Alchemised

by SenLinYu

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. To know what it was to feel wanted.

But it wasn’t kindness. 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.

“There are more immediate needs than making me a special weapon that I’d barely use,” she said. “Consider it an immediate need now. After six years, surely there’s been time,” he said. “How many swords and suits of armour does Holdfast have?” She bristled. “Luc fights at the front lines.” Kaine scoffed, his lip curling. “With fire. Get a better knife.”

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.

She looked down at the scar in her palm. “I used to think that we were the reverse of each other. Now—” She looked at him and extended her hand. “—I can’t help feeling like we’re mostly the same.”

On the long nights, Amaris would curl up behind Helena, nuzzling at Kaine’s limp hands. Helena would sit, tracing her fingers along Kaine’s face, following his every heartbeat and promising, “I’m going to take care of you. I promise, I’m always going to take care of you.”

“You weren’t even seventeen. You’d barely lived enough to know what you wanted.” “I feel pretty alive right now,” Helena said through gritted teeth. “And I’m fine.” “Being alive is not the same as living. I hope someday you’ll have a chance to realise the difference.”

I love you. She told him in the way she held him close; in the way her mouth met his; in how her hands trailed across his skin, mapping him, memorising every detail of what it was to be with him, his scars under her fingers. I love you. I love you. She told him in the way she let go of herself and held on to him instead. With every beat of her heart. I love you. I will always love you. I will always take care of you.

Their every step hurried. They were always running out of time. Someday, she promised herself, someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn’t stolen.

I’m going to take care of you. I’m always going to take care of you.

I am not emotionally ready

He stood unmoving a moment longer, and then the façade fell. He gave a long sigh. “I had really hoped the library would keep you busy for at least a week,” he said, looking exhausted.

“No, but why does everything feel wrong? Like it’s not even real. This is what we wanted.” He pulled her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin. “I don’t think that an ordinary life will ever feel real for either of us.” Exhausted despair tore at her as she realised that he was right. “I think I always saw running away as the destination. I never actually thought about what would be left of me by the time I got here.”

Once Enid could safely sit up, she would spend half the day sitting on Kaine’s shoulders, riding about with him while he walked the perimeter of the property over and over, checking all the buildings and visiting Amaris, who would vibrate with excitement but hold utterly still when Enid tugged her ears and patted her.

Enid might have been a perfect child, if not for the terrible influence of Apollo Holdfast.

“I won’t be able to send letters, but I’ll send messages sometimes, all right? And whenever you see Lumithia, that means I’m thinking about you, and when you see the sun shining, that’s your dad, watching you for me.”

There was no denying Lila Bayard’s heroism. She had done what a dozen countries had failed to do.

She had not come back to rule. She wanted those lost remembered, and she wanted the tragedy of the war confronted, not buried, so that it could not happen again.

“But—” Enid’s jaw trembled. “—she doesn’t deserve to be forgotten like this. She shouldn’t be a footnote. This shouldn’t be the only entry she even has. She deserves her own chapter. She deserves a whole damned book of her own.”