didn't know you had a lab," he said, pausing and looking around
the small room. What had once been a ramshackle workstation was
transformed into a true alchemist's workshop, filled with crucibles,
flasks, and shelves stocked with a variety of alembics and cucurbits.
"I wanted to help make ends meet during the supply shortages in the
hospital," she said, eyes darting past him to see if there was anyone else
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448 • SenLinYu
with him.
She used to dream about Luc visiting her lab, seeing her work, and
realising everything she was doing for him, but instead of elation, all she
felt was worry.
She couldn't be late tonight.
Luc smiled, but it was one of the broad ones he made when per-
forming. "Sol always provides, doesn't he? Why didn't you tell me?"
"It just— never came up I guess," she said, twisting the jar of salve in
her hands.
His smile vanished. "Well, I guess there's a lot I don't know, isn't
there?"
Her spine went rigid.
He wasn't looking at her. "I went to see Falcon Matias. I wanted to
tell him that he shouldn't have talked about you like that in the meeting,
that you'd only done what you'd been asked. And he told me that you
were censured, months ago, and that's why he doesn't trust you, and why
there are new healers. Because you proposed using necromancy on our
dead soldiers."
He gave a dry laugh. "Apparently everyone knew about it except me."
Helena's mouth went dry. "Don't be mad at Lila," she said. "She
wasn't there either."
Luc's jaw clenched. "I know she wasn't. But she still found out. Soren
told her, but no one told me. You could have told me."
She blinked hard. "I was afraid you'd think it meant I didn't believe
in you, and I do, I just—want this to be over."
"Hel . . ." He looked down, fidgeting with the ignition rings on his
fingers. "This isn't your war."
She flinched at that. "What do you mean, it's not my war? I've been
here from the start. I promised you—" She shook her head. "You'd never
say this to Lila. To anyone else."
He looked pained as he shook his head. "No, I wouldn't, because
everyone else knows that in the battle between good and evil, it gets
worse before it gets better. That it's our job to stay the path and not give
into the temptation of doing what's easy."
Her throat closed, and she stepped back, her eyes burning with hurt.
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Alchemised • 449
Easy?
"I know you meant well, you were just trying to help, and to you it
seems like there's a solution right there that we're wasting, but we're—
I'm held to a different standard than that. Sol expects more. And—if
you want to be a part of this, you have to believe that."
She could see Matias's plan now, tricking Luc into thinking it would
better and kinder to send Helena away. That she didn't belong, someone
like her couldn't understand the Northern Faith and Northern ways.
Then Luc would see it as giving her up, not punishing her, if he sent her
away.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I was wrong, I know that now. It won't happen
again. I promise."
He exhaled. "No, I'm the one who's sorry. This is all my fault. I leave
you here alone all the time and assume you'll be fine, but that's not fair.
I'm going to fix this." He nodded. "Starting tonight. The unit's on re-
serve because of the Abeyance. How about I show you that array. We
can catch up and do—anything you want. You can show me what mad
genius things you're up to in here." He smiled his crooked smile. "What
do you say?"
He held out his hand out.
"I have work tonight," she said, her voice painfully small. "Abeyance
is alchemically significant for—things."
"Oh. Right . . . well," he forced a smile, "next time then."
She managed a nod and a tight smile back. Her eyes returned to the
clock, gauging the distance to the Outpost, the fastest she could get
there. Even if she ran the whole way, even if the checkpoint had no line,
she wasn't going to make it in time.
Luc was still standing there, clearly hoping she'd change her mind.
She turned away awkwardly and started measuring things, pretend-
ing she'd forgotten him, but it took more than a minute of painful si-
lence before he quietly left.
Before the door shut, she heard Lila's voice say, "I'm sorry, Luc."
Helena's hands went still, and she waited, trying to guess how long
it would take for them to reach the stairs or the lifts so that they wouldn't
see her leaving. While she waited, she pushed the conversation away,
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450 • SenLinYu
down within her mind and memory, trying to make it stop clawing her
heart open.
Helena ran once she reached the bridge. She was still ten minutes
late.
Kaine raised an eyebrow when she burst in, so breathless she dou-
bled over.
"I thought you were finally standing me up," he said.
She braced her hands on her knees, catching her breath. "Someone—
wanted to talk. Couldn't— rush off."
There was an atrocious stitch in her side. She pressed her hand
against it, trying to soothe the ligaments. Her lungs were burning.
Still winded, she got to work, pulling out all her supplies from the
medical satchel strapped over her shoulder and belted at the waist.
"Do you always carry this much in that bag of yours?" Kaine asked as
he watched.
"Usually it's empty, so I can fill it up in the wetlands." She looked at
him more closely. "How do you feel?"
He tilted his head, considering. "My regeneration is slower right
now, and the array doesn't feel like a screw being twisted through my
consciousness. It's lovely."
He took a sip of something amber, swaying, and she realised that he
was slightly drunk. Slower regeneration indeed.
"That's good, because I think it's best if I keep you conscious for
this," she said. "I'll need you to move as I work, to make sure the new
tissue won't tear or heal rigid, because it might keep regenerating that
way." She drew a deep breath. "This is probably going to hurt a lot."
"You wouldn't believe how often people say that to me."
"I'm serious." She sterilised her hands. "Drinking is probably for the
best tonight."
Beginning on his left shoulder, she pressed two fingers very close to
one of the incisions. He tensed, but it had been a long time now since
he'd flinched at her touch.
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Alchemised • 451
The edges of the wound looked freshly cut. The effect of the lumith-
ium was weaker because of the Abeyance.
Extrapolating heavily on the way he'd regenerated when he lost his
arm, she believed her vivimancy could guide his regeneration back on
track, but she had to proceed cautiously. Make a mistake and he might
be stuck with it.
She applied a thick layer of topical opium to the area she wasn't
working on.
"Ready?"
He nodded.
She began with a small section where the titanium-lumithium alloy
had been fused into the bone, regenerating enough tissue to close the
incision over the metal. Not too much scar tissue, but not too little.
Once formed, the tissue stayed alive. Ferron's regenerative abilities
were finally strong enough to withstand the array's energy.
She made him fully rotate, extend, arch, and stretch his shoulder. The
other incisions began to bleed. Helena winced.
The new scar tissue pulled, threatening to tear. She tried altering the
tissue composition to increase its elasticity, but the regeneration was
stubborn.
She used a scalpel to cut it away, and as she'd feared, it began regen-
erating back. She had to use her own resonance to suppress his regen-
eration as she sliced the healed tissue open and started again.
Kaine said nothing, but his breathing was shallow, and his resonance
hummed through the air.
When she finished with the first array point, she could no longer feel
the lumithium there, as if he'd internalised it.
She completed a second one before Kaine finally broke.
"I need a minute." His voice was shaking as he stood and walked
over to the bar. He grabbed the closest bottle and drank straight out of
it.
She wiped her forehead with a cloth, realising only then how hard
her heart was pounding.
Kaine returned, gripping one bottle by the neck and two more laced
in the fingers of his other hand, dropping onto the chair and pressing
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452 • SenLinYu
his forehead against the back of it.
He drank steadily through the rest of the night until there was an
accumulation of bottles littered around him. It was enough alcohol to
kill most people. Helena's hands began to cramp. Every time she had to
pause to massage them and force her fingers back into compliance,
Kaine would go and retrieve another bottle.
When it was finally over, she wiped away the remaining blood and
applied a copper-based ointment.
The scars were all an angry agitated red, but every incision was finally
closed.
"There." She felt lightheaded as if she were high in the mountains,
the air turned thin.
Kaine said nothing, finishing the bottle in his hand.
She turned wincing at the mess of bloodstained linen and all dirty
instruments. Even with the ports open, they were always short on ban-
dages.
