Page 150 of Alchemised
“It’s power that gets you off, isn’t it?” Her voice shook with rage as she forced herself to move down to the next button. “Hurting people is the only way you know how to feel anything. But now even that barely does it for you, so you have to find new ways to do it, make your victims responsible for their pain; making it a choice they made, a vow they consented to. That’s what thrills you now. Using what people care about to coerce and enslave them rather than having to do the physical work of hurting.” She scoffed in his face. “You think you’re better than us because you’re immortal, but you’re dead inside already.”
She said it despite knowing he’d probably enjoy her attempt at bravado, because she wanted to say it at least once. He didn’t laugh at her words, though; instead the malice in Ferron’s expression vanished.
He stood there staring at her, growing paler and paler.
Then something metal inside the walls of the tenement groaned and the air hummed. Helena could feel Ferron’s resonance in the room, an uncontrolled surge of energy distorting the room. This was one of the many reasons alchemists were dangerous. When they lost control, their resonance could expand beyond them. It was a combat technique, but without stability and control, it could annihilate anything within their repertoire.
And Ferron was a vivimancer, which meant Helena was within his repertoire. She could feel his resonance in her bones.
Her skin vibrated. A thrum ran through her heart.
Ferron’s expression contorted into one of pure rage. “Get out!”
She didn’t move, terrified that in an instant she’d be atomised.
He snarled and turned away from her, and the door warped, the sharp sound of metal and mechanisms splintering as it folded in on itself and split apart, writhing as if alive.
“Get out!”
Helena did not need further invitation. She bolted through the door, leaping across the wreckage and fleeing down the stairs so fast, she slammed into the landing wall. She shoved herself back to her feet and fled the Outpost.
CHAPTER 29
Martius 1786
HELENA WAS STILL CATCHING HER BREATH, A stabbing pain in her side, as she was taken to Ilva’s office to report on what she’d seen in the wetlands.
Ilva sat across from Helena at her desk, a fountain pen clasped in her fingers as Helena gasped out the information.
“I thought chimaeras were a transmutational impossibility,” Ilva said calmly when Helena finished.
“That’s what I was taught,” Helena said.
“And Ferron says there will be more?” Ilva’s expression was difficult to read.
Helena almost flinched at the name but nodded. “It was just the beginning, he said.”
Ilva hummed under her breath, her pale eyes distant.
When Luc was at the front lines, he abdicated his other responsibilities as Principate to Ilva, not realising how ruthless she was in making whatever choices protected him alone.
Helena had liked that about her. When Ilva had first taken an interest in Helena, Helena had been flattered, seeing herself and Ilva as kindred in a cause, because they were both fully willing to make hard choices for Luc’s sake.
She’d thought they were partners.
“How are things progressing with Ferron?” Ilva asked as Helena started to stand.
Helena stilled, sinking back into the chair, fingernails digging against the punctures in her palm. “He’s quite—mercurial.”
Ilva just hummed again. The strained expression she’d worn when the offer had been presented had vanished. Ilva seemed at peace with her choice now.
“Hopefully the new healers free you to focus.”
Helena’s throat closed, her knuckles whitening at the insinuation that the healers were for her benefit.
“I’m sure they will be a great help,” she said with a false smile. “Although—the initial training does take up quite a bit of time.”
Lines of tension appeared in the wrinkles around Ilva’s eyes.
