Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“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.”

Helena’s jaw tensed. Why was it always the hospital’s fault when things went wrong? If Helena had come out and said that surgery was a success and Lila was already getting out of bed, they’d all be off to the perihelion to offer Sol flames of thanksgiving. But bad news was always the hospital’s fault. How nice it must be, to be a god.

Of course the chimaeras were savage. How could anything endure so much hurt and not learn only to bite?

But I want to be remembered as someone who tried at least.”

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

Hibernal Solstice, Solar Year 1786 PD. Principate Lucien Holdfast with Paladin Soren Bayard (See: Bayard, Soren; chapter 12, “A Life of Legacy”) and foreign-born alchemist Helena Marino. Marino left the city at the start of the Paladian Civil War to study healing. She survived the war but died during imprisonment prior to Liberation. She was a non-active member of the Order of the Eternal Flame and did not fight.