Page 319 of Alchemised
He shook his head. “I don’t know what they are. I like to think I was able to put a part of them back, that it’s why it got easier after that, but it’s more likely that they act like themselves because I want them to. I just—can’t seem to let go.”
When Helena was finally able to have a pillow, Davies would prop up books for her to read during the hours when Kaine was absent. She was curious about the kind of library that existed at Spirefell, but Davies unfortunately did not seem to be literate, at least not anymore. The books Helena received were largely at random. One day, she received an encyclopaedia of butterfly species, the next a florilegium of Cetus’s earliest writings.
Because “Cetus” had written thousands of alchemical texts and letters, dated across centuries, excerpts were often assembled into various collections by scholars based on which parts of his work and history they happened to consider legitimate. Depending on the florilegium’s edition, Cetus was born in ten different countries. Sometimes he was a king, other times a priest; some letters even claimed he’d worked with Orion himself.
In the florilegum Helena received, Cetus was very taken by an ancient Khemish cult, which claimed that human resonance was the alchemisation of mankind. That alchemists were an ascendant form.
“Sounds like something alchemists would believe about themselves,” Kaine said in the late evening while she was telling him about it. He was much more interested in Helena’s lungs than in ancient cults.
Helena tried not to wince as the bandages came off. “Do the Undying have a religion?”
“The High Necromancer is our deity,” Kaine said, tracing his resonance carefully along her ribs where several had cracked. “Our lives are in servitude to his infinite power.”
“If he’s that powerful, why doesn’t he come out and win the war?”
He glanced up for a moment. “He’s a god. You’ll notice that making humans die for them is the gods’ primary mode of operation. You’d think Sol could personally smite a few necromancers if he hates them so passionately, but somehow, it’s always the Holdfasts coordinating those efforts. Makes one wonder if he really cares.”
Ever since she’d told him about Orion and why the Holdfasts had become Principates, he seemed to think that if he just criticised the Eternal Flame enough, she’d give up on the Resistance.
Her sigh made her lungs rattle, and Kaine seemed to completely forget the conversation for several minutes.
“Since Holdfast started showing up in combat, Morrough has stayed far away from the front lines,” he said at last.
“But if he’s so afraid of Luc, why didn’t he kill him when he was captured?”
Kaine shook his head. “I don’t think he wants him dead. The orders have always been to take him alive. I used to think it was because Morrough feared usurpation from whoever made the killing blow, but now, after that capture, I think it’s something else. Holdfast has been at the front lines for six years. Do you really think that if Morrough wanted him dead, he couldn’t have found a way to kill him by now?”
IT WAS FOUR WEEKS AFTER the bombing before Helena could get up without feeling like she’d shatter. Her resonance had feebly returned, and the bandages were off, but the wiring remained because her sternum was still worryingly delicate. Before lacing on a chest brace, she sat with a mirror, looking at the scar that ran down between her breasts.
It was far from pretty.
She’d always admired the way Lila wore her scars, her jokes about naming them; it was only now that she began to realise how difficult it was to be proud of them.
The visual evidence of the injury would never go away. In a moment of intimacy it would be all there was to see. Staring at it in the cold light of day, she couldn’t help but think that someday Kaine might not want someone who had the war so overtly carved into them. Surely he’d want to be able to forget sometimes.
Now, with her, it would be impossible.
He was sorting the vials of medicine on the table, but she could feel him observing her from the corner of his eye.
“It’ll fade,” she said quickly.
Her face was burning. She dropped the mirror, putting her hand over the scar to hide it. It took the span of her entire hand.
“Once I’m better, I’ll treat it every day so—it’ll fade more,” she said. She could feel a divot in the bone where it had refused to regenerate. She could attach titanium plating there to reinforce the bone, but given her repertoire, it might interfere with her work. Part of the reason titanium was so medically useful for alchemists was because the resonance for it was rare.
Her jaw trembled. “It won’t look like this forever.”
He set a vial down. His silver eyes were intent, his attention like a beam of light through a magnifying glass, suddenly focused solely on her. He stepped over and gently but firmly pulled her hand away.
She knew he’d seen the scar more than she had, and in far worse stages than this, but she hated having him look at it.
“Do you see my scars that way?” he finally said. “When you look at me, are they all you see?”
She flinched. “No.”
“Well.” He met her eyes. “I don’t see you that way, either. You’re mine.” He let go of her wrist and lifted his hand, the fingertips tracing the scarring until it was covered by his palm, warm against her bare skin, then sliding up to curve around her neck. “You are. It doesn’t matter what happens to you, you will still be mine.”
HELENA SAW ONLY BITS OF the house. Spirefell. They took walks through the dim hallways as she tried to adapt to the way her chest ached when she moved. Breathing deeply made it feel like her sternum would snap. The house was an old, heavy style long abandoned in the city. Everywhere was detailed in dark wrought iron, even the floors run through with it. There was a melancholy beauty to it.
