Page 35 of Alchemised
Helena obeyed without a word, remaining impassive while Stroud prodded her, noting the way Helena’s wrists had shrunk inside the manacles, and checking her vital signs, tsking with irritation.
“Well, this is disappointing,” she said at last. “I’d really hoped you’d handle it better.”
Helena said nothing, a gleam of triumph rising in her chest.
“I suppose it was too much to hope you had the physical resilience of a man like Bayard,” Stroud added with a disgruntled huff after another minute of running her resonance intrusively through Helena’s organs.
She pressed her fingers against Helena’s head, pushing a little frisson of energy into her mind, making Helena wince. Her mind still felt raw. “This degree of inflammation after seven days is worrying.”
She sucked her teeth and glared at Mandl. “A pity you didn’t report her at the time. This would all be so much easier.”
Mandl bobbed her head stiffly, which was not enough penitence for Stroud.
“You should be grateful that I haven’t pointed out to His Eminence that if we’d learned about her sooner, we might have retained Boyle’s corpse and had an animancer for one of the Undying to use.”
“I said I was sorry,” Mandl said. “I don’t know what else you want me to do, or why you dragged me here.”
“You were gifted ascendance on my recommendation. If I am going to be inconvenienced by this, then so will you,” Stroud said. “And if this costs me anything, I will see that it costs you more.”
Stroud turned back to Helena, examining her again with an increasingly sour expression. “We’ll need to delay the next procedure until she’s stronger. If she dies prematurely, we’ll lose the information.”
She turned to the other necrothrall in the room. “High Reeve!”
The servant turned her head, cloudy eyes focusing on Stroud.
“I will speak with you. Privately.”
The necrothrall servant nodded and gestured towards the door.
Of all the uses of necromancy that Helena had witnessed, the creation of the Ferrons’ servants seemed a particularly vile choice. In a war, she could see the horrific rationale leading to the act, but the servants in Spirefell were all civilians, murdered for the sake of cheap convenience.
With every minute she spent in the house, her hatred of Ferron deepened, because she knew his history—the luxury and privilege of his family. His easy life. The Ferrons would have been nothing without the Holdfasts and the Alchemy Institute; their wealth would never have existed.
They should have been grateful, loyal to Luc for what his family had enabled them to become, but they’d turned traitor and chosen Morrough.
Perhaps that ouroboros dragon was not merely a pretentious decoration but something the Ferrons prided themselves on. An omen of a destructive, insatiable hunger which left nothing but ruin in its wake.
FERRON STRODE INTO HER ROOM the next day. Helena’s body went rigid, dread sweeping through her like a tide. The physical pain of transference twinged inside her psyche like an aftershock.
He stopped at the door, and his pale eyes slid over her, flickering as they paused on her fingers, which spasmed uncontrollably when she was startled. She hid them behind her skirts.
“Stroud wants you going outside,” he said. “She believes fresh air will improve your constitution.” He tossed a bundle towards her. “Put it on.”
Helena unfolded it and found it was a thick cloak, dyed crimson. She grimaced.
“Something wrong?”
She looked over. “Is red the only dye you have in this house?”
“It’ll make you easy for the thralls to spot. Come!” Ferron stalked into the hallway.
She followed tentatively. The sconces in the hallways were lit, driving back the shadows as he headed to the far end of the wing, descending a new flight of stairs to a set of doors that opened onto a veranda in the courtyard.
It was raining, and a gust of wind swirled along the house, whipping across her face. She gave a startled gasp.
Ferron turned sharply. “What?”
“I—” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “I’d forgotten what wind feels like.”
