Alchemised: A Novel, page 9
Then blood began to trickle down his face.
Lila was just behind him, glaive in hand, pale hair a crown around her head, but half her face was rotted away, peeling back to reveal her skull. Someone else stood just beside her, but Helena couldn’t remember his face.
Beside them were Titus and Rhea, and after them the Council and the Eternal Flame, all standing in a ring around her.
Their faces were blank except Luc’s.
Luc was still alive. He was bleeding, but she could heal him. Her hand shook as she reached out, but he spoke.
“I’m dead because of you.”
She shook her head, voice failing her.
“Look, Hel,” Luc said. He touched his breastplate, and the golden armour melted away, revealing his bare chest. A gleaming black knife was shoved between his ribs, a bloodless wound. The incision grew, running down his torso until the knife fell, shattering on the ground, and his organs came sliding out, blackened with gangrene, the smell of decay filling the air as if he’d been rotting for months.
“See?”
“No. No …” She tried to reach for him anyway, but he melted away, leaving her fingers stained with his blood.
Her mother was there now. Helena couldn’t make out her face, but she knew it was her mother. The scent of dried herbs clung to her as she stood in front of Helena.
Helena reached for her, but her mother vanished into mist.
Then her father.
He stood out among the Northerners. His eyes were dark, and his black hair curled just like hers.
He wore his white medical coat, and when she met his eyes, he smiled at her. Just below his jaw was a gash mimicking the curve of his smile, running from ear to ear.
“Helena,” he said, “I’m dead because of you.”
He stepped towards her, a scalpel gleaming in his hand.
She didn’t move, didn’t resist this time when he took her in his arms and slit her throat.
WHEN THE WORLD SWAM BACK into focus, Helena wished she’d died.
Her head throbbed, and her hair was plastered to her cheeks and forehead. The room was stiflingly hot. Her mouth was so dry, her tongue threatened to crack.
She managed to roll onto her side. The bedside table bore a pitcher, a cup of water, and several vials. She fumbled for the cup, gulping it down.
She slumped back, kicking off the blankets. The smell of a mustard poultice burned in her nose. She craned her head, looking at the vials on the table again. There were iron and arsenic tablets, smelling salts, and ipecac.
She reached for the arsenic, but she’d no sooner lifted her hand than the door opened, and that nervous stuttering man from Central entered, accompanied by Ferron.
“It’s unlikely the fevers will improve as the procedure continues,” the man was saying, looking as terrified of Ferron as he’d been of Morrough.
Ferron didn’t appear to be listening; his gaze had gone instantly to the table and the vial that Helena had been about to steal. He strode across the room, sweeping up all three vials and pocketing them with the barest glance down at her.
Mongrel.
“I’m expected to put up with this every week?” Ferron asked, scowling down at Helena as if she were a stray he wanted to drown.
The man’s head bobbed. “As I understand, the assimilation process of transference that the Eternal Flame developed was intended to cultivate a progressive degree of tolerance. As with traditional mithridatism, there will be side effects. The next time should result in further progress on your part, but as a result the brain fevers will likely be of a similar magnitude. You must understand, it’s hardly a natural state of being. A living body surviving even a brief presence of another soul has never been achieved before. That she’s alive at all should be considered a miracle. As the purpose of this is only to keep her alive long enough to reverse the transmutations, the long-term deterioration will be immaterial.”
“I don’t have time to play nurse,” Ferron said, sneering at him. “Your cure was nearly as bad as the disease. At this rate, I can’t see how she’ll survive long enough for me to find anything. Getting her to tolerate transference and manage a full reversal of what’s been done to her memory will only be the first steps. I’ll still have to find the information. That could take months. I will not be set up for failure because you’ve decided something is ‘immaterial.’”
The man shrivelled, his neck seeming to sink into his chest cavity, shoulders rising past his ears. “I assure you, High Reeve, the arsenic is unlikely to kill her. She may begin to show symptoms of poisoning, but based on our theories, this procedure will be complete before she develops any serious necrosis or—significant liver damage.”
“How do you know how long this procedure will take? We don’t even know if it worked on Bayard.” Ferron’s voice had grown deadly. “If you’re certain that she will not die before the High Necromancer has his answers, and I am to follow your advice, then you will go attest to this, now, before our preeminent leader, and make clear to him that I am acting on your advice and assurances.”
