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“You are not allowed to hurt yourself or do anything that might cause an abortion or miscarriage,” he said. “You’ll be monitored full-time now, just in case your newfound desperation drives you to previously unknown heights of creativity.”
“No one is going to hurt your baby,” he said, meeting her eyes.
“Really?” She let her desperation fill her voice. “Nothing will happen to it. You have my word. Calm down.”
“If the High Necromancer is correct, she’s keeping the memories hidden by internalising her resonance. Which means that she’s probably been putting most of her energy into maintaining it. It might explain her lethargy, since it’s unlikely that it’s being done efficiently. Now she’s pregnant. She doesn’t have the strength to sustain both, especially if this embryo is an animancer. The High Necromancer says that his power was so great, he’d claimed every drop of his mother’s life while still in the womb and was birthed from her corpse upon the funeral pyre. We’ll have to be sure to maintain
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“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.”
“Luc, I don’t believe in you because anyone ever said I should. I’m here because there’s no one braver or kinder than you. You’re all the good things that anyone ever hopes to be. We’re not here because you tricked us.” She touched his wrist with her gloved fingers for just a moment. “The reason we believe in you is because if you’re not good enough, then no one is.”
Everyone remembered Kaine Ferron. He’d murdered Luc’s father by ripping out his heart at the foot of the Alchemy Tower.
“Kaine Ferron has offered to spy for the Resistance,” said Crowther.
“He wants you, Marino,” Crowther said. “Both now and after the war.”
“You know those lumithium pieces we find sometimes after burning the liches and Undying? If you can rip it out, it kills them. All their necrothralls, too.”
The only reliable method for permanently removing the Undying from combat was by burning them so hot and fast that they couldn’t regenerate, but when on fire, the Undying and the necrothralls would often plunge straight into the nearest cluster of combatants.
“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.”
Rude
“When he made his offer and set his terms, as proof of his—sincerity, he told us how to kill the liches and Undying without fire.”
“Your job, Marino, is to use any means necessary to bring Ferron to his knees. You will use those cursed abilities of yours to make him forget he ever wanted anything but you.”
“I swear it, on the spirits of the five gods and my own soul, Kaine Ferron, I’m yours as long as I live.”
Kiss me like you mean it,” he said, and then as if it were an afterthought, he added, “Based on your performance, I’ll decide how much information I feel inspired to part with.”
Murderers are still men, she told herself. And he was merely a boy.
“You are full of surprises,” he added after a moment, voice lower than before. Helena wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she just said the first thing that popped into her head. “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.”
It was a tarnished silver ring;
The one he wears!
“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.”
Minds instinctively bolt to protect what’s most important to hide. You have to train yourself to do the reverse. Focus on what doesn’t matter.
“It’s been killing you, hasn’t it? Wondering. You expected me to do this to you right off. The waiting—trying to guess when I might get around to it—that bothers you more than having to fuck me. Well, you have your wish. Take your clothes off, Marino.”
“Take your clothes off, Marino. It’s time to see what I’ve been paying for.”
“You think you’re better than us because you’re immortal, but you’re dead inside already.”
“Was it a punishment for you—being made Undying?” He glanced at her, his face empty. “How could immortality be a punishment? It’s what everyone wants.”
“The High Necromancer will be out of the country for the next week. He’s travelling into Hevgoss. There have been extensive preparations made for it. Nearly a third of the Undying will be travelling with him. The trip has been kept secret; only a few know.”
“I think we might as well plan to skip the next few weeks. I don’t expect to make it.”
“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
“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.”
“Don’t—use my name. I hate the way it sounds on your tongue.”
She was a collar around Kaine’s neck, and her job now was to bear it.
“Where’s Luc—” There was a pause and she knew before the older guard spoke. “Missing.”
How nice it must be, to be a god.
“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.”
“After you nearly bled to death here, I thought, at least I can keep her alive. She deserves to have someone who cares enough to try to keep her alive. I thought eventually you’d give up. But you will do anything to save the people you feel responsible for. Of course you’d weaponise your guilt in order to use mine.” He gave a low bitter laugh. “I’m sure there’s something poetic in it all, but right now all I feel is a new set of manacles.”
“So forgive me if I dislike looking at you. I’m still adjusting to the ways these new ones chafe.”
There was Luc.
Pain like fire ran up her left hand. She gave a choked gasp as she kept working. The sensation barely faded before it burned again.
When Soren turned, Blackthorne had swung from the right. The axe head was buried all the way through his ribs to his spine.
He was gone. “No. No. No. Soren!”
His grip was like iron, and her bones broke like twigs.
“I think this one is already broken, but let’s make sure.”
A pale, long-fingered hand dripped red with blood as it pulled out a gleaming piece of metal from Blackthorne’s chest cavity. Blackthorne collapsed into the floodwater, vanishing. The entire fight had not even lasted a full minute.
It was Kaine.
“Remind Crowther that if the Eternal Flame wants my continued assistance, they will keep you alive.”
“You are not expendable. You don’t get to push everyone away so that they’ll feel comfortable using you and letting you die.”
“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.”
“Use the ring, call me, if you ever need anything.”
“I don’t want to always be alone,” she said. It was easier to be honest in the dark. “I want to love someone without feeling like if they know, it’ll end up hurting them. People who love me always die. No matter what I do, it’s never enough to save them. I have to love everyone from a distance, and I’m so lonely.”
