Alchemised, page 90
She couldn’t think about him. Trapped, frozen, without use of her hands, she could only draw her resonance inwards. She was used to pushing it out for combat. Now it was like a net she closed around her own mind.
She could feel the faint texture in her mind of her manipulations, altering her thoughts, bending them around all the things she must not think about. She followed the new paths, over and over, wearing new grooves into place, teaching her mind to settle there and look no further. She counted. She made routines. She tried not to remember.
If Kaine found her, he’d understand.
She could wait.
Hold on. You promised you wouldn’t break.
Chapter 66
Maius 1789
Consciousness split Helena’s mind open.
She lurched up, head throbbing, mad with pain. All she could think was Get away, run. The need to escape consumed her. Everywhere she looked, it was all darkness.
She tried to move, but her body failed her. Her motions jerked, and pain bloomed from her wrists, across her hands, and into her arms when she tried to get up. She struggled to breathe as her ribs had clamped tight around her lungs.
It wasn’t the tank, but it was still so dark, and she could barely move.
A hand brushed against her shoulder.
She gave a strangled scream, her head snapping up. It was Kaine. He was leaning over her, his pale hair and silver-bright eyes visible in the dark. His fingers trembled as he stared at her.
She studied him in shock.
He was different. Older. He wasn’t old, but his eyes had a look as if it had been decades since she’d last seen him.
She gave a sob and reached for him.
“You’re alive,” she said.
He flinched back as despair swept across his face. She didn’t understand why. Then Grace’s fearful voice rose from some distant corner of her mind.
“Lila Bayard was the first one he brought back.”
It all came rushing back: The manacles. Transference. Imprisonment in Spirefell. Everyone was dead because the High Reeve had killed them.
He was the High Reeve.
Her blood ran ice-cold and she snatched her hand back, shoving herself away from him, ignoring the screaming pain in her wrists. Something was tangled around her elbow, and she ripped it out as she scrambled away. Her arms and legs shook under her own weight, and she nearly toppled off the far side of the bed. She slid onto the floor and knelt, peering across the mattress at him in that dark room in that dark house where she was a captive.
Kaine was still alive.
But if he was alive, that meant he had not come for her, and she had waited.
The mental dissonance made her want to scream. The past and present shattering against each other as she knelt in their ruins.
It couldn’t be him. Ferron had hurt her. He’d raped her. And he killed everyone.
Kaine wouldn’t.
He’d promised he’d always—
Pain lanced through her brain. Her vision disappeared. An anguished moan escaped her. She buried her face in her hands as it grew, boring through her mind, so excruciating she could hardly keep conscious.
Her head was on fire, skull cut open, pressure emulsifying her brain. She screamed, trying to let it out. She kept screaming until she was gasping for air. When she looked up again, she was alone.
Perhaps she always had been, and Kaine’s face had been an apparition she’d conjured.
Perhaps this was all a dream. He was dead, and she was still in the tank, rotting and forgotten in the dark where no one would ever find her.
She slumped, and a hand grasped her shoulder before she hit the floor. She started, and he was there again. As their eyes met, his expression crumpled.
“You’re remembering, aren’t you?”
She managed a nod, reaching up and gripping his wrist, feeling his skin and bones beneath her fingers. He was real.
He was still alive. She’d been so sure that everyone was dead, but he wasn’t, and yet that felt worse.
She turned her face away, pressing it into the duvet, wanting to scream again. All the contradictions and horror clamoured as she tried to untangle her mind. Nothing felt real. Everything was lies.
Clarity struck, and she gripped him tighter, nails biting his skin.
“The obsidian—Mandl and the rest—was that—was that you…?”
“It was.”
Her jaw trembled, her eyes burning. “Was it—always you?”
“Yes.”
All the Resistance fighters, secret members of the Eternal Flame that she’d convinced herself were out there, all melted away until only Kaine remained. Her captor and nightmare.
She nodded, looking away, unable to reconcile her simultaneous relief and horror.
He was alive. She’d kept him alive. That was what she’d wanted but—
Not like this.
“Why’d you kill Lila?” Her voice cracked.
“I didn’t. She’s alive.”
