Alchemised, page 61
“I just have to prove that you’ll do what I ask. If I can—they won’t kill you.” She studied his face desperately.
His eyebrows rose mockingly. “Really? Is that all? Just servitude and I’ll get to continue this delightful existence of mine so long as I’m more useful alive than dead? That’s so generous. How could I possibly refuse?”
Her grip loosened, and she gave a disbelieving laugh.
He didn’t want to be saved. Her efforts had only made things worse. All because Ilva and Crowther hadn’t told her, they’d made her believe it was all real, but it didn’t matter—it had never mattered whether she believed it—because Kaine had always known.
She drew a slow breath trying to reorient herself, but her mind wouldn’t comprehend it.
It couldn’t end like this. She’d done what she’d been told to do. She’d followed orders. She wasn’t supposed to have to make this choice.
“I—I have to follow orders. I can’t choose you. There’s too many people at stake,” she said, her voice shaking.
“I know.”
Her mouth opened and closed, but there was nothing else to say.
“All right,” she finally managed, her voice far away. She felt as though she’d been knifed, reality cold as tempered steel driven into her heart.
“Do you—” Her voice broke. “Do you want it to be me? Or does it—not matter?”
She knew Ilva probably wanted the Stone back if it could be recovered, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
He scoffed. “You lost your chance.”
Her throat worked several times before she could speak. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t reply. There was not even a flicker of remorse in his eyes. He looked cruelly satisfied.
There was no air in the room. She kept trying to breathe, but there wasn’t any oxygen. A dull ringing filled her ears. She looked blindly for her satchel, trying to remember where she’d left it. She knelt, wavering, willing her mind to function.
“So, what happens to you now?”
Helena blinked. “Me?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward and caught her chin, tilting her face so that the light from the windows fell across it, a pale slice of winter. “What happens to you?”
“When you’re—gone?”
He gave a short nod.
“I don’t know,” she said with a short hysterical laugh. She pulled away. “Like you said, I’ve always been expendable, so maybe they’ll offer me to the next spy.”
“Don’t joke. I want a real answer.” There was a sharp undercurrent to his voice.
She met his eyes then. “I promised I was yours. You made me swear it. I didn’t make plans.”
Anger darkened his face. “Surely there’s something you’re looking forward to now.”
She reached out, her fingers brushing over his heart. “No. I’m—spent.”
As she stood, she thought of Luc standing on the top of the Alchemy Tower, so close to the edge. She hadn’t understood why he’d gone there. How she and everyone else who needed him weren’t enough to hold him back, but now that edge called her, the abyss that would open once she’d split across the marble.
The air swam, her eyes struggling to focus because all she could hear was the drumbeat of her heart inside her skull.
Everyone who touches you dies.
“What do they want?” His voice was almost a whisper.
She looked back. “What?”
“Is it—actual crawling? Or was there something more constructive Ilva had in mind?”
Her throat closed. “I—I’d have to ask.”
“Find out. I’ll do it.” He looked exhausted, but now there was an edge of something seething in him.
“Are you really offering?” she asked, certain it was a trick.
He gave no response.
“Why are you offering?” Her voice rose, a note of hysteria in it.
He looked up at her a moment. “I realised just now that I’d miscalculated something. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d made you marketable.”
The words thudded against her chest. “Oh.”
Apparently, Crowther was right after all. The Ferrons were possessive enough to eat themselves alive before they’d let go of anything they considered theirs.
“I’ll bring an answer back,” she said.
He gave a short nod and looked away from her, saying nothing else as she went and pulled on her cloak, using it to hide her ripped clothes. She slung her satchel over her shoulder.
His hand twitched as she reached the door, but when she glanced back one last time, he’d looked away, still leaning against the wall, staring across the room, so pale he could have been a ghost.
She walked out of the tenement into a downpour of rain. She stood beneath it, trying to gain her bearings, drawing rapid breaths. She was on a precipice; she could still feel that edge, the plunge if she misstepped.
She kept her hood pulled up at the checkpoint, but she was familiar enough that they waved her through without being thorough. A security failure, but she was grateful for it. She split from her usual route, heading to the drop point. She couldn’t show up at Headquarters like this.
As she neared it, signs of the war began to appear, as they did in every part of the city below Headquarters. The walls were scorched and distorted from combat.
The drop-point safe house was little more than a sub-basement storage room.
Her hands were stiff and trembling as she shoved the door closed. She focused first on lighting a fire in the portable stove using the discarded pile of kindling and old newspapers.
She was struggling to coax the fire to life, wishing her knowledge of pyromancy extended beyond the theoretical, when the door opened. She turned quickly, hoping it wasn’t Ivy, although a stranger might be worse.
It was Crowther who entered. He stopped short, irritation pinching his face.
Helena looked back to the fire.
“Are you injured?”
She shook her head. He nudged her out of the way.
