Alchemised

by SenLinYu

The smile on Ivy’s face vanished. “The Necromancer has Sofia. He said he’d give her back to me if I gave him the Headquarters and Crowther. They wanted him alive, but they said it was all right if I had to kill him. So I did.”

I love you. I love you. I love you.

“If I get her, can I have her?” Lancaster said, eyes lighting up, glancing at Helena again. It was clear he recognised her in some way. “When the interrogators are done with her,” the lich said. “Hurry up.”

Hanging by her wrists, Rhea was screaming. Titus stood beside her. He was covered in blood, and there were knives and sticks and spears sticking out of him. He pulled a knife from his leg and began slicing Rhea’s skin off with it. Then he put it in his mouth and ate it.

The last two years of her life, she pushed down beneath the surface as if to drown them. There was no other way. Kaine was almost everything now.

The burning came again, cutting her panic short as she tried to place where the sensation was coming from. She knew that feeling. Her hand. Her left hand was burning. The ring. Her heart stalled. Kaine. He’d come back and found her gone. She’d told him she’d be waiting, and she wasn’t there. The ring burned again and again and again. He was looking for her. He’d come for her. He always did.

Now it was like a net she closed around her own mind.

She could wait. Hold on. You promised you wouldn’t break.

Consciousness split Helena’s mind open. She lurched up, head throbbing, mad with pain. All she could think was Get away, run. The need to escape consumed her. Everywhere she looked, it was all darkness.

She gave a strangled scream, her head snapping up. It was Kaine. He was leaning over her, his pale hair and silver-bright eyes visible in the dark. His fingers trembled as he stared at her. She studied him in shock. He was different. Older. He wasn’t old, but his eyes had a look as if it had been decades since she’d last seen him. She gave a sob and reached for him. “You’re alive,” she said.

Kaine was still alive. But if he was alive, that meant he had not come for her, and she had waited.

“You’re remembering, aren’t you?” She managed a nod, reaching up and gripping his wrist, feeling his skin and bones beneath her fingers. He was real.

He shook his head. “Not in Paladia, but you’ll see her soon. You promised Holdfast you’d take care of them, remember? They’ve been waiting for you.”

She couldn’t speak. Her jaw kept snapping, lungs rattling as she gasped. Her head began jerking, slamming against his chest until he pressed his hand flat, holding her still. Her heart raced with panic. “It’s all right,” he said. “Give it a minute. It’ll pass.”

“Why—” Her voice broke. “—why did you kill everyone?” He seemed startled by the question, as if he’d expected one of the others. “I was trying to find you.” Her heart stalled, body and mind torn between horror and relief. “You looked for me?” Her voice cracked. A look of anguish flashed across his eyes. “Of course I looked for you. I looked everywhere for you. Did you think I left you there?”

He didn’t meet her eyes as he said this, staring across the room. “I went to Hevgoss quite a few times. Thought maybe you’d somehow ended up there. I was even in that warehouse once, checking all the files there for anyone who might match your description. But I didn’t open the tanks so—”

Understanding slowly dawned on her. All these months, Kaine had been performing for Morrough through Helena’s eyes, knowing that any moment that passed between them might be seen. What had been real, then? Any of it? None?

Helena wasn’t sure why he’d be angry about that. She closed her eyes. She felt so tired now that he was there, as if she’d waited for him in order to rest.

Kaine’s thumb stroked across her knuckles, finally stopping at her ring finger, spiralling something there slowly. The ring. She’d forgotten all about it.

“Fine,” he said. She blinked down at her lap. “You’re married.” He went rigid at that, and she watched him inhale. “Yes, to Aurelia Ingram.”

“Lila has a rather abiding hatred for me.” Helena kept waiting for an answer. We’re supposed to run away together. You promised.

“Hel—” He started to move towards her, but she tensed, and he stopped short. He stood, staring at her, one hand barely outstretched. Her cheeks burned, and she looked away.

He turned away, and she reached out on instinct. “Kaine…” He stopped, and she instantly withdrew her hand. She forced a tight smile. “Be careful. Don’t die.” He stood unmoving for a moment, staring at her, and then turned away. “Right.”

“Through wreckage, and piles of corpses, through prisons and mines and laboratories, and across a damned continent. I looked everywhere—except the one place that mattered.” His voice cracked, but he grinned. “Thank you, truly, for crediting my exceptional efforts.”

“I had really hoped the library would keep you busy for at least a week,” he said, looking exhausted.

“Do you have a better solution for us this time, too?” he asked quietly. “After all, not every single horror that I’ve ever imagined has happened to you yet. Losing you and spending fourteen months trying and failing to find you. Finally getting you back, tortured and broken. Keeping you prisoner—the transference—raping you—” His voice was growing raw with grief and rage.