She stared at him. The pain in her head seemed to make him glow. “Grace saw her body. Everyone at the Outpost saw it. Mandl kept her at the gate.”
“She was pregnant, and she was the only surviving Bayard. They weren’t going to stop looking for her until they found a body. I produced one. It was your idea.”
Helena had no memory of that. She didn’t know how to believe anything he said, so much deceit lay between them.
“She has a son now. An exceptionally noisy child, named for his grandfather. And every time I’ve seen her, she’s tried to murder me at least twice.”
That did sound like Lila. Helena lifted her head, her throat aching with the desire to believe him. “Where is she?”
He shook his head. “Not in Paladia, but you’ll see her soon. You promised Holdfast you’d take care of them, remember? They’ve been waiting for you.”
Her heart rose, but then she remembered all the other things he’d told her, said to her. She shrank away.
“I don’t believe you.” Her jaw trembled uncontrollably.
“I know.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. I can’t remember—I only remember you.”
She wanted to reassure herself that he was real, but he couldn’t be real. The person in her memory couldn’t exist because Kaine Ferron had killed everyone. Eradicated the Eternal Flame, hunted down anyone in the Resistance who’d dared to run. He was drenched in blood.
His throat dipped. “What—do you remember of me?”
He was familiar and yet so utterly changed, as if he’d been carved out of the likeness of the person she’d known.
“You—you spied for the Eternal Flame,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You used to call me, and I’d come and heal you—and—annnn—”
Her tongue stuck on the word as bright scarlet pain burst through her head and everything tilted.
She blinked rapidly, struggling to think. She’d been saying something—something…Her tongue was fuzzy. When she tried to open her mouth, her jaw jerked, snapping repeatedly.
Her limbs and fingers all curled rigidly inwards, as if she were a dead spider. She toppled, and Kaine caught her just before she slammed face-first into the floor.
She couldn’t speak.
Her jaw kept snapping, lungs rattling as she gasped. Her head began jerking, slamming against his chest until he pressed his hand flat, holding her still. Her heart raced with panic.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Give it a minute. It’ll pass.”
She felt him inhale as she kept jerking in his arms.
“Did quite a number to that brain of yours.” His voice was calm. “All your transmuted barriers are coming apart now. It’ll pass.”
Her throat contracted, and every tendon and muscle inside her body seemed to be drawn inwards, threatening to snap. He’d said it would pass but it wasn’t passing.
“Just a little longer,” he said.
Her head finally stopped jerking, and her body went limp in his arms, mind hazy and disjointed. He picked her up. Her bones jutted out, the joints pressing against him as he placed her back onto the bed, tucking her under the duvet. She wanted to protest, but her jaw was rigid, mouth refusing to move properly.
There was a reason he shouldn’t hold her. She didn’t want him to, but she couldn’t remember why anymore. Yet she was terrified that if he let go, he’d disappear into the dark and leave her there alone.
He moved quietly around the bed and lit a candle, sorting through a tray of vials beside the bed. The dim light flickered between them.
“You’ve been unconscious for a week,” he said without looking up, as if he could feel her watching him. “You—” He stopped, lips pressed together as he inhaled. “You had a seizure and wouldn’t wake afterwards. A-Apparently you’ve been subconsciously maintaining all those barriers inside your brain. All this time. When you got pregnant—the Toll from it all was too much. Burned yourself out.”
Pregnant? She’d forgotten that she was pregnant. A panicked rasping gasp shook her as it came back to her. The baby that Morrough wanted. She’d just lain there and let it happen and—
“Why—” One word was all she could manage.
Kaine wavered, eyes darting from the items in front of him to her. He set them down and leaned over.
“Look at me. I know you want to remember everything, but your mind has to stabilise; everything is fragile right now.” His eyes were imploring. “It will make sense eventually.”
He didn’t use resonance as he spoke. It would have made things worse if he had. Just being close to him, her body intuitively calmed even though she remembered so vividly all the ways he’d hurt her inside this cold prison of a house.
A tremor ran through her.
“It’s just a little longer,” he said, “and this will all be over.”
She had so many questions, though. What happened? Why didn’t you come? Why did you hurt me? Why did you rape me?
