Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“Being alive is not the same as living. I hope someday you’ll have a chance to realise the difference.”

She’d promised Kaine that she was safe, that nothing would happen to her. She could not die.

I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order of the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat, it’s 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.

“Just live, Helena.” His voice was shaking. “That’s all I’m asking you to do for me.”

“I don’t want you to kill people because of me.” He gave a barking laugh. “What exactly is it that you think I do with all my time? I kill people. I order other people to kill people. I train people to kill people. I sabotage and undermine people so that they will be killed, and I do it all because of you. Every word. Every life. Because of you.”

He laced their fingers together as they lapsed into a silence as empty as the future.

“Do you see my scars that way?” he finally said. “When you look at me, are they all you see?” She flinched. “No.” “Well.” He met her eyes. “I don’t see you that way, either. You’re mine.”

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.

“Be careful,” she whispered. “Don’t die.”

The war was an abyss that took everything and was never satisfied.

I’d run with you and never look back.”

“Don’t die, Kaine. You can’t leave me behind.”

“Mine. You’re mine,” he said as he kissed her. “Always.”

Someday, she promised herself, someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn’t stolen.

“You’ve always done the worst things because of me.”

“This whole war was just two brothers fighting over who gets to play god?” Kaine gave a disbelieving, bitter laugh. “You think you’re picking a side, and you’re just on the opposite end of the same fucking coin.”

“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”

He’d loved her, even though he never expected them to be anything but doomed. He’d loved her all the same.

He rested his head against Amaris, and her wings fluttered. She turned her neck to nip at him. “We’ll go out together, won’t we, old girl? Bennet’s last two monsters.”

I thought that we could suffer enough to earn each other.”

Helena met Apollo Holdfast the next day.

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes.

Enid and Pol both stared at the photograph. Soren Bayard, Helena Marino, and Luc Holdfast sat together on a sofa, Luc’s arm slung around Helena’s shoulders, as they all stared at the camera.

“—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.”