while she’d been gone, but as more thanbefore the door of the holding cell was unlocked, he was already walking away.
“Go to the hospital. The matron’s on shift. I’ll deal with you tomorrow,” he said over his shoulder.
Matron Pace wept at the sight of her. “You’re alive! I should have gone.
When I heard they sent you—I—”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Helena said. She was exhausted from the flight and journey back. There was a grinding pain in her chest. She pressed her hand gingerly against her sternum, trying to relieve the pressure.
Pace ushered her into a space enclosed by curtains. “How did you survive?”
Helena stuck with the vagaries of Crowther’s excuse. “I don’t really remember. We were in the hospital and there was another explosion. When I woke, I’m not sure where I was. I’d had an operation, and I was mostly left to
recover.”
“Let me see.”
If she were Pace, she’d be the same, so she allowed her clothes to be removed and the chest brace carefully unfastened to reveal the scarring down her chest.
“Oh.” Pace’s hand trembled, but then she inspected it more carefully.
“This is … good work.”
She’d clearly expected some kind of back-alley surgery utilising twine and kitchen knives. “Whoever their surgeon is, we should try to bring them in.”
“I never saw who it was,” Helena said. “I’m getting better, but my resonance is still unstable.”
Pace attempted a smile, but it was more grimace. “Fortunately, chelator is one of the few things we still have in sufficient supply.”
“How bad are things?” Helena asked. existed atPace did not stop moving as she continued to examine Helena and began prepping her arm for an intravenous drip. “I only hear things secondhand.”
“How bad are people saying it is?”
Pace shook her head. “Of our remaining combatants, more than a third are still showing signs of the nullium poisoning. The wind’s shifted, so we’re
spared most of the dust now, but even the parts of the island that are still intact are dangerous. At least until there’s rain.”
“I heard that Althorne died.”
“And Ilva.”
“What?” Helena stared at Pace in shock.
“A little more than a week ago. Her heart failed from the stress. Luc is inconsolable. You should go see Lila tomorrow. She was devastated when she learned you were listed among the dead.”
No mention of Luc’s reaction to Helena’s presumed death. Her throat
tightened.
“How is she?”
“Progressing. Everything is quite healthy.”
THE BOMBING HAD DAMAGED THE island’s structural foundation and flood infrastructure, and it was impossible to repair due to the risk of nullium exposure. The Resistance had also lost almost all their prisoners because the building had collapsed, including Crowther’s, whom he’d moved to keepmostly left to from Ivy’s grasp. They were all presumed dead, but it was impossible to verify much of anything within the blast zone.
Even the smuggled aid received from Novis was now difficult to obtain, and the scale of injuries too great to let patients evacuate to Novis. Theirarring down monarchical neighbour was beginning to signal a dwindling enthusiasm for both providing resources and absorbing Paladia’s injured.
The war had gone from teetering in the balance to a Resistance free fall.
Without Althorne or Ilva, the Council was reduced to three: Matias andng twine and Crowther, who had almost entirely opposing views, and Luc, who distrusted both of them.
Crowther had always operated from the shadows, allowing Ilva to take the lead with his tacit support. Now he was alone, seeming to shrink and writhe under the glaring scrutiny of Luc, like a spider without its web, fumbling about on overlong legs.
There was a part of Helena that wanted to leave him to his fate, but she knew that the more powerless Crowther felt, the greater his danger to Kaine.
She sat, watching him move around his office, pausing at various maps and diagrams now riddled with black slashes of ink.
“How much communication have you been in—with Ferron?” she asked, exhausted from the journey from hospital to Tower.
“None, except that you were alive and would be returned once you were out of danger. Why?”
Helena drew a labouring breath. “I think I’ve discovered something. Ever since Wagner—I was studying the array, thinking about the different kinds of resonance energy to understand the process Morrough uses.”
A wary look entered Crowther’s eyes.
“You know, normally arrays are elemental or celestial, five or eight axis points. But Luc’s pyromancy uses seven, and Wagner drew nine for the ritual. Kaine confirmed it was nine, so I was trying to think differently about the energy. When I’d try to envision how it would work, I kept thinking about a feeling I have in the hospital sometimes—”
“Marino, get to the point.”
“When a patient dies, there’s an inverted form of the energy that Morrough utilises to make the Undying. The vitality changes, and there’s this moment
as it dissipates when I feel it.”
“And …”
“Before the bombing, I figured out a way to channel it and trap it inside obsidian. It didn’t seem to do anything, but when I was at the field hospital, I cut one of the necrothralls with it, and it collapsed—as if the reanimation had been severed.”
Crowther looked over sharply. “Are you sure?”
She shifted and grimaced as pain fractalled like lightning through her chest. “Well, I was injured, but I’m pretty sure. I’ve replayed it again and again. We should test it.” She swallowed hard. “I have a few more pieces, and once my resonance is stable again, I can make more.”
“Bring them, I’ll see who I can pass the idea off to.” He waved her away in dismissal.
Helena didn’t move. It wasn’t that she’d expected to be credited; she just had no intention of letting Crowther casually exploit her anymore.
“You must be very busy now,” she said.
“Indeed. I am.”
“I’ll help you, but I want something in return.” ous maps andCrowther’s eyebrows rose. “And what is that, pray tell?”
“I want to know and approve every order you’re giving Kaine.”
Crowther’s bloodshot eyes flashed dangerously.
Helena didn’t blink. “I’m offering you a deal. What you do is illicit, and you have no allies on the Council to cover it up anymore. You need someone.
I’m offering to be your shadow. I’ll provide you with what you need, same way you did for Ilva. But Kaine is my condition.”
