CHAPTER 63
Augustus 1787
TIME SLOWED TO A CRAWL THE NEXT day as Headquarters was emptied, the combatants dispatched. There was no time or opportunity to speak to Luc before he was gone.
Helena and all the other healers and medical staff waited in a prepped hospital ward, waiting for news, for injuries. The hands on the clock indicated that the bomb should have gone off, but there was no sound or
shudder of an explosion.
No sign that anything had begun.
Of course, it was a smaller bomb, intended to be detonated inside an enclosed area. She wasn’t likely to feel it, and the fighting would mostly be on the West Island.
Knowing that didn’t make it easier to wait. After so many years, she could feel it all coming to an end and dreaded almost every possible outcome.
Perhaps it would end, and they would win and everything would be all right, but Kaine would vanish in the aftermath, and she wouldn’t know if he was dead or alive, trapped under rubble, or had fled somewhere far away.
She would just have to look for him until she knew.
Every tick of the clock made her flinch. The orderlies, medics, and healers were talking among themselves, but Helena stood frozen, her ribs clamping around her lungs.
You made a mistake. You built the bomb wrong. Kaine was caught while planting it and he’s being tortured, and you don’t even know. Everyone is going to die and it’s all your fault.
Her fingertips and arms were beginning to prick, going numb.
The doors burst open. The room was so blurred, Helena couldn’t make out who it was, but she heard shouting: There’d been an explosion on the West Island. The Resistance had attacked.
Helena stood swaying, trying to feel something, but she still felt empty.
Heat flared around her finger. Just once.
She looked down at her hand, at the ring that was barely there, and her knees gave out.
She dropped straight to the floor and burst into tears, pain splintering across her chest.
There were voices around her, but she couldn’t follow them. All she could do was try to breathe, but her lungs refused to open.
A warm hand wrapped around her elbow, pulling her to her feet.
“Let’s sit a minute,” Pace said as she wrapped an arm around Helena’s shoulders and escorted her to her little office in the storeroom. “Elain can call
when someone’s brought in.”
She pushed Helena down into a chair.
Helena let herself be herded along, sitting, eyes closed. She pressed her fingers against her chest, feeling the scarring through her clothes, easing her heart rate back down.
When she finally opened her eyes again, she found Pace watching her.
“What’s happening?” Pace asked.
Helena shook her head. “Nothing. I’m just tired.”
Pace’s features were all pinched together. “You know, they say there’s a point when the Toll becomes exponential.”
Helena shrugged. “They say a lot of things about healers. I don’t know that even half of them are true.”
“Perhaps, but I doubt anyone has ever healed to the extent and magnitude that you have. You have not been well for a long time. You think I couldn’t guess why you started supplementing your treatments with all those tonics and injections? Your trainees barely know how to heal without them, but you worked solo for years. For all you know, you could be risking years of your life every time—”
“I don’t think it’s that …” She reached up absently for the chain, but it was long gone.
Pace shook her head, worry etched into her broad face. “Is it the nullium?
We’re seeing so many side effects from the bombing, and you had some of the worst exposure of any of the survivors. That’s not even considering your injury at the time.”
Before Helena could shake her head, Pace continued. “We’re going in blind on all this, without any idea of the potential long-term effects. I suspect
Luc’s brain fevers are a symptom of residual nullium in the brain.”
Helena looked at her in confusion. “Luc has brain fevers?”
Pace sighed. “You saw what he was like just after the rescue.”
Helena nodded. “I thought they’d stopped.”
“He tries to keep them hidden, doesn’t want to cause worry, but sometimes they’re so severe that he still grows delirious, claws at his skin, won’t let any men in the room, even Sebastian, screaming things like, ‘Get him out.’ Elain has to sedate him until they pass or he’ll injure himself.”
Helena felt as if she had been staring at a puzzle from the wrong angle for months; now she could suddenly see it clearly.
Elain can call“He says, ‘Get him out’?” Her voice seemed to come from far away.
“Usually.”
Helena’s head throbbed. “Can you—describe these fevers for me?”
Pace’s eyebrows furrowed. “Well, I’ve only examined him a few times.
Elain manages him now; he’s more cooperative with her. She believes it’s caused by recurring brain inflammation. The symptoms are delirium, with a rapid heartbeat. We thought it was related to his organ damage, but they
appear to be separate conditions.”
“What’s the opium for?” Helena asked.
