Page 89 of Alchemised
Her lungs contracted, chest heaving, panicking over what had almost happened, and her lack of comprehension at the time.
If Lancaster had gotten her out of Spirefell, what would he have done to her? What would she have just lain there and let him do?
She huddled in a tight ball and didn’t get up when she heard the door unlock and the maid come in, setting the tray beside Helena’s bed.
Breakfast and a pot of tisane with the recognisable scent of chamomile. The maid poured a cup and then pulled out a small vial with a few drops of reddish liquid inside.
She shook her head but regretted the choice once the maid was gone and she was left with her thoughts.
She kept thinking about the girls in the repopulation program, lured in by the promise of food and pardon.
If Helena hadn’t been sterilised and missing memories, she’d be there, too.
Compared with what the rest of the survivors suffered, Ferron was almost kind. It was such a horrible thought.
How was it that the High Reeve was somehow one of the least monstrous of the Undying? No. That wasn’t true. She’d witnessed his killing, watched him calmly unspool Lancaster’s organs with his bare hands.
There was plenty of monster in Ferron, lurking beneath the surface.
Her head throbbed, and she closed her eyes.
The door was rebolted each time the servants left, and so Helena made no effort to leave her bed. She lay curled beneath her blankets, smothered in her despair, until the quiet was split by the sudden scream of metal and the door burst open.
Helena shot up to see Aurelia stride in, a newspaper clutched in one hand, the iron short staff in the other. There were several necrothralls out in the hallway. They all moved to follow Aurelia.
Aurelia stopped short, turning back, then she gripped the staff, twisting it against one of the iron bars running through the floor. The door slammed shut, nearly severing one of the maids’ arms. There was a grating sound of metal as the frame around the door warped, sealing the room.
Aurelia turned back to Helena.
“Come here.” Her voice was bright with anger.
Helena slipped out of bed and walked over without a word, heart pounding.
Aurelia was pale. Brittle as a stalk of grass in midwinter. She was impeccably dressed and groomed as always, but there was a sense of unravelling about her. Her earrings, intricate little chandeliers of tiny pearls, trembled.
“Did you know I was the third daughter my mother had?”
Helena didn’t know anything about Aurelia.
“My family’s been pure iron for nearly a century, had a guild member in every generation, but we never got very high. It’s hard, competing with a family like the Ferrons. My father always said that in Paladia, you have to be satisfied with scrap metal until you can make something of it. We were going to make something of it.”
Aurelia drew a quick breath. “People thought there was something wrong with Kaine when he was born. Thought maybe he was a Lapse, or he didn’t have iron resonance. No one was sure, just knew the family was secretive about him. My father saw an opportunity. My mother and father were cousins. He thought they could easily have a girl with pure iron resonance, and the Ferrons would be desperate to marry Kaine to her. To stay in control of the guild.”
Aurelia gave a panting breath, her chest heaving.
“Mother said the first two were tiny. Little bits of things.” Her blue eyes shone. “My father paid a vivimancer to come in early to see if they were girls, but when they didn’t show any signs of iron resonance in the womb, he didn’t let her keep them. If they’d come to term, he said, another iron family might beat us to the marriage contract. I was the third girl. My mother always said the first two babies were hers, and I was—Kaine Ferron’s. She burned them in the fireplace and buried the ashes in the garden. Spent all her time out there with them.”
Helena studied Aurelia in stunned sympathy, but that only seemed to enrage her.
“I know you snoop. Have you seen this story?” Aurelia lifted the newspaper up so that Helena could see the front page.
It was a gruesome photo, even in black and white. Kneeling down, his face plain to see, Ferron was calmly disembowelling Lancaster in the lobby of the Central Hospital.
She could only stare a moment before Aurelia twitched her hand, folding the newspaper away, knuckles whitening as she gripped the short staff. The house groaned, trembling.
“I have to admit,” Aurelia said in a voice of unnatural calm, “when I first heard that Kaine had killed Erik, I was so happy. I thought, He’s finally noticed.”
The chandelier earrings were trembling more visibly.