The man lost all remaining colour. “W-Well, when considered in that light, it’s possible that if the sessions were spaced out more generously, we might reduce the side effects and brain fevers. But I would not dare make recommendations on my own. I’m no expert in this new science. This would be for Stroud or the High Necromancer himself to decide.”
“I was sent you. I’d expect you to at least have enough expertise to have an opinion,” Ferron said.
The man mopped his forehead. “I will strongly advise Stroud to visit so that she can make a recommendation,” he said, avoiding Ferron’s stare.
“Get out!”
Helena flinched.
Ferron watched him disappear through the door before glancing scathingly down at her, as if it were all her fault.
He reached towards her and she shrank back, but his hand passed harmlessly and slid under the pillow instead, searching the bed to ensure she hadn’t managed to squirrel away any of the arsenic. She glared at him until he was satisfied that she had no poison hidden anywhere and left again with a slam of the door.
Her legs were wobbly when she got up. She had to sit on the floor under the shower spray because it was too tiring to stand, but she felt vaguely human again when all the sweat and smell of poultices had washed away.
The awful red dress had been washed, pressed, and put away in her wardrobe, along with several more dresses, also all red. Some were almost burgundy, while others were luridly bright. Freshly dyed. There were hints of the original sage green and pale pink barely visible along the hems.
Clearly Aurelia did not move on once she had an idea in her head.
STROUD ARRIVED THE NEXT DAY, followed into the room by a dead servant and Mandl, or rather the corpse that Mandl now occupied.
The servant was an older woman, dressed as household staff of some kind. She had light-brown hair that was neatly combed back and age lines around her mouth and eyes. Her eyes had an eerie lack of focus which contrasted sharply with the glowering resentment in Mandl’s new face.
“Sit up,” Stroud said to Helena, setting a medical bag on the table.
Helena obeyed without a word, remaining impassive while Stroud prodded her, noting the way Helena’s wrists had shrunk inside the manacles, and checking her vital signs, tsking with irritation.
“Well, this is disappointing,” she said at last. “I’d really hoped you’d handle it better.”
Helena said nothing, a gleam of triumph rising in her chest.
“I suppose it was too much to hope you had the physical resilience of a man like Bayard,” Stroud added with a disgruntled huff after another minute of running her resonance intrusively through Helena’s organs.
She pressed her fingers against Helena’s head, pushing a little frisson of energy into her mind, making Helena wince. Her mind still felt raw. “This degree of inflammation after seven days is worrying.”
She sucked her teeth and glared at Mandl. “A pity you didn’t report her at the time. This would all be so much easier.”
Mandl bobbed her head stiffly, which was not enough penitence for Stroud.
“You should be grateful that I haven’t pointed out to His Eminence that if we’d learned about her sooner, we might have retained Boyle’s corpse and had an animancer for one of the Undying to use.”
“I said I was sorry,” Mandl said. “I don’t know what else you want me to do, or why you dragged me here.”
“You were gifted ascendance on my recommendation. If I am going to be inconvenienced by this, then so will you,” Stroud said. “And if this costs me anything, I will see that it costs you more.”
Stroud turned back to Helena, examining her again with an increasingly sour expression. “We’ll need to delay the next procedure until she’s stronger. If she dies prematurely, we’ll lose the information.”
She turned to the other necrothrall in the room. “High Reeve!”
The servant turned her head, cloudy eyes focusing on Stroud.
“I will speak with you. Privately.”
The necrothrall servant nodded and gestured towards the door.
Of all the uses of necromancy that Helena had witnessed, the creation of the Ferrons’ servants seemed a particularly vile choice. In a war, she could see the horrific rationale leading to the act, but the servants in Spirefell were all civilians, murdered for the sake of cheap convenience.
With every minute she spent in the house, her hatred of Ferron deepened, because she knew his history—the luxury and privilege of his family. His easy life. The Ferrons would have been nothing without the Holdfasts and the Alchemy Institute; their wealth would never have existed.
They should have been grateful, loyal to Luc for what his family had enabled them to become, but they’d turned traitor and chosen Morrough.
Perhaps that ouroboros dragon was not merely a pretentious decoration but something the Ferrons prided themselves on. An omen of a destructive, insatiable hunger which left nothing but ruin in its wake.
FERRON STRODE INTO HER ROOM the next day. Helena’s body went rigid, dread sweeping through her like a tide. The physical pain of transference twinged inside her psyche like an aftershock.