Why did you become High Reeve?
“Why—” Her voice broke. “—why did you kill everyone?”
He seemed startled by the question, as if he’d expected one of the others. “I was trying to find you.”
Her heart stalled, body and mind torn between horror and relief.
“You looked for me?” Her voice cracked.
A look of anguish flashed across his eyes. “Of course I looked for you. I looked everywhere for you. Did you think I left you there?”
She tried to remember what she’d thought. “I was supposed to be interrogated. There was so much of you in my head. I thought, if I didn’t remember, they wouldn’t be able to find you. No one ever came. I thought everyone must be dead.”
He looked as though she’d gutted him and stepped back, turning away from her.
“I looked for you everywhere. In the wreckage first, then Central and the Outpost, but you’d disappeared. There was a transfer slip about a person of interest captured near West Port, and you’d been listed as too injured for rehabilitation and culled. I went through all the dead trying to find you, but you weren’t there. I went through every prison, every file, but you’d disappeared, so I volunteered to track down anyone missing. I thought eventually something would lead to you.” His jaw clenched. “I had to bring them all back. If I’d failed, the job would have been reassigned.”
He didn’t meet her eyes as he said this, staring across the room. “I went to Hevgoss quite a few times. Thought maybe you’d somehow ended up there. I was even in that warehouse once, checking all the files there for anyone who might match your description. But I didn’t open the tanks so—”
His jaw trembled visibly, and he didn’t say anything else—just turned back to sorting through the tray.
“Why didn’t you assume I was dead?” she asked.
His hands stilled. “I had to know.”
He drew a deep breath. “This room is safe, but Morrough has eyes in the house. He watches from the hallway sometimes. Now that you’re pregnant, he’s unlikely to have you brought in again, but as long as it was a risk, there was always the chance he’d see anything that happened here.”
Understanding slowly dawned on her. All these months, Kaine had been performing for Morrough through Helena’s eyes, knowing that any moment that passed between them might be seen.
What had been real, then? Any of it? None?
A wave of exhaustion struck. She felt as if all her memories had been shaken and lay jumbled and upended, out of order. It was hard to even think clearly.
She wanted to sleep, to sink back into the abyss, but she was afraid that her memories might slip away again. That Kaine would vanish, and when she woke it would be Ferron again, ice-cold and cruel.
Try as she might, the two were categorically separate in her mind.
Kaine, she knew.
But Ferron was a monster. Her fear and hatred of him were rooted in her bones. That horrific chair of bodies, his pile of victims. She couldn’t forget that.
Her head throbbed, her skull threatening to crush her eyes out of her head. She squeezed them shut. The bed dipped, and Kaine took her arm. She felt her veins swell, and there was a prick of a needle as he put in a new intravenous drip.
“Don’t pull this one out,” he said as he worked. “All your years in a hospital, and you’re still a terrible patient.”
He laid her arm down and began going through the vials again, finding one and adding it to all the tubes that joined with the saline running into her arm.
“You should sleep now,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“What if I forget again?” Her voice was small, nearly trembling with fear.
He didn’t answer.
“Will you—will you go back to being the way you were, if I forget?”
“It’s almost over now,” he said, not answering the question.
She could feel the drugs in her veins, a heavy shroud bearing down on her. She fought to keep her eyes open, to stay awake, to remember.
“Then what?”
The room seemed darker.
“You’ll take care of Lila, the way you promised you would.”
* * *
There was a crack of faint light cast between the curtains when her eyes opened again. She could see the room, her prison. Kaine was gone.
She was only awake a few minutes before the door opened, and one of the necrothralls entered. Helena stared.
“I saw you before…” Helena said as the necrothrall set down a tray with a bowl of soup on it. “I was here, before.”
Why would she have been here?
“Shhhhh…” The necrothrall released a soft, hissing breath through her teeth, shaking her head as if in warning.
She reached into a pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, holding it out to Helena.
There was only one word, written in clear strokes.
Rest.
The paper slipped from her fingers and the necrothrall took it immediately, returning it to her pocket before offering soup.
