Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Remembered that she’d been placed there as a prisoner, kept preserved, but someday, someone would come for her.

At first, she’d counted the time in between surges to calculate their frequency. Second by second. Ten thousand, eight hundred. Every three hours without fail.

She had to endure. To stay alert. That way she would be ready. She had to stay ready. She would not let herself fade away.

There wasn’t anyone left to protect, but she refused to cooperate with her captors. To make anything easy for them, even their filing system.

Each death had carved out a piece of Helena until there was a cavern of grief inside her chest. When there wasn’t anyone left worth publicly killing, they’d put her in that stasis tank.

vivimancer. Necromancy’s inverse twin, wielded on the living rather than the dead.

All she knew was that as long as those manacles remained locked in place, she wasn’t an alchemist at all.

She was spiralling down. Down. A long tunnel. Twisting darkness. Cold dead hands and the smell of death.

“I thought the mind was your specialty.” A voice emerged from the darkness, low and rasping.

“From the condition of it, it appears you’ve broken this wrist several times. There’s old nerve damage. Do you remember when it happened?”

Perhaps her violent captor could be her means to that end.

The thought of Lila Bayard, dead, her face ripped off, her corpse used to imprison the people she’d once protected, made Helena’s chest grow so tight, it ached.

Helena couldn’t imagine how anyone could have killed Lila, especially not after Luc had been killed. Lila would have died a thousand times over before she’d live to see Luc captured. She had lived and breathed her vows of protection.

“Welcome to Spirefell. My husband is waiting for you.”

She stared at him in stunned recognition. He’d been one of the few guild students who’d stayed at the Institute for undergraduate study. They’d been the same year, shared classes, even worked as assistants on the same research floors.

Her mind refused to accept what it was seeing, because it could not be Kaine Ferron. His hair had been dark, now it was colourless. While the pallor of his skin didn’t come from age, he looked as if he’d been bleached in moonlight.

“I believe you knew each other at the Alchemy Institute.”

His eerie silver eyes flicked away. “Hardly.”

“We don’t want anyone mistaking her for staff. Unless you prefer I have something made?”

High Reeve. She’s all yours.”

Without Ferron touching her, a frisson of resonance fine as spider silk had insinuated itself through her body, so subtle she hadn’t felt it.

“Holdfast is dead,” he said sharply, as if he’d seen the answer in her eyes. “The Eternal Flame extinguished. There’s no one left for you to save.”

“I’ll get it done. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

He seemed—distilled. As though he’d been taken and sublimated until all that was left was an essence—something deathly cold and gleaming. The High Reeve.

Not a person, but a weapon. Well, Helena would be sure to treat him as one.

rattled in her hand. The darkness was like a pulsing oesophagus, the long shadows swaying with the wind, threatening to swallow her. If she stepped out, she’d fall into the cold, awful, unending dark again. She would never be found.

When she didn’t obey, a slow smile curved along his lips. “I can make you, if you don’t.”

She was screaming. She could hear it. Feel it. The physical part of herself still immobilised in the chair was screaming, but Helena’s mind was elsewhere, fissuring beneath the growing pressure of Ferron’s consciousness.

She was drowning inside her brain, trapped as the water rose and the pressure grew and there was nowhere to go. He swallowed her whole.

Her eyes moved jerkily, startled at Ferron’s cruel features, at how alien and unnatural he was. She realised sluggishly that he was in her mind, looking at himself through her eyes.

She looked back. He was right there, his face white and terrifying, twisted with fury. The room hummed. “I said get out!” He looked like an animal, ready to lunge and rip her throat open with his bare teeth.

She leaned forward, hands trembling. Headfirst. Dead on impact or Ferron could use vivimancy to keep her alive. Just a little— A vise-like grip closed around her arm and wrenched her back an instant before she toppled over the railing.

“Don’t. You. Dare.”

but he dragged her back from the railing and down the stairs as she beat and clawed at him, trying to rip herself free. He didn’t stop. He pulled her through the house, practically kicking in the door of her room before shoving her onto the bed.

“Did you think I didn’t know you’d try to kill yourself?” Ferron asked venomously. “As if there’s anything the Eternal Flame loved more than dying for their causes.”

“Industrious as always,” he said mockingly, pulling his hand away.

“You’re welcome to try.” He turned to leave, then paused as if just remembering something. “Don’t enter my room again. If I want to deal with you, I’ll come here.”

Choose. Who lives and dies. She had to decide. It would be her choice.

Someone else stood just beside her, but Helena couldn’t remember his face.

He stopped at the door, and his pale eyes slid over her, flickering as they paused on her fingers, which spasmed uncontrollably when she was startled. She hid them behind her skirts.

He turned away. “The courtyard’s enclosed. You may wander as you wish.”

“Go.” Ferron waved her off and then seated himself at a nearby table with two small chairs, pulling a newspaper out of his overcoat.

“Creative.” Ferron’s voice was colder than the wind.

She looked up at him. “You’re a monster.” He raised an eyebrow. “Noticed that, have you?”

Ferron had been accused of killing the Principate? The assassination responsible for causing the war?

The largest was right in the middle of her chest, running between her breasts. The roping scar was raised, slightly puckered, as if her sternum had been split open and stapled back together.

There were traces of a large circular wound that went straight through her calf. Hairline scars, one on her stomach and another between two ribs. Vivimancy had undeniably been used to heal them.

In her right palm there were more scars. Slits in the palm and fingers, as if she’d gripped a knife blade in her hands, and more

oddly, seven tiny punctures. They were perfectly spaced into a circle in her palm. Not large but distinct in the way they marred the skin. She ...

It was hardly visible, hidden below the shadow of her jaw. It ran long and thin across the left side of her neck, stopping just short of her throat.