Page 102 of Alchemised
Stroud looked amused. “I thought I’d stop by and make sure there wasn’t any damage from this first time. We wouldn’t want an infection interfering. Was there blood?”
Helena hadn’t looked, but she shook her head slowly.
Stroud’s eyes flicked curiously up and down. “Well, you are over twenty. There isn’t always.”
Helena tried not to react to Stroud’s resonance when she laid her hand on Helena’s pelvis, but when she felt the resonance wave glide through the most intimate parts of her body, she shuddered uncontrollably.
“We likely won’t know if you’re pregnant for a few weeks after, but we will know soon enough. I’ve grown quite adept at detecting them early.” There was the most unnerving sensation of something inside her lower abdomen being adjusted, and Helena gave a sharp gasp. “Yes, this is definitely the right window. You’re as ready as I can make you.”
Helena’s skin crawled until Stroud stopped.
“So, how was it?”
“Horrible,” Helena said, looking away.
Stroud made a sound of false sympathy. “Not surprising. You’re high-strung.”
Helena stared towards the window, her jaw trembling.
Stroud’s lips stretched like rubber, and she set the file down, running her fingers idly across Helena’s name and the two prisoner numbers stamped across the front.
“Did you know, I studied in the Alchemy Tower. It was years before your time, obviously. My repertoire and resonance levels weren’t good enough to keep ascending, but I was allowed to transfer to the science department and study as a medical assistant. That’s where I first heard of vivimancy. It wasn’t until years later that I realised what power I had and began the struggle of mastering it. I would never have imagined I’d become one of the few vivimancers to survive the war.”
Helena didn’t understand why Stroud was telling her this.
Stroud rummaged in her bag and pulled out a vial of tablets, breaking one in half. “Open.”
“Why?” Helena asked, locking her jaw.
Stroud did not answer, she just stepped forward and, using her fingers and resonance to pry Helena’s mouth open, pushed a crumbling piece into her mouth and forced her to swallow as it began dissolving. Helena recognised the taste as it moved down her throat.
“Artemon Bennet saved people like me. Gave us a chance to test our abilities openly and be proud of them.” Stroud was still gripping Helena’s jaw; her fingers were digging into the skin.
Helena could feel Stroud tinkering with her physiology, tuning her. It was wholly different from what Ferron had done when acclimating her to the house. Rather than feel physiologically detached from her mind, she realised that her skin had begun to warm, starting at the surface and slowly sinking deeper.
Stroud kept talking. “I’m not saying he was perfect; Bennet considered other vivimancers too feeble-minded to appreciate his genius.” Her pale eyebrows rose. “But I served him without question, gave up my personal ambitions to stay by his side. That’s why I’m still here, even though everyone always underestimated me.”
Helena tried to pull away, but Stroud’s resonance had strangled her motor nerves. A pulsing tension bloomed from her lower abdomen, and her skin was growing so sensitive, it ached.
“There.” Stroud let go, letting Helena topple sideways on the bed. “You’ll enjoy it much more now.”
Helena lay paralysed, unable to resist or scream as Stroud arranged her on the bed, flat on her back, legs parted.
No. No. No.
“I’ll tell the High Reeve you’re ready for him on my way out,” Stroud said as she left.
Helena waited for what felt like hours, want carving itself into her bones. Her body screamed for movement, for touch, for friction, need crawling beneath her skin.
When Ferron finally arrived, if she could have moved, she would have shuddered just at the vibration of the door shutting, but she could only lie there, eyes fastened on him, begging him to notice that something was wrong.
He wasn’t looking at her, though. He was staring past her, through her, his gaze in an unseeing mid-distance as he slid off his coat and draped it over the sofa.
She watched him move, her eyes suddenly ravenous, intent on cataloguing all the details about him. The wait had left her hollow inside, a pit of harrowing want that kept growing.
His hands, she knew, were warm.
A tremor swelled inside her.