Helena forced a few spoonfuls down, but her body recoiled, trying to hurl them back up. She tried not to think, to stop trying to remember, but it was like trying to ignore Lumithia in Ascendance.
All that time, Kaine had known her. From the moment she’d arrived.
The transference process…it was her idea. The procedure she’d wanted to use on Titus Bayard.
And Shiseo…
She looked down at her wrists in renewed horror.
Transference, the manacles—those weren’t things that Kaine had known of. It was Shiseo who’d known. Transference was the reason Morrough had wanted the repopulation program started.
Her throat convulsed, and she vomited all the soup onto the floor beside the bed.
She tried to stop thinking about it. To remember herself from before, to reconcile who she was with the person she’d forgotten. In the process of forgetting, she’d flattened herself, forgotten all her anger. Her capacity to be monstrous.
That was the person Kaine wanted. Who he’d done all this for.
But that Helena didn’t exist anymore. All that was left now was a shadow.
It was dark when Kaine returned.
Her heart rose with relief, but dread rushed through her at the sight of him. She stared at him in the dark as he stayed by the door, clearly not intending to linger, coldly appraising her from across the room.
She didn’t know what she wanted him to do. She didn’t want him there, but not seeing him was worse because when he was gone, he might be dead; she’d never see him again.
“Are you angry with me about something?” she asked when he didn’t speak.
His lips vanished into a line, and he entered, shutting the door. “No.”
He went to a window, pushing back the curtains enough to let in a soft gleam of silver light. He was in uniform.
Helena watched him, trying to pinpoint what it was about him that was so different now.
“You are,” she said. “I feel like I know you are, but I don’t remember why.”
He didn’t look at her. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past.”
“Why look for me, then, if the past doesn’t matter?”
His jaw clenched. “Do you remember how you were captured?”
She nodded. “I blew up the West Port Lab.”
He gave a short nod, still staring out the window. “Do you remember why?”
She furrowed her eyebrows. The answer felt obvious, but she couldn’t remember exactly.
“Don’t push if you can’t recall,” he said, glancing towards her sharply when she was silent.
“It was because of you, wasn’t it?” she asked, somehow sure it had to have been, although she didn’t remember anything except the fire, her ears throbbing, trying to run.
He looked away again but nodded.
She could feel the faint texture in her mind of her manipulations, altering her thoughts, bending them around all the things she must not think about. She followed the new paths, over and over, wearing new grooves into place, teaching her mind to settle there and look no further. She counted. She made routines. She tried not to remember.
If Kaine found her, he’d understand.
She could wait.
Hold on. You promised you wouldn’t break.
Chapter 66
Maius 1789
Consciousness split Helena’s mind open.
She lurched up, head throbbing, mad with pain. All she could think was Get away, run. The need to escape consumed her. Everywhere she looked, it was all darkness.
She tried to move, but her body failed her. Her motions jerked, and pain bloomed from her wrists, across her hands, and into her arms when she tried to get up. She struggled to breathe as her ribs had clamped tight around her lungs.
It wasn’t the tank, but it was still so dark, and she could barely move.
A hand brushed against her shoulder.
She gave a strangled scream, her head snapping up. It was Kaine. He was leaning over her, his pale hair and silver-bright eyes visible in the dark. His fingers trembled as he stared at her.
She studied him in shock.
He was different. Older. He wasn’t old, but his eyes had a look as if it had been decades since she’d last seen him.
She gave a sob and reached for him.
“You’re alive,” she said.
He flinched back as despair swept across his face. She didn’t understand why. Then Grace’s fearful voice rose from some distant corner of her mind.
“Lila Bayard was the first one he brought back.”
It all came rushing back: The manacles. Transference. Imprisonment in Spirefell. Everyone was dead because the High Reeve had killed them.
He was the High Reeve.
Her blood ran ice-cold and she snatched her hand back, shoving herself away from him, ignoring the screaming pain in her wrists. Something was tangled around her elbow, and she ripped it out as she scrambled away. Her arms and legs shook under her own weight, and she nearly toppled off the far side of the bed. She slid onto the floor and knelt, peering across the mattress at him in that dark room in that dark house where she was a captive.
Kaine was still alive.
But if he was alive, that meant he had not come for her, and she had waited.
