Page 232 of Alchemised
When she said nothing, he gave her a sidelong grin. “We’ll finally go on our trip. Once everything’s over and settled, Ilva can manage a bit longer. It won’t be the big trip like we said, but if we wait for the Abeyance, we could take a fast ship to Etras and spend at least a week there before the tides come back. I’ve always wanted to see the lost cities. I’ve still got your map on the wall.”
“That’s not going to happen, Luc,” she said, her voice low. Even if he had to believe in this lie, she couldn’t be a part of it. She couldn’t live as a prop in this deceit.
“What?”
She looked down at her gloved hands, as emptiness hollowed her lungs.
She swallowed hard. “When this is all over, I don’t want you to think of us as friends anymore. I think it will be better that way for both of us.”
“Why?” He looked horrified.
“Because I’m not your friend anymore. Your friend Helena Marino died in a field hospital six years ago. She doesn’t exist anymore. I need you to let her go.”
He didn’t, though. Luc caught her hand again. His face was stricken, and he was so beautiful.
Even in the depth of winter, he looked limned in sunlight. Divine or not, the Holdfasts had a look as if they were born to be immortalised in marble. Like the sun, born for eternity.
Helena was not a planet or any celestial thing. She was just a human bound tight to the present, to the brevity of existence, and she could feel time running out.
“No. I won’t let you go,” he said. “I can’t. Hel, just tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll fix it. You and me, we’re friends forever.”
She pulled away from him, shaking her head.
All Luc knew was Paladia, alchemy, and the Eternal Flame, with their ideals about the refinement of fire, of trials and sacrifice, the purity of suffering. That it would be worthwhile eventually, in the next life if not this one.
Maybe if Helena were at the front, she could believe in all that, too. But she’d spent every day of the last six years watching people die. She lived in the aftermath of every battle, breathed in the devastation until she was drowning in it. Nothing and no one would ever convince her that anything noble or purifying could come from this scale of suffering. That any rewards could ever be worth it.
To trick people into embracing it was cruelty. But how could she tell Luc that? That none of it had ever meant anything. That the miracles he believed in were mere sleights of hand, bought and paid for with betrayal. She couldn’t.
“If I was ever your friend, let me go now.” She jerked her hand free and fled the house.
Her heart was beating so hard, it hurt. The blood pounded in her ears until she could barely hear the wind, the cold slicing across her cheeks.
Snowflakes fell, spiralling onto the street.
She paused and looked up at the sky.
It was supposed to be good luck, snow on the solstice. A brightening of the longest night.
She stood watching it fall until her hands and feet were numb with cold. She wanted to stay there and freeze to death. She’d read it was a gentle way to go, like falling asleep.
The beacon of the Eternal Flame burned overhead. She turned, putting her back to it, wandering without destination. There was nowhere to go. Her life was so small. Beyond the gates of the Institute, she was homeless.
She followed the only route she knew by heart.
It was eerily still on the Outpost. The snow-heavy clouds had a dim silver glow from the moons. She’d always found the Outpost so ugly next to the elegant, natural lines of the islands’ architecture, but now she found the brutality of the towering steel, concrete walls, and jutting smokestacks fitting. She didn’t want to be somewhere beautiful.
There was no pretence on the Outpost, no ornamentation to distract the eye; it didn’t hide what it was. Which was more than she could say about the city or Institute.
A lie. All of it a lie, the celestial emblems that decorated the island, all those murals and paintings of the Holdfasts, the sun always rising with them. All lies.
Her face grew numb, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn back. She went towards the tenement.
The door unlocked easily even though her fingers were stiff. The wind rattled the windows.
She sat at the table, resting her head on the edge, and closed her eyes.
The door banged open.