Pace sighed and looked away. “His fevers seem prompted by a condition of the nerves. Calming him keeps them from growing so severe. We’ve tried n’t know thateverything, but inhaling the vapours is the only thing that prevents them. If he becomes fully delirious, it can take days before he recovers, and he requires extensive treatment to get back on his feet.”
“That’s just—masking the symptoms. That’s not fixing anything. You
should have told me this was going on.” hem, but youThis couldn’t be.
“Helena,” Matron Pace said firmly, “he’s been examined over and over by myself and Maier and Elain. There’s no cause. It’s all in his mind. Managing in, but it wasthe symptoms is all we can do. He was specific that he didn’t want you involved. Every time your name was even brought up, he worsened.”
“And you never questioned that?”
Pace looked at her pityingly. “It’s not as if you have any particular experience with brain fevers.”
Helena shook her head. Pace was wrong. She had a great deal of recent experience with brain fevers. She knew exactly what caused them.
Animancy.
But that wasn’t the only time she’d encountered brain fevers. She’d seen them before that. The exact symptoms Pace had described. The impossibly hot fevers, as if the mind were trying to burn something out from inside it.
The self-mutilation, screaming, “Get him out.” ut sometimesShe’d seen all of it just before her father had been murdered.
At the field hospital.
But Luc had no talisman like those liches had. He had been checked and rechecked. It would have been found. … unless the talisman had not been coated in lumithium, which would make it undetectable.
Morrough had captured Luc but hadn’t killed him, and they’d thought it was only because they’d arrived in time.
But maybe they’d been too late after all.
She jolted out of her seat. Pace reached out, trying to stay her, but Helena bolted from the room, running through the hospital and straight to the war room. There was no one there except a cadet, who looked up nervously and told her that she didn’t have the clearance to be there.
She glared at him. “Do you know where Crowther is? It’s urgent I speak to him.”
He shook his head, clearly sullen about guarding an empty room. “No.
They were looking for him earlier. Disappeared last night, it seems.” ts them. If heThat made no sense.
It was as if she were standing in a trap laid with dominoes. She could feel
them falling around her. Closing in.
“Do you know where Luc’s battalion is?”
The boy rolled his eyes and drew himself up. “You don’t have clearance to —”
Helena eyed the map on the table. There was a golden flag amid the sea of blue.
She turned and left before the cadet was done talking.
She ran to her lab, snatching up everything she could get her hands on.
First, her new set of knives. Then a couple of obsidian knives Shiseo had been experimenting with. She ransacked her remaining healing supplies.
Shiseo entered with a box from the off-site lab as she was cramming a final vial into her overfilled satchel. He was probably the only person who would take a warning from her without asking for proof or an explanation.
“Get out of Headquarters,” she said. “Take everything you can and go back to the off-site lab. I’ll send word if it’s safe to come back. I can’t explain now, but something’s about to go wrong.”
She went to Crowther’s office, but it was empty. Where was he? There was no time to search. She headed out.
She traversed the island on foot. She knew from flyovers which parts were still intact, and that she was headed in the right direction when the air began to smell of smoke and burning flesh.
Whenever she spotted Resistance units, she asked for updates. Reports were contradictory, but there were consistent stories of many necrothralls dropping, leaving whole districts with only a few bewildered Aspirants to defend them. They were making piles of the necrothralls and burning them to ensure they couldn’t be recovered and reanimated.
With all the good news, Helena began to doubt herself. Was she paranoid?
It was going so well. She refused to turn back, though; she had to find Luc.
A broad-shouldered commander that she vaguely recognised as part of Luc’s battalion stepped out of a building. ent I speak to“Marino?” He said her name doubtfully.
“I need to see Luc,” she said, gripping an obsidian knife in her pocket so hard the handle bit into her skin.
“Well, he’s not here, he’s fighting,” the man said.
She must seem insane. “I know, but it’s urgent. I can work with the medics on-site until he comes back.”
The commander looked confused but didn’t object.
Healing at the front had none of the organisation used in the hospital. Most clearance toof her work was stopping blood loss by staunching and closing wounds, healing only the simple injuries. The priority was completing the most urgent interventions and then sending the patients on to Headquarters for full treatment.
The bombing was believed to be either an accident or an act of sabotage.
No one even considered that the Resistance might have planted a bomb.
The miracles had begun, people were saying. The gods were on their side.
Victory Day, they were already calling it. They’d retake the whole city. mming a finalThe injured combatants arriving slowed to a trickle because the battalion had pushed so far into the West Island, no one was being brought back.
The field commander was on the radio, wanting to know if they were supposed to relocate closer to the action. They’d had no instructions about
n and go backwhether to follow.