The mental dissonance made her want to scream. The past and present shattering against each other as she knelt in their ruins.
It couldn’t be him. Ferron had hurt her. He’d raped her. And he killed everyone.
Kaine wouldn’t.
He’d promised he’d always—
Pain lanced through her brain. Her vision disappeared. An anguished moan escaped her. She buried her face in her hands as it grew, boring through her mind, so excruciating she could hardly keep conscious.
Her head was on fire, skull cut open, pressure emulsifying her brain. She screamed, trying to let it out. She kept screaming until she was gasping for air. When she looked up again, she was alone.
Perhaps she always had been, and Kaine’s face had been an apparition she’d conjured.
Perhaps this was all a dream. He was dead, and she was still in the tank, rotting and forgotten in the dark where no one would ever find her.
She slumped, and a hand grasped her shoulder before she hit the floor. She started, and he was there again. As their eyes met, his expression crumpled.
“You’re remembering, aren’t you?”
She managed a nod, reaching up and gripping his wrist, feeling his skin and bones beneath her fingers. He was real.
He was still alive. She’d been so sure that everyone was dead, but he wasn’t, and yet that felt worse.
She turned her face away, pressing it into the duvet, wanting to scream again. All the contradictions and horror clamoured as she tried to untangle her mind. Nothing felt real. Everything was lies.
Clarity struck, and she gripped him tighter, nails biting his skin.
“The obsidian—Mandl and the rest—was that—was that you…?”
“It was.”
Her jaw trembled, her eyes burning. “Was it—always you?”
“Yes.”
All the Resistance fighters, secret members of the Eternal Flame that she’d convinced herself were out there, all melted away until only Kaine remained. Her captor and nightmare.
She nodded, looking away, unable to reconcile her simultaneous relief and horror.
He was alive. She’d kept him alive. That was what she’d wanted but—
Not like this.
“Why’d you kill Lila?” Her voice cracked.
“I didn’t. She’s alive.”
She stared at him. The pain in her head seemed to make him glow. “Grace saw her body. Everyone at the Outpost saw it. Mandl kept her at the gate.”
“She was pregnant, and she was the only surviving Bayard. They weren’t going to stop looking for her until they found a body. I produced one. It was your idea.”
Helena had no memory of that. She didn’t know how to believe anything he said, so much deceit lay between them.
“She has a son now. An exceptionally noisy child, named for his grandfather. And every time I’ve seen her, she’s tried to murder me at least twice.”
That did sound like Lila. Helena lifted her head, her throat aching with the desire to believe him. “Where is she?”
He shook his head. “Not in Paladia, but you’ll see her soon. You promised Holdfast you’d take care of them, remember? They’ve been waiting for you.”
Her heart rose, but then she remembered all the other things he’d told her, said to her. She shrank away.
“I don’t believe you.” Her jaw trembled uncontrollably.
“I know.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. I can’t remember—I only remember you.”
She wanted to reassure herself that he was real, but he couldn’t be real. The person in her memory couldn’t exist because Kaine Ferron had killed everyone. Eradicated the Eternal Flame, hunted down anyone in the Resistance who’d dared to run. He was drenched in blood.
His throat dipped. “What—do you remember of me?”
He was familiar and yet so utterly changed, as if he’d been carved out of the likeness of the person she’d known.
“You—you spied for the Eternal Flame,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You used to call me, and I’d come and heal you—and—annnn—”
Her tongue stuck on the word as bright scarlet pain burst through her head and everything tilted.
She blinked rapidly, struggling to think. She’d been saying something—something…Her tongue was fuzzy. When she tried to open her mouth, her jaw jerked, snapping repeatedly.
Her limbs and fingers all curled rigidly inwards, as if she were a dead spider. She toppled, and Kaine caught her just before she slammed face-first into the floor.
She couldn’t speak.
Her jaw kept snapping, lungs rattling as she gasped. Her head began jerking, slamming against his chest until he pressed his hand flat, holding her still. Her heart raced with panic.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Give it a minute. It’ll pass.”
She felt him inhale as she kept jerking in his arms.
