Page 351 of Alchemised
“You gave your word.”
Helena met his eyes. “You know I will always choose the Eternal Flame first.”
He stared at her, eyes widening as if she’d struck him. His mouth pressed into a hard line, and his gaze dropped. She watched his throat dip, and she kept talking.
“If you force me to leave without speaking to Shiseo, the last thing you will ever do is betray me and everyone I love. A traitor is all you’ll be to me, but if you let me do this, maybe—someday I’ll be able to forgive you.”
Hurt shone from his eyes, an empty look of despair, but she glared back. Too drugged to show more emotion.
“Fine.” His voice was raw with bitterness, and he didn’t look at her again.
She sat up laboriously and drew a map that showed which part of the city the off-site lab was in, hoping that it had escaped notice. She added a vaguely termed list of things she wanted Shiseo to bring. “He should be there if no one’s found him. I’ll need him to bring all this so I can explain how it works.”
Kaine stared at the map and list, his eyes narrowing. “Who is he exactly?”
“An Easterner. He helps here and there.”
“And you trust him?”
“More than I can trust you,” she said.
Kaine turned white, but he crumpled the list into his pocket. “Don’t leave,” he said.
She turned away from him. Lila lay beside her, still unconscious.
The instant he was gone, Helena pushed herself and began ransacking the suite, finding and prying free every piece of metal she could. She was indiscriminate in her destruction; anything that was not immediately visible, she ripped out, and then identified its components and transmuted it down into compact bars of various alloys and metals, pausing every few minutes to clear her head of the drug.
She was certain that Kaine would take her and Lila into Novis first. It was in range. He’d use Amaris to get across the river without dealing with checkpoints or the paperwork of commandeering a boat. However, large as Amaris was, Helena doubted the chimaera could carry three. The river was wide in the basin. Two riders would be enough to wind Amaris and require her to rest before returning.
Helena didn’t trust Novis with Lila, not now with Luc dead. In the hands of Novis, with Falcon Matias circling him, Luc’s son would be little more than a pawn, a Principate raised with the same lies and manipulation that had haunted Luc.
Lila would have to be hidden.
Kaine had somewhere already in mind, but travel arrangements would not be quick. Even if he had money on hand, obtaining safe and discreet passage would be complicated.
She went to the window, peeking out, trying to gauge how high she was, and found a street only a few storeys below. The suite was in one of the higher parts of the city, far removed from the violence, but there was a large skybridge connected to all the nearby buildings, with a plaza and gardens overlooking the lower parts of the city.
There was also a fire escape just outside the window. Not a functional one, but a decorative sort of balcony made of wrought iron.
She heard footsteps sooner than she’d expected and rushed back to the bed, trying to look dazed when the door opened and Kaine entered, Shiseo behind him.
She pushed herself up, rubbing her eyes. “You found him.”
“Give him your information so he can go.”
Helena slurred her reply. “He’s just an assistant. I’m going to have to go over everything.”
Shiseo blinked at Helena, and she was grateful then for how unreadable he was.
Kaine gave a hiss between his teeth, hands clenching into fists. “Fine.”
She was interfering with his timeline. She could feel his desperate impatience.
“You’ll use Amaris, right? To take us across the river?” she asked.
Kaine’s eyes flicked to Shiseo, but he gave a faint nod.
“Can she carry all of us that far?”
