Page 40 of Alchemised
In her right palm there were more scars. Slits in the palm and fingers, as if she’d gripped a knife blade in her hands, and more oddly, seven tiny punctures. They were perfectly spaced into a circle in her palm. Not large but distinct in the way they marred the skin. She stared at them. The shape felt familiar.
She put her hand down, unsettled, and finally reached up to find the one scar that she did remember.
It was hardly visible, hidden below the shadow of her jaw. It ran long and thin across the left side of her neck, stopping just short of her throat.
FERRON BROUGHT HELENA’S DRIED AND cleaned cloak with him when he arrived the next day and threw it at her head.
Helena followed him, surreptitiously dropping the newspaper along the way. On the veranda, he pulled out another paper. The cover story was about a monument the governor, Fabian Greenfinch, was having built in honour of Morrough as New Paladia’s liberator. It would be unveiled the following year.
It was raining again. Helena glanced around, not sure what to do, finding no appeal in strolling about in circles under Ferron’s supervision.
Perhaps she could find a very sharp stick somewhere and stab him with it.
She wandered along the veranda until she was bored, and then sat observing the stillness of the house, trying to guess at how many rooms there must be in a place so large.
She’d thought the Bayards’ house, Solis Splendour, enormous. It had been one of the few freestanding houses in the city, a remnant from long ago. Spirefell was much larger.
When Ferron stood and left, she assumed it was a sign to go back inside. She cast her eyes around and was disappointed to find he hadn’t forgotten his newspaper.
She went to the door. The winter light spilled like quicksilver across the dark floor, but the hallway beyond disappeared into darkness like the opening of a mouth. With the winter drapes, the light was blotted out, creating the dusty suffocating feeling of a tomb. The lights were off.
She groped along the wall, trying to find a dial or switch.
Wind rushed out of the dark, and the smell of dust and rot struck her face like a cold breath, followed by a low, shifting groan that made the house vibrate.
Helena stumbled back outside, heart racing.
If the clouds would lift, it would get brighter. She huddled on the veranda, waiting. Through the obscuring rain, the house around her looked almost like an immense slumbering creature, curved inwards, the spires like spines.
The rain did not cease. Instead the sky dimmed as dusk fell. At this point in the lunar cycles, even Lumithia, the brighter moon, had waned too much for her light to penetrate the cloud cover.
The light in the doorway had shrunk and weakened.
Helena drew a deep breath; she’d taken the route before. There were steps not far into the shadows. If she found them, she could feel her way back.
It was only shadows. It wasn’t the tank. It wasn’t the nothing. Just shadows.
She wavered in the doorway, and everything grew darker, the remaining light outside beginning to vanish.
Helena felt herself disappearing into it. Terror sharp as talons clawed through her as she forced herself forward. She stumbled, colliding with a table, barely feeling the pain that shot up her shin.
Find the stairs.
It’s only a house.
But she felt the darkness swallowing her, dragging her in, the endlessness so close. She gripped the table, hands shaking so violently that the wood rattled. Something fell, crashing onto the floor.
Breathe. Just breathe.
She fought to breathe but pain splintered her chest. Her heart was racing, beating like a caged bird inside her, breaking itself against her ribs.
She made it a few steps before her legs gave out. She curled up on the floor, the wood like bones beneath her hands. She was disappearing into the nothing again. Into the nothing where she couldn’t move … couldn’t scream … and no one ever came …
She was gripped by the arms and wrenched off the floor.
“What are you doing?”
She blinked in the sudden light, staring into Ferron’s incensed face.
