Alchemised

by SenLinYu

A rivalry, albeit an indirect one, never openly acknowledged.

She’d beaten Ferron before. If she was careful, and clever, she would do it again.

She looked up at him. “You’re a monster.” He raised an eyebrow. “Noticed that, have you?”

Had Ferron killed Principate Apollo? Surely not, he would have been only sixteen.

After all, keeping the High Reeve’s identity hidden provided the High Necromancer with an exceptionally powerful tool. If the High Reeve could be anyone, people were kept paranoid, always wondering.

The solution, the author declared, was sponsored births.

It was a breeding program being passed off as an economic solution.

He shook his head. “But I don’t think it’s possible to exceed what you’ve done to yourself.”

“I have no desire to touch you,” he said, sneering. “Your presence here is offensive enough.” “Small mercies,” Helena said in a dry voice.

But no, you put them back together and sent them right back out to suffer a bit more.”

“What happened to us, Hel?” he asked as she crouched down beside him. She stared at the horizon, past all the towers, towards the south. “A war,” she said.

Waittt i remember this part

“No,” he said. “This is how we win. This is how we’ve always won. My father, my grandfather, all the Principates going all the way back to Orion. They won by trusting that good would triumph over evil, and I have to do the same.”

“What if it’s not that simple, though?” she said. “Everyone who wins says they were good, but they’re the ones who tell the story. They get to choose how we’ll remember it. What if it’s never that simple?”

Hatred was a construct rather than an emotion.

The only piece visible was a slender, dark metal ring on his right hand.

“What kind of ring is that?” she asked. He looked down. “This?” he asked, as if there were any other rings she could have been referring to. He turned his hand. “Just an old piece.”

She could feel him watching and wondered what he’d do if she swallowed it. “Don’t swallow it.” She looked up.

Inside was a pair of boots.

She was not so foolish as to mistake calculation for kindness.

Ferron’s lips remained pressed against Aurelia’s, but as he kissed her, he raised his eyes, and his gaze locked onto Helena’s face.

He didn’t look away until Aurelia broke off the kiss, turning from him.

When she climbed into her bed, she could still see Ferron’s shadow outside her door. Somehow, knowing it was his, the sight of it didn’t frighten her even though it should have.

but you’re still hovering about like you’re hoarding her.”

“No.” Lila shook her head. “I’ve been lying to everyone—”

“I assumed she’d been eating as Aurelia and I do.” His fingers flexed. “Aurelia has always managed the menu. I will make enquiries.”

When her head cleared, her temples were throbbing. What had she been thinking about? Something about—Lila?

She should have cut her throat open the instant she’d gotten her fingers on that knife.

Morrough lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him. Morrough seemed shrunken somehow from the immense distorted being he’d been.

“There is only one answer: She is the animancer. Even now, with her resonance all but gone, she is still resisting. She erased her memory of what she is in an attempt to escape me.”

“You called?” His tone was sardonic.

She’s trying to produce an animancer for Morrough.

“The Undying. You’re his source of power, and the Resistance—we figured that out, didn’t we? How to kill him. How to kill all of you.”

But her eyes— Her eyes were dead. There was no fire in them.

He met her stare, eyes glittering with a strange look of satisfaction. “Yes, he’s dying.”

It was as though he were mentally eroding as the physical ramifications vanished.

“Is there really a difference between having someone die for you and killing them?”

Without lowering Lancaster from where he was holding him, Ferron shoved his hand into Lancaster’s abdominal cavity as easily as if his hand were breaking water. He pulled out Lancaster’s organs, winding them slowly around his fist.

HELL YEAH I REMEMBER THIS PART

He sighed and sat down beside her, taking the cloth away from the necrothrall. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a tense voice. He took her by the shoulders, turning her towards him.

I was made to be his wife. How many men can say that? I did everything, all the things, just the way I was supposed to.”

On our wedding day, he left me in the foyer. Disappeared for a whole month before I heard he was back in the city.

“Until you came along, and suddenly he moved in, and he turned every inch of this estate upside down for you; took you out for walks and gave you a tour of the house.”

“Erik came here because of you. Kaine killed him because of you. Erik was using me! He used me so he could get to you!”

Kaine Ferron Publicly Kills Initiate

As quickly as it had come alive, the house sank back into stillness.

“Look at me. I need you to stay calm and tell me how to fix this. You know how to do it.”

“Good, we’re getting somewhere, then. Now what?”

There was no way that anyone could possibly transmute iron from a distance, especially not in that manner.

If you ever go near her again, or speak to her, or so much as set foot in this wing again, I will kill you, and I will do it slowly, perhaps over the course of an evening or two. That isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. Now get out of my sight.”

“How did you know I’d be able to fix my eye?” “You were a healer.”

“Where did you learn to heal?” she asked, thinking back not only on how easily he’d imitated her directions but also how he’d dealt with Aurelia, and repaired the nerve damage on his own. “Well, you see, there was a war, and I was a general. Picked up a few things.”

Ok sure king