She wiped the tools clean and packed everything away. When she
turned back, Kaine had stood. His shoulders were twisting and contort-
ing as he moved. Small movements at first, but they progressed until his
arms were overhead, his back arched like a strung bow. He gave the
most indecent- sounding moan, his face slack with relief.
His arms dropped to his sides as he drew a deep breath, shoulders
still rotating, giving a low shuddering sigh that Helena felt through her
own nerves.
She snatched up her satchel, lightheaded with exhaustion and relief.
"Well, I'll be off now."
He turned instantly. His eyes were dark, but there was that silvery
sheen to them she'd noticed a few times before.
His movements were loose and languid the way he used to move,
except now he looked entirely different from the boy he'd been a few
months ago. Not just because of the silver threading at his temples, or
because pain had reset his expression into something much harder. He'd
aged, his body seemingly lurching through time.
"Why so eager to be off ?" he said.
She felt like a cornered animal. She hadn't realised how accustomed
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Alchemised • 453
she'd grown to his injury, to the energy he devoted to tolerating the
pain.
His full attention was blistering.
"Is someone waiting for you?" he asked when she tried to sidle to-
wards the door.
The question caught her off guard. She blinked, a lump rising in her
throat.
"No," she said.
He grinned. "Nor I. Let's drink in celebration. What do you want?"
He went to the bar, scanning the remaining bottles.
"I think the once was enough—"
He picked up a bottle, sniffing it and holding it up in the light. "This
one."
He came over, decanter in hand, and Helena was nearly overcome
with the instinct to bolt.
The way he moved reminded her of a panther she'd once seen in the
zoo. No bandages, no shirt. There was so much bare skin and now that
she was not healing it, it was simply there.
She backed into the wall. "I'm not sure—"
"Stay," he said softly, and his head dipped so close she felt his breath
in her hair. "You know, there's something about you, Marino, that in-
spires the most terrible decisions from me. I'll know better, but then I'll
still . . ."
His voice trailed off as he tucked a stray curl behind her ear, finger
running along her jaw.
It dawned on her then: He was intoxicated. Properly drunk, from the
combination of alcohol and the euphoria of being healed, and as a re-
sult, he was being—
This.
She should stay. For the purpose of her mission, staying during mo-
ments like this was her job. The point of healing him. But he was so
hard to predict; he was in a good mood now, but there was no knowing
how long it would last.
What kind of person was Kaine Ferron without inhibition.
Her throat closed, threatening to choke her.
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454 • SenLinYu
His thumb tilted her chin up as he stared at her through darkening
eyes.
"You have such a singular mind. Even when I'm not inside it, I can
still see it churning away behind those eyes of yours."
Helena's pulse thrummed. He pressed the decanter into her hands,
and when she looked down and tried to hand it back, he took her face
in both hands, tilting it up so she had to meet his stare.
His hazel-grey eyes were gone, replaced by a silver-bright glow.
This was no mere transmutation; Kaine Ferron was becoming some-
thing altogether new. She had finalised the process with her bare hands,
drawn into completion something that he alone knew the entire pur-
pose of.
"Stay," he said, his voice coaxing, pleasure-soaked, his face so close to
hers. "Have a drink with me."
Instead of perpetually ice-sharp and guarded, he felt like something
she might drown in.
"Just—one drink," she said, her voice barely wavering.
He smiled. The first real smile she'd ever seen from him.
"One drink," he said.
He pressed a finger beneath the decanter she held, lifting it up, and
watching as she brought it to her lips.
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CHAPTER 37
The alcohol burned down Helena's throat, bright and
smooth, leaving an aftertaste like wood smoke on her tongue.
She handed the decanter back, not sure why they were passing some-
thing so unwieldy.
One sip and she could already feel the alcohol loosening her insides
as he gestured towards the sofa. She curled up nervously on the far end.
He pushed the bottle towards her and when she tried to demur, he
slid closer, his body closing in, sending her heart skyrocketing.
"You need to catch up."
"I don't have a regenerative liver," she said in protest, looking dubi-
ously at the amount inside and realising only then that the entire bottle
was the "one drink" she'd agreed to.
The sofa was long enough that there was no reason for him to be so
close, but there were barely inches between them. She took another sip
and tried to return it, but he refused to take it, watching her like a curi-
ous cat before it springs.
"You're going to regret this if I start crying." She could already feel
the alcohol in her face. "I get emotional when I'm drunk."
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456 • SenLinYu
His eyebrows furrowed. "Is there a reason to cry?"
She looked down, rubbing her thumb over the etched pattern on the
decanter. "There's always a reason."
Kaine shifted, rubbing his shoulders against the sofa like a cat mark-
ing its territory. His eyes fluttered shut as he moaned. "I never realised
how much I enjoy leaning against things."
"Should I give you and the sofa some privacy?" she asked, trying to
scoot farther into the corner.
He stilled, eyes instantly opening, and reached towards her. "Don't
go."
Heat rose all the way to the roots of her hair. She looked away, drink-
ing more.
"I know you feel a lot better, but you need to be careful for the next
few days," she said between sips. "I think I did everything right so the
scar tissue won't tear, but once the Abeyance is over, things might
change. If it feels off, at all, you can call me. I can keep coming to make
sure."
He shook his head in disbelief. "Is there anyone you don't feel re-
sponsible for?"
She looked away, trying to stifle Luc's voice in her head calling her
choices easy. "It's my job," she said quietly.
"Thank you, Marino."
She swallowed, lifting her gaze. "Still not Helena?"
He exhaled, avoiding her eyes.
"Helena." He said it slowly, drawing it out, as if he was testing the
way it sounded.
She smiled at him. "See? Not so hard."
He stared back at her without smiling back, and she tried not to be
distracted but he was so close, and still without a shirt on. Her eyes kept
dropping involuntarily. She wasn't trying look, but ordinarily when she
saw people without their clothes on, it was because they were dying.
He was— very alive.
Her breath grew short. She tore her eyes away, not wanting to be
accused of leering again, but he didn't seem to have noticed this time.
He was still studying her.
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Alchemised • 457
She couldn't tell how intoxicated he was, but she was beginning to
feel very drunk. Her head was growing heavy, and she had an over-
whelming desire to laugh and cry simultaneously.
"You should put a shirt on," she said, her voice jumping. "You must
be cold."
Faster than she could blink, her hand was in his, and he pressed her
fingers against his chest.
"Do I feel cold?"
She shook her head, speechless, his skin warm against her palm. He
didn't flinch when she touched him now, instead leaning into it.
"You can use your resonance, if you don't believe me."
A shiver ran down her spine.
"I guess you're all right," she said, her fingers brushing against his
skin.
He inhaled unsteadily, and she felt the shudder under her palm. His
hand was still over hers, but he wasn't holding it in place any longer.
She looked up and realised she found him handsome.
Before he'd been too young and vicious, like a newly hatched viper
striking at anything that moved. Then gaunt and dying and perpetually
furious looking.
Now there was something still about him. His features had filled
out. The threads of silver-white in his dark hair made him look even
older than she was.
The coldness she associated with him had become distant memory;
his skin was warm, and his breath where it touched her cheek was warm.
Drunk and feeling his heartbeat beneath her fingers, she couldn't re-
member when she'd stopped being afraid of him.
"I must admit," he said in a low voice as though making a confession,
"if anyone had told me you'd become so lovely, I would never have come
near you. I was rather blindsided when I saw you again."
Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
"You're like a rose in a graveyard," he said, and his lips twisted into a
bitter smile. "I wonder what you could have turned into without the
war."
"I— never thought about it."
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458 • SenLinYu
He nodded. "That doesn't surprise me." He reached out and captured
the loose curl behind her ear. "I remember your hair. Is it still the same?"
She flushed. He would remember that, of all things.
"Unfortunately," she said.
"Like you then," he said, twisting the curl so it wrapped around his
fingertip, "Trapped in place, but still the same somewhere underneath."
She stared at him, startled by the remark, and then tears welled up
and streamed down her cheeks. His eyes widened.
