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She was not as stilted and blank as Helena was accustomed to; she moved more like a lich.
“I would rather spend the rest of my life being raped in Central than spend a minute of it having feelings for you.”
The first time he did it, she thought he was playing with her fingers; then she realised he was massaging them.
“Stay…please…stay.”
“You’re mine. You swore yourself to me.” The words were growled in her ear.
“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.”
She pressed her hand against her chest, finding the sunstone amulet under her filthy uniform.
“Whether you win a battle or lose it, all I see is the cost.”
“Kaine Ferron has offered to spy for the Resistance,” said Crowther.
“He wants you, Marino,” Crowther said. “Both now and after the war.”
Most healers could practise for decades without consequence, but to heal injuries that cheated death came with a price. It was called the Toll.
“I’m sure Ilva has filled your head with pretty stories about your importance, but you’re easily replaced. We already have several candidates under consideration.”
Why would Kaine Ferron, the iron guild heir, want Helena Marino?”
“A sign of some kind of subconscious obsession perhaps.”
She didn’t let herself pause or think, just pressed a hand over her heart. “I swear it, on the spirits of the five gods and my own soul, Kaine Ferron, I’m yours as long as I live.”
She didn’t like to think about the kinds of things men considered a favour.
“Do you say that to every girl?” He huffed a laugh and ran his hand through his hair to brush it off his face. “No, I can’t say I do.”
She caught it reflexively, studying it. It was a tarnished silver ring;
I’ll transmute it to warm briefly if I need to meet. Twice if it’s urgent. I’d advise coming very quickly if it ever burns twice.”
“It’s an elixir that’s bonded to the surface. The coating bends light to make things hard to notice unless you know to look for them.”
“Did this happen to you?” she asked, her tongue sluggish. He was Undying; she didn’t know if they got headaches. Or even slept. “More than once,” he said. “My training was rigorous.”
Ferron stared at her, his mouth twisting. “Are you wanting a confession? Shall I tell you everything I’ve done?” She stared into his mocking eyes. “Do you want to?”
“You’re Marino, I know. This is Marta Rumly, Claire Reibeck, and Anne Stoffle. I’m Elain Boyle.”
Shiseo was a small, balding man with dark eyes. He could read and understand Northern dialect fluently but spoke very little.
“At the front—everything’s so focused, you know. The rules are simple. We win some. We lose some. You get hit sometimes. You hit back. You get days to recover if it’s bad. But—” She looked down, her fingers tapping absently along the place where her prosthetic was joined to her thigh. “—in the hospital, every battle looks like losing. I can’t imagine what that’s like.” She looked at Helena. “All you see in there is the worst of it.”
Crowther and Ilva somehow knew exactly who possessed the latent resonance for it, even when the girls themselves did not.
she started massaging the palm and worked slowly to his fingertips, knuckle by knuckle, her resonance seeking out every bit of tension and knotted muscles.
She could fix this. She wasn’t going to let him suffer and die for finally doing something good in his life.
She was replaceable. Ferron wasn’t.
She could feel his annoyance at the question. “Because we’re bound to Morrough.”
In Etras, to pray to Luna, they’d balanced rocks in stacks along the beach, each stone a prayer for the tides to carry to her.
He spoke just as she was leaving. “Don’t die, Marino. I might miss you.”
“This is war.” His voice came from somewhere beyond the bodies crowding around her. “You don’t get to want; you get to live or die.”
“Vivimancy is often a late-onset ability. Mid to late adulthood. Young people tend to manifest it as a reaction to a traumatic event.
If she saw him, without the context of who he was, she might find him rather handsome.
They do not share. They are obsessive about what they regard to be theirs. You do this and Kaine Ferron will never let you go, and he will not be content with being secondary to anyone.”
“Stay,” he said, his voice coaxing, pleasure-soaked, his face so close to hers. “Have a drink with me.”
“I must admit,” he said in a low voice as though making a confession, “if anyone had told me you’d become so lovely, I would never have come near you. I was rather blindsided when I saw you again.” Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “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.”
I was worried my father or I might slip away like that and leave the other all alone. So he’d hold my hand until I fell asleep, so I’d know he was there. You looked lonely just now, so I thought…” She shook her head and let go. “I don’t know. It’s nothing. Sorry.”
heat already scalding her face and neck. “There. My mane.” He stared in silence, as if he needed time to take it in. “I didn’t realise it was so long.”
He was gentler than she thought he could be. He looked at her like he saw her. And he was asking. She kissed him. A real kiss this time.
“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.”
Blackthorne was one of the Undying that everyone feared. He didn’t wear a helmet as most of the Undying did, making no effort to hide his identity. Whether he won or lost his battles, the devastation he left behind was terrible. He was known for eating his victims on the battlefield.
Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.
A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.
Helena turned, then gave a brittle laugh. “You know, I just realised, if I succeed, you’ll control Ferron the same way you use Luc to control me. It makes me feel rather sorry for him.”
We called it mo’lian’shi. It—creates inertia.”
“Don’t die, Kaine,” she said. The line he walked frightened her. If the array was the punishment for a failure, what would the price of betrayal be? A smirk twisted his mouth as he looked at her. “There are far worse fates than dying, Marino.” She nodded. “I know. But that one you don’t come back from.” He gave a bitter laugh. “All right, then, but only because you asked.”
Sometimes she wished she’d died in the hospital with her father, to be remembered and mourned for her possibilities, rather than live day by day growing ever lesser.
