Alchemised, page 83
She was suddenly struggling to breathe. He pulled his hand free and then held her head in both his hands, as if trying to quiet her mind for her.
“We’re safe here,” he said.
For now. For this moment.
But not really. Not ever.
Still she nodded, trying to believe it, not wanting to poison what little time they had left. She rose up on her toes, kissing him, pulling his arms around her.
Don’t let this be the last time.
She didn’t close her eyes. She kept them open and watching him, trying to notice every detail. She wanted to commit everything to memory, the way he felt under her hands and against her skin, as if sufficient detail could make this secret thing real enough to endure; as if she could write it into the universe so deeply that even a war could not erase it.
Afterwards, he gathered her against his chest, chin resting on the top of her head as his fingers drew patterns across her skin.
I’m going to take care of you. I’m always going to take care of you.
He didn’t say it audibly, but she could hear it in the shifting of the air, the way his jaw moved when he mouthed the words.
She’d hoped to sleep, to experience one last hour of peace, but she was too afraid. When she sat up, Kaine’s quicksilver eyes were instantly guarded. She didn’t say anything for a moment, holding his hand in hers, studying his face, this aspect of him that was hers alone.
She entwined their fingers, trying to find the right words.
“Kaine,” she finally said, “there’s a chance—we’re hoping that this attack will be the end of the war. We don’t—we aren’t sure how much longer we’re going to last if it isn’t.”
His hand twitched.
“If it isn’t—” Her chest jerked, and she gave a tight, half-sobbed laugh. “—well, we’ll just keep fighting, then. But if it is…I—I don’t know what will happen to you. I’m sorry. I tried to find a way”—she looked down—“I couldn’t figure out—”
“It’s fine,” he said.
She shook her head. “Maybe if Morrough’s killed, your soul just goes back to you. We don’t know that it won’t. There’s a chance. Or maybe the Stone would be enough to—”
She was grasping, and they both knew it.
“It could,” she said insistently, squeezing his hand. “So, if that happens, if you’re all right when it’s over, you have to run. All right? Get away as fast as you can. Don’t let yourself be captured.”
His eyes narrowed. “Where will you be?”
Helena looked down, playing with the ring on his hand. It had been so long since she’d seen hers.
“You know me, I’ll be in the hospital. There will be a lot of injuries, so I wouldn’t be ready right away—so you just go, and I’ll catch up.”
He scoffed. “If I survive, I’m not going anywhere without you.”
She pressed her fingers to his lips, hushing him. “No. You can’t risk getting caught.”
He pushed her fingers away from his mouth, but she wouldn’t let him interrupt. She had thought about this in circles, and there was little chance that Crowther would let her slip away without paying for her necromancy. If she was lucky, she’d just be expelled from the Eternal Flame. It would be the quickest and quietest resolution, but even that might take weeks or months.
“Go south, towards the sea. When I can, I’ll come, I’ll look for you, and it’ll be just like we said—we’ll disappear.”
His eyes narrowed into slits. “And how long do you expect I’d be waiting?”
Helena’s eyes dropped. “I don’t know. It might be—a little while.”
“Why?”
“Because—there will be a lot of things that will happen once it’s over. But I’m sure once it is, they’ll rather I just disappear, so then I’ll come look for you, all right? I think it would be good that way. For you. You might realise you want other things once you have real choices—”
His fingers curled around the back of her neck, pulling her close until their faces were nearly touching.
“You’re mine,” he said almost against her lips. “Mine. You swore it. Your Resistance sold you to me. I’m not going anywhere without you. And if anyone touches you, immortal or not, I will kill them.”
He didn’t wait for a reply; he kissed her as though his lips were a brand on hers.
* * *
Shiseo was the only other choice for delivering the bomb. He and Helena coated the very exterior of it with a fine layer of mo’lian’shi which Shiseo had extracted from nullium dust. After that, it was coated in Helena’s mirroring elixir. Shiseo had tinkered with the composition and made it workable on larger surfaces.
Once it was all assembled, it would be difficult to notice, and the exterior inertia would make it invisible to anyone searching by resonance.
As they finished, Helena slipped her ring off, studying it. The mirroring was rubbing off. If she was arrested, she’d be searched, and any metal removed. That would include Kaine’s ring.
“Would mo’lian’shi interfere with an entanglement?” she asked.
Shiseo studied the half-visible ring. “If you left a small part exposed, you could probably still use it.” He eyed her knowingly. “That would keep it hidden if someone searched you using resonance unless they were very thorough.”
That was all she needed to know. Muttering an apology to Kaine for the burn he was about to get, she coated all but one section. Once it cooled, she dipped her ring into the mirroring elixir, refreshing the concealment, watching it vanish.
* * *
While Shiseo was delivering the bomb, Helena went to check on Lila. If the hospital ended up inundated, it would be a while before she’d come again.
The bump between Lila’s hips had grown undeniable, but Lila was almost manic with regret, questioning her decision for the first time. Her nails were all bitten to the quick. “I can’t believe that the final battle is happening now,” she said, watching the combatants as they milled below. “I should be out there.”