"Gods, Marino, don't cry," he said hastily.
"Sorry," she said, pulling her hand free and scrubbing her face. "I'm
just— really drunk."
The moment vanished like mist in sunlight. She wiped her eyes sev-
eral times, suddenly feeling so raw.
When she glanced up, he'd looked away, his eyebrows knit together.
She'd never seen him so casually expressive before. As they sat there,
she felt as if she were finally seeing the real him. He looked so sad at
first; but as she watched, an empty look of bitterness filled his eyes,
darkness spreading across his face.
She reached towards him, not sure what she was doing but wanting
to pull him back from wherever his thoughts were taking him. She
caught his left hand in hers, and when he didn't resist, she pressed her
thumbs up across the palm until his fingers flexed and began massaging
it from the wrist to the fingertips.
"Why do you do that?" he asked after a minute.
"My father used to do this for me," she said without looking up. "He
said alchemists were like surgeons, so we have to take care of our hands."
"But why are you doing it for me?"
Her fingers stilled briefly; she stared at the lines of his palm. "My
mother died when I was seven. She'd been sick for a long time. All my
life actually. One day I went to wake her, and she was—cold. She'd
slipped away in the night, no warning, no goodbyes. After that, I was
afraid to go to sleep. I wasn't scared of being dead, but I was worried my
father or I might slip away like that and leave the other all alone. So he'd
hold my hand until I fell asleep, so I'd know he was there. You looked
lonely just now, so I thought . . ." She shook her head and let go. "I don't
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Alchemised • 459
know. It's nothing. Sorry."
She sat awkwardly fidgeting with her fingers. If she stayed much
longer, the checkpoint would close and she'd be trapped outside the city
overnight. As she opened her mouth to excuse herself, he spoke.
"Would you do something for me?" The question was quiet.
She looked up. His expression had relaxed again, and his hair had
fallen across his forehead, softening his features.
She scanned him quickly. "What do you want?"
He tilted his head. "Will you take your hair down? I want to see it."
She blinked in surprise. "Really?"
He just gave a short nod, watching her.
She reached up awkwardly and pulled the pins out. The two braids
tumbled down, and she removed the ties, running her fingers through
the strands to unbraid them, feeling the tension in her scalp release as
she dropped her hands into her lap, not wanting to see his reaction, heat
already scalding her face and neck.
"There. My mane."
He stared in silence, as if he needed time to take it in. "I didn't realise
it was so long."
She squeezed the pins, daring to glance up. "The weight makes it
more manageable."
He said nothing else, just staring as if mesmerised.
She flushed. Having her hair loose felt as if she was revealing some-
thing deeply intimate about herself, something she was accustomed to
keeping carefully put away because it was so often treated as either un-
acceptable or pitiable. She wasn't prepared for this kind of reaction.
He leaned forward, lacing his fingers into her hair along her temple,
running his fingers through it. His expression curious. She shivered at
the sensation, at the nearness of him.
"It's softer than I expected," he said. His eyes were fascinated.
She didn't know what to say.
His hand slid up her neck and tangled with the curls at the base of
her skull. His breathing had grown shallow.
He wasn't looking at her hair anymore; his eyes were on her face, on
her lips, that silver gleam lighting them again as he shifted closer.
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460 • SenLinYu
"If you don't want me to kiss you, you should say so now," he said.
He was so near, she could taste his breath, the burn of alcohol on it.
Everything had become blurred and dreamlike, except him.
She could feel the weight of her life bearing down, crushing her day
by day, always taking more than she could spare, but she could also feel
Kaine, the warmth of him and his fingers laced through her hair.
He was gentler than she thought he could be. He looked at her like
he saw her.
And he was asking.
She kissed him.
A real kiss this time.
The instant her lips met his, he took control. As if she'd sprung
something loose in him, his arm was around her waist, drawing her to-
wards him, pulling her close until their bodies pressed together, and she
was on his lap.
Her hands were on his shoulders, fingertips brushing across the out-
ermost point of the array while he deepened the kiss as if wanting to
consume her. When his lips left hers, he arched her neck back, his
breath and tongue hot on across her bared throat.
He seemed to be mapping her with the span of his fingers, a topog-
rapher exploring the curve of her clavicles, every dip and rise of bone
and flesh.
He pulled her so close that she could feel the barrier of her clothing
between them, her skirts around her hips. His hands gripped her waist,
thumbs tracing along her ribs.
She ran a hand along his jaw, when her palm grazed his cheek, he
pressed his face into it, eyes fluttering shut, a breath escaping him, as if
he were starved for touch.
His hands slid up her back, following the length of her spine, and
she arched like a cat, leaning into him. His touch sent a heady rush
through her, her mind tumbling as if caught in a wave.
She hadn't realised how much she'd wanted to be touched. That she
was starved for it, too.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, clinging to him, her
heart pounding so violently she could hear it. A bruising pleasure rip-
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Alchemised • 461
pled through her at his touch, making her chest clench. His fingers on
the buttons of her shirt, unfastening them one by one. The layers be-
tween them slipping away.
She had not comprehended her stark lack of intimacy until this mo-
ment. Now awakened, it seemed to claw out from under her skin, a need
that she'd only ever known as an absence.
She knew that people enjoyed sex, but she had always thought it was
an indulgence. She had not known it was a hunger.
Or that she was starving.
She pressed closer, wanting to erase every sliver of space between
them, so tired of being always alone. A thing apart, reduced to her func-
tions. Healer. Chymist. Liaison. Tool.
Whore.
Her eyes burned and she closed them, trying to slip free and lose
herself in a place where her thoughts couldn't catch up, but they chased
her down, insinuating themselves beneath her skin where Kaine's fin-
gers didn't reach. Whispering through her skull, like a damning, mock-
ing chorus.
This was a mission. A job. What she'd been sent to do. What did it
say about her, that she was so eager? So hungry for this feeling of being
wanted. Desired?
Kaine's teeth scraped along the curving bone of her jaw, his touch
evoking an ache that nearly split her open.
When he bit down on the side of her neck, she shuddered with a
gasping moan, fingers grasping, digging into his skin, and he turned her
until she was beneath him on the sofa, his warmth and weight sur-
rounding her, pressed against her.
It was happening so fast. Why would he so suddenly want her?
Reality caught up like a blow to her chest: He didn't.
He was drunk. And no longer injured.
After months of agony, he was ravenous for pleasure and physical
release.
And she was here. Drunk and compliant, ready to be consumed.
A starved wolf would sate itself on anything.
She stared at him, her ribs clenching around her lungs until she
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462 • SenLinYu
couldn't breathe. Shame burning trails down her temples as she recoiled.
Kaine went still, then lifted his head. He looked at her for only a
moment, then pulled his hands away and himself off.
"I think it's time you go," he said.
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CHAPTER 38
Helena sat up but didn't move to leave. She just sat beside
him on the sofa, trembling as she fought back tears. She looked over at
the clock and a wave of despair washed over her.
"The checkpoints are closed now," she said. "I can't get back into the
city until morning."
He sighed, sitting back and looking away from her.
She wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her shirt closed, fum-
bling at the buttons, her chest hitching as she tried not to cry.
"Why are you crying?" he finally asked.
She smeared at her cheeks with the back of her hand. "Because I'm
lonely, and kissing you, and you don't even like me."
He looked at her and then tilted his head back and stared at the ceil-
ing for a full minute.
"Why do you think I was kissing you?" he finally asked in a tight
voice.
"Because I'm here."
He looked at her again. "Why'd you kiss me?"
She stared across the room at a tapestry of Tellus, spinning the earth
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464 • SenLinYu
into being.
"You made me feel like the parts of me that aren't useful still deserve
to exist. Like I'm not just all the things I can do."
The decanter was on the floor, abandoned. Helena snatched it up.
There was only a little left. She had a lingering hope that if she finished
it, she might reach the point of inebriation beyond feeling.
