CHAPTER 7
FERRON TOOK HER TO AND FROM THE courtyard each day. His mood was always dark after that, and he’d mockingly point out the location of the various light switches that she was “too dense” to observe on her own.
He was so condescending, she wanted to throw a rock at him and was disappointed when she found nothing outside but little pieces of finely milled white gravel.
The courtyard bored her. It was tedious and bitterly cold, the winter snow bearing down in the clouds, although there was never more than a dusting on the ground—enough to leave her feet numb with cold.
When alone, she ventured out of her room, determined to find a passable weapon; even a furniture nail would do. If Ferron wouldn’t slip up and do it, she’d kill herself before another transference session arrived.
In the hours when light trickled through the east windows, if she stayed near the walls and thought very carefully about breathing, she could manage the excursions.
But whenever she left her room for long, the necrothralls began materialising. They didn’t try to stop her or herd her back into her room; they just watched her, hovering like ghostly apparitions.
She tried to ignore them along with the creaks and groans of the house, the shifting shadows, but they made it impossible for her to find any means of suicide. She persisted doggedly, but most of the rooms were locked tight, and those that weren’t held nothing but old furniture and useless knickknacks.
In one old room, she found a painting crammed behind a disassembled bed frame. It was covered by a dustcloth. She pulled it out, curious.
Drawing the fabric back, it was a portrait of the Ferron family. Not Ferron and Aurelia, but Ferron as a boy with his parents.
Atreus Ferron, the former patriarch, was a large man Helena vaguely remembered seeing at the Institute. He had hawkish features, a harshly lined face, and heavy brows that shadowed pale-blue eyes. He was elegantly
dressed, but the family’s lineage as blacksmiths and ironmongers was plain to see in his build, his broad shoulders and huge hands with heavy iron rings decorating the fingers.
Kaine Ferron stood beside his father. He looked exactly as she remembered him from the Institute, so unlike the distilled iteration he would become. His face was fuller, and while he was almost the same height as his father, he had none of the build that made the patriarch so intimidating.
Ferron was gangly, with the air of a colt. His manners were a clear imitation of the man looming beside him. His brown hair was lighter than his father’sd was always but styled identically, his expression and posture also mirroring Atreus, dark brows drawn down over hazel eyes.
The central figure of the portrait was a woman in a pale-grey dress. She wore an iron ring on her wedding finger, but her hands were so delicate that itfinely milled looked out of place on her. She was slight as a willow, with a heart-shaped face, grey eyes, and a small chin framed by ash-brown hair. If Helena had seen a portrait of her alone, she would never have guessed that this was Ferron’s mother, but side by side, she could see her influence in his build, the way her features softened Ferron’s, erasing the harsh hawkish angles and build he would have inherited from his father; but there was the greatest likeness in their mouths and something in the light and tilt of their eyes.
Helena studied the faces for a long time before noticing that the portrait was incomplete. The details of their clothing and the motifs usually included in such portraiture were all absent. As if something had interrupted it, and that was why it was abandoned.
She let the dustcloth slip from her fingers and tucked the painting back intor room; they its hiding place. Her mind flipped like a coin between the dark-haired Ferron in the painting and the silvery-pale iteration that now existed.he house, the
ked tight, and “THE INFLAMMATION IS NEARLY GONE,” Stroud announced two weeks later, bringing Mandl with her once again, and pressing her resonance intrusivelysembled bed into Helena’s brain until her vision turned red. “I think monthly sessions will do. Although”—she picked up Helena’s wrist, inspecting her muscle tone with disapproval—“you’re not recovering the way I’d hoped. Are you going outside daily?”
“Yes. The High Reeve has been ensuring it.”
“And exercising? The stronger your constitution is, the more likely you’lls was plain to handle transference without any more febrile seizures.”
Helena stared at Stroud in speechless disbelief at this revelation that no one had seen fit to reveal previously. She’d had seizures?
Stroud stared back expectantly, and it took her a moment to remember that the woman thought walks might prevent them.
“Yes,” Helena bit out.
“Good. It’s been noted that you have a nervous disorder.”
Helena’s jaw tensed. Of course Ferron would have told Stroud.
“Yes. I don’t like—dark places I don’t know.”
There was a snort of laughter from Mandl.
“Well, not much to be done about that,” Stroud said, and resumed her elicate that itexamination of Helena. “You know, it’s a pity I can’t use you as one of my program’s trial subjects. I was rereading your admission paperwork. You had
a remarkable repertoire.”