The current base of operations was in an old building on a mid-level of the city. It had solid walls and small windows. It was a good place to fall back, e? There wasreasonably defensible. The air inside grew suffocating, warm from bodies and motion. The medical transport lorry had departed for the hospital and not yet returned.
Helena was closing a deep cut along an inner thigh when someone outside yelled, “They’ve taken Headquarters!”
Everyone looked up, staring at one another in confusion.
The lorry driver stumbled in, gasping for air, his head bleeding. “The Undying have taken Headquarters!” ning them toNo one spoke for a moment as shock rippled through the room. In all these years, Headquarters had never been touched. There were so many protective measures in place. It was the most secure place in the entire city.
Everyone seemed to snap back to life. There was a clamour of furious voices, everyone descending on the driver, demanding information. Helena pushed through, checking his head. He had a graze, and his hands were torn up.
“I went through all the checkpoints,” he said, allowing Helena to tilt his head to the side and close the wound. “Showed my papers, got waved through. Everything was—normal. Pulled in, the patients were being h the medicsunloaded.” He mopped his forehead, smearing blood across his face. “Quiet, though. really quiet. I get fuckin’ awkward when it’s too quiet. Always rather talk, you know? Asked a guard a question. No answer. I thought all the blood ospital. Moston them was from carrying the wounded. Asked another question. They started moving towards me. That’s when I realised. They were all greys. most urgentFresh killed, still warm. I drove out—ran over a few, didn’t look back. First checkpoint, tried to report it. They weren’t talking, either. Barricade was up.
So I ran. Didn’t know where to go except come back.”
The building was palpably silent as everyone tried to absorb this. It was beyond belief.
The Undying would have needed extensive information about their security protocols to infiltrate, a spy with a high-level security clearance to get in, and intimate knowledge to create necrothralls with the right instructions. How could it have happened? With no word? No distress signals?
The commander tried to contact Headquarters by radio, but there was only static.
“Signal to anyone you can, without setting off any alarms. You, you, and you,” said the field commander, pointing at several men. “Go check the
pital and notnearest checkpoint.”
Only two men came back.
“They were all dead,” said one, holding a hand against his stomach where blood seeped through his fingers. “They were waiting for us.”
The field commander sent out anyone capable of carrying word to intercept and recall any units or lorries they encountered, and then he sat down at the radio and began uttering a string of jargon into channel after channel, arguing m. In all thesefuriously with everyone who answered, because no one wanted to believe the report.
The door burst open, and Luc strode in, Sebastian only a few steps behind him, concealing a limp, the rest of the battalion milling in back of him.
Luc’s face was pale and streaked with blood and smoke. Although he looked skeletally thin, his eyes were blistering, a brilliant feverish blue, but rather than acknowledge the field commander, his attention went directly to
Helena.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
She stood up. “I need to talk to you, Luc. Urgently.”
He blinked and finally turned to his field commander. “Who let her in Always ratherhere?” all the bloodBefore anyone could respond, Helena spoke again.
“It’s about Lila,” she said.
The words worked like magic. Luc’s attention snapped onto her, and his throat dipped as his eyes darted around the room.
“Fine,” he said after a beat. “Let’s talk. Sebastian, get everyone ready to move. We’re retaking Headquarters.”
“No, bring him, I’ll heal him while we talk,” Helena said. “It’ll save time.”
Luc eyed her warily but nodded. He seemed so familiar, and yet—there was something off about him.
You should have known. You should have noticed.
He turned to the field commander, who looked lost. “Take everyone who can fight and start moving back towards Headquarters. Sebastian and I will follow.”
There were rooms deeper in the warehouse that connected to the next building, and as they walked there, Helena slipped one of the obsidian knives into the waistband at the back of her skirt, hidden under her jacket.
Sebastian had cracked ribs and a gash to the leg where a knife had gotten through a weak point in his armour.
Helena gave him one of her last vials of medicine to help sustain the amount of tissue and blood she was about to regenerate. Before she could stop him, he unfastened and began removing his chest plate. d to intercept“What’s wrong with Lila?” Luc asked the instant the door was shut and the three of them were alone. nnel, arguing“Nothing,” Helena said. “She’s fine.” o believe theAnger lit Luc’s face.
“I just didn’t realise you knew about the baby,” Helena said, meeting his
eyes.
Sebastian started. “What baby?”
Luc tensed enough that his armour clicked, but his expression was controlled. He didn’t even look at Sebastian.
