Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“The war is over. What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours?”

“What if it’s not that simple, though?” she said. “Everyone who wins says they were good, but they’re the ones who tell the story. They get to choose how we’ll remember it. What if it’s never that simple?”

“Who are you?” she slurred through her teeth. Myriad emotions flashed across his face. He opened his mouth, then shut it firmly. “I’m in charge of your care,” he finally said very slowly, saying each word precisely.

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

Ferron’s lips remained pressed against Aurelia’s, but as he kissed her, he raised his eyes, and his gaze locked onto Helena’s face. She stared back, forgetting to breathe, frozen in place. Her stomach flipped, and her heart began pounding until her blood roared in her ears. She wanted to draw back, to disappear, but she was trapped by that cold silver.

She looked over towards the cage. “Keep a lot of people in cages, Ferron?” His jaw clenched, throat dipping as he swallowed. “Only you,” he said, glancing around at the intricate, iron interior of his ancestral home. “Haven’t you noticed?”

Helena stopped in her tracks. “You sound as enslaved as I am.” He paused and turned slowly to face her. “Are you trying to provoke me? Or sway my allegiance?” He gave a dark chuckle. “How terribly audacious of you.”

“Blind adoration, then,” he said, turning to walk away. “It wasn’t blind. I chose him,” she said. He stepped back, and something about his expression sharpened. “Did you? Remind me, how many other choices were there?”

“The world already knows she’s mine,” Ferron said, his words pointed, “but if you’d like, I can remind them. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m hiding anything, my dear.”

“I feel like I can breathe again,” she said, wishing she could feel this calm without being frozen. “Like I’d been drowning so long, I’d forgotten what oxygen feels like.”

Ferron said nothing, but Helena could have sworn he’d somehow paled.

Ferron raised a silencing hand, his focus on Helena, a predatory intensity illuminating his eyes.

Ferron drifted towards her. His gaze seemed to be cataloguing her, as if there was a checklist he was reviewing.

She angled the blade back and drove it towards her own throat, meeting Ferron’s eyes with savage triumph. Ferron moved so fast he blurred.

“I will die before I lose her,” Ferron said, his grip tightening.

She shook her head. “I was a healer,” she said. “I wasn’t—they didn’t let me fight.”

She was a vibrant corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.

His fingers twitched. He almost managed to hide it by crossing his arms. “Is there really a difference between having someone die for you and killing them?”

When Lancaster had disappeared, Ferron turned towards Helena. His face was rigid with fury. “You idiot—why did you come out tonight?” Helena just looked at him. She thought she should say something. What she’d tried to tell Lancaster. “Ferron always comes for me,” she whispered.

He finally sat back and looked away. “Did he do—anything else to you?” She shook her head. He exhaled slowly.

Ferron will come. Ferron will come. The words ran through her mind in a relentless loop. He would; he had to know what was happening.

He tilted her face up towards his, and his expression grew horrified. He touched her cheek and held her face as he drew several deep breaths.

“H-How much can you see?” Ferron asked, tilting her face up towards his, his fingertips pressed against her jaw, his thumb running along the place where Aurelia had sliced her cheek open.

He stumbled as he left the room, catching himself against the doorframe and righting himself slowly, as if unsteady on his feet. She closed her eyes again, listening to the heavy silence of the house. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, she told herself.

If the destination was inevitable, her only choice was in how horrifying the journey would be.

When he saw her, he seemed to almost turn, as if to walk out. She started to reach a hand forward, then snatched it instantly back, clenching her fingers into a fist. The movement was enough to still him.

“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.”

“But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.”

It was a punishing kiss.

“You are not allowed to hurt yourself or do anything that might cause an abortion or miscarriage,” he said. “You’ll be monitored full-time now, just in case your newfound desperation drives you to previously unknown heights of creativity.”

“It—this baby—it’ll be half yours. Don’t let them—” she said in a broken voice. “I’ll do anything you want—I’ll—I’ll—” She didn’t have anything to offer. Her heart was racing too fast, and her voice cut off when she couldn’t breathe. She clawed at her chest, trying to force her lungs to inhale.

Ferron’s eyes flickered, and he stepped into the room, shutting the door. He walked over and took her by the shoulders, practically holding her up as she fought to breathe. “No one is going to hurt your baby,” he said, meeting her eyes.

“Sickness isn’t unusual in early pregnancy. It’ll pass. Statistical probability indicates I’m unlikely to die from it.” She felt the air shift as Ferron stiffened, as if her words had startled him. “My mother nearly did,” he said. She felt as if there was something she was meant to realise at the comment, but her head hurt too much to wonder.

That fluttering negative space in the resonance screen danced in her mind’s eye. Her chest tightened, heart pounding as if she were running. The mattress shifted, and cool fingers touched her cheek, brushing back her hair and resting against her forehead.

When they’d gone, Ferron would sit on the edge of the bed and smooth her hair. Sometimes he would take her hand, his fingers moving absently against hers. The first time he did it, she thought he was playing with her fingers; then she realised he was massaging them.

Ferron began to hover, too. He had to leave to hunt and perform whatever duties Morrough still gave him, but he was often in her room. Sometimes he’d come in, completely filthy, verifying that she was still alive before even cleaning up. He didn’t speak or meet her eyes, but he was there constantly. Sitting sometimes for hours with her hand in his as if it could keep her from slipping away.

She felt like an hourglass, the final grains of sand finally running down. It was almost over. She could feel herself slipping away. The room flipped as she was dragged up and crushed tight. “Stay…please…stay.”

“You’re mine. You swore yourself to me.”

“I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat. It is a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the Resistance as Holdfast’s. If you die, I will kill every single one of them.”