Page 332 of Alchemised
He didn’t waver. “Then I’ll see you after. Send someone else.”
Her breath caught in her lungs. “Kaine …”
He glared at her. “I found you after a bombing. I had to watch them cut you open, trying to get the shrapnel out. You nearly died so many times on the operating table, I lost count. If you’d been an inch closer to the blast, that shrapnel would have gone through your heart. You want me to set a bomb, I will do it, but you will not touch it. Do you understand?”
She swallowed bitterly, grateful that she hadn’t told him any details that might have revealed her involvement. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”
She turned to go. There was so much she needed to do. Take inventory, finish the bomb, help prep the hospital. She’d been assigned to the casualty ward again.
Kaine pulled her to him. “Come back here in a few hours.”
She shook her head. “Now’s hardly the time.”
He didn’t seem to remember that he was the one who couldn’t linger. He wouldn’t let go. She wished that all of this had begun sooner; there was so much time they’d missed.
“All right,” she said finally, giving in. “But you have to leave now.”
He let go slowly. “I’ll call for you.”
After reporting to Crowther, she headed to the off-site lab where she and Shiseo used their resonance in tandem to assemble the final components. They’d built the bomb to be as compact as possible, but it was still nearly the size of a child. It would need to be placed in the centre of a room.
Bombs themselves were not a new alchemical development, but they’d been banned for almost a hundred years after it was decided they were uncivilised. Although banning them had done nothing to stop their development; Hevgoss was famously partial to such technology, viewing it as an equaliser against alchemists.
With the right manipulation of the air and flames, Luc held firebombs in his fingertips. A great deal of his homework had involved arrays and technical studies, drilling all the various ways in which fire could be manipulated and weaponised. Helena had utilised much of it.
The trick had been designing something that would cause a powerful explosion without melting their obsidian.
Shiseo had taught her a technique for a combination alloy fusion utilising dual array transmutation. It was complicated and dangerous. Even with all the arrays stabilising their resonance, Helena burned several fingertips nearly to the bone.
“Are you all right?” Shiseo asked as she sat trying to quickly regenerate the tissue.
Her fingertips hurt so much, it was hard to even feel her resonance, but years of practice made it natural to soothe the damaged nerve endings and regenerate them. Later she’d fix the dermal layer so that it wouldn’t be obvious to the eye.
“It’s nothing,” she finally managed to say, blinking hard and staring at her hands, at the lines that ran across her fingers and palm. Out of habit, she pressed her fingers against her sternum, feeling the faint dip in the bone. The scar had faded some, but the ache where the bone had split lingered. “Is it done?”
He set the two pieces on the worktable, and she eyed them wearily.
He looked at her. “We’ll finish this tomorrow. Your hands need to recover, and you need rest.”
She gave him a faint smile. “I will tonight.”
SHE STAYED PREOCCUPIED UNTIL LATE into the night, rechecking the medical inventory. Her epinephrine injections were nearly out, but there was no record of who’d taken them. Helena left a brusque note. If Elain was going to run everything, she could at least enforce the rules.
She was rolling a mountain of sterilised bandages into spools when her ring burned.
Amaris barely landed; Kaine swept her off the roof and they were airborne. The instant they were inside, he had her pinned against the wall, his lips ravenous on hers.
She gripped him tightly. Her fingertips were still numb, but she hardly noticed.
His hands slid up until her face was cradled in them. His forehead pressed to hers, breath mingling a moment before he kissed her again, drawing her farther inside. Their every step hurried. They were always running out of time.
Someday, she promised herself, someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn’t stolen.
“Are you all right?” he asked once they were inside, where it was lit enough that he could look at her.
He reached out, and she knew that if he touched her, he’d use his resonance and realise her hands had been recently injured, so she caught his hand in hers, curling his fingers closed and clasping it against her chest.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Now I’m all right.”