“What baby?” Sebastian asked again.
“That’s why you came here?” Luc asked, his blue eyes glinting cold.
“Because of that?”
Helena’s heart was beating so fast, it was a thrum in her chest. “No, I came because I don’t understand why you wouldn’t let me heal Titus but you’ve been letting me take care of your heir.”
“Luc, what did you do?” Sebastian said.
Luc ignored his paladin; all his focus was on Helena. “Lila can protect herself. You’ve already done enough to Titus.”
Helena’s throat closed, but in that moment, she knew: This was not Luc.
She should have realised sooner, but she’d spent so much time fearing his rejection, dreading the inevitable schism, that she had not questioned its l save time.”happening.
She looked away. “You know, I was in one of the field hospitals during the massacre. When the liches infiltrated using living bodies. Apparently, a living body won’t accept another soul; it’s like an infection, the body tries to burn it out. That’s why they came in sick with brain fevers, screaming and clawing at themselves, saying, ‘Get him out,’ until they died.”
She drew a slow breath as she finished healing Sebastian’s leg. “Do you know anyone who suffers from fevers like that, Luc?”
Sebastian had gone very still. sidian knivesLuc shook his head. “Can’t say I do.”
He said it calmly, but there was a growing pressure in the air.
Helena found the cracks in Sebastian’s rib. “You surrendered yourself to save Lila. You knew it would cost everything, but you did it anyway. You told me that you chose her as your paladin because you wanted her by your side, so you’d have a chance of protecting her, even though you knew you weren’t supposed to. I know how it killed you every time she got hurt. You shut and thedidn’t even want me to clear her for combat again after she lost her leg.” She kept looking for any glimmer of the person she knew. “Now she’s the mother of your child, and instead of getting her to safety, you’ve kept her in isolation for months. And right this minute, you have every reason to think she’s been captured, that she’d be one of the first people they’d kill, but instead of running to her, you’re here with me. Luc would never do that.”
“Luc, what have you done?” Sebastian was staring at him in horror.
Helena asked, “Who are you?”
It was like watching a curtain being pulled back.
One moment, the expression and characteristics were still there, and then Luc sighed and seemed to vanish beneath his own skin.
“Well.” He grinned at them both, a smile like a slit throat. “I thought you’d “No, I camerealise months ago, but you’re all such fools when it comes to the Holdfasts.”
Sebastian trembled beneath Helena’s fingers as they both stared at this thing standing in front of them.
Helena’s hand slipped to her back. “Who are you?” she asked again.
“I’ve gone by so many names, I don’t even remember them all,” said the person in Luc’s body. “Once, long ago, my brother called me Cetus.”
Helena’s eyes widened.
“Cetus?” she said.
He inclined his head, but she shook hers.
That would make him older than Paladia, older than the Holdfasts, older als during thethan the first Necromancy War. No one could live that long. Cetus was an ently, a livinginvention, centuries of alchemists pseudonymously writing under one name. ies to burn itNot a person.
It had to be a lie, an attempt to distract her.
“I checked Luc,” Helena said, trying to keep her voice steady. “There was no talisman. How is this possible?”
“Cetus” tilted his head to one side so that Luc’s neck popped, as if Luc’s body were a suit of armour that didn’t fit properly.
“My brother and I were born entwined. We entered the world as one when we slid from our mother’s womb. We’d sucked her dry from within, and the fires of her pyre licked across our skin, branding us from birth. Cursed children, they called us, when they called us anything at all. Our shared blood has endured for centuries and now we’re one again, as we always should have been.” He gestured down at himself.
“You’re—related to Luc?” Helena said in disbelief. ’s the motherThe smile split Luc’s face again. r in isolation“You should have seen Orion. He had such a way about him. People worshipped the ground he walked on. He could charm with a look. He found us sponsors, lodging, funds so I could do the Great Work and he could find audiences to adore him. He would do anything for adoration, and I taught him the tricks to do it. Gold and fire, and he thought that should be enough for us; we could buy ourselves a kingdom.” Cetus looked scornful. “But I had greater aspirations. Kings and kingdoms rise and fall. We were made for eternity, my brother and I, we were gods.
“I lacked my brother’s natural charm, but I’m a fair actor. Orion drew so hought you’dmuch attention, most overlooked me, so I pretended to be Orion, coaxed just e Holdfasts.”a few of his followers into cooperation. I needed trust, the kind that he earned so easily. It was necessary for my work, and he had always benefitted most, but when Orion learned what I’d done, the source of this new power, he called me a monster and left me. I knew he’d come back, once I discovered the true secrets of immortality. When he realised that humans were mere puppets and saw what I could offer, he would beg for me to take him back.”