He watched her drink and then leaned back, slinging an arm over his
eyes. When she glanced over, his arm had slipped down, and he was
asleep.
She stared at him for a long time, studying his features, trying to
pinpoint the changes in his face, but her own eyes were heavy.
She should get up. Move to the chaise over by the desk.
Her vision dimmed. She'd let her eyes rest, just for a moment. Then
she'd go . . .
When she woke, she was still on the sofa, and so was Kaine, except
somehow they'd ended up tangled together. Her face was crushed
against his chest, his elbow prodding her ribs, and his chin was digging
into the top of her head.
It was a miracle that neither of them had fallen off the sofa.
Helena didn't move immediately; her head was on the verge of
cracking open. She suspected that any sudden movements would result
in a lot of smoky, overly expensive whisky coming back up.
She managed to slip a hand up to her face, using her vivimancy to
alleviate some of her nausea before slowly extricating herself.
Kaine didn't even twitch. He was insensate. He probably hadn't slept
properly since spring.
She gripped her satchel and went to the heavy secured door, prying
it slowly open, and fled without looking back.
She threw up over the dam, and again crossing the bridge, retching
into the river. Rather than feel better, she felt worse.
She made her way slowly back towards Headquarters, wanting to
kick herself. She'd kissed Kaine Ferron. Not a fake, strategic kiss but a
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Alchemised • 465
real one, and he'd returned it, and it would have been the perfect op-
portunity to take the next step, but she'd blown it.
Kaine had handed himself to her on a platter, gone above and be-
yond what Crowther and Ilva had ever hoped, and Helena had sabo-
taged herself because it wasn't real and she'd wished it was.
She'd let herself become wrapped up in her feelings at being com-
pared to a rose and called lovely, at having aspects of herself that no one
had ever liked treated as a source of desire.
Apparently that was all it took for Ferron to seduce her.
Just thinking about it left her cold, a pit of nauseous shame threaten-
ing to choke her.
"Hel." Soren's voice broke into her thoughts as she came through the
gatehouse into Headquarters. He was sitting with a group of the guards.
She stared at him, dazed by her own thoughts, too hungover to
speak.
"Are you all right?" he asked. "What happened to your hair?"
She didn't understand the question until she reached up and remem-
bered it was loose, tangling around her shoulders.
"Brambles," she lied promptly.
His eyebrows knit together, studying her with his deep-set eyes.
"You should be careful out there, especially during the Abeyance."
"I only went out after light," she said, trying to slip past. "Just a bit of
harvesting, I need to process it."
Soren was still watching her. "You know, I forgot your hair looked
like that. It's pretty, the way you braid it now."
"Yes," she said, forcing a smile, her eyes burning. "It's best when I
keep it braided. I hardly know what to do with it when it's like this."
She went straight to her room and into the shower, scrubbing herself
violently, trying to erase the physical memory of Kaine's hands. The
water was hot, and she turned it up until it was scalding on her skin,
standing under the spray until she was raw from the heat.
She wasn't crying. It was just the spray of the shower. It was just
water on her face.
She barely towelled off before quickly pulling her hair into two
braids so taut they tugged at her face. She coiled them at the nape of her
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466 • SenLinYu
neck, letting the pins scrape across her skin as she lodged them into
place.
She didn't let herself look in the mirror until she was done, until
there was not a stray curl to be seen.
She was restocking the hospital inventory when one of the order-
lies materialised beside her, placing several bottles of plasma expanders
in a box.
"Crowther wants you to meet him at the lifts, right away," the girl
said without looking at Helena.
Helena turned sharply. The girl was soft-featured with soulful eyes,
and Helena was certain she'd seen her before, but the girl was unobtru-
sive enough that she only flickered on the edge of Helena's memory.
Of course Crowther would have eyes everywhere, including the hos-
pital. Still, it set Helena on edge.
"Who are you?" Helena said as the girl seemed about to slip away.
"No one."
"What's your name?" Helena wanted to know who to look out for on
the roster.
The girl looked up, seeming flattered at the question. "Purnell."
Purnell. She felt she'd heard the name before. She nodded absently.
"All right, you can go."
The orderly hurried off.
Helena finished restocking and headed reluctantly towards the
Tower.
Crowther was waiting for her. The lift went down.
In the tunnels, there was a young boy crouched beside the door. Hel-
ena blinked and realised it was Ivy, Crowther's other vivimancer, her
hair tucked up under a cap. She looked like a street urchin.
Ivy stood up and threw open the door. The room contained a single
figure restrained in a chair, head slumped forward, breathing shallowly.
"Who is this?" Helena asked, wanting to bolt. The smell of old blood
and dampness underground made her sick.
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Alchemised • 467
"One of the Aspirants sent to Hevgoss," Crowther said. "Intercepted
and brought back, but he's proving difficult. He's quite desperate for a
taste of eternal life. He's requiring more persuasion than he can cur-
rently survive."
Helena expected severe burns but found vivimancy instead.
There were no visible signs of torture. No cuts or any external
wounds. Instead the corticospinal tract in his spine had been pinched,
paralysing him but leaving his sensory nerves intact.
That way, he would feel everything.
Beneath his skin, Ivy had flayed him, using vivimancy to sever the
individual layers of skin. Blood had pooled between each one. In some
areas, he was flensed down to the muscle.
It was one thing to heal people injured in battle, but healing torture
was a different kind of horror.
Crowther did not seem to think that any physical violation went too
far in the war against necromancy, so long as the soul was not violated.
Based on the tenets of the Faith and the Eternal Flame, there was noth-
ing wrong with the torture of necromancers or aspiring necromancers;
flesh was an inferior substance to eventually be consumed by fire any-
way. What these people were willing to do to civilians and the Resis-
tance was far worse than anything Crowther did to them.
The prisoner regained consciousness while she was working on his
feet.
"I know you," he said, raising his head. His Northern dialect was
thick, the kind that pulled hard on the consonants.
She glanced up. He had wheat-coloured hair and thick stubble across
his face.
"You're Holdfast's little foreign bitch."
She looked away again, ignoring him, determined to finish without
speaking. She felt marginally less sorry for him now.
"I'm going to tell you a secret," he muttered while she was finishing
his hands. "You're going to lose this war. No one can stop the Undying.
They're the new gods. Someday I'm going to be one of them. People are
going to know the Lancasters."
She looked up again. Now she remembered him; he'd been at the
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468 • SenLinYu
Institute and left after receiving his certification. A guild family. Nickel,
she thought it was.
"Once I'm Undying, I'm going to kill that little bitch so slowly she'll
beg me for it. Everything she does to me, she'll get it tenfold. And then
I'm going to bring her back." His teeth bared gruesomely.
Helena's jaw tensed, and she fought to stay focused. She was sup-
posed to leave patients conscious. Crowther didn't want them waking
and finding themselves healed, he wanted them dreading, thinking
about what would happen to them once she was done.
Once she finished, she stood and left without a word.
Ivy and Crowther reentered the room together, the door shutting.
Screaming began vibrating through the door, echoing down the under-
ground corridor.
Helena walked farther, trying to escape it, but it followed her.
She wandered blindly through the tunnels, not caring if she became
lost amid them. They turned and twisted, opening into a large room lit
by green glass sconces. There were dozens of tunnels leading into it. The
walls were covered with intricate but faded murals. It looked almost like
an abandoned church.
She'd had no idea any of it existed, buried beneath the Institute. The
screaming seemed to carry along all the tunnels, magnifying and con-
centrating in the room. The place had a sick, eerie feeling about it.
She entered another tunnel, trying to get away, but no matter which
one she took, or which way she turned, they all seemed to lead back to
the same room. As if to mockingly remind her that she could not escape
herself, and what she had become. This was what the war had made her.
Finally she turned slowly back, walking towards the screaming, tired
of running from herself.