“Did quite a number to that brain of yours.” His voice was calm. “All your transmuted barriers are coming apart now. It’ll pass.”
Her throat contracted, and every tendon and muscle inside her body seemed to be drawn inwards, threatening to snap. He’d said it would pass but it wasn’t passing.
“Just a little longer,” he said.
Her head finally stopped jerking, and her body went limp in his arms, mind hazy and disjointed. He picked her up. Her bones jutted out, the joints pressing against him as he placed her back onto the bed, tucking her under the duvet. She wanted to protest, but her jaw was rigid, mouth refusing to move properly.
There was a reason he shouldn’t hold her. She didn’t want him to, but she couldn’t remember why anymore. Yet she was terrified that if he let go, he’d disappear into the dark and leave her there alone.
He moved quietly around the bed and lit a candle, sorting through a tray of vials beside the bed. The dim light flickered between them.
“You’ve been unconscious for a week,” he said without looking up, as if he could feel her watching him. “You—” He stopped, lips pressed together as he inhaled. “You had a seizure and wouldn’t wake afterwards. A-Apparently you’ve been subconsciously maintaining all those barriers inside your brain. All this time. When you got pregnant—the Toll from it all was too much. Burned yourself out.”
Pregnant? She’d forgotten that she was pregnant. A panicked rasping gasp shook her as it came back to her. The baby that Morrough wanted. She’d just lain there and let it happen and—
“Why—” One word was all she could manage.
Kaine wavered, eyes darting from the items in front of him to her. He set them down and leaned over.
“Look at me. I know you want to remember everything, but your mind has to stabilise; everything is fragile right now.” His eyes were imploring. “It will make sense eventually.”
He didn’t use resonance as he spoke. It would have made things worse if he had. Just being close to him, her body intuitively calmed even though she remembered so vividly all the ways he’d hurt her inside this cold prison of a house.
A tremor ran through her.
“It’s just a little longer,” he said, “and this will all be over.”
She had so many questions, though. What happened? Why didn’t you come? Why did you hurt me? Why did you rape me?
Why did you become High Reeve?
“Why—” Her voice broke. “—why did you kill everyone?”
He seemed startled by the question, as if he’d expected one of the others. “I was trying to find you.”
Her heart stalled, body and mind torn between horror and relief.
“You looked for me?” Her voice cracked.
A look of anguish flashed across his eyes. “Of course I looked for you. I looked everywhere for you. Did you think I left you there?”
She tried to remember what she’d thought. “I was supposed to be interrogated. There was so much of you in my head. I thought, if I didn’t remember, they wouldn’t be able to find you. No one ever came. I thought everyone must be dead.”
He looked as though she’d gutted him and stepped back, turning away from her.
“I looked for you everywhere. In the wreckage first, then Central and the Outpost, but you’d disappeared. There was a transfer slip about a person of interest captured near West Port, and you’d been listed as too injured for rehabilitation and culled. I went through all the dead trying to find you, but you weren’t there. I went through every prison, every file, but you’d disappeared, so I volunteered to track down anyone missing. I thought eventually something would lead to you.” His jaw clenched. “I had to bring them all back. If I’d failed, the job would have been reassigned.”
He didn’t meet her eyes as he said this, staring across the room. “I went to Hevgoss quite a few times. Thought maybe you’d somehow ended up there. I was even in that warehouse once, checking all the files there for anyone who might match your description. But I didn’t open the tanks so—”
His jaw trembled visibly, and he didn’t say anything else—just turned back to sorting through the tray.
“Why didn’t you assume I was dead?” she asked.
His hands stilled. “I had to know.”
He drew a deep breath. “This room is safe, but Morrough has eyes in the house. He watches from the hallway sometimes. Now that you’re pregnant, he’s unlikely to have you brought in again, but as long as it was a risk, there was always the chance he’d see anything that happened here.”
Understanding slowly dawned on her. All these months, Kaine had been performing for Morrough through Helena’s eyes, knowing that any moment that passed between them might be seen.
What had been real, then? Any of it? None?
A wave of exhaustion struck. She felt as if all her memories had been shaken and lay jumbled and upended, out of order. It was hard to even think clearly.