He stopped at the door, and his pale eyes slid over her, flickering as they paused on her fingers, which spasmed uncontrollably when she was startled. She hid them behind her skirts.
“Stroud wants you going outside,” he said. “She believes fresh air will improve your constitution.” He tossed a bundle towards her. “Put it on.”
Helena unfolded it and found it was a thick cloak, dyed crimson. She grimaced.
“Something wrong?”
She looked over. “Is red the only dye you have in this house?”
“It’ll make you easy for the thralls to spot. Come!” Ferron stalked into the hallway.
She followed tentatively. The sconces in the hallways were lit, driving back the shadows as he headed to the far end of the wing, descending a new flight of stairs to a set of doors that opened onto a veranda in the courtyard.
It was raining, and a gust of wind swirled along the house, whipping across her face. She gave a startled gasp.
Ferron turned sharply. “What?”
“I—” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “I’d forgotten what wind feels like.”
He turned away. “The courtyard’s enclosed. You may wander as you wish.”
She looked around, taking in the details of the house and the other buildings. The veranda they stood on continued past the end of the wing and became a cloister walkway, connecting the main house to the other buildings, walling them in. A person could travel all the way to the gate without stepping into the rain, the house and buildings forming an iron ring.
“Go.” Ferron waved her off and then seated himself at a nearby table with two small chairs, pulling a newspaper out of his overcoat.
Helena’s eyes instantly locked onto the headlines.
ETERNAL FLAME TERRORIST SEIZED! screamed the words at the top of the fold in all-capitals.
She stepped closer without thinking.
Who had they found?
Grace said they were all dead. But here was proof of survivors. Ferron hadn’t killed them all.
He looked up. She froze in her tracks, unable to tear her eyes away from the paper, looking desperately for a name.
“Care to see?” he asked in a slow drawl that made her skin prickle.
He snapped the paper open, and Helena stared dumbfounded at a photograph of herself, drugged and sedated in Central. Her face was gaunt, her expression contorted, strained from the withdrawal of the interrogation drug, her hair tangled around her face.
It was clearly intended to make her look like a dirty, feral extremist.
The last fugitive of the Eternal Flame terrorists has been apprehended and taken for interrogation, proclaimed the lede just above the fold.
“You’re finally famous, and look—I’m included, too.” Ferron’s eyes glittered with malice as he indicated a photo of himself farther down the column, in that very courtyard, the spires of the house silhouetted behind him. “Just in case anyone wants to know where you are. Or who’s keeping you.”
Helena looked at him in confusion. Why would they want to publicise her capture and location? And why now? She’d been in Central for weeks. Her apprehension was old news.
“I thought it was a rather obvious trap,” Ferron said with a sigh, flipping past the front page. “Then again, your Resistance was never known for its intelligence. Anything more subtle would elude them. The High Necromancer hopes that if there’s anyone left, they’ll feel morally obligated to rush in and save the Flame’s last ember.” He glanced sidelong at her. “I have my doubts, but no harm in trying, I suppose.”
He leaned back, idly returning his attention to the next column.
Helena staggered back.
Was that why they’d sent her to Spirefell rather than keeping her in Central? To be used as bait?
A strangled sound tore from her throat. She turned and stumbled down the steps out into the rain. There was nowhere to go, but she had to go somewhere.
The cloak, clasped at her throat, choked her, dragging her back. Her fingers tore at it until it came loose, setting her free. She ran across the courtyard.
The icy rain soaked through the thin, fashionable fabric of her dress, but she scarcely felt it. She could see the towers from the city, rising beyond Spirefell. She looked for the beacon, the light that had always shone from the top of the Alchemy Tower, the Eternal Flame which had been kept burning since the day of Paladia’s founding, but it was not there. It was gone.
Still she went towards them, but as she neared the far side of the courtyard, all the towers vanished behind the wall. She moved back and forth, looking for some way out, finally going to the gate, knowing it would be futile but unable to help herself.
It was locked tight, made of wrought iron too ornate to squeeze through. She rattled it so hard, it made her wrists spasm.
She tried to climb it but her slippers shredded, the iron cold enough to burn her skin, and when she tried to pull herself up, the pain inside her wrists left her hands numb.
Across the courtyard, Ferron was reading the paper, unconcerned by Helena’s attempts at escape.
She wanted to scream. She gripped the gate, rattling it again.
What if someone came, not knowing they were being lured into a trap?
