Page 171 of Alchemised
She felt that the answer was obvious.
He shuddered again. “Fuck.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Shut up!”
She stood silently, waiting until his breathing slowed.
“Fine,” he bit out. “Go on.”
“Do you want me to knock you out again?” she asked.
He lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were empty. His face bruised with exhaustion. “Is there really a point to this?”
Helena met his stare. She could fix this. She wasn’t going to let him suffer and die for finally doing something good in his life.
“Please, let me try.”
Something incredulous flickered in his eyes. His lips started to move, but then he turned away, forehead pressed against the back of the chair.
“Fine,” he said, sounding resigned.
She slid her fingers against the base of his skull. It took only a few seconds, and he went limp.
She removed the gauze and cleaned the wounds, washing his entire back with saline and then a carbolic dilution. At least the Resistance had enough supplies now that she could treat him properly.
She examined him with her resonance, working slowly to better understand what the array was doing to him. When she’d finished in the lab, she’d gone to the library and researched arrays, trying to find any information that might be relevant. There was nothing. No one had ever carved an active array into a human before.
She could feel it in her resonance that his body was dying. Tiny flashes of that horrible dissipating coldness, over and over. The array was not only draining the energy from the talisman, but also stripping his body of every resource he had.
Ferron didn’t have the physiological resources to counterbalance the deterioration, so it grew worse with every passing moment.
She pressed a hand on his arm, using her resonance to try to warm him. If she’d known sooner, if he’d summoned her, maybe she could have done something more—
She was so late.
She stood staring at him, throat too tight to swallow. She’d reported the injury to Crowther, and he hadn’t seemed to care, either that Kaine was hurt or that Helena had revealed her vivimancy. He’d provided her with the papers and instructed her to do what she could to get any further information from Ferron, adding that if he was beyond hope of recovery, she should bring back the talisman. They had no use for Ferron as a lich.
Save him or kill him.
She stood, staring at the array, gripping her amulet through her shirt, feeling its points prick the scars in her palm.
She couldn’t kill him. Not after he’d trusted her. Not after he’d helped them.
A month ago, perhaps, but not now.
The Resistance needed him. All the advantages and territory they’d retaken was because of Kaine, and the war was still not won. She had to save him.
She pulled the amulet off, rubbing her thumbs across the surface.
She’d realised after she started wearing it again that she’d stopped feeling so tired, so physically strained by her vivimancy.
She knew the sunstone amulets were supposed to be special, to hold some of Sol’s light and strength within them, but she hadn’t realised what a difference it had been making all these years. Buying her time. Getting her to this moment.
If it could do that, maybe it could save Kaine, tilt things into balance and give him a chance.
If he died, it didn’t really matter what happened to her. There were other healers now, and with the ports back, her medicine wasn’t needed anymore, either.
