Page 114 of Alchemised
“It—this baby—it’ll be half yours. Don’t let them—” she said in a broken voice. “I’ll do anything you want—I’ll—I’ll—”
She didn’t have anything to offer. Her heart was racing too fast, and her voice cut off when she couldn’t breathe. She clawed at her chest, trying to force her lungs to inhale.
Ferron’s eyes flickered, and he stepped into the room, shutting the door. He walked over and took her by the shoulders, practically holding her up as she fought to breathe.
“No one is going to hurt your baby,” he said, meeting her eyes.
She gave a small gasp of relief. It was what she’d so desperately wanted him to say.
She dropped her head, her hair falling and concealing her face.
“Really?” She let her desperation fill her voice.
“Nothing will happen to it. You have my word. Calm down.”
What an empty promise. There was no point in begging. He had every reason to lie to her, to say whatever was necessary to lull her into compliance, to keep her calm and docile with reassurances that meant nothing.
She jerked free, backing away.
“You’ll say anything, won’t you?” she said, her voice shaking. “I guess you have to, whatever it takes to ‘maintain my environment.’”
She wrapped her arms around herself and sank to the floor.
“Stay away from me,” she said. “I’ll only exercise and eat if I don’t have to see you.”
SHE WENT OUTSIDE ALONE THE next day, intent on poisoning herself with everything and anything she could find. Spring was a good time for it. With a garden so overgrown, there was a chance of white hellebore being somewhere in the overgrowth. She crawled through the beds, ignoring the pain in her hands and arms, searching everywhere, but there was nothing abortive or poisonous.
Even the crocuses and snowbells that she was certain she’d seen were gone, the soil loose in their wake. She raked through it with her fingers, but there wasn’t a single bulb left behind.
She went out searching every day, desperate to find some overlooked sprout as she began to develop headaches and nausea. What was briefly a grinding pain in the back of her skull seemed to expand by the hour. It worsened week by week until she couldn’t read, her vision swimming in an aura of pain.
The heavy winter drapes were kept closed, blotting out all light. She ate less and less. When she couldn’t eat or drink or get out of bed for two days, Ferron reappeared.
“You said you’d eat,” he said.
She scoffed, and her head throbbed so painfully it was as though someone had driven a metal rod into her skull. Her vision turned blood red. She moaned, hardly able to breathe until it passed.
“If I could even think of anything that sounded edible, I doubt I could keep it down,” she said in a strained voice. “Sickness isn’t unusual in early pregnancy. It’ll pass. Statistical probability indicates I’m unlikely to die from it.”
She felt the air shift as Ferron stiffened, as if her words had startled him.
“My mother nearly did,” he said.
She felt as if there was something she was meant to realise at the comment, but her head hurt too much to wonder.
Ferron didn’t leave. He was still standing beside her bed when she fell into exhausted sleep.
He brought Stroud a few days later.
“I can’t imagine that the Toll of the animancy is already manifesting,” she was saying loudly as she entered the room. “It generally doesn’t develop until the final months. However, she was a healer. Perhaps she has less vitality left than we’d realised.”
She stopped beside Helena, not really looking at her at all. She flipped the duvet back and shoved Helena’s nightgown up to her stomach without warning.
Helena flinched, and Ferron looked away.
“Now, it’s still early, but I think—” Stroud rummaged in her bag and pulled out a resonance screen.
Stroud held the screen up in her left hand while her right rested on Helena’s lower abdomen. Stroud’s resonance sank through her skin, and the gas within the glass morphed into a series of nebulous shapes. In the negative space, there was something small, pulsing so rapidly it seemed to flutter.