Helena’s throat closed. his build, the“The Holdfasts did love collecting rare alchemists,” said Mandl.
Helena bit her tongue until she tasted blood.
Stroud nodded. “Once the High Reeve is done with you, I think I might request to have you next.”
Helena’s chin snapped up. “Well, you won’t have much luck with me. I’m sterilised.”
She winced as Stroud’s resonance suddenly jabbed into her lower abdomen. A moment later, disappointment and anger lit Stroud’s face. ing back into“When did this happen?”
Helena looked away, staring across the room so hard, her vision blurred.
“It was one of the conditions the Falcon had for allowing me in the city.
Since vivimancy is a corruption of the soul that begins in the womb, it could —it could be passed on. I’d already taken vows as a healer that I wouldn’t ever marry or have children, but he—” She swallowed. “He wanted to be sure.”
“And of course you agreed,” Stroud said, withdrawing her hand. “Because you thought they’d accept what you are if you only reduced yourself enough.”
Heat spread along Helena’s jaw. “There wasn’t any point in refusing. Like I said, I’d already made the vows.”
Stroud chuckled. “Usually, it was children who fell for that lie.”
Helena looked at her, eyes narrowing.
Stroud had an arch expression and glanced at Mandl again. “Didn’t you n that no oneknow? Your Eternal Flame was quite adept at identifying potential vivimancers not even born. It was, what, thirty years ago that Principate member thatHelios mandated that all pregnancies be managed by the Faith’s hospitals.
Devout doctors trained to know what to look for and what solutions to offer.
What kind of parents would want to keep a monster once they’re warned of
the danger?”
Helena’s stomach clenched.
“Mandl here was abandoned at birth, raised as an orphan in one of the aeries. Children like her were told their soul’s corruption must be purified, and that if they did what was asked, they might be wanted someday.” Stroud shrugged. “Of course, neither the Faith nor Paladia ever did want them for ork. You hadanything but forced labour. And look, they handled you the same way.”
“No,” Helena said, shaking her head. “Luc wasn’t like that. He didn’t even know about the conditions for me becoming a healer. Or how healing worked. He wouldn’t have let me, if he’d known. People like Falcon Matias had harsh views, but Luc was always reining people like the Falcon in. Once it was over, he wanted to—”
“If he didn’t know, all that means is that he was a puppet and a fool. And you’re still one,” Mandl said, her dead face seething with hatred, before she turned to Stroud. “You should tell her what His Eminence did with Holdfast after he killed him.”
Helena’s stomach dropped like a stone. She looked quickly between them, but Stroud shook her head. “Remember your place, Mandl.”
When they were gone, Helena sat, frozen and wondering what had happened to Luc.
Of course it was no surprise they hadn’t cremated him properly, but—what had been done that Mandl wanted Helena tortured with knowledge of?
Luc had never deserved the cruelty and hatred he’d been subjected to.
She’d admit he hadn’t known everything, but that wasn’t because he was a puppet. The position of Principate was complex. Being a religious head and ruler was a difficult task, especially during war when he was expected to be fighting and governing. He couldn’t be weighed down by everyone else’s personal decisions.
Some choices had to be made without him, certain sacrifices that would have paralysed him to make or even know of. That didn’t make him a puppet.
It made him human.
Helena had loved him for how human he was. He didn’t need to be Principate or favoured by the gods. He’d been good enough just as he was.
FERRON MADE HIS ROUTINE APPEARANCE after Helena’s inedible lunch. She went resignedly to fetch her cloak.
“No need today,” he said. She paused, looking at him warily.
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
His fingers spun, and his resonance seized hold of her. She was pulled forward. Once she was near the bed, his hand flicked, toppling her back onto the mattress.
Ferron sauntered over, expression bored, the only emotion a glint in his eyes.
Helena bit her lip to keep quiet, willing her breathing to steady as shee didn’t even fought against his resonance.
He stared down at her through hooded eyes.
She hadn’t even considered this. She should have. She knew he was a monster, but he’d never shown interest.
As if interest had anything to do with it. Her mind raced. Why now? Why today? Had Stroud mentioned that Helena was sterile, and he’d seen that as an opportunity? Something he could exploit without consequence?
A whimper crept up her throat. She wished she could sink through the surface of the mattress and suffocate there. Wished she could scream. Her fingers managed to flex, but in the place where her resonance should be, there was nothing but a gaping wound.
His right hand pressed into the mattress by her head, and he turned her chin until she was looking straight up at him.y, but—what Her heart shuddered.
