Page 27 of Alchemised
The more time she had to think about it, the more a seething sense of hatred filled her at knowing, even distantly, someone so evil.
In a way, it was strangely poetic that it was Helena who’d been brought as a captive to Spirefell.
She’d beaten Ferron before. If she was careful, and clever, she would do it again.
WHEN FERRON DIDN’T APPEAR ON the second day, Helena forced herself into the hallway, ignoring the way her organs shrivelled and her throat closed. She hugged the wall, letting her fingers trace the wainscotting, not caring that the dust crept into the grooves of her fingerprints, blackening them like an infection.
You can do this, she told herself as she edged slowly towards the darkness, trying to evade the sharpest shadows. She tried the nearest door along the hallway and found it locked. She kept going, just a little farther.
The wind moaned through the halls, twisting into a scream, windows rattling. The house creaked like shifting bones.
Helena tried to breathe but she couldn’t, not in the hallway with the shadows crawling up her like fingers.
After the third door, she couldn’t go any farther. She turned back, the hallway swaying, the dark moving closer.
Before she reached the open door, her legs gave out. Everything blurred, blackening around her.
Lila Bayard emerged from the darkness.
It was not the Lila that Helena remembered. Not the beautiful, statuesque girl in armour who wore her pale-blond hair plaited in a crown around her head like the statues of Lumithia.
Lila’s hair was cropped short as a boy’s. She looked shrunken, despite her unusual height.
She stared at Helena. The right side of her face and neck was mottled with scarring, a long cruel gouge across her cheek that ran down her throat. Her eyes were red.
“Lila. Lila, what’s wrong. What happened?”
Helena felt herself growing cold, fingers numb as she reached out.
Lila opened her mouth to answer but then faded away.
“Lila …”
When Helena opened her eyes, she was lying on the floor in her room, head throbbing.
Something niggled in the corner of her mind, dangling just past the edge of recollection.
She tried to focus, but sharp red pain splintered her mind. Whatever it was vanished like water through sand.
The windows rattled, and the house groaned, sending a vibration through the floor as though it were coming alive. She pushed herself up, favouring her hands, and went to the window.
The mountains were white, but snow hadn’t reached the river basin yet. The winter solstice to mark the new year must be at least a few weeks away.
Fourteen months. She tried to remember the last date she could recall during the war. It would have been late summer when the final battle occurred, but she couldn’t remember the month or lunar phases at the time. The hospital ward did not change with the seasons.
As she was peering out, the door behind her opened. Her spine prickled as she turned, anticipating Ferron.
Instead it was Aurelia, who entered in a swirl of blue fabric, gilded in metal once more as if she were a filigreed exoskeleton. If the Ferrons were short on money, it was likely because Aurelia’s skirts required a dozen yards of imported silk.
Aurelia might have an unusual resonance for iron, but she seemed new to money. Not that Helena had ever had any herself, but it was unavoidable knowledge when among the noble families that served the Holdfasts and the Eternal Flame.
Country dress was supposed to be less formal. Luc used to always tell her about his family’s country home in the mountains, how much more comfortable the clothes were. Every year after the summer solstice parades that celebrated the Principate’s birthday, he’d invited her to come, to escape the city’s heat and the river sicknesses that came with the warm season.
She’d always chosen to stay with her father.
Years later, she did see the country home, but she’d gone there alone. Luc had been right. It had been beautiful, the clothes comfortable, but she’d hated every minute of it.
Aurelia stood staring at Helena in disgust. “Why are you still wearing that? Haven’t you washed since you got here?”