“You were the Necromancer,” Helena said, realising. “The one who built the cult in Rivertide. After you made that Stone, you called Orion here, but when he saw what you’d done, he tried to kill you.”
Rage flashed across Cetus’s face. “His mind was poisoned by those paladins of his. If he’d come alone, he would have seen reason—”
“Why did you come back now?” Helena asked. “You disappeared for half a millennium. The Holdfasts don’t want anything from you. Why are you helping Morrough?”
She studied Luc, or what was left of him. Gaunt, sweated down to nearly bone. He was dying; it was just a slower death than what she’d witnessed in the field hospital.
Luc laughed. It was the timbre and note she’d heard a thousand times over the years, but the malice and mockery in it were all new. “I am Morrough.”
Sebastian shot to his feet, but before he had even drawn a weapon, Luc had his sword out and stopped him, tsking.
“A piece of him, I should say. When young Luc so boldly surrendered shared bloodhimself, I was curious how alike we were. I have lived for so long now, and he was so—fresh. I bound a piece of my soul to my bone and placed it inside him. I’d hoped he would accept me—hoped that we could be one as my brother and I should have been—but he’s as self-righteous as Orion. It’s fortunate that healer Boyle is so eager to please, she keeps him sedated for me.”
“Luc’s still alive, then?” Helena’s voice shook.
“Of course. This is his body after all.” Morrough, or Cetus, or whoever he d I taught himwas, gestured downwards. “I’m just a shadow in the back of his mind, or I nough for us;would have been, if he hadn’t gone so mad trying to tear me out that they drugged him to a stupor. Gave me free rein.”
“You’re puppeting him like a necrothrall? Is that how you infiltrated Headquarters?”
Luc’s features twisted in offence. “I’m not a puppet. I know what’s in the interest of my primary self, and I have found the means of pursuing it. You hat he earnedcan kill me, and it’ll do nothing—only Luc will die. As for your Headquarters —” He shook his head. “It seems that young Luc isn’t your only traitor.”
“But what is all this for?” Helena asked. Apollo, Luc, Lila … she couldn’t understand. “Why come back to Paladia after all these centuries?”
“Because I want to erase my brother’s legacy the same way he destroyed mine.” Fury swept across Luc’s face. “He tried to blot my name from history, to discredit any of my work that he couldn’t steal and claim as his own.
Attributed my discoveries to charlatans, taking my research and making himself a god with it. It’s only fair to return the favour.”
Helena shook her head. She didn’t believe that. Morrough had too many opportunities to wipe out the Holdfasts; even Kaine had remarked on it, that Luc was being intentionally spared.
She thought of Luc, cut open on that table, all those decaying organs inside him.
“You’re dying,” she said. “Your original body, wherever it is. You came to Paladia because all the power in the world isn’t enough to keep regenerating forever. There’s a limit and you’ve reached it and you can’t push beyond that
no matter how much vitality and how many souls you harvest. When you had Apollo killed, you took his heart, and when you had Luc, we couldn’t heal his pon, Luc hadorgan damage because those organs were yours. You’re harvesting Orion’s descendants for parts. And—” It dawned on her slowly. “—that’s—that’s why Lila’s pregnant. You’re making yourself another descendant. That’s why you wouldn’t let her go to Novis: because you’ll need that baby next.”
Cetus stared at her, a bizarre look of calculation in Luc’s eyes. “You’re clever,” he said. “The Holdfasts had no idea what they’d found when they imported you. An indentured animancer. Perhaps Apollo was more cunning than I realised. I knew what you were the moment you reached in with your resonance—if I hadn’t thrown you across the room, you would have found me. Pity really. I had no choice but to have you sent off to the front. Matias was so happy to oblige. But somehow you came crawling back like a cockroach.”
Cetus smiled, a cruel glint in his eyes that Luc had never possessed.
“Never mind, though. I’m glad I get to do this personally. Sebastian”—he looked at Luc’s last remaining paladin—“you’re finally going to die protecting a Holdfast from a necromancer.”
Luc moved so fast. There was a shriek of metal as Sebastian drew his weapon and blocked the attack. The room was small. Helena flung herself out Headquartersof the way as Sebastian shoved Cetus back, drawing another weapon, slamming the hilt down on Luc’s hand before he could unleash a wave of fire.