Someone who’d managed to survive all this time, captured because of her.
She drew in a gasping breath. Her chest felt as though it might split open. She slumped, shaking the gate again and again, as if the iron might bend for her if she were only persistent enough.
Finally, she turned back to the house in despair.
Everywhere she looked was grey: the dead grass and leafless, skeletal trees, the dark house with its black vines and spires, even the washed-out slope of the mountains, white peaks shrouded by the mist of an overcast sky.
It was as if all colour had been leached from the world. Except her. She stood there in blood red, stark against the monochrome.
The wind drove the rain into her, striking like droplets of ice, making her shudder. She was drenched through. Her hands were turning white, the tips of her fingers aching with every gust of wind. The metal from the manacles sent a chill radiating into her bones.
She pressed her fingers over her eyes, trying to think. What could she do? Surely there was something.
No. Her plan remained the same. Die, by Ferron’s hand or her own.
The rain was streaming through her hair and down her face as she forced herself to walk back towards the house. There were two necrothralls stationed outside, at the top of the stairs leading to the main wing. She recognised them from Central. Weathering outside, they were so decrepit that they almost blended in with the stones, but both watched as she neared Ferron.
Ferron glanced up, his eyes hard. “You haven’t been out long enough. Keep walking.”
She slunk back into the courtyard. There were a few trees in the centre that hid her from view as she huddled in the cloistered walkway across the courtyard, trying to warm herself. She could see her cloak lying in the gravel, soaked with rain. She wrapped her arms around her chest, trying to conserve body heat.
Gradually the shivering stopped. Another gust of wind tore through her. She felt thin as paper, so tired she could fall asleep out there.
Which might indicate hypothermia …
If she fell asleep, her organs would begin to shut down, and she’d die. She’d read it was a gentle way to go. She let herself sink into the oblivion until everything grew comfortingly vague.
“Creative.” Ferron’s voice was colder than the wind. Fingers gripped her arm, and heat surged through her, her heart suddenly racing, hot blood pulsing through her body.
She gave a startled gasp, wrenching herself away from him, but it was too late.
He glared at her. “Get up.”
She pushed herself awkwardly to her feet, wrists twinging. She was still blue with cold, limbs stiff with chill, but now too warm to die.
Lila was just behind him, glaive in hand, pale hair a crown around her head, but half her face was rotted away, peeling back to reveal her skull. Someone else stood just beside her, but Helena couldn’t remember his face.
Beside them were Titus and Rhea, and after them the Council and the Eternal Flame, all standing in a ring around her.
Their faces were blank except Luc’s.
Luc was still alive. He was bleeding, but she could heal him. Her hand shook as she reached out, but he spoke.
“I’m dead because of you.”
She shook her head, voice failing her.
“Look, Hel,” Luc said. He touched his breastplate, and the golden armour melted away, revealing his bare chest. A gleaming black knife was shoved between his ribs, a bloodless wound. The incision grew, running down his torso until the knife fell, shattering on the ground, and his organs came sliding out, blackened with gangrene, the smell of decay filling the air as if he’d been rotting for months.
“See?”
“No. No …” She tried to reach for him anyway, but he melted away, leaving her fingers stained with his blood.
Her mother was there now. Helena couldn’t make out her face, but she knew it was her mother. The scent of dried herbs clung to her as she stood in front of Helena.
Helena reached for her, but her mother vanished into mist.
Then her father.
He stood out among the Northerners. His eyes were dark, and his black hair curled just like hers.
He wore his white medical coat, and when she met his eyes, he smiled at her. Just below his jaw was a gash mimicking the curve of his smile, running from ear to ear.
“Helena,” he said, “I’m dead because of you.”
He stepped towards her, a scalpel gleaming in his hand.
She didn’t move, didn’t resist this time when he took her in his arms and slit her throat.
WHEN THE WORLD SWAM BACK into focus, Helena wished she’d died.
Her head throbbed, and her hair was plastered to her cheeks and forehead. The room was stiflingly hot. Her mouth was so dry, her tongue threatened to crack.
She managed to roll onto her side. The bedside table bore a pitcher, a cup of water, and several vials. She fumbled for the cup, gulping it down.
She slumped back, kicking off the blankets. The smell of a mustard poultice burned in her nose. She craned her head, looking at the vials on the table again. There were iron and arsenic tablets, smelling salts, and ipecac.
