Page 249 of Alchemised
If it were possible, Helena would have recommended a break—a few weeks to recuperate at least. Luc was dangerously haggard, and his lungs worried her, but they could not afford the luxury. Both were dispatched back to the front in their newly polished armour to reassure the now nervous battalions.
Soren was only a few days behind them.
Each week Kaine would train her, hand over intelligence reports, take his orders, and leave without even a backwards glance.
They didn’t talk anymore. If she asked questions and it wasn’t about combat, he ignored them. It felt as if there were a canyon between them now.
It was fine, though. He was alive. Every week she got to see him and know he was alive.
However, that was not something he seemed to care about. There was a raw despair visible in his eyes. Even his rage was smothered, as though he were existing out of sheer obligation.
After three weeks, she caught him by the wrist as he was taking Crowther’s envelope from her. “Please—look at me.”
He snatched his hand back but then stared squarely at her, that cold rage briefly reappearing. “Is this not enough for you? Is there something else you want, too?”
“No—” She looked at him helplessly. “I’m sorry. I thought—”
He gave a dry laugh. “Perhaps someday, if I have time again, I can make you a list of all the things that apologies don’t fix.”
Her hands dropped. “Kaine, I—”
“Don’t—use my name. I hate the way it sounds on your tongue.” He ripped the envelope from her fingers and left.
There was another deluge of injuries. Helena could barely keep track of all the battles and skirmishes, the victories and losses. In the hospital it all blurred together into endless screaming. Time seemed to morph into a horrific monotony, punctuated only with Kaine’s cold resentment.
She tried to stay busy. With Rhea’s permission, she attempted a tentative treatment of Titus, but he reacted poorly, becoming severely sick with a fever, putting an immediate end to the attempt.
She was cut loose. Left to her own devices. Everyone else seemed to come and go—even the other healers got dispatched down-island to the new hospital every few weeks—but Helena was always at Headquarters.
Ilva and Crowther no longer made any demands of her except to pass on their orders.
She was a collar around Kaine’s neck, and her job now was to bear it.
SHE WAS RETURNING FROM THE Outpost when her hospital charm grew hot. She sprinted the rest of the way back. There was blood smeared across the ground of the gatehouse.
The guards were waiting for her. “Where were you?”
“Who? What—” she gasped out as they cleared her.
“Lila,” said one of the young guards. “And Soren.”
Dread flooded through her like poison. “Where’s Luc—”
There was a pause and she knew before the older guard spoke.
“Missing.”
Helena’s body moved but her mind had stalled as she raced to the hospital.
No. This couldn’t be happening.
The casualty ward was in a frenzy as Helena entered. Elain immediately turned to Helena, hands covered in blood, her face white with panic.
“My resonance doesn’t work!” she said, her voice rising with panic. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”
Lila was laid out on a bed, covered in dust and dirt and blood. The remains of her armour were smashed and split, her clothes shredded, as if she’d been caught in an explosion. Nurses were cutting off the straps and transmuting her armour to get it off her. A wide gouge ran down her face, from temple to cheek, and below that, at the base of her neck, a large puncture was pouring blood.
“I don’t know what’s wrong!” Elain was saying as Helena washed her hands under scalding water and doused them in carbolic dilution. “I think there’s something inside her, but my resonance doesn’t work! When I try to feel her, it’s like—my hands—”