She'd climb over tortured bodies, sell herself, and tear out Kaine Fer-
ron's heart if that was what it took to win.
She was called in two more times before Lancaster finally broke. By
the third time, Helena didn't think he was still sane.
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Alchemised • 469
Waiting in the underground passages, ears plugged to try to keep
from hearing what was happening in the next room, she'd reevaluated
her assessment of the previous night.
Now that it was a little less fresh, her missteps felt less disastrous.
Kaine did feel some sort of partiality towards her. After all, he'd
wanted her to stay.
However, whatever flicker of desire or fondness he felt was barely
kindled. Too much fuel too fast would smother it. It was for the best
they'd stopped when they did. That he was left wondering what could
have happened.
She suspected he burned for things more deeply than he knew.
Therefore, the key would lie in cultivating that spark into something
beyond his control.
He was too calculating for anything else to be effective. It was all or
nothing. Leave him as the threat he was, knowing that he was now in-
finitely more enabled by her to achieve his desires, or try to redirect his
ambition and obsessive nature onto herself.
People always said there was no greater temptation than the forbid-
den.
As for the fact that she wanted him back . . . that she was so willing.
She chewed anxiously on her thumbnail.
It was for the best. Everyone had always said she was a terrible liar.
The door opened, and Ivy came out. Helena looked over at her.
"Again?"
Ivy shook her head, shutting the door. "Crowther's still working on
him."
Ivy crouched down next to Helena, drawing a finger idly through the
dirt on the ground. Helena watched her in silence, trying to ignore the
smell of burned meat beginning to permeate the air.
"You know," Helena couldn't help but say, "there's other ways to get
information out of people. You don't have to torture them."
Ivy looked up with her sharp eyes glittering. "I like hurting them. It's
the best part of the job. The rest is boring."
"Oh."
There was long silence. Finally Ivy spoke up. "Can vivimancy get rid
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470 • SenLinYu
of memories? Make someone forget something so they'd never remem-
ber it?"
Helena watched her curiously. "Is there something you want to for-
get?"
Ivy shook her head, staring down the tunnel, and her face twitched
oddly. "My sister, she doesn't remember things. Matron said it's called a
fugue–– her not remembering–– but it might all come back someday."
"Don't you want her to remember?" Helena asked.
Ivy gave a sharp shake of her head. "No." She looked up at Helena
and laughed. "You think I'm bad. If she ever remembers, she'd go com-
pletely mad."
The door opened, and the stench of burned meat wafted out. "Ma-
rino. We're done now."
Crowther had drugged Lancaster with something synthetic. He was
hallucinating wildly. He'd nearly bitten through his tongue, and Helena
had to paralyse him to reattach it. His skin was charred all over, al-
though Crowther was always careful never to burn deep enough to kill
the nerves.
Lancaster was babbling. It seemed Helena and Ivy had converged in
his mind. One moment he'd struggle violently, nearly biting her hands
when they were near him, threatening to pour molten metal through
her veins until her eyes burst like grapes, and the next he'd be trying to
leaning towards her and drawing deep rasping breaths, crooning that
she was a sweet thing, how once he was Undying, he'd keep her as a pet
with collar and chain, just like Holdfast.
Then he'd think was she was Ivy again, and he'd threaten to eat her.
Cut her into pieces. Put her back together wrong. Violate her in every
way imaginable.
When she was done, she wanted to peel the skin off every place he'd
touched her.
"Why don't you kill him?" she asked Crowther when she got out of
the room. Her skin was still crawling.
He seemed amused by this. "Why?"
"You have what you want. He's a waste of rations."
He shook his head. "Until we've found the guard he was looking for,
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Alchemised • 471
we'll keep him. Morrough's determination to unearth this Wagner in
Hevgoss indicates a significant degree of importance. Lancaster is a
uniquely devoted Aspirant. He could be useful as evidence if we are ever
in contact with Hevgoss. Don't worry about him. I've never lost a pris-
oner."
"Can I go then?" she said dully. Her clothes were stained with Lan-
caster's blood.
"Yes, I'll escort you," he said. "You healed Ferron? Was it a success?"
She gave an idle nod without looking at him. Whether he was
pleased or disappointed by this, she had no energy to care. "Yes. The
procedure was a success."
There was a pause as they ascended the stairs. Crowther blocked the
exit, his eyes skimming across her. "I hear you were out all night and
returned— dishevelled."
Her stomach clenched. "It took longer than expected. The check-
points were closed for curfew. I had to sleep there."
Crowther waited but she volunteered nothing else.
His eyes narrowed. "Carry on then."
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CHAPTER 39
Julius 1786
Helena returned to the Outpost that evening, but found
the door in the factory wall locked, the necrothrall that usually appeared
with the key nowhere in sight.
She went to the tenement, but the unit was cold and empty, too. She
lingered for a little while, just to be sure.
The next evening was the same.
She told herself it was a good sign. The healing was a success. Still, it
felt abrupt to suddenly have her evenings again.
Helena hadn't realised how much time she'd spent making salves
and journeying back and forth until all those hours were at her disposal
once more.
On Martiday, she went foraging and then headed towards the tene-
ments.
She wasn't even halfway there when a necrothrall stepped out of the
shadows, intercepting her. Helena's stomach clenched. It wasn't the nor-
mal man, but a woman. She showed an iron symbol on her pallid inner
wrist and then held out an envelope.
Helena took it, and the necrothrall turned and walked away.
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Alchemised • 473
Helena didn't usually open the missives, but this time she broke the
seal and pulled out the contents, looking for instructions or a message.
It was just an encoded intelligence report.
On Saturnis it happened again.
She hadn't considered that Kaine could do that, but there was noth-
ing about the way his information was passed on that required the in-
person meetings.
She spent her newfound free time in the laboratory experimenting
with Shiseo, who had become a collegial companion and collaborator.
Because healing was considered separate from medicine and medical
care, the two did not always complement each other. Many sedatives
inhibited vivimancy, requiring countering or workarounds in ways that
made the healing process unnecessarily complicated. Healing Kaine, far
from Matias's purview, had allowed her to begin considering the pos-
sibilities of chymiatria designed for vivimancy.
She began with tonics to support things like blood regeneration and
bone repair, but her primary interest was developing something that
would maintain vivimancy's effects by controlling the body's inner chy-
mistry. She and Shiseo synthesised a glycoside from foxglove and ex-
tracted alkaloids from nightshade, working piece by piece.
Creating a niche for herself was a consolation because Elain Boyle
was becoming widely preferred as healer. Helena tried to tell herself it
was a good thing to have a healer so naturally likeable. No one ever
jumped or even batted an eye when Elain forgot her gloves, but Elain's
social strengths also undermined her as a healer. She was too much of a
people pleaser, and it affected her methods. She had a relentless ten-
dency towards prioritising her intuition over her training and healing
symptoms rather than causes.
A necessary fever never ran its course when Elain was on shift. Peo-
ple felt better but developed infections more often and recovered slower.
In late Augustus, Basilius Blackthorne tried to retake the southern
tip of the East Island. Blackthorne was one of the Undying that every-
one feared. He didn't wear a helmet as most of the Undying did, making
no effort to hide his identity. Whether he won or lost his battles, the
devastation he left behind was terrible. He was known for eating his
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474 • SenLinYu
victims on the battlefield.
After days of fighting, when it was clear the attack was a failure,
Blackthorne set his own army on fire and sent them as far into Resis-
tance territory as they could get. The rainy season hadn't begun; every-
thing was unusually dry. The flames spread fast, jumping across the
tributary between the East and West islands and consuming a large
swath of the city. The sky to the south glowed red as an ember.
The hospital was flooded with burn injuries and lung damage, com-
batants and civilians alike.
The healers were on duty in the hospital for so long, Helena lost
track of the days. She didn't realise how tired she'd become until she was
in the war room, listening to reports, and Ilva made a comment that
they were unlikely to have an estimate on enemy losses for another day.
