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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. But she could not think about it. She had to forget. If she remembered and was interrogated, Kaine could not be found. She couldn’t think about him. Trapped, frozen, without use of her hands, she could only draw her resonance inwards. She was used to pushing it out for combat. Now it was like a net she closed around her own mind. She could feel the faint texture in her mind of her manipulations,
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“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?”
“I looked for you everywhere.
I thought eventually something would lead to you.” His jaw clenched. “I had to bring them all back. If I’d failed, the job would have been reassigned.”
We’re supposed to run away together. You promised.
“Be careful. Don’t die.”
“Today, you didn’t say you’d always come for me,” she said. “You used to say that when I had to go. When I—” She blinked, one hand spasming. “I think. Didn’t you?” Kaine’s face twisted into a grimace, and he stepped into the room, shutting the door, and leaning against it. “I thought it a rather empty promise at this point.”
“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.”
“Is this not enough? There are, undoubtedly, still unexplored depths to the potential misery between us. Shall we endeavour to achieve all of it?”
“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—”
“Helena…breathe. Please. You have to breathe.”
“There has to be another way,” she said, when she could speak again. “We said we’d run away together. Remember? Why can’t we run away? You said you travelled; we could run and I’ll find a way to reverse what happened
“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.”
“I promised to take care of you first,” she said, snatching her hand back. “Always. I promised you always. If you’d gotten your way, you would have sent me off, and I wouldn’t have even remembered you. Wouldn’t have had any idea until it was too late—”
“Well.” His voice was strained. “The last time I was honest with you, you disappeared and never came back.” She flinched, and her breathing stalled again. “But I...
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“We have a long goodbye in front of us. I don’t want to fight you, but I will not do anything that puts you at further risk.” “Let me try to find another way,” she said.
“You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.”
“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”
He’d had to choose, and he’d set her free. She didn’t want him to regret that.
“Come back to me, all right?” “I will.”
“You’re mine,” she said, heart pounding unsteadily against her ribs. “Did you really think I would still hate you once I remembered?” She shook her head. “Even before I did, you were the only thing that ever felt safe. I thought I was going mad, but a part of me always knew you. I left a note. Didn’t you get my note? I love you.”
“I do,” she said more firmly, her voice shaking with intensity. “I love you. And I always will. Always.”
“I love you,” she said the words against his mouth, as if breathing them into him.
“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.”
“I love you,” she said, kissing him. “I wish I’d told you a thousand times.”
“What has he done to you?” He looked away. “Anything he wants.”
“Don’t do this to me.” Her mouth went dry. “But I have to save you.”
“You don’t get to have everything, Helena,” he said at last. “There’s a point when you have to realise that you aren’t going to get everything you want. You have to choose and let it be enough for you. You have other people. You promised Holdfast you’d take care of Lila and her son. You have a baby who needs you, and you know that.”
“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.”
“Those initial attempts were unsuccessful, and due to the constraints of the war, it was necessary to focus our efforts elsewhere. However, since then, a new method has been discovered, which the High Reeve and I have closely collaborated in perfecting. The High Necromancer’s physical form is in—decay, but no one dares deny his power. He will transfer his soul into a new body and thereby ascend to heights of power unimaginable. And when he has done so, he will allow you to do likewise.”
“What new body?” It was the first man who spoke. Stroud smiled, pushing Helena forward so that she was more visible. “The one our prisoner is producing for us.”
Every word. Every life. Because of you.
“This was ours…” She swallowed, blinking hard. “They took it from us, but it was ours.”
“I used to have so many dreams for us,” she said, voice thickening. “When I’d worry about you, when I’d do things I didn’t want to, when the war felt so heavy that I was sure I’d break under it, I’d tell myself: Someday you’re going to run away with him. Somewhere quiet. You won’t ask for very much, just you and him, and that will be enough.” A lump welled up in her throat, and she shook her head. “That was all I wanted. It was my whole dream, to see what we could be away from the war. I thought it would all be worth it for that.”
“Why are you always so ready to die?” she said, whirling on him even though she’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t be angry anymore. “Even at the beginning when you made your offer to Crowther, you were already planning to die, like it didn’t matter to anyone. But why are you still like that now, when it does?”
I’d rather die in your arms.
“You came—” She reached for him. “I guess you always do.”
“I know you don’t want to believe it’s possible, because hoping terrifies you. But I would rather die trying to save you than live knowing there was a chance and I didn’t take it.” She could feel him wavering. “You promised we’d run away together,” she said. “Remember?” He dipped his head. “Why is it that I have to keep all my promises, but you never seem to keep a single one of yours?”
“The first promise I made to you was that I’d be yours for as long as I live. I’m keeping that one.”
“I need you,” she said. “We’re almost to the end now. But you have to come back to me. We’re running away, remember? You, me, and our baby. We’re going to be free. I’m going to save you, but I need you to fight with me.”
“Come back to me. Stay with me.” His eyes seemed to find her.
“Your mother was always so proud of you. She said you were the best thing we ever made.” Then Atreus looked at Helena. “Save him.”
“Don’t die, Kaine,”
“You have to be so careful. It could take months, maybe even years before your soul fully integrates again. No vivimancy or animancy, nothing that could strain your vitality at all. One mistake could be enough to kill you. And you can’t lean into the array anymore. You won’t regenerate, and it could burn your back open.”
They were free. Her heart swelled inside her chest. It felt like a dream. One wrong move and it would all dissolve. Even staring at him, she could not shake the feeling that it wasn’t real. And even if it somehow was, then it would not last. The beautiful things in her life never did.
“But what if something goes wrong?” she asked, her voice straining. “It’s going to fall apart. It always—falls apart.”
Time always ran out for them. They’d spent years surviving on stolen moments, and now she finally felt how starved it had left her.
“Helena, look at you. You have broken yourself into pieces, over and over, because of me, and you don’t seem to understand that it kills me. Living is not worth it to me if you’re the one who keeps paying the price for it. Let me fix what I can.”
“We have to stop hurting ourselves for each other,” she finally said. “Both of us. We’re not going to last if this is the only way we know how to love.”
