Page 82 of Alchemised
Since the meals had improved, she’d begun avoiding her reflection, hating the changes she saw, as the version of herself that she knew vanished.
In her memories, she’d been gaunt from stress. Her skin sallow from the absence of sunlight. Her nearly black hair always carefully restrained by two tight braids coiled at the back of her head. Bony and thin-limbed. Her eyes, large and dark, but with fire in them.
When she’d come to Spirefell, there was still something of that girl in her reflection.
Now her face was no longer gaunt, or her cheeks hollowed, and her eyes weren’t sunken from exhaustion. Her colour had improved. Without a comb or ties for her hair, it hung loose, cascading past her elbows. Her bones barely jutted out.
She looked healthy.
Pretty, even.
A Helena from a different life.
But her eyes—
Her eyes were dead. There was no fire in them.
The spark she’d once regarded as the most intrinsic part of who she was had gone out.
She was a vibrant corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.
FERRON REAPPEARED A DAY LATER while Helena was eating dinner.
He was wearing his “hunting” clothes, but they were clean, so she assumed he was heading out rather than returning. She watched him warily as he entered. Without his coat and normal layers, he was noticeably slender.
As he came closer, her eyes narrowed. His clothes were a dark grey, made to blend into the city shadows, but there was a metallic sheen in some places. It was most obvious over his forearms, chest, and legs.
A woven body armour. That was why she hadn’t been able to stab him.
He stopped in front of her, his expression unreadable, hands somewhere behind his back. “What made you realise?”
The tines of her fork caught against the plate. “Realise what? That Morrough’s dying or that he’s been creating the Undying as some sort of power source?”
His mouth curved. “Let’s start with the latter.”
She looked towards the window. “Everyone always acted like the war was inevitable, a part of the cycle in the eternal battle of good and evil, but I just—never understood. Why did Morrough want Paladia? The Council thought Hevgoss was involved, that they were creating a pretext for their military intervention so they could absorb Paladia into their borders. But what did Morrough get out of it, then? No one ever seemed to wonder. There’s just always an evil necromancer somewhere that the Eternal Flame needs to kill. No one talks about why, what could drive someone to that.” She shook her head. “I just don’t think immortality seems like much of a gift, especially not one that someone would give away like Morrough does, unless there was more of an advantage for him than everyone who got it. Things that seem too good to be true usually have a price you don’t know about until it’s too late.”
Ferron said nothing.
“Am I right?” she asked.
His expression and posture were unreadable. “Does it matter?”
She looked away.
“Actually, I’ll tell you … if you tell me what it was that ended up being too good to be true for you.”
She swallowed hard, staring at the mountains. “Paladia.”
She drew a deep breath and looked at him. “Well?”
He met her stare, eyes glittering with a strange look of satisfaction. “Yes, he’s dying.”
CHAPTER 15
HELENA’S CAPTIVITY SANK BACK INTO MONOTONY.
She only saw Ferron when he came to check her memory, and then a few days later to perform transference again.
