Page 231 of Alchemised
“You’re dead,” Luc said with a laugh. “Did you manage to win at least?”
Soren shook his head mournfully. “Fuck me, why’s Lila coming over here?”
“Language in your mother’s house,” Luc tsked, “and as your precious sister approaches.”
“Fuck off.”
Lila was headed in their direction with a large, intricate box hanging from her neck. She stopped in front of them. “Mum has me on photo duty.” She tapped the contraption.
Soren groaned.
“Sit up and hold still. This thing is finicky.” Lila was peering into the apparatus, adjusting lenses, shifting back and forth. “Soren, don’t you have a spine somewhere? How do you manage to slouch in armour? You’re folded up behind Helena like a wet noodle. Luc, poke him, would you?”
Luc reached behind Helena and obliged.
“Much better.” Lila grinned, and Luc instantly did, too. “Right. No serious faces, it’s solstice. Be cheery.”
They stared at the contraption, and just before the click, Luc’s arm wrapped around Helena’s shoulders, squeezing tight. Helena tried to force the corners of her mouth up as the camera flashed.
Luc moaned, shielding his eyes. “Sol’s light, I think I’m going blind.”
“Soren, Mum wants a picture of you and Dad.” Lila peeled a reluctant Soren off the sofa and dragged him into the next room.
Helena watched them go and felt as though her chest were being crushed. Her hands were clenched into fists so tight, the leather bit at her knuckles.
“Are you thinking about your father?” Luc asked quietly.
She hadn’t been, but perhaps that was what was wrong with her. She should think more about all the people who were dead, whose common trait was the way their life had overlapped with hers.
Whether or not vivimancy was a curse, she was becoming quite sure that she was one.
“Hel, what’s wrong?” Luc touched her arm.
She looked at him and realised that she was being forced to choose. Luc or Kaine? She could only save one. She had to choose Luc, but it was going to kill her to do it.
“I have to go.” She started to stand.
“No, you don’t.” He wrapped his fingers around her hand. “You always say that, but I’m not letting up this time. Stay with us.”
He gave a teasing, pleading smile.
He’d always had a terrible talent for persistence. From the very start, when he’d found her crying after her first class because the lecturer’s Northern dialect was thick and spoken so quickly.
He’d coaxed the whole thing out of her in a dusty corner of the library. The next week, the lecturer had talked slower and wrote all the key terms on the board so Helena could copy them down and look them up. Having Luc in her life had always felt like magic.
There’d been no reason for him to go out of his way for her, but he had, and then he kept doing it. He’d just picked her out on that first day and decided she was the friend he wanted. And if that required sitting for hours in the library while she did homework, even though he hated homework, that was what he’d do.
She couldn’t imagine her time at the Institute without him. It was like imagining the world without the sun in it.
“Come on now, what’s wrong?” he asked, leaning in so their heads were together.
Everything. Everything was wrong and it was going to be wrong forever, and it wasn’t their fault but they were paying for it. She couldn’t tell him that; it would be too cruel to rip everything away, to expose the lie that was his whole life when it was all he had.
“Everyone seems so happy,” she finally said. “It makes me afraid.”
He nodded slowly, his worry clearing. “I know, it’s hard to believe it might be over soon. Doesn’t feel real.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “That’s why it’s so important to have people that ground you.” He glanced towards the next room where Lila and Soren were kneeling beside their father as Rhea snapped a photo. “When it doesn’t seem possible, it helps to think about everything I’m waiting for.”
Helena’s chest clenched, wondering what fantasy Luc had spun for himself to get up each day.
