Page 142 of Alchemised
She’d suspected that he might be. Ever since Crowther had told her about the circumstances of his parents’ marriage, she’d re-evaluated her vague memories of Ferron at the Institute. She couldn’t remember him having friends. He’d associated with the other guild students, but he hadn’t spent much time with any particular individuals. If he had, they would have been inundated with questions and accusations after the murder. The students in their year had all said things like, “I roomed with him last year, but he barely talked,” and “We were partners in alloy fusion, but he always did assignments alone.”
If he’d been raised on ancestral ambition and little else, always being watched for signs of weakness or vivimancy, he’d probably never had anyone he could risk trusting. Now in war, the stakes had only grown.
He lived among immortal men all consumed by their own desire for power and vengeance. He couldn’t possibly risk trusting anyone.
“Why would I want to tell you anything?” he asked viciously, stepping away from her.
She didn’t press the issue. She didn’t need to know.
She only needed him to realise he wanted to tell someone—
—that he wanted to tell her.
That would make her emotionally valuable to him. It would make her interesting enough that he’d begin to let his guard down.
“Did you want to go again?” she asked after a moment, hoping to impress him.
Instead, he stood. “They used to torture me while Bennet did it. Called it practice—in case I got caught.” His mouth twisted into a sneer. “But it was an excuse. He enjoys it, how it feels to be inside a mind when it’s screaming. If you’re ever caught, that’s what he’ll do to you.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond, just tossed an envelope too quick for her to catch, walking out before it hit the floor.
HELENA WAS ON SHIFT IN the casualty ward when Ilva Holdfast and Falcon Matias appeared with four girls trailing behind them.
“Healer Marino, we’ve realised that you’re under undue strain as our only healer,” Ilva said with a completely unreadable expression while Matias was droning on about sacred duty, pronouncing an invocation, and draping sunstone amulets around the necks of the four girls. “Falcon Matias was divinely led to these four. He has interviewed them extensively to verify the sincerity of their faith and the pure intention of their souls. It will be your sacred duty to guide them as they learn to provide Sol’s intercession.”
There was a pause; Helena didn’t know what to say. When the silence grew painful, she forced herself to nod mutely. Crowther had said there were others who could replace her as healer. She hadn’t expected four.
Matias had always overruled the idea of new healers. It seemed Helena’s outburst had convinced him that any quantity of healers would be better than Helena.
Although the girls were her trainees, Helena was not expected to do all the teaching. Matron Pace was also assigned to provide the newcomers with basic medical training. Helena refrained from pointing out that this process would create the very same hybrid of medicine and healing that Matias had always objected to Helena openly utilising.
Matron Pace was already reviewing the hospital security protocols with the trainees, stressing that every patient brought in had to be checked for reanimation before they could be treated. It could be difficult to determine in victims that had died recently, but every single one had to be vetted twice, once by the guards upon intake and then by a medic or nurse. Any patients not double-marked with clearance had to be approached with extreme caution; they could be a necrothrall or, even more insidiously, a lich.
Helena tuned out the lecture, resisting the urge to touch the scar on the side of her throat. She’d heard the warning repeated so many times she’d lost count, but every time she did, she wanted to plunge her face into a bucket of ice water and scream.
She knew she should be glad that there’d be more healers, but instead a knot formed in her stomach as she studied each girl.
These were her replacements, because her job as healer was now secondary to her function and purpose as Ferron’s possession.
The knowledge sat like a live coal inside her.
One of the trainees stepped forward, extending her hand, then catching sight of Helena’s gloved hand, she bobbed in an awkward curtsy instead.
“You’re Marino, I know. This is Marta Rumly, Claire Reibeck, and Anne Stoffle. I’m Elain Boyle.”
IN LESS THAN A WEEK, Helena was tired of all her trainees. They did not adapt to their new posts once they began to realise that healing was not an illustrious rank.
Claire and Anne both would barely even try to form a resonance channel. Marta didn’t like getting her hands dirty. Elain Boyle was eager to learn but kept trying to heal dead patients.
They were all prone to thinking that just because they could “feel” how to do something that it would naturally be right, and when corrected, rather than seek answers, they acted like baby birds, waiting passively, heads gaping, expecting her to hurry over and stuff the relevant knowledge inside. Being proactive or looking for answers themselves never seemed to occur to them, always waiting to be told what to learn or do.
She couldn’t stop thinking resentfully about them when she returned to the Outpost. Ferron seemed to notice her distraction; he caught her chin, tilting her head back so that their eyes met.
She was keyed up in anticipation for his mental invasion, but instead she felt his resonance, a sensation as insubstantial as spider silk, flicker through her nerves. What was he—
His palm was pressed against her forehead, and she scarcely had time to refocus before her mind was split open and it was all she could do to keep her thoughts of the trainees away from him, trying to keep her focus on the repetitive parts of her life that he found unremarkable. For all he knew, she spent her days performing inventory, reviewing medical forms, and washing her hands.
When it was finally over, he studied her with an expression she couldn’t place. Rather than step away, he moved closer.
