Alchemised

by SenLinYu

the silver-grey eyes that met hers were sharp, the sclera white, pupils black, no darkened veins anywhere beneath his skin. There were no veins visible at all, as if his blood were quicksilver.

Helena didn’t move. His gaze lifted. “Come here.” When she didn’t obey, a slow smile curved along his lips. “I can make you, if you don’t.”

Perhaps she could find a very sharp stick somewhere and stab him with it.

The house had not eaten her, because houses did not eat people.

“You know,” Ferron said, jolting her from her thoughts, “when I heard it was you I’d be getting, I was looking forward to breaking you.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think it’s possible to exceed what you’ve done to yourself.”

A bizarre thing for an iron alchemist to wear. She could feel him watching and wondered what he’d do if she swallowed it. “Don’t swallow it.”

“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.

If even one of the necrothralls had walked in and stroked her hair, she probably would have wept.

He nodded towards Helena just as Ferron stepped between them. Helena shrank towards Ferron without thinking, so close she could smell the scent of juniper on his clothes. “She’s not available for entertainment,” Ferron said, his voice chilly. “You’ll have to find someone else to amuse yourself with. I’m sure you’ll manage.”

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 world already knows she’s mine,” Ferron said, his words pointed, “but if you’d like, I can remind them.

Ferron turned towards Helena. His face was rigid with fury. “You idiot—why did you come out tonight?” Helena just looked at him. She thought she should say something. What she’d tried to tell Lancaster. “Ferron always comes for me,” she whispered.

“But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.”

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” she said at last. He gave her a sidelong glance which communicated that this was obvious.

Helena couldn’t stop screaming. Everything was bleeding together, the edges of her vision fading. Ferron was in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. “Calm down.” His voice was hard, but his hands weren’t. He pulled her close until the world narrowed into the space between them. “Breathe.”

“Do you remember Kaine Ferron?”

There was something about the way Ilva said it that made Helena feel that a pardon was not all Ferron had asked for. “And…?” “He wants you, Marino,” Crowther said. “Both now and after the war.”

Becoming a healer would slowly carve away Helena’s life span, like a candle being burned at both ends. Someday, she didn’t know when, her resonance would begin to wither and fade, and Helena would go with it. She felt it sometimes while healing, a sensation like sand in an hourglass being diverted, flowing from her fingertips and into her patients. She never knew how much was left, just that she was spending it.

squeezed

The mystery indentations in her palm. Where is the amulet now?

“Your job, Marino, is to use any means necessary to bring Ferron to his knees.

“I swear it, on the spirits of the five gods and my own soul, Kaine Ferron, I’m yours as long as I live.”

However, this ring was hand-forged rather than transmutationally crafted; she could see the hammer marks that had beaten a scaled, almost geometric pattern onto it. A bizarre thing for an iron alchemist to have. “A symbol of our relationship,” Ferron said, and when she looked up sharply, he raised his right hand to indicate a matching band on his index finger.

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?” There was a flash of surprise that softened his features for an instant. He was lonely.

“Do you want to?”

He glanced at her, his face empty. “How could immortality be a punishment? It’s what everyone wants.”

As he was regaining consciousness, she took his nearest hand, careful not to shift his shoulder as 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.

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

“Fuck off,” she said. “I didn’t know you could swear.” He sounded amused. Her jaw clenched, and she turned and told him to fuck off in three more languages.

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.”

She couldn’t fix herself anymore, and no one else seemed inclined to even notice she was breaking.

“Like you, then,” he said, twisting the curl so it wrapped around his fingertip, “trapped in place, but still the same somewhere underneath.” She stared at him, startled by the remark, and then tears welled up and streamed down her cheeks. His eyes widened. “Gods, Marino, don’t cry,” he said hastily. “Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand free and scrubbing her face. “I’m just—really drunk.”

“Why are you crying?” he finally asked. She smeared at her cheeks with her hand. “Because I’m lonely, and kissing you, and you don’t even like me.” He looked at her and then tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling for a full minute. “Why do you think I was kissing you?” he finally asked in a tight voice. “Because I’m here.” He looked at her again. “Why’d you kiss me?” She stared across the room at a tapestry of Tellus, spinning the earth into being. “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.”

“What the fuck, Ferron?” “Ah, back to surnames, I see,” he said coolly. “That. Hurt,” she said through gritted teeth,

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

She smiled bitterly at the difference between them. Her death count was the numerical representation of her failures. All the lives she hadn’t saved, the ways she fell short. For Kaine, it was a mark of power. His victims, even Principate Apollo, all represented what made him so valuable.

They were the inverse and counter to each other. A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.

“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.”

“I wasn’t going to die,” he said scathingly, but he leaned towards her. She almost drew back, but he reached out tentatively and she made herself hold still. He pulled her hand away from her neck, his eyes fastened on her throat, his fingers moving slowly down the length of it. She felt his resonance under her skin, warm along her spine. Another crack in his façade of indifference.

His fingers stilled, and he glared at her. “I’m not your patient.” He might have been intimidating if he wasn’t sitting on the floor, both hands cradling her neck, tilting her head slowly from side to side.

His eyes darted down to her lips, and she felt the draw between them. A feeling like a string instrument, stretched taut and ready to vibrate.

“Well—” She swallowed. “I lost it.” “You—lost it?” He said it slowly, and she could hear the implied use of the word idiot punctuating each word. “When?”

“Eyes are awful. I mean, hopefully if you ever lost one, it would just grow back, but if not…”

eyes are awful

The whole city, the Principate, the Faith, the history, every mural, every amulet. All lies.

“If you can present Ferron on his knees, crawling, willing to do anything, within a month, I’ll let you keep him.”

She was cast forever into the role of doubter, of tempter.

“Because I’m not your friend anymore. Your friend Helena Marino died in a field hospital six years ago. She doesn’t exist anymore. I need you to let her go.”

His eyes found her instantly, scanning her from head to toe. She stared back at him, a feeling like hunger rising inside her.

She should have just gone to the bridge. And jumped.

She leaned closer, her hand sliding up from his chest to his shoulder to pull him forward and kiss him. It was not a slow, sweet kiss. It was not a kiss caused by alcohol or insecurity. It was born of rage, despair, and desire so hot, it threatened to burn her into oblivion. It was possibly a kiss goodbye. She wanted him to know. It was real. For her, it had always been real.

But his eyes… She could tell— He was hers. The realisation broke her heart.

“Fuck you.” She flinched but spat back, “You already did.”