His pupils were contracted, the grey of his irises like a storm.
His cool fingers followed the curve of her jaw to her temple. She lay,use he was a viscerally aware of the almost-weight of his body as his resonance pierced her mind.
Her mind was like an upturned snow globe, all her thoughts whirling like snow flurries through her consciousness.
It wasn’t transference, but she could still vaguely sense his mind through the connection. Endured his amusement at all her ideas for killing him—ithim a puppet.
had grown into a veritable constellation of fantasies. He skimmed through them all without concern, and then sank deeper into her mind, watching her tentative explorations of the house, the courtyard, the necrothralls, the newspaper she’d stolen, Stroud. The only moment in which she felt any glimmer of a reaction from him was at her constant thoughts of Luc, the scale of her grief.
Then she was in her room reaching for her cloak, and he was closing the door, and she knew what was about to happen.
The memory evaporated like fog beneath bright sun, and she found herself lying on the bed, Ferron staring down at her with a scathing expression on his face. He snatched his hand away.
“I have no desire to touch you,” he said, sneering. “Your presence here is offensive enough.”
“Small mercies,” Helena said in a dry voice. It wasn’t a very clever retort, but her head was throbbing again, as if the scab on a wound had been peeled off while the skin was fresh.
He straightened, and she thought he’d walk out in offence, so she quickly
asked the question haunting her.
“Did you kill Principate Apollo?”
He paused and leaned against the bedpost, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side. “Not … officially.”
“But it was you. Wasn’t it?” The more she’d thought about it, the more convinced she’d become.
“You don’t remember?” He shook his head. “Did you even do anything ould be, thereduring the war? The way the Holdfasts used to parade you around, you’d think you would have at least tried to be useful, but you have the most rned her chinunexceptional personnel file I’ve ever seen.” He scoffed. “How many years of your life did you spend in that hospital? And for what? Saving people who would have been better off if you’d let them die. But no, you put them back together and sent them right back out to suffer a bit more.” He gave a slow smile. “Perhaps Stroud’s wrong, and you were sympathetic to our cause.”
He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d struck her.
All those years. All the people she’d healed, her resonance knitting them back together so they could live to fight another day, and for what? So they could be tortured to death, or enslaved, or—worse?
Until that moment, healing had been the only thing she hadn’t felt guilt over. Luc might be dead, but she had done some good. Now Ferron had
ripped that shred of comfort away from her, turning the act into its own form of atrocity.
She clamped her hands over her mouth until she could feel the outline of her teeth, curling onto her side.
Luc, the scaleHe laughed. “You Resistance fighters are always easy to break.”
He turned to leave.
The grief swelled inside her lungs, but she fought it back. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said through gritted teeth.
He paused. ession on his“Right … Well, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. The High Necromancer personally requested that I kill the Principate. He’d been in Paladia for some time already, quietly gathering followers, but with Apollo in power, the Guild Assembly would never have garnered enough public support. The country needed to be destabilised, the future made to feel uncertain. The Principate was impossible to target in public with his paladin, guards, and everyone else flocking around, worshipping his radiance. But the Holdfasts were always careless at the Institute, convinced that anyone who walked through those gates would be too dazzled by their magnificence to lay a finger on them.”
She watched from the corner of her eye as Ferron held up his left hand, studying it. “I’m sure you know what a fascinating resonance vivimancy is.
Sinking my hand into his chest cavity was like breaking the surface of water.
Slipped right in”—his fingers curled—“then I pulled out his beating heart.
You should have seen the shock on his face. I hadn’t realised he’d still be alive for a moment, but he lived just long enough to know exactly who killed him.”
Principate Apollo had been a warm, generous man with an easy smile, g people whojokes ready for any nervous student who approached. Luc had been so much like him. The same crooked smile. Being near them felt like standing in the summer sun.
“I suppose your master was quite pleased with you,” she said dully, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of witnessing her horror.
“He was indeed. They were all waiting for me when I returned. We had a celebratory dinner with him, my mother and I. I was declared a prodigy …”
Helena glanced up. His eyes were locked on the window, as though his
mind had gone elsewhere.
He roused himself, glancing down.
“Any other questions?” He arched an eyebrow as if daring her.
“No,” she said quickly, looking away. “You’ve done enough.”
ith Apollo in
ance. But the
ficence to lay
“Any other questions?” He arched an eyebrow as if daring her.
“No,” she said quickly, looking away. “You’ve done enough.”