Page 36 of Alchemised
He turned away. “The courtyard’s enclosed. You may wander as you wish.”
She looked around, taking in the details of the house and the other buildings. The veranda they stood on continued past the end of the wing and became a cloister walkway, connecting the main house to the other buildings, walling them in. A person could travel all the way to the gate without stepping into the rain, the house and buildings forming an iron ring.
“Go.” Ferron waved her off and then seated himself at a nearby table with two small chairs, pulling a newspaper out of his overcoat.
Helena’s eyes instantly locked onto the headlines.
ETERNAL FLAME TERRORIST SEIZED! screamed the words at the top of the fold in all-capitals.
She stepped closer without thinking.
Who had they found?
Grace said they were all dead. But here was proof of survivors. Ferron hadn’t killed them all.
He looked up. She froze in her tracks, unable to tear her eyes away from the paper, looking desperately for a name.
“Care to see?” he asked in a slow drawl that made her skin prickle.
He snapped the paper open, and Helena stared dumbfounded at a photograph of herself, drugged and sedated in Central. Her face was gaunt, her expression contorted, strained from the withdrawal of the interrogation drug, her hair tangled around her face.
It was clearly intended to make her look like a dirty, feral extremist.
The last fugitive of the Eternal Flame terrorists has been apprehended and taken for interrogation, proclaimed the lede just above the fold.
“You’re finally famous, and look—I’m included, too.” Ferron’s eyes glittered with malice as he indicated a photo of himself farther down the column, in that very courtyard, the spires of the house silhouetted behind him. “Just in case anyone wants to know where you are. Or who’s keeping you.”
Helena looked at him in confusion. Why would they want to publicise her capture and location? And why now? She’d been in Central for weeks. Her apprehension was old news.
“I thought it was a rather obvious trap,” Ferron said with a sigh, flipping past the front page. “Then again, your Resistance was never known for its intelligence. Anything more subtle would elude them. The High Necromancer hopes that if there’s anyone left, they’ll feel morally obligated to rush in and save the Flame’s last ember.” He glanced sidelong at her. “I have my doubts, but no harm in trying, I suppose.”
He leaned back, idly returning his attention to the next column.
Helena staggered back.
Was that why they’d sent her to Spirefell rather than keeping her in Central? To be used as bait?
A strangled sound tore from her throat. She turned and stumbled down the steps out into the rain. There was nowhere to go, but she had to go somewhere.
The cloak, clasped at her throat, choked her, dragging her back. Her fingers tore at it until it came loose, setting her free. She ran across the courtyard.
The icy rain soaked through the thin, fashionable fabric of her dress, but she scarcely felt it. She could see the towers from the city, rising beyond Spirefell. She looked for the beacon, the light that had always shone from the top of the Alchemy Tower, the Eternal Flame which had been kept burning since the day of Paladia’s founding, but it was not there. It was gone.
Still she went towards them, but as she neared the far side of the courtyard, all the towers vanished behind the wall. She moved back and forth, looking for some way out, finally going to the gate, knowing it would be futile but unable to help herself.
It was locked tight, made of wrought iron too ornate to squeeze through. She rattled it so hard, it made her wrists spasm.
She tried to climb it but her slippers shredded, the iron cold enough to burn her skin, and when she tried to pull herself up, the pain inside her wrists left her hands numb.
Across the courtyard, Ferron was reading the paper, unconcerned by Helena’s attempts at escape.
She wanted to scream. She gripped the gate, rattling it again.
What if someone came, not knowing they were being lured into a trap?
Someone who’d managed to survive all this time, captured because of her.
She drew in a gasping breath. Her chest felt as though it might split open. She slumped, shaking the gate again and again, as if the iron might bend for her if she were only persistent enough.