“It’s not as if you knew,” Helena said, tiredly. It was too late for Lila to change her mind now.
“Do you think this’ll be it?” Lila asked. “Are our chances good?”
“As good as they can be,” Helena said.
Win or lose, all she felt was dread, but it had to end now. It could not go on.
“He’s awake,” Lila said, holding out her hand for Helena’s. “Come feel. Right here.”
Lila caught Helena’s hand and pressed it on her stomach, just above her hip bone. There was a pause, then, without using resonance, Helena felt a strange flutter against her palm.
“Feel that?” Lila asked.
Helena nodded, letting her resonance sweep through Lila to the baby, finding the heartbeat quick as the flutter of a bird’s wings.
There were no more kicks.
“He probably went to sleep,” Lila said. Helena still didn’t know where Lila got the conviction that the baby was a boy, but she’d named him Apollo and referred to him as Pol. “You should feel him at night—I think he does somersaults. Gets his feet all the way up to my ribs.”
“I can’t imagine where he gets his athletic troublemaking genes from,” Helena said in a dry voice, pulling her hand away.
“He’ll have all the fun we missed,” Lila said, letting her shirt fall over her stomach. “You know, I think I’ll be happy for him to be a peacetime baby. I bet there will be a lot of babies in the next few years. They’ll all go to the Institute together like we did. D’you think you’ll ever have children?”
Helena shook her head without a word.
“You might change your mind someday,” Lila said coaxingly. “Just have to find the right sort for you. You’d be a good mum.”
“I’m a healer; we don’t do things like that,” Helena said.
“But you only became a healer because of the war. No one’s going to expect you to keep doing it once it’s over.”
For all of Lila’s exceptionalism and understanding of the perilous role she occupied, somehow she didn’t seem to realise that most people never had the chances she did, whether by birth or by ability. Lila was a once-in-a-lifetime talent, with the beauty to match, and a name with centuries of legacy behind it. The rules did not bend like that for anyone else. Especially not Helena.
She changed the subject.
“I really think you should tell Luc. He should know before this battle starts. That way if things go wrong, the Eternal Flame will know the importance of getting you to safety.”
Lila was silent for a surprisingly long moment.
“He already knows,” she finally said quietly, averting her eyes from Helena’s.
“What?”
“He broke in, through the window, when I was first placed in quarantine. He was so worried that I told him the truth. He said if people knew, they’d make me leave. Send me to Novis. He needed me, so I kept saying I wanted it to be a secret. He made me promise not to tell anyone.”
Helena was struck dumb for several moments. “He’s known this whole time? That you’re pregnant, and I’m the one caring for you?”
If Luc knew and allowed this, why was he so opposed to her healing Titus? It made no sense.
Lila flushed. “Sorry. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want him upset. He’s still not doing very well.”
“I need to go,” Helena said, standing up unsteadily.
Lila tried to stop her, blocking the door. “No. You’re angry, I can tell. Please, let me explain.”
Helena stared at her. Lila looked so much like her father, cast in a feminine mould—the height, the pale hair and blue eyes, even a scar on one side of the head.
“I don’t need an explanation from you,” Helena said. “I need to talk to him.”
She searched everywhere for Luc. Everyone she asked gave a different location: He was in a meeting, he was asleep, he was in the commons, the mess. Everywhere she went, he was always a few minutes ahead of her.
Finally, she tracked him down in the hospital, but he was in a private room, under guard, no admittance.
Helena stood waiting, and finally Elain emerged carrying a tray with several syringes and empty vials on it, and a tense furrow between her eyes.
“I need to see Luc,” Helena said.
Elain started at the sight of her. “He’s resting.”
Helena looked down at the tray, and Elain tried to turn it from her view.
“Why are you giving him all that?” Helena asked, eyes flicking from vial to vial. “These shouldn’t be combined, and he’s too young to need half of them. And these—” She snatched up a syringe with her writing on it. “—these are for dire emergencies only. If you overuse them, you’re going to give him heart failure. Who approved this?”
Elain’s eyes flashed indignantly. “I’m his healer.”
Chapter 63
Augustus 1787
Time slowed to a crawl the next day as Headquarters was emptied, the combatants dispatched. There was no time or opportunity to speak to Luc before he was gone.
Helena and all the other healers and medical staff waited in a prepped hospital ward, waiting for news, for injuries. The hands on the clock indicated that the bomb should have gone off, but there was no sound or shudder of an explosion.
No sign that anything had begun.
Of course, it was a smaller bomb, intended to be detonated inside an enclosed area. She wasn’t likely to feel it, and the fighting would mostly be on the West Island.
Knowing that didn’t make it easier to wait. After so many years, she could feel it all coming to an end and dreaded almost every possible outcome.
Perhaps it would end, and they would win and everything would be all right, but Kaine would vanish in the aftermath, and she wouldn’t know if he was dead or alive, trapped under rubble, or had fled somewhere far away.