She wanted to sleep, to sink back into the abyss, but she was afraid that her memories might slip away again. That Kaine would vanish, and when she woke it would be Ferron again, ice-cold and cruel.
Try as she might, the two were categorically separate in her mind.
Kaine, she knew.
But Ferron was a monster. Her fear and hatred of him were rooted in her bones. That horrific chair of bodies, his pile of victims. She couldn’t forget that.
Her head throbbed, her skull threatening to crush her eyes out of her head. She squeezed them shut. The bed dipped, and Kaine took her arm. She felt her veins swell, and there was a prick of a needle as he put in a new intravenous drip.
“Don’t pull this one out,” he said as he worked. “All your years in a hospital, and you’re still a terrible patient.”
He laid her arm down and began going through the vials again, finding one and adding it to all the tubes that joined with the saline running into her arm.
“You should sleep now,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“What if I forget again?” Her voice was small, nearly trembling with fear.
He didn’t answer.
“Will you—will you go back to being the way you were, if I forget?”
“It’s almost over now,” he said, not answering the question.
She could feel the drugs in her veins, a heavy shroud bearing down on her. She fought to keep her eyes open, to stay awake, to remember.
“Then what?”
The room seemed darker.
“You’ll take care of Lila, the way you promised you would.”
* * *
There was a crack of faint light cast between the curtains when her eyes opened again. She could see the room, her prison. Kaine was gone.
She was only awake a few minutes before the door opened, and one of the necrothralls entered. Helena stared.
“I saw you before…” Helena said as the necrothrall set down a tray with a bowl of soup on it. “I was here, before.”
Why would she have been here?
“Shhhhh…” The necrothrall released a soft, hissing breath through her teeth, shaking her head as if in warning.
She reached into a pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper, holding it out to Helena.
There was only one word, written in clear strokes.
Rest.
The paper slipped from her fingers and the necrothrall took it immediately, returning it to her pocket before offering soup.
Helena forced a few spoonfuls down, but her body recoiled, trying to hurl them back up. She tried not to think, to stop trying to remember, but it was like trying to ignore Lumithia in Ascendance.
All that time, Kaine had known her. From the moment she’d arrived.
The transference process…it was her idea. The procedure she’d wanted to use on Titus Bayard.
And Shiseo…
She looked down at her wrists in renewed horror.
Transference, the manacles—those weren’t things that Kaine had known of. It was Shiseo who’d known. Transference was the reason Morrough had wanted the repopulation program started.
Her throat convulsed, and she vomited all the soup onto the floor beside the bed.
She tried to stop thinking about it. To remember herself from before, to reconcile who she was with the person she’d forgotten. In the process of forgetting, she’d flattened herself, forgotten all her anger. Her capacity to be monstrous.
That was the person Kaine wanted. Who he’d done all this for.
But that Helena didn’t exist anymore. All that was left now was a shadow.
It was dark when Kaine returned.
Her heart rose with relief, but dread rushed through her at the sight of him. She stared at him in the dark as he stayed by the door, clearly not intending to linger, coldly appraising her from across the room.
She didn’t know what she wanted him to do. She didn’t want him there, but not seeing him was worse because when he was gone, he might be dead; she’d never see him again.
“Are you angry with me about something?” she asked when he didn’t speak.
His lips vanished into a line, and he entered, shutting the door. “No.”
He went to a window, pushing back the curtains enough to let in a soft gleam of silver light. He was in uniform.
Helena watched him, trying to pinpoint what it was about him that was so different now.
“You are,” she said. “I feel like I know you are, but I don’t remember why.”
He didn’t look at her. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past.”
“Why look for me, then, if the past doesn’t matter?”
His jaw clenched. “Do you remember how you were captured?”
She nodded. “I blew up the West Port Lab.”
He gave a short nod, still staring out the window. “Do you remember why?”
She furrowed her eyebrows. The answer felt obvious, but she couldn’t remember exactly.
“Don’t push if you can’t recall,” he said, glancing towards her sharply when she was silent.
“It was because of you, wasn’t it?” she asked, somehow sure it had to have been, although she didn’t remember anything except the fire, her ears throbbing, trying to run.
He looked away again but nodded.
