Page 221 of Alchemised
“Blackthorne was—?”
“Quite the monster now, isn’t he? I told you about the phylacteries, remember?” His fingers around her throat tightened. She gave a small nod, heart rising.
“After I killed Principate Apollo, Basilius said he’d never agreed to such methods and bloodshed. Morrough—he still went by Morrough back then—pretended to give this some consideration. He called a meeting of us all. We hadn’t known our numbers until that night. Morrough said he wanted us all there, to see him change Basilius’s mind. He brought out Basilius’s phylactery in a box and reminded us that we had all entrusted ourselves to him, and then he began carving into it using a talon ring. Basilius began to scream and tear at his own body, until there were pieces of him all over the floor, but it never stopped, he just kept regenerating. Over and over until the floor was covered. When Morrough was finally done, I’m told Basilius went home and ate his wife alive in their marriage bed. I believe he had children, too. All gone.”
Kaine described it without emotion, his fingers still wrapped around her throat.
“We are all expendable to Morrough. So you see, I am intimately acquainted with the illusion of choice.” He smiled, slow and cruel. “That’s why I recognise it.”
She shook her head, and he gripped her tighter, until she could feel her pulse against his palm. Her heart was pounding in her chest. He leaned in, looming over her, and she could tell he wanted her to be afraid of him. But she wasn’t. Not anymore.
“Luc isn’t like that,” she said. “The reason I remain loyal to him is because I know he’d do the same for me.”
His eyes turned black. “Really?”
His thumb had found the curve of her jaw. There was faint colour in the pale hollows of his cheeks. His eyes darted down to her lips, and she felt the draw between them. A feeling like a string instrument, stretched taut and ready to vibrate.
He drew her closer until their faces were nearly touching, and everything around them seemed to fade away. She watched his lips part, hesitating, so close she could taste his breath. He inhaled.
“And what would your dear Luc say if he learned how you let his father’s killer buy you like a whore?” As he spoke, his free hand found her waist and he pulled her close, hand sliding up her body, groping her as if he were about to push her down and ravish her there on the bare floor.
But his eyes were cold.
There was no desire. It was a pantomime of their kiss, now performed with rough indifference, as he reminded her of who it was she’d willingly given herself to.
She jerked away, skittering across the floor until she was out of reach.
He just laughed.
Her cheekbones ached, body going hot and cold as she curled inward, trying to compose herself. As if there was any point. What a grotesque and pathetic creature she was.
Property. No, not even that.
She was a trinket. Something he’d thrown into his demands. So insignificant that Ilva and Crowther had looked at her and seen no reason to refuse.
He could talk all he wanted about how her education was to leverage her, how the Holdfasts were to blame. But he was the one who’d turned her into a whore.
Sometimes she wished she’d died in the hospital with her father, to be remembered and mourned for her possibilities, rather than live day by day growing ever lesser. Now it didn’t matter if she’d been an alchemist, or a healer, or anything else. To anyone who ever learned of it, she would only be that one thing. Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.
But worse still was knowing all that and still craving those rare moments in which he was gentle. Because that was all she had left.
“I have to go,” she finally forced out. “Do you have—do you have any information this week?”
It was almost ironic to ask that question right then.
He reached into his discarded coat, pulling out an envelope, its edges bloodstained.
He tossed it, letting it land on the floor between them.
HELENA WAS OUTWARDLY CALM WHEN she returned to Headquarters, but her hands were shaking as she presented the shards to Crowther and received instructions to have Shiseo analyse them. She took them to the lab and went down to the hospital for her shift.
She wished it wasn’t such a quiet day. She couldn’t stop thinking.
She returned to the empty lab after curfew and sat, left alone with herself.
It was nearly the winter solstice. The North had many feasting traditions from back when they’d slaughter the animals they couldn’t feed through the winter before the new year set in, sharing supplies so that everyone would survive until spring.
In modern times, supplies had been replaced with gifts: books, crafts, puzzles, things to while away the dark hours of the long Northern winters.