She would just have to look for him until she knew.
Every tick of the clock made her flinch. The orderlies, medics, and healers were talking among themselves, but Helena stood frozen, her ribs clamping around her lungs.
You made a mistake. You built the bomb wrong. Kaine was caught while planting it and he’s being tortured, and you don’t even know. Everyone is going to die and it’s all your fault.
Her fingertips and arms were beginning to prick, going numb.
The doors burst open. The room was so blurred, Helena couldn’t make out who it was, but she heard shouting: There’d been an explosion on the West Island. The Resistance had attacked.
Helena stood swaying, trying to feel something, but she still felt empty.
Heat flared around her finger. Just once.
She looked down at her hand, at the ring that was barely there, and her knees gave out.
She dropped straight to the floor and burst into tears, pain splintering across her chest.
There were voices around her, but she couldn’t follow them. All she could do was try to breathe, but her lungs refused to open.
A warm hand wrapped around her elbow, pulling her to her feet.
“Let’s sit a minute,” Pace said as she wrapped an arm around Helena’s shoulders and escorted her to her little office in the storeroom. “Elain can call when someone’s brought in.”
She pushed Helena down into a chair.
Helena let herself be herded along, sitting, eyes closed. She pressed her fingers against her chest, feeling the scarring through her clothes, easing her heart rate back down.
When she finally opened her eyes again, she found Pace watching her.
“What’s happening?” Pace asked.
Helena shook her head. “Nothing. I’m just tired.”
Pace’s features were all pinched together. “You know, they say there’s a point when the Toll becomes exponential.”
Helena shrugged. “They say a lot of things about healers. I don’t know that even half of them are true.”
“Perhaps, but I doubt anyone has ever healed to the extent and magnitude that you have. You have not been well for a long time. You think I couldn’t guess why you started supplementing your treatments with all those tonics and injections? Your trainees barely know how to heal without them, but you worked solo for years. For all you know, you could be risking years of your life every time—”
“I don’t think it’s that…” She reached up absently for the chain, but it was long gone.
Pace shook her head, worry etched into her broad face. “Is it the nullium? We’re seeing so many side effects from the bombing, and you had some of the worst exposure of any of the survivors. That’s not even considering your injury at the time.”
Before Helena could shake her head, Pace continued. “We’re going in blind on all this, without any idea of the potential long-term effects. I suspect Luc’s brain fevers are a symptom of residual nullium in the brain.”
Helena looked at her in confusion. “Luc has brain fevers?”
Pace sighed. “You saw what he was like just after the rescue.”
Helena nodded. “I thought they’d stopped.”
“He tries to keep them hidden, doesn’t want to cause worry, but sometimes they’re so severe that he still grows delirious, claws at his skin, won’t let any men in the room, even Sebastian, screaming things like, ‘Get him out.’ Elain has to sedate him until they pass or he’ll injure himself.”
Helena felt as if she had been staring at a puzzle from the wrong angle for months; now she could suddenly see it clearly.
“He says, ‘Get him out’?” Her voice seemed to come from far away.
“Usually.”
Helena’s head throbbed. “Can you—describe these fevers for me?”
Pace’s eyebrows furrowed. “Well, I’ve only examined him a few times. Elain manages him now; he’s more cooperative with her. She believes it’s caused by recurring brain inflammation. The symptoms are delirium, with a rapid heartbeat. We thought it was related to his organ damage, but they appear to be separate conditions.”
“What’s the opium for?” Helena asked.
Pace sighed and looked away. “His fevers seem prompted by a condition of the nerves. Calming him keeps them from growing so severe. We’ve tried everything, but inhaling the vapours is the only thing that prevents them. If he becomes fully delirious, it can take days before he recovers, and he requires extensive treatment to get back on his feet.”
“That’s just—masking the symptoms. That’s not fixing anything. You should have told me this was going on.”
This couldn’t be.
“Helena,” Matron Pace said firmly, “he’s been examined over and over by myself and Maier and Elain. There’s no cause. It’s all in his mind. Managing the symptoms is all we can do. He was specific that he didn’t want you involved. Every time your name was even brought up, he worsened.”
“And you never questioned that?”
Pace looked at her pityingly. “It’s not as if you have any particular experience with brain fevers.”
Helena shook her head. Pace was wrong. She had a great deal of recent experience with brain fevers. She knew exactly what caused them. Animancy.
But that wasn’t the only time she’d encountered brain fevers. She’d seen them before that. The exact symptoms Pace had described. The impossibly hot fevers, as if the mind were trying to burn something out from inside it. The self-mutilation, screaming, “Get him out.”
She’d seen all of it just before her father had been murdered.
At the field hospital.
But Luc had no talisman like those liches had. He had been checked and rechecked. It would have been found.
…unless the talisman had not been coated in lumithium, which would make it undetectable.
Morrough had captured Luc but hadn’t killed him, and they’d thought it was only because they’d arrived in time.
