Alchemised

by SenLinYu

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

Why do I already want to cry

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

Reading this and knowing what i know from mancled makes me want to shrivel up and die

His lips curved into an insincere smile. “Prior commitments, I’m afraid.”

He turned back to Helena, examining the knife in his hand. It had sliced into his palm so deep, it was lodged in the bones.

Him wounding himself for her

“Ferron always comes for me,” she whispered.

“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.”

if my soul’s the price of saving you, of saving everyone”—she choked—“that’s not a price. That’s a bargain.”

“He wants you, Marino,” Crowther said. “Both now and after the war.”

Crowther said something else about healing herself as necessary to avoid raising questions. She couldn’t make out all the words. She just nodded and said yes again.

What a pig

There was a flash of surprise that softened his features for an instant. He was lonely.

My babyyy

Shiseo was a small, balding man with dark eyes. He could read and understand Northern dialect fluently but spoke very little.

I fear my brain has decided he looks like Stanley Tucci

“Don’t die, Marino. I might miss you.”

They do not share. They are obsessive about what they regard to be theirs. You do this and Kaine Ferron will never let you go, and he will not be content with being secondary to anyone.”

“I must admit,” he said in a low voice as though making a confession, “if anyone had told me you’d become so lovely, I would never have come near you. I was rather blindsided when I saw you again.”

“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.”

He had been the one to tell her that she was the reason both her parents were dead.

I hate him so much

A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.

She’d always thought of him as so much safer than her, that she was the one taking all the risks, venturing out into enemy territory, mortal as could be. That wasn’t an accurate way to view it at all. The Resistance spies and scouts often carried cyanide pills to escape interrogation if their capture was inevitable. That wasn’t an option for him.

She wanted him to know. It was real. For her, it had always been real.

“And now Titus doesn’t even know what’s been done to our beautiful children—all my family, I only have pieces of them left.”

My heart hurts for her so bad

It was Kaine.

MY MAN

“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.”

“I’ve always thought my eyes were my best feature.” “One of them,” he said quietly.

Kaine Ferron was a dragon, like his family before him. Possessive to the point of self-annihilation. Isolated and deadly, and now he held her in his arms as if she were his.

“You’re mine. You swore yourself to me. Now and after the war. I’m going to take care of you. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. You don’t have to be lonely. Because you’re mine.”

my favorite quote

She was locked in the dangerous embrace of Kaine Ferron, and it felt like home.

Whenever she thought of him, she felt as though a piece of her was missing. The war had drilled itself into her bones, carving away at her until there was hardly anything left except what made her useful, an ideal component in an elaborate machine, but Kaine had reminded her that she was human; that not every trait and ability and quality she possessed only mattered insomuch as it was useful to someone else. That she was allowed to breathe sometimes. Now, in his absence, she felt herself suffocating.

If he couldn’t hide her, he would hoard her to himself as much as he was able to. She’d fallen for a dragon.

“I thought you said if I ever burned you—” He captured her hand and pulled her close. His other hand slid possessively up her throat, fingers tilting her head back, and he kissed her, long and deep, before he drew away to meet her eyes. “Call me, and I will come.”

“Be careful.” It was always the last thing she said to him before he left her on some rooftop. She would hold his face in her hands, staring into his eyes. “Don’t die.” He’d dip his head forward, kissing her inner wrist or the palm of her hand, his silver eyes locked on her face. “You’re mine. I’ll always come for you.” He always did.

“I’ll admit, you’re probably better than me at hurting people. I can’t beat you at your own game, but we’re playing mine.”

Pop off babe

“Because 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. Given that the risk to their lives is the only way to make you value your own.”

There was so much blood on his hands.

This is literally war??

He was looking for her. He’d come for her. He always did.

“You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.”

Oh god 😭

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

despite the alterations of time, he was hers. Still. Just as he had been. He’d loved her, even though he never expected them to be anything but doomed. He’d loved her all the same.

“I love you. You left, and I’d never told you.”

Slowly Helena realised what he was doing. This was his attempt at giving her what she wanted. For him, acknowledging that he would have a child, a daughter, meant acknowledging that he wouldn’t live to meet her. He was telling the stories so Helena could tell their daughter about him, about what he’d been like, before the Institute and the war.

My baby 😭😭😭

“I don’t want to choose. I always have to choose, and I never get to choose you. I’m so tired of not getting to choose you.”

“We’ll go out together, won’t we, old girl? Bennet’s last two monsters.”

Helena watched him and recognised the expression that slowly filled his eyes as he stared at the tiny person tenaciously clinging to him: possessive adoration.

People talk about Morrough, make jokes about him, but do you know who no one ever jokes about? The High Reeve.

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

She was a non-active member of the Order of the Eternal Flame and did not fight.