Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Helena had enlisted in the Resistance and sworn fealty to the Order of the Eternal Flame—not out of faith, but because of Luc Holdfast. Because she might not believe in the gods, but she had believed in him, that he was good and kind and cared about everyone.

“Oh, Marino.” His thumb trailed along her neck, following the scar below her jaw. “If I’d known what pain you’d cause me, I never would have taken you.”

“I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat. It is 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.”

“Don’t die, Marino. I might miss you.”

“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the war.”

“You made me feel like the parts of me that aren’t useful still deserve to exist. Like I’m not just all the things I can do.”

Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.

“I promised I was yours. You made me swear it. I didn’t make plans.” Anger darkened his face. “Surely there’s something you’re looking forward to now.” She reached out, her fingers brushing over his heart. “No. I’m—spent.”

“You know, I used to think the circumstances of my servitude to the High Necromancer as cruel an enslavement as anyone could conceive, but I must admit, it pales beside you.” He tilted his head. “At least before, I could console myself that it wasn’t my fault; acceptance was the best I could do to keep my mother safe. It’s different when I have no one to blame but myself.” His hand came up, his gloved fingers wrapping around her throat, pulling her forward. “After all, I did choose you.”

“You are not expendable. You don’t get to push everyone away so that they’ll feel comfortable using you and letting you die.”

“I think I’ve nearly memorised you,” she said. “Especially your eyes. I think I learned to read them first.”

Kaine Ferron was a dragon, like his family before him. Possessive to the point of self-annihilation. Isolated and deadly, and now he held her in his arms as if she were his. The temptation to give in, to let him have her, and to love him for it terrified her.

She missed Kaine. Whenever she thought of him, she felt as though a piece of her was missing. The war had drilled itself into her bones, carving away at her until there was hardly anything left except what made her useful, an ideal component in an elaborate machine, but Kaine had reminded her that she was human; that not every trait and ability and quality she possessed only mattered insomuch as it was useful to someone else. That she was allowed to breathe sometimes. Now, in his absence, she felt herself suffocating.

“I think your scars are prettier than mine,” she finally said. “I have a better healer.”

Someday, she promised herself, someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn’t stolen.

“You’ve always done the worst things because of me.”

I love you. I love you. I love you.

There are, undoubtedly, still unexplored depths to the potential misery between us. Shall we endeavour to achieve all of it?”

“You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.”

I left a note. Didn’t you get my note? I love you.”

“I don’t want to choose. I always have to choose, and I never get to choose you. I’m so tired of not getting to choose you.”

“Helena, I’m tired.”

“But look at everything we’ve done, and it’s still not enough. I guess in the end, I am like Luc. I thought that we could suffer enough to earn each other.”

“Helena, look at you. You have broken yourself into pieces, over and over, because of me, and you don’t seem to understand that it kills me. Living is not worth it to me if you’re the one who keeps paying the price for it. Let me fix what I can.”

She was a non-active member of the Order of the Eternal Flame and did not fight.