Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.

“I’m not lying,” she said. “I’m sorry. I am truly sorry for what happened to her.” She drew closer to him. He looked so utterly broken, as if he were about to collapse into himself. She placed a tentative hand on his arm, half expecting him to fling her across the room, but his shoulders trembled and he dropped his head onto her shoulder. She pulled him into her arms; he gripped her close and sobbed. “I can’t—I can’t—” he kept saying over and over. Helena didn’t know what to do. She ran her fingers through his hair and just held him. “I can’t—I can’t do this again—” he finally gasped out. “I can’t care for someone again. I can’t take it.” She blindly found his face, pressing her hand against his cheek, felt tears slide along her palm and down her wrist. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Kaine.” She said it again and again. She was apologising for everything. For the first time, Kaine Ferron was fully human to her. She’d slipped through his walls and peeled away the defensive layers of malice and cruelty, and found that there he carried a broken heart. She could use that.

“By the time I realised I’d miscalculated, you’d already forced your way in. You were so obvious, but that only made it worse; knowing you’d let me do anything to you in the hope it would save everyone else, even the people who’d sold you in the first place. At least when I sold my soul, my mother prostrated herself, begging to take my place. I suppose, in some regards, I am luckier than you.” She gave a low sob. “After you nearly bled to death here, I thought, at least I can keep her alive. She deserves to have someone who cares enough to try to keep her alive. I thought eventually you’d give up. But you will do anything to save the people you feel responsible for. Of course you’d weaponise your guilt in order to use mine.” He gave a low bitter laugh. “I’m sure there’s something poetic in it all, but right now all I feel is a new set of manacles.” He let go and stepped away from her, heading for the door. “So forgive me if I dislike looking at you. I’m still adjusting to the ways these new ones chafe.”

The necrothralls began to drop. A few Aspirants noticed the newcomer and seemed confused about what had happened. Before they could react, they were dead. A weapon gleamed so quick that she barely saw it, just watched the bodies fall. It was Kaine. She’d never seen him fight. He’d never really fought with her. But she knew. There was no mistaking that brutal efficiency. He was as deadly as she’d imagined. She could see the techniques he’d tried to drill into her, the fluidity that she’d lacked, how quick he was. No movement wasted. The momentum of one kill led to the next. Bodies fell like stars. He stalked through the water towards Helena. Not a step wavering, cutting down everything that crossed his path.

“Use the ring, call me, if you ever need anything.”

She looked for a door. An escape. He didn’t let go. “Helena…” She stilled at her name. “I’m alone, too,” he said.

“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 happens 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 them. Given that the risk to their lives is the only way to make you value your own.”

She 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.”

She shifted across the bed and into his arms, burying herself there, letting her eyes close as she traced her fingers across his skin. She would know him blind.

Helena 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.

Damn

Helena wasn’t sure why he’d be angry about that. She closed her eyes. She felt so tired now that he was there, as if she’d waited for him in order to rest. “When you were asleep, I used to promise I’d take care of you,” she said. “No.” He said it harshly. “That was me. I was the one who used to say that.” She opened her eyes. “I used to say it back. I guess you didn’t know.” His expression grew stricken and then he looked away, flicking the curtains closed so that it was too dim to make out his face anymore.

Helena sat up. “It would have killed me. If you’d sent me away and I’d found out later you were discovered because I made you go back for Lila, it would have killed me. I’d do it all again, every second, to save you.” He turned to look at her, shock and rage sweeping across his face. “You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.” If he’d struck her, it would have hurt less. The blood drained from her face, her body going ice-cold.

Like a spear through the hearr