Page 143 of Alchemised
She went stiff, forcing herself to look up at his face so that she wouldn’t focus on the physicality of him. His bare fingers touched her chin lightly, tilting her head back so that her throat was bared.
She felt his resonance again.
Was he testing her, trying to see if she could feel it?
“Remind me, what was your repertoire?” he asked softly.
“Broad,” she said, knowing not to lie—the Guild Assembly might have access to her immigration records. “That’s why the Institute accepted me. There were a few rare compounds that I couldn’t pass with, but for the most part, my resonance is broad-spectrum.”
He tilted his head to one side, still unnervingly close. “What were you going for?”
“I hadn’t decided.”
He gripped her chin. “You were two years into your undergraduate studies. How had you not decided?”
“Luc wanted to travel, and he wanted me to go with him. I thought I could choose afterwards.”
His hand dropped away, resonance vanishing.
“Of course. You must have thought you were so special, being Holdfast’s little pet.” He cast her a sidelong look as he withdrew an envelope and held it out. “Look at you now.”
The scars on her palm itched as she took it.
The envelope bore the same name as always. “Who’s Aurelia Ingram?”
He gave a dismissive shake of his head. “No one.” Then he laughed. “Someone my father contracted me to marry when I was—nine. The guild’s pushing for it. They’re worried about what will happen should I be prematurely consumed by fire.”
“But you’re—” She hesitated, finding the word bizarre to use in conversation. “—immortal.”
“In a way.” He rolled his eyes. “But I could still lose my body at some point. They’d like me to have an heir just in case. My betrothed has recently come of age, but I visited her once, and I have no intention of ever doing so again. I keep meaning to write her letters, but somehow,” he shook his head, “they all go astray.”
CHAPTER 28
Martius 1786
AS MUCH AS HELENA HATED IT, SHE had to admit that Ferron’s training was doing something, although perhaps not what he’d intended.
His repeated invasions had awakened in her a newfound sense of her own mental landscape. It reminded her of when she’d first realised she was a vivimancer, as if her resonance could suddenly reach something wholly unfamiliar.
Ferron’s resonance through her mind made her conscious of an energy there which she could manipulate.
She wasn’t sure if she’d always had the ability and simply didn’t notice, or if it was the “animancy” Ferron had mentioned. It wasn’t as if she could ask.
As far as Ferron was concerned, Helena was only learning to concentrate.
However, she’d realised that she could supplement her focus with her resonance, pushing away her thoughts, rerouting her mind down preferred paths. At first, she practised it simply for their meetings, but she found herself using it constantly at Headquarters, too, pushing away all the thoughts and feelings eating at her.
After another test, Ferron stepped away from her, glancing outside one of the dirty windows. There was barely a view; the Outpost was crowded, but there was a sliver of sky visible in the direction of the islands. He stared towards it. The white, overcast sky was stained with smoke.
He looked at her. “There’s always smoke rising from your Headquarters. It’s from the crematorium, isn’t it?”
Helena said nothing, but his guess was right. They were constantly burning the dead.
“How many soldiers do you have left?”
Helena’s mouth went dry. That was one of the Eternal Flame’s greatest concerns: that the Undying would realise how exhausted the Resistance ranks were. That one brutal push might be enough to wipe them out entirely.
She said nothing.