Luc’s body was weak, tired from battle, and dying, and Sebastian was a fury unlike anything Helena had ever seen before. In an instant he’d from history,hammered Luc into a corner, smashing through his defences, raising his arm to make a killing blow.
The instant before Sebastian brought his weapon down, Cetus’s expression morphed, mockery vanishing as it became Luc’s face, blue eyes wide in
shock.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Sebastian hesitated for less than an instant, and Luc’s knife sank into the organs insidebase of Sebastian’s throat. There was no armour to stop it. Cetus dragged the blade down, sundering Sebastian’s ribs and gutting him.
You came toSebastian fell without a sound.
Cetus didn’t even watch Sebastian die; he’d already turned to Helena. beyond that“Your turn.”
When you hadHe was blocking the door, and if she screamed, no one who came would ldn’t heal histake her word over Luc’s.
As Cetus came towards her, she focused on everything that Kaine had ever drilled into her. She needed direct contact. t. That’s whyAn instant would be enough.
He swung his sword at her head, but he was tired, his hand injured by Sebastian. The blow was slow and weak. She whipped out one of her titanium knives and managed to transmute it quickly enough to block the blow.
Cetus’s knife flashed, Sebastian’s blood spattering, aimed at her throat.
With her other hand, she slammed the hilt of her obsidian knife into his wrist.
The sight of black glass captured Cetus’s focus. Helena dropped her titanium knife, her empty hand shooting out, her palm against his forehead, fingers tangling in his hair.
Her resonance slammed into his head with the force of an arrow, using the same trick of paralysis that Kaine had used on her so long ago.
The knife and sword in Luc’s hands clattered to the floor, and his knees gave out. She let him slide to the ground, her palm still firmly pressed against his skull, shoving her resonance deep into his mind. ng herself outHelena had never been inside Luc’s consciousness, but she knew from her interrogation work that a mind was like a home. It had the feeling of the person. Luc’s mind was like walking into a house and finding the walls covered in blood and torn apart. A parasite had grown through his consciousness and fed on every glimmer of the person who should be there.
Cetus had cannibalised Luc, wearing him like a skin.
She ripped her consciousness back out and nearly doubled over with nauseous horror. ’s expressionCetus’s eyes danced even though his face was strained by his inability to breathe.
“Luc, come back,” Helena asked, her voice tremulous. “I know there’s still a part of you in there. It’s Hel. Come back. I’ll help you.”
She moved the paralysis enough to let Luc breathe.
Cetus studied her with interest. He was not afraid at all. “You’re talented.
If you joined me, your abilities would be valued.”
She stared coldly at him. “Let me talk to Luc.”
There was a strange hunger in his eyes. “You’re the one making that obsidian, aren’t you? I should have realised. Crowther was so tight-lipped.
Tell me how you do it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Let me talk to Luc, and I’ll tell you.” aine had everAnger flashed across Cetus’s face. “Why bother with him? He’s weak and useless, just like Orion, so satisfied with mere tricks that he suppressed his true power, denying his animancy.”
“Luc is an animancer?” she said in shock.
Cetus’s expression was jeering. “You never noticed? Never felt the way he could alter a room, entrance an audience?”
Yes, but she’d always assumed that was related to his pyromancy. The feeling of pressure that could come over her when he was upset. She shook
nto his wrist.her head.
“That’s not animancy.”
“It’s a form of it, one Orion was especially talented in. He wanted people to love him and he made sure they did, while he repressed and rejected all the rest of it. And then hunted everyone else with similar abilities out of existence.”
She shook her head again, but Luc had always had an uncanny magnetism. essed againstShe had never questioned it. Had he even known?
“Let me talk to Luc,” she said again, “and I’ll tell you how to make the obsidian.”
Cetus’s expression morphed. “Hel?” The voice was wavering.
Helena’s fingers clenched into a fist, closing his throat, choking him. She shook him. “That’s not Luc. You think I can’t tell? Give me Luc.”
Cetus glared at her, and his eyes rolled back. This time Helena felt a shift through his mind as though something were being ripped out from beneath layers of membrane.
Cetus gave a ragged groan, and his eyes rolled dazedly back into focus.
Luc’s face drained of all colour.
“Run,” Luc rasped. “Hel, run. He’s going to kill you.” w there’s still“No, I’m not going anywhere,” Helena said, wanting to cry. “I’ve got you.
I’m here now. I’m sorry I’m so late.”
