Page 394 of Alchemised
Kaine held up a hand, and Amaris stopped. “Oh, that. That wasn’t you. That was the necrothralls. She can’t stand them.” Amaris was bobbing her head impatiently. He stepped closer and rumpled her fur. “She tolerates the staff, but any of Morrough’s reanimations that get close—well.”
He glanced at Helena. “She very much remembers you. Howled for half the day when you arrived.”
Helena stepped hesitantly closer and let Amaris sniff and nuzzle at her fingers. When she didn’t lose her hand, she took a step closer.
“You and Shiseo will take her with you when you go,” Kaine said when she hazarded to rest a hand on Amaris’s head. “Fly at night. It’ll take a few days to reach Lila, but you’ll be hard to track down that way.” He rubbed Amaris’s shoulder just beneath an immense wing. “You’ll leave her, when you take the ship.”
Helena’s hand stilled. “Leave her?”
“She’ll be fine,” he said, but his voice was gruff. “She can hunt for herself, and she doesn’t like most humans, so she’ll avoid populated areas. With luck, she’ll head back to Paladia looking for me. End up in the mountains.”
“But doesn’t she need someone to—the transmutations on her have to be maintained if she’s still growing.”
His jaw ticced. “There’s only one surviving chimaera from the war, and everyone knows who it belongs to. If she’s sighted, that will be enough to give an ambitious Aspirant a direction to hunt you down. You have to leave her.”
He rested his head against Amaris, and her wings fluttered. She turned her neck to nip at him.
“We’ll go out together, won’t we, old girl? Bennet’s last two monsters.”
The air in the stable was burning her eyes. Helena turned and walked out.
The air near the house was fresher, and she drew several forceful gasps, her hand pressed over her heart until she heard quick steps and looked up to see Aurelia storming down the stairs towards her.
Aurelia was pale, her eyes flashing with rage. She was wearing a pale-pink dress splashed with scarlet detailing. As she got closer, Helena noticed that the hem and her shoes were also scarlet.
“Where is Kaine?”
“Aurelia.” Kaine’s voice emerged from the dark interior of the stable. “What did I tell you about speaking to my prisoner?”
Aurelia whirled towards the stable. “I need to talk to you! How am I supposed to stay away from her and ever talk to you when you’re always with her?”
Kaine stepped out of the stable, eyes glittering. “What do you want?”
Aurelia’s throat worked several times. “I need you to talk to your father. He’s ruining the house.”
Kaine raised an eyebrow, looking unconcerned. “I thought you were pleased that he’d come to stay.”
Aurelia’s eyes bulged in her head. “That was before he turned the house into a torture chamber. It was one thing when it stayed in the storehouse, but he’s bringing them inside! There are piles of body parts all over, and I walked into a pool of blood because he flayed someone in the middle of the foyer.”
Helena realised then that Aurelia’s dress was not scarlet-detailed at all.
“I advised that you stay in the city,” Kaine said, appearing indifferent to all this. “But you refused because my father said something about domination livening the blood, and you thought, what?” He leaned towards her, lip curling. “That I might set my sights on you?”
Aurelia had gone white as a sheet with two scarlet blotches staining her cheeks. “I am your wife.”
Kaine cocked his head to one side. “I didn’t ask for you.”
“What’s this?” Atreus had emerged from the storehouse. There was blood up to his elbows, and a long knife used for gutting fish in his hand.
Aurelia started, clutching at her throat with her iron-ringed hands, shrinking towards Kaine, but Kaine drifted away from her, just happening to insert himself between Helena and his father as they faced each other.
“I’m afraid Aurelia doesn’t care much for what we’ve done to the house, Father,” Kaine said. “I believe she finds us rather—uncivilised.”
Atreus stared at Kaine for a moment, Crowther’s narrow nostrils flaring in a way that Helena recognised as suppressed anger. “Does she? I suppose it is rather excessive. I was waiting for you to object. I thought at some point surely you’d feel a sense of ownership. You did grow up here …” His voice trailed off as he turned to stare at the immense house which towered around them. “This was your mother’s house. She planted those roses the summer we wed.”
Atreus’s grip on his knife tightened, and for a moment Helena felt Kaine’s resonance in her teeth.
“I’m afraid the estate has never had much sentimental charm for me,” Kaine said. “Perhaps if you’d come back sooner, you might have made the effort of maintaining it.”