She reached for the arsenic, but she’d no sooner lifted her hand than the door opened, and that nervous stuttering man from Central entered, accompanied by Ferron.
“It’s unlikely the fevers will improve as the procedure continues,” the man was saying, looking as terrified of Ferron as he’d been of Morrough.
Ferron didn’t appear to be listening; his gaze had gone instantly to the table and the vial that Helena had been about to steal. He strode across the room, sweeping up all three vials and pocketing them with the barest glance down at her.
Mongrel.
“I’m expected to put up with this every week?” Ferron asked, scowling down at Helena as if she were a stray he wanted to drown.
The man’s head bobbed. “As I understand, the assimilation process of transference that the Eternal Flame developed was intended to cultivate a progressive degree of tolerance. As with traditional mithridatism, there will be side effects. The next time should result in further progress on your part, but as a result the brain fevers will likely be of a similar magnitude. You must understand, it’s hardly a natural state of being. A living body surviving even a brief presence of another soul has never been achieved before. That she’s alive at all should be considered a miracle. As the purpose of this is only to keep her alive long enough to reverse the transmutations, the long-term deterioration will be immaterial.”
“I don’t have time to play nurse,” Ferron said, sneering at him. “Your cure was nearly as bad as the disease. At this rate, I can’t see how she’ll survive long enough for me to find anything. Getting her to tolerate transference and manage a full reversal of what’s been done to her memory will only be the first steps. I’ll still have to find the information. That could take months. I will not be set up for failure because you’ve decided something is ‘immaterial.’”
The man shrivelled, his neck seeming to sink into his chest cavity, shoulders rising past his ears. “I assure you, High Reeve, the arsenic is unlikely to kill her. She may begin to show symptoms of poisoning, but based on our theories, this procedure will be complete before she develops any serious necrosis or—significant liver damage.”
“How do you know how long this procedure will take? We don’t even know if it worked on Bayard.” Ferron’s voice had grown deadly. “If you’re certain that she will not die before the High Necromancer has his answers, and I am to follow your advice, then you will go attest to this, now, before our preeminent leader, and make clear to him that I am acting on your advice and assurances.”
The man lost all remaining colour. “W-Well, when considered in that light, it’s possible that if the sessions were spaced out more generously, we might reduce the side effects and brain fevers. But I would not dare make recommendations on my own. I’m no expert in this new science. This would be for Stroud or the High Necromancer himself to decide.”
“I was sent you. I’d expect you to at least have enough expertise to have an opinion,” Ferron said.
The man mopped his forehead. “I will strongly advise Stroud to visit so that she can make a recommendation,” he said, avoiding Ferron’s stare.
“Get out!”
Helena flinched.
Ferron watched him disappear through the door before glancing scathingly down at her, as if it were all her fault.
He reached towards her and she shrank back, but his hand passed harmlessly and slid under the pillow instead, searching the bed to ensure she hadn’t managed to squirrel away any of the arsenic. She glared at him until he was satisfied that she had no poison hidden anywhere and left again with a slam of the door.
Her legs were wobbly when she got up. She had to sit on the floor under the shower spray because it was too tiring to stand, but she felt vaguely human again when all the sweat and smell of poultices had washed away.
The awful red dress had been washed, pressed, and put away in her wardrobe, along with several more dresses, also all red. Some were almost burgundy, while others were luridly bright. Freshly dyed. There were hints of the original sage green and pale pink barely visible along the hems.
Clearly Aurelia did not move on once she had an idea in her head.
STROUD ARRIVED THE NEXT DAY, followed into the room by a dead servant and Mandl, or rather the corpse that Mandl now occupied.
The servant was an older woman, dressed as household staff of some kind. She had light-brown hair that was neatly combed back and age lines around her mouth and eyes. Her eyes had an eerie lack of focus which contrasted sharply with the glowering resentment in Mandl’s new face.
“Sit up,” Stroud said to Helena, setting a medical bag on the table.
Helena obeyed without a word, remaining impassive while Stroud prodded her, noting the way Helena’s wrists had shrunk inside the manacles, and checking her vital signs, tsking with irritation.
“Well, this is disappointing,” she said at last. “I’d really hoped you’d handle it better.”
Helena said nothing, a gleam of triumph rising in her chest.
“I suppose it was too much to hope you had the physical resilience of a man like Bayard,” Stroud added with a disgruntled huff after another minute of running her resonance intrusively through Helena’s organs.