She sensed the landscape of Luc’s mind shifting again. That he was being dragged back under, but she’d paid attention, found the shape of Cetus, how he was entwined through Luc. After years as a healer, months of interrogations, and the difficult task of learning to sense Lila’s baby—one spark of life hidden inside another—her resonance was surgical. It wrapped around Cetus, crushing him into submission.
Luc’s eyes went out of focus, and he gave a pained gasp, wavering as if he were about to faint.
“Luc?” Helena said sharply. “Luc, focus. Listen to me. I am going to figure out a way to save you. I’ll get rid of him.”
Her voice was shaking, as her focus was split between talking to Luc and trying to keep Cetus at bay without injuring Luc further. “I just need you to lt the way hehold on a little longer.”
“Hel …” Luc’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I tried to—fight.
He killed Ilva.”
“I’m so sorry.” Tears welled up in her eyes and fell onto his face. “I’m going to fix this. I promise.”
Luc shook his head. “No. Kill me, it’s the only way to stop him.”
“No!” she said sharply. “Look at me. I’m going to save you. That’s why I jected all thebecame a healer, remember? So that someday, when you needed me, I could save you.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. He was talking, the words all coming out in a
magnetism.rush.
“Lila—she thought he was me—”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else she could say.
His jaw trembled. “Don’t tell her.”
“You’re not going to die, Luc.”
Her mind felt as if it were about to rip in two from the effort of keeping
Cetus subdued.
She could barely see straight.
“You have a chance. Kill him. No one else can—”
“No—”
There was a knife in Luc’s hand. She saw it too late.
She was so focused on keeping Cetus back, she’d let the paralysis slip.
She didn’t think.
She blocked it on instinct and completed the parry exactly the way Kaine had taught her to: a quick sweep of her knife, so fast it knocked the blade from his fingers. In the same motion, the obsidian knife sank to the hilt into the left side of Luc’s chest, in the place under the arm where the armour was weak.
He gave a guttural gasp, body seizing uncontrollably. Helena gave a panicked scream as he collapsed in her arms.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said.
She ripped the knife out, wrenching his armour out of the way with her resonance, trying to reach the wound. oing to figure“No! No, no. Don’t do this to me. Luc, don’t.” She closed the wound as quickly as she could. It only took seconds to stop the bleeding and repair the place where her knife had sliced the aorta.
Fingers clamped around her throat, digging into her trachea, and she looked into Cetus’s expression of pure hatred.
“You stupid—bitch,” he said as she felt a quick pulse of that dead energy.
Luc’s face cleared as he gave a gasp of relief.
“Got him,” Luc said, letting go of her, forcing a smile.
Before Helena could speak, there was a hard knock on the door.
“Principate, are you all right?”
Helena expected the door to burst open, for the room to fill with soldiers who’d find her kneeling over Luc with a bloody knife while Sebastian lay slaughtered beside them.
“I’m fine,” Luc immediately called, his voice straining. “Be out soon.”
The footsteps retreated, but Luc wasn’t fine.
Helena had closed the wound, there was nothing physically wrong with him, but she knelt there and felt that he was dying. It was happening slowly.
Not a sudden cold pulse, but as if he were bleeding to death, his vitality slipping out rather than blood.
There was no cause for it, nothing to fix, but she felt it through her resonance. As though he were unravelling.
“What’s happening?” Her fingers scrabbled, trying to find a way to fix it, but she had never encountered a death like this.
His hand closed over hers, squeezing tight enough to stop her resonance.
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, trying to pull her hands free. “I can figure this out.
But if you’d given me time—I would’ve—”
“I died months ago, Hel—” he said, his breathing forced.
“No—you’re still alive—I’ll fix this if you just—” She tried to pull her hand free.
“Stop,” he said more forcefully, pulling her close and making her look at him, at his gaunt, nearly skeletal face. “Listen to me. You have to get out of here before anyone realises. I’ll help you. I think I can last that long. Get Lila, take her far away, where Cetus—Morrough—whatever he is, can’t find her.
She won’t leave if I’m still alive.”
“She won’t leave if you’re dead, either. You’ll come with us. We’ll all go.
I’ll heal you, and then—”
Luc swallowed hard. “She has another—another Holdfast to protect. Not me—anymore.”
Helena shook her head. “Luc, don’t do this to me.”
“I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be you, but it has to be.”
She tried to touch him again, to push his life back where it was seeping out through his skin.
“We have to go now.” His voice rose, hard and commanding. He shook her as if trying to startle her into compliance. “Get Sebastian up. People will notice if he’s not with me.”
She stared at him, before looking to Sebastian lying in a pool of blood.
“Y-You want me to use necromancy?”
