Page 115 of Alchemised
Helena stared, stricken.
“There.” Stroud sounded pleased. “Your heir—” She caught herself. “Well, progeny, I suppose we should say.”
Ferron’s face had gone ashen.
Stroud pulled her hand away. “It all appears normal, nothing irregular that I can detect. Have you checked her brain recently?”
Ferron shook his head.
Stroud clicked her tongue but nodded. “Given the seizures she’s had, it’s probably for the best not to disrupt things at such a fragile juncture.” She rested her hand on Helena’s head, sending out the barest wave of resonance. Helena shuddered from the pain. “If she really is an animancer, I suspect the headaches are self-inflicted, so there’s not really anything to be done about it. In fact, it might prompt the recovery of her memories.”
Ferron’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
Stroud pulled the covers back over Helena. “If the High Necromancer is correct, she’s keeping the memories hidden by internalising her resonance. Which means that she’s probably been putting most of her energy into maintaining it. It might explain her lethargy, since it’s unlikely that it’s being done efficiently. Now she’s pregnant. She doesn’t have the strength to sustain both, especially if this embryo is an animancer. The High Necromancer says that his power was so great, he’d claimed every drop of his mother’s life while still in the womb and was birthed from her corpse upon the funeral pyre. We’ll have to be sure to maintain Marino. Perhaps if we’re lucky, we’ll end up with both a baby and the memories before she succumbs to the Toll.”
“You didn’t think to mention this until now?” Ferron’s words were fine and sharp as a razor.
Stroud gave a tight shrug. “It’s not as though I have much data to theorise on.” She shot him a snide look. “You should ask your father. He’s our resident expert, you know.”
Something unreadable flashed across Ferron’s face. “I wouldn’t rely on his cooperation in this case.”
“Well, I can have an intravenous drip put in, but that’s as much as I can do.”
Stroud left, but Ferron stayed behind.
Helena closed her eyes. Now she understood: She was expected to die, and they’d all known. She only hoped it would happen too early for the pregnancy to be viable.
That fluttering negative space in the resonance screen danced in her mind’s eye.
Her chest tightened, heart pounding as if she were running.
The mattress shifted, and cool fingers touched her cheek, brushing back her hair and resting against her forehead.
A few days later, a doctor visited, and an intravenous drip was inserted into her left arm. Her days became ruled by the unending drip of saline and drugs inside the glass vial.
The morning sickness seemed to fade, but the headaches didn’t; if anything, they grew worse. Helena could barely move. She was poked and prodded by countless doctors, but none offered useful advice.
When they’d gone, Ferron would sit on the edge of the bed and smooth her hair. Sometimes he would take her hand, his fingers moving absently against hers. The first time he did it, she thought he was playing with her fingers; then she realised he was massaging them.
He always started at her palms, careful not to bend her wrists or bump the manacles, working slowly to her fingertips, knuckle by knuckle. It made them spasm less, so she let him, but she told herself she didn’t like it.
She grew thin, until the manacles were loose enough that she could see the tubes where they penetrated her wrists, and the necrothrall maid who most frequently watched her grew fretful to the point that Helena began to doubt that the woman was a necrothrall at all.
She’d hover over Helena, wordlessly offering mint and ginger tisanes, clear broths, and bits of toast, giving her sponge baths, and carefully combing and plaiting Helena’s hair into a loose braid so it wouldn’t mat. She seemed strangely experienced in nursing for a lady’s maid.
Ferron began to hover, too. He had to leave to hunt and perform whatever duties Morrough still gave him, but he was often in her room. Sometimes he’d come in, completely filthy, verifying that she was still alive before even cleaning up.
He didn’t speak or meet her eyes, but he was there constantly. Sitting sometimes for hours with her hand in his as if it could keep her from slipping away.
Stroud visited again when Helena was barely conscious. She heard comments about not expecting it to take such a toll already, blaming the transmutation in Helena’s brain, and complaining that it was far too early for viability.
Atreus was mentioned again.
Helena dreamed that her room was filled with moonlight, except instead of coming through the windows, the light came from Ferron. His eyes had that eerie silver glow as he sat next to her, her hand in his once more, but this time her palm was pressed against his chest so that she could feel his heartbeat.
She couldn’t help but think something was supposed to happen, but nothing did. The dead sensation in her wrists was like a pit.
She felt like an hourglass, the final grains of sand finally running down. It was almost over. She could feel herself slipping away.
