Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“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.”

“I’ll tell you if you swallow it like a good girl.”

“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. He gave a mocking smile. “Steal my heart with your wit and charms.” Helena scoffed. “Who knows, perhaps I have a proclivity for—” He paused, studying her, trying to find something. Helena walked away. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Do I know you?” she asked as her eyes slid closed. “I suppose you do.”

“You think the guilds invented the divide between us and the Eternal Flame? The Holdfasts claimed all their preferences were divinely moral and treated any concessions as a violation of their consciences; where exactly did that leave the wants and needs of the rest of us? When anything we wanted became a sin or form of vice simply because it inconvenienced them for us to have it? All we did was become what they’d already convinced themselves we were. Ignoble and corrupt.” He stopped, hands clasped behind his back. “You think it was an accident that we hated sponsored students like you? If we hadn’t, how would they have kept you so lonely and desperately grateful to them?”

She’d thought sometimes that someday, when she’d repaid her debts, accomplished all that was expected, and reached her own goals, she would like to be loved.

“Oh, Marino.” His thumb trailed along her neck, following the scar below her jaw. “If I’d known what pain you’d cause me, I never would have taken you.” He sighed, and she could smell the liquor on his breath as his head dipped closer. She had no idea what he meant, if she was supposed to apologise. “But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.” His face was so close the words brushed against her lips, and his mouth crashed against hers.

He wasn’t kind; he simply wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t as monstrous as he could be. And for Helena’s fracturing mind, an absence of cruelty was sufficient solace. For her starved heart, it was enough.

“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.”

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

“Why that design? What was Bennet trying to turn you into?” “I designed it,” he said quietly. That information was shocking enough to sober Helena. She sat up. “It was my punishment,” he said. “I expected it would kill me, but if I survived, I didn’t want them to choose what I became.

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

“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.”

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.”

Lila took the vows. To protect Luc with her life, to die for him. Luc had no choice but to accept them. Whatever had or hadn’t briefly existed between them was buried beneath the weight of those vows.

He was always cruellest when he was vulnerable.

“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.”

“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.”

Kaine Ferron was a dragon, like his family before him. Possessive to the point of self-annihilation. Isolated and deadly, and now he held her in his arms as if she were his. The temptation to give in, to let him have her, and to love him for it terrified her.

She was locked in the dangerous embrace of Kaine Ferron, and it felt like home.

“Would you go now, if you could?” His eyes seemed to ripple with heat. “With you, I would.” She forced a smile. “Then we’ll go together. After the war.” She gripped his hand and pressed it against her chest, letting him feel her heartbeat. “When the war is over. We’ll run away somewhere no one knows us. We’ll disappear—forever.”

“It’s a war, Kaine. People die. Given your personal death toll, you should know that better than anyone else. You know that I’m not going to prioritise my survival over everyone else’s.”

She would indeed have been an exceptional healer if she hadn’t been a psychopath.

Mandl

“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?”

“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 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.”

“But…I want to save you back.” “I know.” He said it gently. “And if anyone could, it would be you. But I would like to say goodbye to you before you’re gone, and you are losing yourself in this.”

“We’ll go out together, won’t we, old girl? Bennet’s last two monsters.”

“He looks like your wife, doesn’t he? It’s the eyes and mouth; they’re so much like hers. He’s all you have left of her now. But every time he sees you, he hates you with your wife’s eyes.”

Atreus is desperate to save his son because it’s the last thing he has left of his wife

“Why would you be willing?” Kaine asked, sneering down at him, his eyes scorching. “You’ve hated me since before I was born.” Atreus looked away. “Your mother would want me to save you.”

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes. Kaine and I go hand in hand. I made him who he is. I knew what that array meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”

“So, what do we do now?” The corner of his mouth curved into a smile that had only ever been for her. “Anything. Whatever you want.”