His expression grew scathing. “You’re overestimating your value, rent kinds ofMarino.”
Helena’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “I’m not, though, am I? You said it yourself: I am an exceptional asset. Why else would you and Ilva spend so much time manipulating me? Always been so quick to take advantage of what I can do while treating it like it’s of no use to anyone. By all means, replace me if you can.”
Crowther’s fingers curled into a fist, eyes narrowing, but he said nothing.
Her heart rammed against the damaged bone. “You have overutilised Kaine. If I were a lower-calibre healer, you would have killed him a dozen at Morroughtimes over in the last several months. I have told you this, but you ignored it because you know I’ll do whatever it takes to save him.”
Her face contorted with anger. “But the fact that he will do anything you ask doesn’t mean you can keep demanding it. I have done the unconscionable for the Eternal Flame, and I have let him suffer for it because what other choice do we have? But now everything we achieved, that he paid for, is nimation hadgone. We have nothing to show for it. I won’t let you keep forcing him to pay the price while you stall for time.”
Crowther was silent for a moment. “A trade, then? Is that what you’re proposing? Yourself—your cooperation—in exchange for Ferron’s safety?”
Helena gave a tight nod. If Kaine had any idea what she’d come back to do, he probably would have ripped out his own talisman before letting her return. Clearly she was learning; she was not so easy to read anymore. d her away inThere was a pause, then Crowther laughed.
“What an odd turn of events.” He stood, still chuckling. “Very well.
Follow my orders, and he will stay alive. I’m not Ilva; I have no interest in seeing Ferron prematurely dead for the sake of vengeance. Why begrudge a weapon its uses? Even if that weapon is an abomination.”
He walked around his desk, a ghastly smile on his face. “You know, I had a nearly identical version of this conversation with Ferron earlier this year.”
Helena refused to react, meeting his eyes.
“So long as you make yourself useful to me, I’ll let you approve Ferron’s assignations. But if you ever disobey me, or cross me, I will—”
“Yes, I know what you’ll do,” Helena said. eed someone.
IT TOOK A WEEK BEFORE Helena’s resonance was stable again. During that time, she functioned as a test subject for Shiseo as they developed a tablet form for the chelators, to reduce the overcrowding and demand on saline.
In that same week, a weapons specialist gave an obsidian spear to an ambitious young man hoping to join Luc’s unit. Even before he returned, the rumours reached Headquarters about a miraculously effective weapon.
The weapons specialist was evasive about his methods, although he was obliged to admit that Crowther was the one who’d given him the obsidian.
Everyone leapt to the conclusion that the properties of the obsidian came from pyromancy; that the obsidian must be infused with holy, cleansing fire.
The new weapon secured Crowther’s place and influence not only on the Council but over the Eternal Flame. Once Helena was finally recovered enough to resume work, she was told that because of her injuries she would no longer work in the casualty ward but be assigned the less rigorous task of palliative care and last rites.conscionable She wore a heavy black habit with myriad hidden pockets filled with obsidian glass and tended to the patients that couldn’t be saved. She’d thought she’d seen the worst of the hospital, but she realised now that sheng him to pay was used to seeing those with some chance of survival.
Now she sat with men whose bodies seemed turned inside out, hearts exposed, faces lopped off, sometimes so little of them left that it seemed impossible that they were alive. They’d hold on to her, often mistaking her for someone else as she tended them like a carrion bird.
As unprecedented a breakthrough as the obsidian was, it was impossible to keep up with the demand, especially in the hands of soldiers trained with steel. Though its edges were sharper than razors, the glass shattered easily, making the weapons unreliable.
The obsidian was effective not only on necrothralls but liches as well.
When one soldier managed a blow through the chest, the lich died, all his necrothralls collapsing with him.
The talisman was brought back, and Helena examined it. There was no sense of energy. She compared it with others. When it was cut in half, powder as fine as dust poured out.
Kaine summoned her that night. Her ring burned twice, and she practically ran out of Headquarters. She stood on the rooftop, hand pressed against her chest, numbing the grinding pain as she waited.
“What happened today?” he asked as Amaris landed heavily on the roof.
He didn’t dismount, which meant the conversation would be short. She could feel every second they’d been separated, the weight of it.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve all been recalled from combat. Effective immediately. The thralls and Aspirants will continue to fight, but the Undying have all been withdrawn from the front lines.”
“Someone killed a lich with the obsidian,” Helena said. “Do you think maybe he—the lich—died? That Morrough can’t bring him back anymore?”
Kaine was silent for a few moments.
“Seems you’ve found a weapon to kill us,” he finally said.
She couldn’t read the emotion in his voice. All the exhilaration drained from her.
She’d spent so much time afraid of Kaine’s immortality, knowing that his discovery or apprehension would be without means of escape; he could be tortured forever, without even the hope of death. Now it was very likely that he could die.
She had made this possible. She had not saved him; she had created a new
way to lose him instead.
“Be careful,” she said.
He was studying her. “Did they let you recover before they set you back to work?”
She managed a smile. “Yes. Moved me out of the casualty ward. My duties
mpossible toare less rigorous now.”
He nodded. “Well, that’s something.”
There was a pause. She had so much she wanted to say, to tell him, but she knew he was already lingering too long.
“If the obsidian does what we think, the Eternal Flame will be a real threat to Morrough now. He’s sure to respond accordingly,” he finally said. “You should prepare for that.”
She nodded wordlessly, and he relaxed on the reins, Amaris immediately moving to spring, the wind rushing around her wings.
“Don’t die.”
She must have said it too quietly, because he didn’t answer.
e practically
rt. She could
you back to
rd. My duties
him, but she