Page 292 of Alchemised
Shiseo had said nothing about the message Helena had sent him to the Outpost with, asked no questions, but he’d looked very relieved the first time she returned to the lab. It communicated more than words could.
They spent days analysing and re-analysing the shards and new samples of Lila’s blood, trying to determine what they were missing. Every time Helena had to leave for a shift, she always returned to find Shiseo still working. He finally fell asleep, slumped over the workstation.
Helena sat quietly, watching a flame under the glass alembic before her, steam rising in the cucurbit, collecting in the ambix and running down the tube into a vial beside it.
Elain Boyle had been made the Resistance’s lead healer earlier that day. It was a new position that Matias had created for her. Elain had arrived in the hospital wearing a large and ornate sunstone amulet around her neck, and now her general duties were managing and scheduling the other healers’ shifts, while she worked exclusively as Luc’s “personal” healer.
Helena told herself she didn’t care.
Her chymiatria was becoming the default for the healers. Pace had quietly created a section in the storerooms for the tonics and medicines, letting Helena’s chymiatria bear some of the load of healing.
Helena curled her fingers into a tight fist. She’d built up a large supply of ingredients since they’d recovered the ports, but she was worried about running out now that Crowther had banned her from foraging anymore. Some could be made using imported materials, but there were a few things that were hard to get her hands on if she couldn’t gather them herself.
She sighed. She used to love the quietness of lab work—such a stark contrast with the hospital—but now it left her to her thoughts, and everything she pushed away in her mind crowded around, suffocating her.
She missed Kaine.
Whenever she thought of him, she felt as though a piece of her was missing.
The war had drilled itself into her bones, carving away at her until there was hardly anything left except what made her useful, an ideal component in an elaborate machine, but Kaine had reminded her that she was human; that not every trait and ability and quality she possessed only mattered insomuch as it was useful to someone else. That she was allowed to breathe sometimes.
Now, in his absence, she felt herself suffocating.
CHAPTER 54
Aprilis 1787
WHEN HELENA STOOD ON THE DAM, STARING across the bridge to the Outpost, she hesitated.
She’d missed Kaine the whole week, but now, returning, she felt dread. He could be so unpredictable. Every moment of softness between them tended to be followed by its direct inversion.
She drew several steadying breaths, set her jaw, and made herself cross. A necrothrall was waiting outside the tenement when she arrived. Her heart dropped, and she swallowed hard, opening her satchel and pulling out the envelope along with replacements for his medical kit.
Her face was burning, but she tried to control her expressions and not look directly at the necrothrall as she held it all out.
“Here.” She shoved everything into the necrothrall’s hands and turned away.
“Marino.”
She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her name. She whirled around.
The necrothrall was the only one standing there.
“Did you—talk?” She’d never heard a necrothrall speak. Motor function was one thing, but reanimation of the language parts of the brain was too much. Necrothralls didn’t talk. They never talked.
“Come,” it said.
She followed him warily, relaxing when she realised they were headed for the panic room. He couldn’t have just told her to go there last week?
She was half indignant when she arrived, and then forgot, because before she was through the door, Kaine had her in his arms and was kissing her as if starved.
Her fingers caught his cloak and her eyes fluttered closed as she kissed him back. The whole world dropped away. She felt his teeth, hungry against her lips and tongue.
His hands found her hips, guiding her backwards. Then his lips were on her neck as she gasped, the dip of her throat, between her clothed breasts, and he was on his knees, pushing her back on the sofa, and she was under him and she had not even put down her satchel.
His hands were sliding under her clothes, lips burning a trail of desire across every inch of skin his mouth could find.
She had never felt so intoxicated.
