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She thought at first if she waited long enough, some glimmer of light would appear, or someone would come. Yet no matter how long she waited, there was nothing.
Remembered that she’d been placed there as a prisoner, kept preserved, but someday, someone would come for her.
She had to endure. To stay alert. That way she would be ready. She had to stay ready. She would not let herself fade away.
vivimancer. Necromancy’s inverse twin, wielded on the living rather than the dead.
But Mandl, split open as she was, was not dead. Her hands rose up, and she tried to claw her ribs closed with one hand and ward off Morrough with the other, her exposed lungs pulsing. “Another chance—please! I will not fail you! I swear. You will not regret it.” “No, you will not fail me again,” Morrough said, his rasping voice almost gentle as he reached into Mandl’s open chest, fingers sliding beneath her lungs and extracting a gleaming piece of metal from somewhere near her heart. Little tendrils of viscera were wrapped around it, clinging to both the metal and Morrough’s fingers as it was
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He gestured with his other hand. A necrothrall crawled from the shadows like an animal. It was a young woman in the early stages of necrosis, still wearing the tattered remains of the Eternal Flame’s hospital uniform. Her expression was blank. A rip in the uniform exposed a chest latticed with blackening veins. When the corpse reached Morrough, she stood, and he shoved the metal piece into her. There was a soft crunch of breaking bone that left a hole purpled with old blood in the centre of her chest. The corpse-woman shuddered, and then her expression morphed, the blankness vanishing. She
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“From the condition of it, it appears you’ve broken this wrist several times. There’s old nerve damage. Do you remember when it happened?”
There were no veins visible at all, as if his blood were quicksilver.
“The war is over. What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours?” She met his stare without flinching. Luc. She was protecting Luc.
WRONG 😩😩
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.
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.
Helena glanced up. His eyes were locked on the window, as though his mind had gone elsewhere. He roused himself, glancing down.
“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.
“I promised I’d do anything for you.” She curled her fingers into a fist. “Maybe you didn’t realise how far I was willing to go.”
Alchemisation, the transformation of one metal into another, was the most difficult form of alchemy.
In Orion’s work, alchemisation was predicated upon spiritual purity; only an alchemist with a soul as pure as the metal they sought to create could alchemise it.
The lich’s face darkened until it was almost purple with rage. Helena would never have guessed this was Atreus Ferron. Crowther was a different build entirely, so slight he was needle-like and more than half a head shorter than Ferron.
It was not her imagination: The house was almost alive.
He had to have some kind of weakness she could exploit. Kaine Ferron, where is the chink in your perfect armour?
“Reanimation is like electricity. Just channelling the right kind of energy to where it needs to go and keeping it there. It takes barely anything to maintain something so small once it’s encased in the proper preservatives.”
It was undeniable that Ferron had a horrific talent for necromancy.
“You’re not a homunculus, are you?” She felt ridiculous asking the question. Artificial humans were considered as mythical as chimaeras or philosopher stones. One of the many ideas attributed to Cetus in the prescientific era. Of the three, homunculi were a particularly enduring concept. The idea was that by placing a man’s seed in a cucurbit with the proper environment of stable warmth, it could come to life on its own. After being fed distilled blood, it could grow into a human of limitless alchemical potential and utterly without flaws because it was unspoiled by the inferior environment
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Ferron usually wore nothing, not even a wedding band. The only piece visible was a slender, dark metal ring on his right hand.
A bizarre thing for an iron alchemist to wear.
GOING TO KMS BYE
“Why all this sudden interest in me?” he asked. She shrugged. “You don’t make sense.” He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, is that all? And here I was hoping you were plotting to seduce me.” She stared at him blankly. He gave a mocking smile. “Steal my heart with your wit and charms.” Helena scoffed. “Who knows, perhaps I have a proclivity for—” He paused, studying her, trying to find something. Helena walked away. “Maybe tomorrow.”
The details of the ouroboros on the foyer floor showed up better from the third floor, even with the bars. Helena stared down, studying the wings, the spines, the fangs, and the sleek body curving into a circle as it consumed itself.
The hallway was unlit. She could feel the shadows, the dark looming, but she kept her fingers tracing along the wainscotting and her focus on her next step. She knew her way. Even in the dark, she could find it now. When she reached the courtyard, Ferron appeared on the veranda, observing her like a scientist with a test subject. She sighed and began a tedious walk around the courtyard. When she finished the first loop, he was already gone.
“Who are you?” she slurred through her teeth. Myriad emotions flashed across his face. He opened his mouth, then shut it firmly. “I’m in charge of your care,” he finally said very slowly, saying each word precisely. His hand slid across the side of her neck, making her tremble. His fingertips touched the dip at the base of her skull. “Go to sleep. You’ll remember when you wake.” Helena wanted answers, not sleep, but the warmth seeped under her skin like water. The room blurred, the edges disappearing. The face softening as it faded away. “Do I know you?” she asked as her eyes slid closed. “I
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She didn’t want to see him again because she had a very clear memory of pressing her face against his hand without any idea of who he was. In charge of her care? A very generous way of describing himself. She paused, replaying the interaction. His slow enunciation as he’d answered her question. She’d been speaking in Etrasian.