With the snap of his fingers, there was fire, the wood igniting with a crackling roar. Helena held her hands out towards the flames, saying nothing. He went into the next room and returned with a towel. She took it wordlessly, scrubbing until water stopped trickling from her hair. She could feel him scrutinising her.
“Is it done, then?” he asked when she lowered it to her lap and reached towards the fire again.
Her throat caught. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. “Yes, I did it.”
He released a soft breath of relief, and his right hand briefly patted her shoulder. “You can give the talisman to Ilva.”
She kept staring at the fire. “He was being honest when he said he wanted to avenge his mother.”
Crowther sighed, but Helena kept speaking.
“Back when Atreus was arrested, Kaine was safe at the Institute, but his mother wasn’t. You know vivimancy for torture doesn’t always leave evidence behind. Kaine killed Principate Apollo because it was the only way to save her. But she never recovered from it. Certain kinds of stress for too long can damage the heart.”
There was a tense pause, and she could feel Crowther’s doubt permeating the air.
Helena didn’t look away from the fire. The heat singed her hands, but she didn’t draw them away. If her hands were scorched, maybe she wouldn’t feel the rest of her body.
“Atreus used to make Kaine swear he’d take care of his mother, because he blamed him for Enid being sickly afterwards. She wouldn’t leave Paladia, though, and eventually the torture caught up with her. She died at home, but there was nothing natural about it.”
There was no sound but the crackle of fire.
Perhaps Crowther already knew all that. She had no idea how much he and Ilva had lied to her, choosing to present Kaine’s motive as power because that was how they’d wanted Helena to perceive him.
She closed her eyes, wanting to sink into the floor. “He wants to know what you want. You and Ilva. What proof of loyalty you expect from him.”
The air shifted and then Crowther’s fingers grasped hold of Helena’s shoulder, pulling her to her feet and turning her to face him. His eyes swept from the top of her head and slowly down, catching on various points along the way.
“What did you do?” he finally said.
She met his eyes, lifting her chin. “I completed my mission. I made him loyal.”
She was used to Crowther being unfazed by nearly everything, but he looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. Then he pulled her over to the window where the light was strongest, pushing her cloak off with his right hand, so he could get a good look at her.
Her braids had been pulled loose, the sections hanging haphazardly. His fingers dropped down to her neck, brushing against a spot that made her flinch. Before she could stop him, he flipped the clasp on her cloak; heavy with rain, it slid off her shoulders and to the floor with a wet thud, revealing her torn clothes, and all the bruises from the training that she usually healed before she got back.
She recoiled, shrinking back towards the shadows. She wanted to say it wasn’t what it looked like, but she didn’t think he’d believe her.
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice shook. “I only came here to clean up. You said not to go back to Headquarters if I wasn’t put together.”
Crowther’s mouth was pressed into a hard line, and he started to speak—but then his eyes swept over her again and he slowly let go.
Helena twisted free, shoulders hunching inward. There was a small bathroom through the next room. She locked the door and stared at the reflection in the mirror; she was so pale that she was nearly grey, but her lips were red and bruised. Her hair looked like a bird’s nest, only made worse by the rain.
She turned away, rummaging for a cloth, anything to clean herself up with. Stripping off her underclothes and trying to scrub them clean. The cold, stinging wet between her legs had her feeling almost hysterical.
Her hands were shaking as she threw the rag into a bin under the sink, barely steady enough to remove the hairpins tangled in her hair.
Her lips were trembling, eyes burning as she braided her hair.
She bit down on her lip as she coiled the long braids carefully at the base of her neck.
Her fingers were trembling too hard to make her resonance stable, so she left the bruises.
Calm down. You only have one chance to convince Crowther.
But the more she thought it, the more unsteady her breathing became. She crouched on the floor, pressing her hands over her face until she was quiet.
She looked at her reflection again. She was thinner now than she’d been when she first saw Kaine last spring. Her cheeks had hollowed, there were craters of exhaustion under her eyes, and her collarbones jutted out. Stress had carved her away like water cutting through sand.
She rummaged through her satchel and found a salve for bruises, spreading it across her lips. Eventually her hands were steady enough that she could conceal the bruises with a tingle of resonance, watching the only colour in her skin slowly fade.
She pulled on a fresh shirt and walked out. The rooms were silent.
“Crowther,” she called, her voice hollow.
There was no answer. She went to the front room; the fire had dimmed to embers, and he was gone.
She swallowed hard, trying not to cry. Of course he’d gone. He wasn’t going to listen. No one would. He’d picked up whatever he’d come for and left again.
A pit of despair opened in her stomach.
Your failure was always the plan.
The room seemed to stretch as she reached the door. Her hands were shaking too much to manage the knob.
It swung open, Crowther reentering. He was dripping wet, his thin hair plastered against his scalp. He looked like a wet cat.
“What are you doing?” he said as he came back in. “Sit down.”
He had a paper packet in his hand, already tearing from the rain. He ripped it open, and several bottles tumbled out.