She pressed her fingers against Helena’s head, pushing a little frisson of energy into her mind, making Helena wince. Her mind still felt raw. “This degree of inflammation after seven days is worrying.”
She sucked her teeth and glared at Mandl. “A pity you didn’t report her at the time. This would all be so much easier.”
Mandl bobbed her head stiffly, which was not enough penitence for Stroud.
“You should be grateful that I haven’t pointed out to His Eminence that if we’d learned about her sooner, we might have retained Boyle’s corpse and had an animancer for one of the Undying to use.”
“I said I was sorry,” Mandl said. “I don’t know what else you want me to do, or why you dragged me here.”
“You were gifted ascendance on my recommendation. If I am going to be inconvenienced by this, then so will you,” Stroud said. “And if this costs me anything, I will see that it costs you more.”
Stroud turned back to Helena, examining her again with an increasingly sour expression. “We’ll need to delay the next procedure until she’s stronger. If she dies prematurely, we’ll lose the information.”
She turned to the other necrothrall in the room. “High Reeve!”
The servant turned her head, cloudy eyes focusing on Stroud.
“I will speak with you. Privately.”
The necrothrall servant nodded and gestured towards the door.
Of all the uses of necromancy that Helena had witnessed, the creation of the Ferrons’ servants seemed a particularly vile choice. In a war, she could see the horrific rationale leading to the act, but the servants in Spirefell were all civilians, murdered for the sake of cheap convenience.
With every minute she spent in the house, her hatred of Ferron deepened, because she knew his history—the luxury and privilege of his family. His easy life. The Ferrons would have been nothing without the Holdfasts and the Alchemy Institute; their wealth would never have existed.
They should have been grateful, loyal to Luc for what his family had enabled them to become, but they’d turned traitor and chosen Morrough.
Perhaps that ouroboros dragon was not merely a pretentious decoration but something the Ferrons prided themselves on. An omen of a destructive, insatiable hunger which left nothing but ruin in its wake.
FERRON STRODE INTO HER ROOM the next day. Helena’s body went rigid, dread sweeping through her like a tide. The physical pain of transference twinged inside her psyche like an aftershock.
He stopped at the door, and his pale eyes slid over her, flickering as they paused on her fingers, which spasmed uncontrollably when she was startled. She hid them behind her skirts.
“Stroud wants you going outside,” he said. “She believes fresh air will improve your constitution.” He tossed a bundle towards her. “Put it on.”
Helena unfolded it and found it was a thick cloak, dyed crimson. She grimaced.
“Something wrong?”
She looked over. “Is red the only dye you have in this house?”
“It’ll make you easy for the thralls to spot. Come!” Ferron stalked into the hallway.
She followed tentatively. The sconces in the hallways were lit, driving back the shadows as he headed to the far end of the wing, descending a new flight of stairs to a set of doors that opened onto a veranda in the courtyard.
It was raining, and a gust of wind swirled along the house, whipping across her face. She gave a startled gasp.
Ferron turned sharply. “What?”
“I—” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “I’d forgotten what wind feels like.”
He turned away. “The courtyard’s enclosed. You may wander as you wish.”
She looked around, taking in the details of the house and the other buildings. The veranda they stood on continued past the end of the wing and became a cloister walkway, connecting the main house to the other buildings, walling them in. A person could travel all the way to the gate without stepping into the rain, the house and buildings forming an iron ring.
“Go.” Ferron waved her off and then seated himself at a nearby table with two small chairs, pulling a newspaper out of his overcoat.
Helena’s eyes instantly locked onto the headlines.
ETERNAL FLAME TERRORIST SEIZED! screamed the words at the top of the fold in all-capitals.
She stepped closer without thinking.
Who had they found?
Grace said they were all dead. But here was proof of survivors. Ferron hadn’t killed them all.
He looked up. She froze in her tracks, unable to tear her eyes away from the paper, looking desperately for a name.
“Care to see?” he asked in a slow drawl that made her skin prickle.
He snapped the paper open, and Helena stared dumbfounded at a photograph of herself, drugged and sedated in Central. Her face was gaunt, her expression contorted, strained from the withdrawal of the interrogation drug, her hair tangled around her face.
It was clearly intended to make her look like a dirty, feral extremist.
The last fugitive of the Eternal Flame terrorists has been apprehended and taken for interrogation, proclaimed the lede just above the fold.