“Kaine—” His name came out jagged. He sighed, resting a hand against the doorframe as though it were propping him up. “I know you want to save everyone; you always do. Unfortunately, that’s not a talent I possess. At least this way you’ll see the war ended. I can give you that.” “No!” she said forcefully. He looked up at her, his face hardening. “You always said you wouldn’t choose me over everyone else. I am chained to a sinking ship. I will not take you with me.” “I was lying!” The words came out a scream. “I didn’t—I couldn’t—I wasn’t g-g—”

He took her hand in his. “You promised me whatever I wanted if I saved Bayard for you, remember? Well, here is what I want. I want you to leave this accursed country behind and go live a whole life somewhere far away. You swore to Holdfast that you’d protect Lila and his heir. I expect that promise will keep you busy for a long time.”

Helena sat up. “It would have killed me. If you’d sent me away and I’d found out later you were discovered because I made you go back for Lila, it would have killed me. I’d do it all again, every second, to save you.” He turned to look at her, shock and rage sweeping across his face. “You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.” If he’d struck her, it would have hurt less. The blood drained from her face, her body going ice-cold. “I tried to come back—” she said, her voice shaking. “I really did.”

He’d loved her, even though he never expected them to be anything but doomed. He’d loved her all the same.

She wasn’t sure what he meant until he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and the ribbon of metal suddenly unspooled.

“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t—” The word caught in her throat. She squeezed his hand. “Come back to me, all right?” “I will.”

“From what I understand,” he finally said, his voice eerie and removed, “simple methods of abortion are unlikely to be feasible by the time you’ll escape. There are other methods that can be done by vivimancy or surgery. When you go, I’ll try to ensure you have the materials necessary to resolve it, but if there’s anything in particular you’ll need, just tell me. I’ll make sure that you have it.”

“I am,” she said. “And I want you to know. If I didn’t, I’d wonder about everything. If our baby would get your eyes or mine. What kind of resonance they’d have. If they’d have any, or if they’d just get to be ordinary.” She was speaking quickly, because her throat was growing thick. “I’d wonder if they’d have hair like mine or if it would be straight like yours. If I have to go without you—if you—if you die—I’d want to tell them all about you.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve never gotten to tell anyone about you. I’d want someone to know what you were like.”

“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with one of the Undying’s bastards chained to you?” he asked. “The whole world knows you’re here, who you were sent to. Do you think they won’t guess who the father was and how it came to be? No matter what colour eyes it has, or how old it gets, it will be the child of a murderer, conceived because I raped you while you were my prisoner, and everyone will know that. Everyone.”

“Just leave it behind.” He drew a ragged breath. “You want children? Have them with someone else.”

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything I did to you,” he said, his voice hoarse and broken. “I love you. You left, and I’d never told you.”

“It’s female.”

Faced with indifference, Helena felt herself grow reactively possessive. She slipped her hand away from Kaine and went to the wardrobe, getting dressed slowly.

This was his attempt at giving her what she wanted. For him, acknowledging that he would have a child, a daughter, meant acknowledging that he wouldn’t live to meet her. He was telling the stories so Helena could tell their daughter about him, about what he’d been like, before the Institute and the war.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, his mouth over her throat. “Tell me to stop.” She pulled him closer. “Don’t stop. I don’t want you to stop.” His teeth dragged across her skin, and she drew his hands to the buttons on her dress, helping to unfasten them. His fingers slid over her bare skin as she shuddered into his touch, aching for him. It used to be like this. Feeling it again, she could remember it, the way he used to touch her, hold her, consume her. He kissed her neck until her head dropped back and she was gasping. Her hands trailed along the curve of his jaw, down over his shoulders, as the physical memory of him awakened beneath her skin. She brought his face back to hers. “I love you,” she said, kissing him. “I wish I’d told you a thousand times.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to choose. I always have to choose, and I never get to choose you. I’m so tired of not getting to choose you.” He looked back at her. “You’re not choosing. You promised me anything I wanted. 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.”

He reached towards her, his fingers brushing her hip. “You care about this baby. You worried about her so constantly, you wrecked your heart with fear over what would happen to her. Now you’re so preoccupied trying to save me that you’re letting yourself forget that she is dependent on you. I can’t protect her from you. Endangering yourself trying to save me risks her.”

Helena snatched hers away, curling her fingers into a fist so tight she could feel metacarpal bones under her fingertips. The room swam, threatening to topple her from the bed. She braced her other hand firmly against the mattress to steady herself. “Well, maybe if I—” “Helena, I’m tired.”

“I was afraid she’d give us away if I let her near you. She has quite the reputation nowadays,” he said. “You were the only other person she’s ever taken to.”

He glanced at Helena. “She very much remembers you. Howled for half the day when you arrived.”

“You planned that.” He froze for an instant. “What makes you say that?” His voice was light. “Because she’s a loose end. If you’ll let Amaris die, you won’t let Aurelia live.” His expression hardened. “What did you expect? She tried to gouge out your eyes.”

“We received word that while the Eastern envoy was passing through Novis, the train was attacked. Everyone on board was killed—including Shiseo.”

Soon this would be all that was left of Kaine in the whole world. “I’m going to take care of you,” she whispered. “It’s—our way.”

“What did he do?” Helena said, afraid of the way he’d avoided the question. He exhaled. “He ripped out my heart first. Said it was—f-fitting…”