Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Remembered that she’d been placed there as a prisoner,

kept preserved, but someday, someone would come for her.

“Do I know you?” she asked as her eyes slid closed. “I suppose you do.”

“Well, you—you have a natural talent for it. In another life, you could be a healer.” “One of life’s great ironies,” he said, glancing towards the door, his jaw tight.

“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.”

“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.”

If I wanted my betrayal to matter, he couldn’t see it coming.”

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.

if the Eternal Flame has decided that you are an affordable casualty, I will not be noble or understanding. I can exact dual revenge. I will make them pay if they get you killed.”

“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.” He searched her face. “They didn’t tell you.”

“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.”

“You are so much more than what the war has done to you.”

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

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

I want you to stop breaking yourself trying to save me. Go. Live. Tell our daughter I saved you both. That—is what I want.”

But I would rather die trying to save you than live knowing there was a chance and I didn’t take it.”

“Every day. I’ll choose you. That way you’ll know it’s still what I want.”

She wanted those lost remembered, and she wanted the tragedy of the war confronted, not buried, so that it could not happen again.

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes. Kaine and I go hand in hand. I made him who he is. I knew what that array meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”