She'd already missed more than a week. She had to go.
When she got up the next morning, the room tilted. Lila was sound
asleep, a lump under the blankets in her bed. The battalion had returned
black with smoke. Luc had kept the fire from advancing on Headquar-
ters, but even his pyromancy had limits against an inferno.
Helena's head was hollow, throbbing from exhaustion as she dressed
and headed out.
Everything was eerily quiet, as if even the birds were afraid to sing.
The smoke hung like a shroud over the city.
Even the Outpost was quiet, but Helena paid no attention, just
looking for the necrothrall so she could get Kaine's missive and head
back.
She came around a corner and found four of them. She was so tired,
she stopped and stood staring stupidly for several moments, trying to
understand why Kaine would send four.
Then it dawned on her that they were not his. These were ordinary
combat necrothralls.
She immediately began backtracking, noticing only then that the
encampments that covered the Outpost were torn apart. The Undying
had retaken the Outpost, and she had walked straight into it.
She turned and fled, only to run into another group of necrothralls.
She had to retreat again, winding through the maze of buildings and
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Alchemised • 475
factories. She tripped over a body, not reanimated.
Every time she escaped one group, she stumbled across another.
Necrothralls didn't generally move fast, but they didn't need to. They
were herding her away from the gate, from the bridge, from the only
way off the Outpost.
She ripped her gloves off as she was cornered in a tight alley and
backed away until she hit the wall. It was narrow enough that they
could only enter a few at a time.
They shuffled forward.
A few carried weapons. It was hard to say what was worse.
When they got in range, she shoved her hands towards them, forc-
ing her resonance outwards, closing her eyes instinctively.
Her resonance flared for a moment and then burned out like a light-
bulb filament.
She opened her eyes, barely seeing the remaining necrothralls ap-
proaching because of how raw and wounded she felt inside, as if she'd
ripped out a vein.
Burnout was common for defence alchemists, who frequently
strained the limits of their range and abilities. It also happened to heal-
ers. Once it started happening a lot—
She forced herself to focus.
There was blood everywhere, but two of the necrothralls were still
coming towards her.
She fumbled for her knife, lost in the bottom of her satchel, barely
managing to grasp it in time.
She aimed for the nearest necrothrall's throat. Straight through to
the spinal cord. With her resonance burned out, she couldn't transmute
the blade, but she twisted it and jerked left. The head toppled off with a
grotesque squelch, body following as fiery, white-hot pain exploded up
her leg.
When she'd lunged towards one, the other necrothrall had tried to
stab at her with a metal spike.
It had missed her body and gone through her calf.
Helena nearly collapsed, slashing clumsily. She barely managed to
sever enough fingers that it couldn't jerk the spike back out.
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476 • SenLinYu
Her brain clamoured to pull out the spike as her calf muscles tore
around it, but she knew she'd bleed out if she did. The rough metal
shifted, and she bit through the sleeve of her shirt to keep from scream-
ing.
The necrothrall was still coming. Most of the fingers on one hand
were gone, but it could still bludgeon her, and she knew the most dan-
gerous part of necrothralls was often their teeth.
She gripped the knife tighter, forced to wait until it reached for her.
As soon as it was in range, she grabbed its outstretched hand, her absent
resonance like a hole inside her. Teeth swung towards her face, and she
shoved her knife straight through the V of the jaw.
Something slammed into the side of her head, sending her stum-
bling.
The arm was wrenched free of her grasp. Broken fingernails clawed
at her skin.
There was thick old blood in her eyes.
She lurched forward. Her left leg failed, but it gave her enough mo-
mentum to drive the knife through the top of the skull. Purple blood
spurted across her face as the necrothrall collapsed.
Helena stood dazed and gasping for breath, scrubbing at the
purplish- brown blood on her face. It was all she could smell.
She tried to make out where she was using the towers of the city to
orient herself. The bridge was on the far side from her, but the tenement
was nearby.
She'd hide there first, and then make a plan. She leaned against the
wall, trying to keep from putting weight on her left leg. Even dragging
it was agony.
She reached the tenement building and crawled up the steps, but it
was only as she reached the landing that she remembered that door had
a resonance lock. She couldn't get inside.
She crawled over and pressed her hand against it anyway, as if her
resonance were a well and there were some final drops she could plumb,
even though she knew burnout often took days to come back from.
She sat back cursing herself for being so accustomed to the routine
to be this careless. Her head was swimming although she didn't know if
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Alchemised • 477
it was from exhaustion or blood loss.
She found the cleanest spot in the corridor and forced herself to look
at her leg. Blood had coated her calf and foot, leaving an obvious trail.
Fortunately, necrothralls weren't generally aware enough to notice any-
thing that didn't move.
Her vision blurred, the pain seeming to crush her ability to think
down into a funnel.
No artery, she didn't think. She debated pulling out the spike, but
she didn't have enough supplies to pack a wound that large.
If she could reach the checkpoint, they'd get her to Headquarters,
but no one was going to come looking for her on the Outpost.
She fumbled through her satchel.
The priority was stabilising the spike, and applying pressure to re-
duce the bleeding. Then she'd plan.
She chewed on an abandoned sprig of yarrow as she wrapped ban-
dages around her leg.
Blood was already seeping through before she finished, and her mind
had gone sluggish.
She tried harder to focus, head lolling as she struggled to stay alert.
Stay awake. You have to stay awake.
Her vision lengthened. Her legs seemed far away, all the way down a
tunnel, and then everything faded away.
"What are you doing?"
Helena started, her leg jerking reflexively, pain bursting through her.
Kaine was standing over her, seemingly having appeared out of thin
air.
At least, she thought it was Kaine. Her vision was blurry, and his
presence seemed to swallow the space. As his face swam into focus, he
was glaring at her icily.
Her heart lurched at the sight of it.
"It's Martiday," she managed to say.
"What happened?"
She gestured limply at the metal spike still running through her calf.
He barely glanced at it. "Yes, I noticed. I'll admit, your commitment
to the bit is impressive. I can't say I expected you to go this far."
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478 • SenLinYu
She stared at him, not understanding.
"Tell Crowther I have no time for his tricks. Pull something like this
again, and he can consider the deal off." Kaine turned, walking away.
Her chest felt hollow as she watched him leave, realising that he
thought she'd injured herself on purpose, in a desperate bid for atten-
tion.
He paused at the top of the stairs, staring at the trail of blood before
looking back at her.
"Get up." He was speaking through clenched teeth.
She shook her head. "I'm waiting for my resonance to come back."
His head jerked sharply. "What?"
She looked down. "The fires . . . there was a lot—I was too tired
today. I didn't realise— never burned out before. So I'm—waiting."
Kaine walked back over and crouched in front of her, his eyes nar-
rowed. His hair was so much more silver now.
"Marino, what kind of vivimancy do they have you doing in the hos-
pital?"
"Depends who's injured." Her head was very light; her consciousness
was threatening to rise through the top of her head and float away.
Fingers snapped sharply in front of her face.
"Focus," he said. "Describe the healing you do. Are you just trans-
muting physical injuries away or are you using your vitality to keep
people alive?"
"Depends . . ." she said again. She was having trouble making her
eyes focus. His own eyes shone, and she stared at them, mesmerised.
"We use triage protocol. Can't afford to lose our combatants. Especially
not alchemists."
His jaw tensed. "I assumed they'd save that for the likes of Holdfast."
The corridor had stretched into a tunnel once more.
"Luc can't win by himself," she said.
Ferron was suddenly very close, reaching towards her. He pulled her
up off the ground, sending an inferno of pain through her body. She
screamed and fainted.
When her eyes opened again, she was in the tenement unit, lying on
her back, her injured leg elevated with a chair. She felt simultaneously
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Alchemised • 479
better and worse.
She was overwhelmingly thirsty.