“We have to leave together,” Luc said, the remaining traces of colour draining from his face as he pushed himself up, strapping on his armour. “Get him on his feet.”
Her heart was in her throat as she closed the wounds on Sebastian, regenerating only as much as was necessary, and brought him to his feet. She had learned her lesson reanimating Soren. She was careful and brought back only a shadow.
He stood up, blank-eyed. Empty. She put his armour back on to hide the blood.
She braced herself as she looked towards Luc.
Luc sat looking at his last paladin with open grief, but when his eyes rested on her, there was only that same sadness. “You’ve always done the worst things because of me.”
The words cut her to the quick. She should have known. She should have known Luc better, enough to know he wouldn’t turn on her like that. He was too faithful.
She drew a harsh breath. “I promised I’d do anything for you.”
She helped him stand, and he pulled her closer, into a hard hug. His chin resting on the top of her head.
Helena’s eyes were burning. His armour dug in through her uniform hard enough to leave bruises behind. His hand clutched at her shoulder as he ong. Get Lila,caught his breath and opened the door.
He straightened as they walked out. The warehouse was mostly abandoned; only a few of the uninjured lingered, waiting for Luc. Everyone
was blood-spattered; they barely noticed the fresh blood on Luc or Sebastian.
They all stood at attention.
Luc walked with his head high, shoulders squared, his shrunken frame naturally falling into the posture he’d been raised to assume.
“Sebastian and I are heading out,” he said. “You all stay here; this is a solid base, and we need it to remain defended. If we can’t recover s seeping outHeadquarters, we’ll depend on places like this for our forces to fall back to.”
“But—” one of the soldiers started.
He shook her“Those are my orders,” Luc said. Beads of sweat formed along his temples, and Helena could feel him wavering, fading away, that cold energy seeping into the air around him. “Sebastian, with me. Marino, you too.”
They made it up one street and around a corner into a narrow alley between two towers before Luc’s legs failed. He was too heavy for Helena alone; Sebastian had to catch him, dragging him out of sight. armour. “GetLuc sank against the wall, his breath shallow as he blinked up at the little bits of sky visible overhead between the towering buildings.
“Is it dawn?” he asked, his voice almost wondering. his feet. SheHelena nodded. “First light.”
He exhaled. “We were—going to see the world together, remember?”
His fingers scrabbled to find hers, his eyes still on the sky.
She took his hand, squeezing tightly, as if she could keep him longer if she held on.
“Never did see Etras …” he said, his voice faint. “Sorry. Promised I’d—
s eyes restedtake you back.”
“It’s all right,” she said.
“Will you—take care of Lila? And the baby?”
She nodded.
“Don’t tell Lila—”
“I won’t.”
His hand trembled in hers. “Promise …?”
She swallowed hard. “I promise.”
He said nothing else. When she looked up, his eyes were unseeing, the dawn reflecting in the empty blue.
was blood-spattered; they barely noticed the fresh blood on Luc or Sebastian.
They all stood at attention.
Luc walked with his head high, shoulders squared, his shrunken frame naturally falling into the posture he’d been raised to assume.
“Sebastian and I are heading out,” he said. “You all stay here; this is a solid base, and we need it to remain defended. If we can’t recover Headquarters, we’ll depend on places like this for our forces to fall back to.”
“But—” one of the soldiers started.
“Those are my orders,” Luc said. Beads of sweat formed along his temples, and Helena could feel him wavering, fading away, that cold energy seeping into the air around him. “Sebastian, with me. Marino, you too.”
They made it up one street and around a corner into a narrow alley between two towers before Luc’s legs failed. He was too heavy for Helena alone; Sebastian had to catch him, dragging him out of sight.
Luc sank against the wall, his breath shallow as he blinked up at the little bits of sky visible overhead between the towering buildings.
“Is it dawn?” he asked, his voice almost wondering.
Helena nodded. “First light.”
He exhaled. “We were—going to see the world together, remember?”
His fingers scrabbled to find hers, his eyes still on the sky.
She took his hand, squeezing tightly, as if she could keep him longer if she held on.
“Never did see Etras …” he said, his voice faint. “Sorry. Promised I’d—
take you back.”
“It’s all right,” she said.
“Will you—take care of Lila? And the baby?”
She nodded.
“Don’t tell Lila—”
“I won’t.”
His hand trembled in hers. “Promise …?”
She swallowed hard. “I promise.”
He said nothing else. When she looked up, his eyes were unseeing, the dawn reflecting in the empty blue.