“I wasn’t sure what was needed,” he said.
She looked at the vials. He must have gone back to Headquarters and taken them from the hospital. The drop point kept basic medical supplies but nothing too valuable or prone to supply shortages. She recognised her own handwriting on the labels.
She stared at them, and considered taking the laudanum, something to smooth down the razor-sharp edges of her emotions, but she needed to stay clearheaded.
She inspected the next option. A contraceptive.
Her throat worked as she set it down. “You know I don’t need that.”
The only useful thing he’d brought was a valerian tincture, which the hospital used to calm patients who were in shock.
“What happened?” Crowther asked as she unscrewed the lid and swallowed it.
“You know what happened,” she said. “Exactly what you expected when you sent me there. I’m just a bit slow.”
“Marino.” His voice was sharp but then he seemed to catch himself and softened it. “What happened?”
She’d planned to go to Headquarters and make her report without any explanations about exactly why or how, to be calm and assured, but Crowther had caught her before she was ready. Her jaw began trembling uncontrollably.
She felt so used. She understood rationally that it had to be like that. The war was larger than any one person. Even Luc, whether his family legacy was real or not, was a figurehead, an idea greater than himself.
She knew that and she was willing to follow orders, knowing the consequences, understanding the sacrifice. She didn’t need any promises of reward or acknowledgement or eternity; she would do what was necessary because it was necessary. They knew that, and they had still lied to her.
“I told Ilva that all I needed was more time,” she said simply. “It was just—abrupt. We’d been training. The bruises were from that.”
Crowther said nothing, but she could feel him watching her like a hawk. She could only wonder what he was noticing, dissecting her behaviour, organising all the details of his observations into a mental file.
Helena pressed her hand against her sternum, trying to make the warmth from her palm seep into her, to speak calmly so that Crowther would believe her, not write her off as hysterical.
“He was so upset afterwards that he told me everything. He started crying after he told me about his mother. He always knew you were going to betray him. It was part of his plan. That’s why he’s kept climbing rank; he figured the more important he was, the greater the blow—when it happened.”
There was a long silence after that.
Crowther gave a low sigh that sent Helena’s heart skyrocketing.
“If he’s such a suicidal martyr, why would he cooperate now?”
Her throat closed. Her fingers twisted at the loose fabric of her shirt. “Well, now that he can’t deny the obsession to himself, I don’t think he knows how to let go. Like you said, the Ferrons are self-destructively possessive. The array made it worse. He regards me as—” She swallowed. “—as his. I think that’s what changed things. He still doesn’t care about survival, but he also doesn’t know how to let go.”
Crowther’s lips pursed. He ran his thumb slowly against them, considering.
Helena watched him, twisting her fingers, squeezing until her knuckles ground together. “Will you—will you tell Ilva? I know you both think I’m compromised, but I did what I was told to. He said he’ll do whatever you want. I did it—I did—”
Her voice failed, and she started shaking uncontrollably. She gripped her arm, using her resonance to force the valerian to take effect. Calm down.
“Yes,” Crowther said, “I’ll speak with Ilva. You—did do as instructed.” He cleared his throat. “If he’s prepared to prove himself, that changes things.”
Helena nodded, glancing blindly around the room, unable to feel relief. “Thank you.”
She started towards the door, although she wasn’t sure where she was going to go. She didn’t think she was calm enough to return to Headquarters, but she couldn’t stay here.
“Marino.”
She winced. Crowther was still watching her. There was an odd look in his eyes, like he was seeing more than she wanted him to.
He swallowed several times and pressed his fingertips together. “I was about the same age you were when the Holdfasts brought me to Paladia.”
Helena drew back. She knew that Crowther had been one of the Holdfasts’ sponsored students, but he’d been brought in as an orphan after the Holdfasts had saved him. Helena had never considered their experiences as similar.
“My family and village were murdered at the hands of a necromancer. They crawled up from the ground and left me in the snow to die. When the Eternal Flame came, there was no saving them, only lighting the fires to erase the atrocities they’d become. I chose to distinguish myself with my willingness to do what is necessary. Not for glory or for the Faith, but because someone must do whatever it takes to stop the rot. I’ve never regretted my choice.”
He looked down at his right hand, slowly opening and closing it. It was thinner than his other hand—the muscles had wasted over the years.
He was silent for so long that Helena finally realised the speech was meant as a sort of apology. That in some way he regarded them as alike, and she had done something for him and now he regretted treating her so poorly.
She didn’t want an apology, though.
“Are you—” He blinked and started again. “Is there—healing you require?”
Her spine went rigid. The last thing she wanted was Elain or Ivy anywhere near her.
“He wasn’t violent,” she said sharply. She folded her arms tightly around herself. Her voice was very tense, her throat refusing to relax. “It was just—abrupt. Besides”—she let her voice grow venomous—“wasn’t healing myself part of your instructions from the very beginning?”