Kaine was studying her calf where the spike ran through it.
"How do I heal this?"
She blinked sluggishly, the ceiling swirling overhead.
Think, Helena, you've taught healing before. "Numbing the area is the
first step, but I don't have enough blood to . . ."
Her words slurred away. Explaining the lack of saline and plasma
expanders was too many words to string together. Did he even know
how to numb? With the new healers, she'd use her resonance at the
same time and guide them, so that they'd know what to look for.
She was so thirsty.
She shook her head. "I don't think . . . It's . . . tricky for beginners . . .
nerves."
Annoyance flashed across his face. "I did paralyse you once. I'm fa-
miliar with nerves." His bare hand pressed just below her knee. "Here?"
She nodded and barely felt his resonance before her leg went numb.
She drew several deep breaths, feeling less shaky now that she wasn't
distracted with pain.
"Um," she said, swallowing, "you need to identify what's damaged
before you pull the spike out. Nerves, veins—I don't think it went
through the artery, but you should check. Might've fractured the bone.
Blood flow's easy to sense. Close the veins and arteries temporarily—
not too long."
Kaine was silent, his bare fingers pressed against her calf, and his
eyes went out of focus. She couldn't feel what he was doing, which
would normally bother her, but right now she was not lucid enough to
care properly.
He placed his hand on the spike. Despite being numb, she tensed,
bracing herself for the grind of metal against tissue.
Rather than pull it out, he transmuted it. The metal rippled in his
hand, shrinking out of the wound so that it didn't drag or tear. Only a
little blood spattered on the floor. He dropped the bar, studying the
puncture with a critical eye.
"I don't feel any trace metals left. Do I clean it?"
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480 • SenLinYu
She nodded, starting to tremble even though the spike was out and
the pain was gone. "There's leftover carbolic dilution in my satchel."
He rummaged through it and found the vial.
"Lucky I healed you," she said as he wordlessly unscrewed it and
poured the contents over the wound. It looked like water trickling
through and joining the puddle of blood on the floor.
Then he began closing the puncture. She warned him to only per-
form the most basic regeneration, because she didn't have the physical
resources for more.
Gradually the hole in her leg was gone, replaced with delicate, ex-
tremely inflamed new tissue, and he partially removed the block on her
nerves. Pain rolled through her like a wave. She'd need more healing,
but this was enough to get her back.
She tried to rotate her foot, but the muscles weren't intact enough.
She could limp, though.
"Thank you."
He didn't acknowledge her, wiping his hands off on a handkerchief
and pulling his gloves back on. He radiated impatience as she got up,
favouring her left leg. There was a new sort of hardness about him.
Her head was light, but she felt less wobbly.
She touched the door, but her resonance was still just a gap, like a
lost tooth. Her fingers skittered across the surface. Before she could say
anything, she heard the mechanisms inside move, and the door clicked
open.
She looked back, expecting to find Ferron behind her, but he was
still across the room.
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CHAPTER 40
Septembris 1786
Despite the Outpost being retaken, Helena returned the
following week. Even with necrothralls patrolling, there was no better
place to meet. Anywhere else in the city would have checkpoints main-
tained with living guards with long-term memories who'd inspect her
papers every time she passed through. Helena was too memorably for-
eign looking to safely move in and out of enemy territory.
The Outpost, although Undying territory, was only being minimally
patrolled by the necrothralls, something Helena would have known if
she hadn't been half asleep during the meeting.
Her leg still ached when she walked on it, a side effect of not being
able to heal herself for the several days it took for her resonance to re-
turn. Regenerated muscle took time to fully reintegrate, but the injury
wasn't anything permanent.
She navigated the Outpost cautiously, her knife gripped tightly in
her hand, but she only saw a few necrothralls at a distance. No solitary
necrothralls approached her with missives. She wondered if Kaine had
gotten the memo about still using the Outpost.
She was about to leave when her ring burned. She headed for the
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482 • SenLinYu
tenement.
He was seated at the table, waiting, when she arrived. She'd grown so
used to seeing him always straddling chairs, it was surprising to see him
seated on one properly.
His eyes swept from head to toe, as if expecting her to be bleeding
from somewhere again.
"I think it's time I trained you," he said as the door shut behind her.
She said nothing. She felt too many emotions to even begin to make
sense of them all.
So he was back, no explanation for his month-long disappearance,
while she'd been left to endure being written off as a failure and casti-
gated for wasting critical resources on a gamble that had failed to pay
off.
Crowther had been scathing, because although the missives had still
arrived every four days, Kaine passed on only the information he chose
to. They could not ask for anything. Everything they received was at his
discretion, for only as long as he chose to provide it.
Relying on Kaine Ferron was like walking on black ice, knowing that
at any moment it might break beneath their feet.
Her fingers curled into a fist, feeling the punctures in her palm, not
trusting herself to speak.
He tilted his head back. His dark hair was threaded through with
silver so that it almost gleamed. "How long have you been healing?"
She paused, calculating. "Little more than five years now."
There was an almost charring intensity in the way he was looking at
her. "I assume you're aware of the Toll."
She nodded.
"Have you burned out like that before?"
She shook her head. "No, it was the first time." Her fingers bumped
absently against her chest where the empty amulet hung beneath her
clothes. "I used to— handle it better."
"Well, that's something at least." He stood up. "How was it explained
to you? I assume that Falcon or the Holdfasts told you about it."
She looked away, staring out the window. "Vivimancy is a corruption
of resonance that can use vitality as well as the energy of resonance. It's
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Alchemised • 483
caused when an unviable soul sustains itself by stealing life from an-
other. Souls like that can only be purified through a life of self-sacrifice.
The toll is—penance. It's giving up what was stolen."
His mouth twisting into a sardonic smile. "Right. You mentioned
that your mother died when you were young."
She nodded wordlessly, cold all over. She'd still been in shock from
her father's death when Ilva had her sent away to Matias, a Shrike at the
time.
He had been the one to tell that she was the reason both her parents
were dead.
Her mother's mysterious sickness, diagnosed as a kind of consump-
tion, was the Toll. Not because her mother had been a vivimancer, but
because from the moment of conception, Helena's defective, corrupt
self had leached her mother of life from within her womb, stealing all
but those seven years away. That vivimancers were parasites by nature,
and they would rot and burn in the bowels of the earth for an eternity
if they did not repent and purify themselves by giving up every drop of
the vitality they'd taken.
Just thinking about it made Helena's head throb. All the years she'd
spent hovering over her mother, watching her father attempt cure after
cure, running them into debt buying expensive ingredients, and it was
Helena who'd been the cause.
"So . . ." Ferron said slowly, moving idly towards her, "you use your
vitality to save—anyone you're told to save, as penance?"
She wished he'd stop talking.
"I want to show you something." He was in front of her. "Give me
your hand."
She extended her left hand reluctantly.
He took it and she had barely time to brace herself before his reso-
nance shot down her arm into her chest, and she felt a hard yank.
It was like being wrenched forward on a cellular level. Her whole
body lurched as if his resonance were hooked inside her, trying to rip
her soul out, but before it could budge, a rebound of energy severed it,
and Ferron's resonance slammed back into him with bone-charring
speed.
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484 • SenLinYu
She felt it scorch his fingers as he let go. She almost fell backwards.
"What'd you do—" Her tongue scarcely worked. She doubled over
and nearly threw up.
He flexed his hand as if burned. "I just tried to take your vitality by
force. Notice anything?"
Helena's hand pressed against her chest, trying to erase that awful
pulling sensation that seemed diffused through her entire body. "It—
hurt?"
"It didn't work," he said. "It's not possible to take it by force like that.
If it was that easy—" He scoffed. "—Morrough wouldn't be bothering
with most of this. Try it yourself now."
Helena drew away from his proffered hand. "No thank you. I get the
idea."