“You’re finally famous, and look—I’m included, too.” Ferron’s eyes glittered with malice as he indicated a photo of himself farther down the column, in that very courtyard, the spires of the house silhouetted behind him. “Just in case anyone wants to know where you are. Or who’s keeping you.”
Helena looked at him in confusion. Why would they want to publicise her capture and location? And why now? She’d been in Central for weeks. Her apprehension was old news.
“I thought it was a rather obvious trap,” Ferron said with a sigh, flipping past the front page. “Then again, your Resistance was never known for its intelligence. Anything more subtle would elude them. The High Necromancer hopes that if there’s anyone left, they’ll feel morally obligated to rush in and save the Flame’s last ember.” He glanced sidelong at her. “I have my doubts, but no harm in trying, I suppose.”
He leaned back, idly returning his attention to the next column.
Helena staggered back.
Was that why they’d sent her to Spirefell rather than keeping her in Central? To be used as bait?
A strangled sound tore from her throat. She turned and stumbled down the steps out into the rain. There was nowhere to go, but she had to go somewhere.
The cloak, clasped at her throat, choked her, dragging her back. Her fingers tore at it until it came loose, setting her free. She ran across the courtyard.
The icy rain soaked through the thin, fashionable fabric of her dress, but she scarcely felt it. She could see the towers from the city, rising beyond Spirefell. She looked for the beacon, the light that had always shone from the top of the Alchemy Tower, the Eternal Flame which had been kept burning since the day of Paladia’s founding, but it was not there. It was gone.
Still she went towards them, but as she neared the far side of the courtyard, all the towers vanished behind the wall. She moved back and forth, looking for some way out, finally going to the gate, knowing it would be futile but unable to help herself.
It was locked tight, made of wrought iron too ornate to squeeze through. She rattled it so hard, it made her wrists spasm.
She tried to climb it but her slippers shredded, the iron cold enough to burn her skin, and when she tried to pull herself up, the pain inside her wrists left her hands numb.
Across the courtyard, Ferron was reading the paper, unconcerned by Helena’s attempts at escape.
She wanted to scream. She gripped the gate, rattling it again.
What if someone came, not knowing they were being lured into a trap?
Someone who’d managed to survive all this time, captured because of her.
She drew in a gasping breath. Her chest felt as though it might split open. She slumped, shaking the gate again and again, as if the iron might bend for her if she were only persistent enough.
Finally, she turned back to the house in despair.
Everywhere she looked was grey: the dead grass and leafless, skeletal trees, the dark house with its black vines and spires, even the washed-out slope of the mountains, white peaks shrouded by the mist of an overcast sky.
It was as if all colour had been leached from the world. Except her. She stood there in blood red, stark against the monochrome.
The wind drove the rain into her, striking like droplets of ice, making her shudder. She was drenched through. Her hands were turning white, the tips of her fingers aching with every gust of wind. The metal from the manacles sent a chill radiating into her bones.
She pressed her fingers over her eyes, trying to think. What could she do? Surely there was something.
No. Her plan remained the same. Die, by Ferron’s hand or her own.
The rain was streaming through her hair and down her face as she forced herself to walk back towards the house. There were two necrothralls stationed outside, at the top of the stairs leading to the main wing. She recognised them from Central. Weathering outside, they were so decrepit that they almost blended in with the stones, but both watched as she neared Ferron.
Ferron glanced up, his eyes hard. “You haven’t been out long enough. Keep walking.”
She slunk back into the courtyard. There were a few trees in the centre that hid her from view as she huddled in the cloistered walkway across the courtyard, trying to warm herself. She could see her cloak lying in the gravel, soaked with rain. She wrapped her arms around her chest, trying to conserve body heat.
Gradually the shivering stopped. Another gust of wind tore through her. She felt thin as paper, so tired she could fall asleep out there.
Which might indicate hypothermia …
If she fell asleep, her organs would begin to shut down, and she’d die. She’d read it was a gentle way to go. She let herself sink into the oblivion until everything grew comfortingly vague.
“Creative.” Ferron’s voice was colder than the wind. Fingers gripped her arm, and heat surged through her, her heart suddenly racing, hot blood pulsing through her body.
She gave a startled gasp, wrenching herself away from him, but it was too late.
He glared at her. “Get up.”
She pushed herself awkwardly to her feet, wrists twinging. She was still blue with cold, limbs stiff with chill, but now too warm to die.
