Page 194 of Alchemised
She stared across the room at a tapestry of Tellus, spinning the earth into being.
“You made me feel like the parts of me that aren’t useful still deserve to exist. Like I’m not just all the things I can do.”
The decanter was on the floor, abandoned. Helena snatched it up. There was only a little left. She had a lingering hope that if she finished it, she might reach the point of inebriation beyond feeling.
He watched her drink and then leaned back, slinging an arm over his eyes. When she glanced over, his arm had slipped down, and he was asleep.
She stared at him for a long time, studying his features, trying to pinpoint the changes in his face, but her own eyes were heavy.
She should get up. Move to the chaise over by the desk.
Her vision dimmed. She’d let her eyes rest, just for a moment. Then she’d go …
WHEN SHE WOKE, SHE WAS still on the sofa, and so was Kaine, except somehow they’d ended up tangled together. Her face was crushed against his chest, his elbow prodding her ribs, and his chin was digging into the top of her head.
It was a miracle that neither of them had fallen off the sofa.
Helena didn’t move immediately; her head was on the verge of cracking open. She suspected that any sudden movements would result in a lot of smoky, overly expensive whisky coming back up.
She managed to slip a hand up to her face, using her vivimancy to alleviate some of her nausea before slowly extricating herself.
Kaine didn’t even twitch. He was insensate. He probably hadn’t slept properly since spring.
She gripped her satchel and went to the heavy door, prying it slowly open, and fled without looking back.
She threw up over the dam, and again crossing the bridge, retching into the river. Rather than feel better, she felt worse.
She made her way slowly back towards Headquarters, wanting to kick herself. She’d kissed Kaine Ferron. Not a fake, strategic kiss but a real one, and he’d returned it, and it would have been the perfect opportunity to take the next step, but she’d blown it.
Kaine had handed himself to her on a platter, gone above and beyond what Crowther and Ilva had ever hoped, and Helena had sabotaged herself because it wasn’t real and she’d wished it was.
She’d let herself become wrapped up in her feelings at being compared to a rose and called lovely, at having aspects of herself that no one had ever liked treated as a source of desire.
Apparently that was all it took for Ferron to seduce her.
Just thinking about it left her cold, a pit of nauseous shame threatening to choke her.
“Hel.” Soren’s voice broke into her thoughts as she came through the gatehouse into Headquarters. He was sitting with a group of the guards.
She stared at him, dazed by her own thoughts, too hungover to speak.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “What happened to your hair?”
She didn’t understand the question until she reached up and remembered it was loose, tangling around her shoulders.
“Brambles,” she lied promptly.
His eyebrows knit together, studying her with his deep-set eyes. “You should be careful out there, especially during the Abeyance.”
“I only went out after light,” she said, trying to slip past. “Just a bit of harvesting. I need to process it.”
Soren was still watching her. “You know, I forgot your hair looked like that. It’s pretty, the way you braid it now.”
“Yes,” she said, forcing a smile, her eyes burning. “It’s best when I keep it braided. I hardly know what to do with myself when it’s like this.”
She went straight to her room and into the shower, scrubbing herself violently, trying to erase the physical memory of Kaine’s hands. The water was hot, and she turned it up until it was scalding on her skin, standing under the spray until she was raw from the heat.
She wasn’t crying. It was just the spray of the shower. It was just water on her face.