Oh my GODDDD
At zero, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Aurelia’s. A camera flashed. The room exploded with cheers, and kissing, and clinking glassware. 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. She stared back, forgetting to breathe, frozen in place.
He didn’t look away until Aurelia broke off the kiss, turning from him. His eyes immediately dropped, and a false, indulgent smile curved across his lips as he scanned the room, clapping without enthusiasm until one of the dead servants approached with a tray of drinks. He snatched up a flute and knocked back the contents as if it were a mouthwash.
Ferron hadn’t even used resonance or a weapon, just his bare hands. He straightened, adjusting his cuffs with the flick of his wrist. “Executions are required to be clean now, Durant. His Eminence has been quite clear on that point. I hope you weren’t expecting to break the law here on my property and in front of our illustrious governor and a dozen journalists.”
It grew readily apparent which people in attendance knew him to be the High Reeve and who were unaware.
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.
The cage was too narrow for an animal but slightly shorter than Helena. A prisoner would be forced to huddle inside it. It was iron, but roughly wrought, made with manual smithing not alchemy, which meant the iron was probably inert, not transmutable at all. She
He said it almost glibly, but Helena suspected he was not as indifferent as he tried to appear.
He didn’t look at her. “I was commanded to marry her, so I married her. I was never commanded to care.” Helena stopped in her tracks. “You sound as enslaved as I am.”
😭💔
The only sign that he’d even seen battle was his eyes: There was a hollow rage lurking behind them that she’d only ever seen in those who’d spent a long time at the front lines.
“As if she’ll disappear otherwise.” She cast a hateful glare at Helena. “There’s no need to act as if she’s anything precious. I asked Stroud, and she told me: She was a nobody. No one’s coming for her, but you’re still hovering about like you’re hoarding her.” Ferron gave a dark laugh, and a glint entered his eyes as they dropped from the mirror to Aurelia. Uncertainty flashed across her face, as if she was caught off guard by the weight of his attention.
Ferron stared after her with a look of annoyance, then turned and directed his scowl at Helena. “You irritate my wife,” he said.
Lmao
“Besides, if I didn’t leave you on the floor retching, you might make the mistake of thinking I care.” Helena inclined her head. “Yes. You seem strangely concerned about me thinking such a thing.” Ferron froze for an instant, then turned back, a cruel smile thawing his face. “Your friends must have thought very little of you, if this seems like care.” Helena was so stunned by his words, she felt her heart try to beat faster. “Yes, they did,” she said quickly. “Of course they cared.”
“Luc, and Lila, and—” There was a name on the tip of her tongue, but her mind seemed to swerve around it until she focused. “And S-Soren. Lila’s twin brother. He was—he was my friend, too.”
lol Harry, Ginny, and Ron
Despite the visible neglect, the chantry was not entirely abandoned. One plaque was brighter than the rest, carefully polished. It sat beneath the altar of Luna, the lesser moon goddess. Enid Ferron. Always beloved. A wife and mother.
She angled the blade back and drove it towards her own throat, meeting Ferron’s eyes with savage triumph. Ferron moved so fast he blurred. The world morphed, going silver as resonance exploded outwards and the knife was ripped away from her throat, pain tearing up her arm all the way into her shoulder. Her mind struggled to catch up.
“Why don’t you ever stop?” He let go of her, shoving her back. Her hand, numb with pain, lost its grip. “Why don’t you die?” There was no point in being coy. She wanted to kill him; they both knew it. Blood was still flowing down the hilt of the knife, dripping scarlet across the white marble floor, spattering across the ouroboros mosaic. His lips curved into an insincere smile. “Prior commitments, I’m afraid.”
Oh…….. ☹️ iykyk
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. Now he looked as though the skin was rotting off him. One of the faces in the throne was briefly illuminated in the dim light, and Helena thought it might be Mandl’s old face, but she couldn’t be sure because the throne shifted, lifting Morrough towards her.
“I will die before I lose her,” Ferron said, his grip tightening.
“I—” Her throat closed, convulsing. “I—attacked a prison?” “It was after the final battle,” Ferron said, sounding far away. “Seems you were captured after levelling more than half the West Port Laboratory. You’d disguised yourself as a Hevgotian during the attack, and then disappeared into that tank afterwards, resulting in contradictory reports. The investigation was considered inconclusive until my father realised where he recognised you from. He was present that night.” She shook her head. “I was a healer,” she said. “I wasn’t—they didn’t let me fight.” Ferron said nothing.
“Are you wanting a confession?” he finally asked. “Shall I tell you everything I’ve done?”
Oh I’m SICK
She couldn’t help but notice the strain around his eyes and the stiff way he often moved. She began to suspect that Morrough was torturing him regularly. Since Ferron couldn’t stay dead, Morrough got the pleasure of killing him over and over.