His expression hardened. "I don't need you to get it, I need you to
believe it. You're being driven by the guilt over crimes you never com-
mitted, that you think you deserve to suffer for, and that's making you a
liability for me."
Of course this was all self-interest on his part. As usual.
"Take my hand," he said.
She grasped his hand limply.
"You know what your vitality feels like when you use it; feel for
mine."
She shot him a look. "You're not exactly normal."
She focused reaching with her resonance, not merely trying to get a
read on his physiology but searching for the actual spark of life within
him. Except it was not so much a spark as a small sun.
It was like being flung bodily into the face of Lumithia at full As-
cendance, a cold searing burn that etched itself into her teeth and bones.
She tried to ignore it. Pull. She had no idea how to do that. Healing,
when it required the use of vitality, worked in the opposite direction,
pushing in, giving, but she knew what it felt like when Ferron did it, so
she tried to imitate the feeling.
She reached with her resonance towards the overwhelming burn and
tried to tug at it. It prompted an instant recoil.
Her resonance rebounded like a rubber band snapping her finger-
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Alchemised • 485
tips. An odd look of amusement flickered on Kaine's face as she let go.
She swallowed, blinking hard. "But if that's—if that's true, then why
did my mother die? If I didn't take it?"
He exhaled. "My father sought treatment for my mother prior to my
birth. A vivimancer they employed believed she likely possessed a latent
degree of vivimancy, and didn't realise that using her vitality wasn't nec-
essary." He wasn't looking at her. "Perhaps it was similar for yours."
Hearing those words, Helena felt like an immense weight had been
partly lifted from her. It was possible that her mother's death, while still
her fault, had at least not been her doing. She drew a shaky breath, not
sure if she could believe it. Why would Kaine tell her this? Why would
he care about her guilt?
"Vitality is a strange thing," he said, stepping away. "It doesn't take
much to do things like necromancy or healing. If it did, necromancers
would hardly be a threat, and you would've been dead in a week as a
healer. Here's what interesting, though: If I were a necrothrall, you could
have ripped out my vitality. Reanimation doesn't fully bond with other
bodies, it just reactivates a corpse. Bennet would give almost anything
to be able to transfer souls between living bodies, but it always kills
them instead." He arched an eyebrow. "Do you see where I'm going
with this?"
"No."
He waved a hand, and despite being halfway across the room, the
lock turned and the door opened. Helena was horrified as a necrothrall
entered the unit.
"Ferron!" she said sharply, backing away, but she ran into something
solid. He'd moved behind her, and when she tried to escape the ap-
proaching necrothrall, he gripped her by the shoulders, trapping her in
place.
She tried to kick him, her heart racing. "Let go! Let go of me."
"You're not going to blast it apart, and you're not going to attack.
When it reaches you, you're going to take the vitality reanimating it."
"Are you insane?" She tried again to twist away, but he took her by
the wrist and pushed it forwards, firmly, so that her hand pressed against
the necrothrall's chest.
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486 • SenLinYu
It was a man. He looked as if he'd been around forty. He'd been dead
for a few days at least before being reanimated. She couldn't see a visible
cause of death, but she could smell it. It was probably hidden some-
where beneath his clothes. His eyes were empty, the whites yellow-
stained, the skin taut.
"Feel the energy," Ferron said softly. His hands were warm on her
shoulders, simultaneously bracing and trapping her.
She'd never touched a necrothrall with resonance like this, never ex-
perienced the dissonance of life and death entwined. There was a heart
beating sluggishly, oxygen-deprived blood crawling through the veins.
There was no life; it was just energy.
The living had a vibrancy, but the necrothrall was dead. It was like a
perpetual electric shock on an animal corpse to make the systems func-
tion.
"Do you feel it?" Ferron asked.
She gave a shaky nod.
"Then take it."
She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled. It was like a plant in loose
soil. The energy came loose, and a shock of power ran up her arm.
The world went silver-white, as if she'd exploded in place and then
instantly reconstituted.
She dimly heard the muffled thud as the necrothrall hit the ground.
She blinked to find Kaine kneeling beside the corpse.
He touched the hand for only a moment, and the dead man sat up,
standing and walking back out.
Kaine looked up at her. "If you're ever attacked by necrothralls again,
don't waste your energy obliterating them. Just rip out the reanimation."
He looked away. "It's possible it may keep the Toll at bay for you."
Helena said nothing. Beneath her skin, her nerves were still buzzing.
"I didn't know that was something vivimancers can do," she said, try-
ing to get her thoughts straight.
"I don't think that most can," Kaine said, straightening. "It's some-
thing only animancers are capable of."
He said it so casually that it took Helena a moment process his
words. She looked at him sharply.
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Alchemised • 487
"How'd you realise?" she said.
A thin smile curved across his face. "It was just a guess."
She flushed.
"I did think you were rather quick to catch on with the memory
trick." He straightened. "Now that you're not at risk of keeling over
from performing a bit of basic transmutation, I want to see your combat
forms."
Her stomach sank. She could already feel his impending judgement.
"It's been a while," she said, digging for her knife from her satchel. It
had fallen to the bottom, and she had to dig out several bundles of herbs
and sphagnum moss to find it. "I wasn't very advanced. Academic track,
you know."
"So was I." he said, watching her through insolently lidded eyes, but
she could see a gleam of silver beneath his lashes. "You should be wear-
ing that knife. You can't afford to waste time fumbling through that bag
of yours, and you should have at least two of them."
"Two knives would get in the way of my vivimancy."
He raised his eyebrows. "With thralls, yes, but not if you're fighting
the Undying. Or a chimaera."
She looked up. "Couldn't I still use vivimancy?"
"If you're close enough to touch them, they'll have already killed you.
You don't regenerate. To survive, you need distance."
She looked down at the knife in her hand. It was annoyingly hefty,
but everything standard-issue was. "A knife isn't going to give me much
more reach than I already have, and if I'm walking around armed, I'm
more likely to be noticed. It's safer to be mistaken for a civilian. Necro-
thralls usually leave them alone."
"Not anymore. With the losses incurred this year, now that the Eter-
nal Flame controls the entire East Island, there's no civilians any longer.
Anyone on the East Island, or elsewhere without the right papers, is an
enemy, and may be treated as such."
Helena's mouth went dry. "Anyone?"
"Man, woman, or child. When the Eternal Flame was constantly
losing territory, the Undying could afford to be magnanimous, but the
goal is eradication now."
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488 • SenLinYu
Helena knew about combat forms. Academically.
She had also practised them, but it had been a very long time.
Kaine seemed to think she was the most incompetent combatant
he'd ever seen. After only brief observation, he started her all the way
back with first-year forms, drilling them on and on until they were per-
fect.
After he was relatively civil about the animancy, she wasn't prepared
for how merciless he'd be about combat. He was completely vicious. It
was only marginally preferable to being chased around the room having
furniture thrown at her.
"I doubt this is going to save me from anyone," she said after a week,
growing uncomfortably sweaty. Her arm trembled as she raised the
knife over her head for the hundredth time and channelled her reso-
nance, altering the length and curve of the blade.
"If you can't master the basics, you're not going to survive anything."
A boot collided with the small of her back.
She gave a startled scream and barely managed to keep herself from
ramming face- first into the wall by getting one foot out to catch her
momentum, her knife curving instinctively as she spun around to face
him.
Her spine was throbbing. A little harder and he might have broken
it.
"What the fuck, Ferron?"
"Ah, back to surnames, I see," he said coolly.
"That. Hurt," she said through gritted teeth, touching her back gin-
gerly, her resonance preventing the swelling before it could start.
"Then keep your guard up." His eyes flashed. "I'm not training you to
take a test. Do you think combat is for standing around seeing who
transmutes best? You'll never know what's coming. You use your reso-
nance to predict attacks. If you let me close enough to hit you, I will.
Now keep going."
She shook her head, refusing to move.
His expression darkened. "I said, keep going."
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Alchemised • 489
"I'm not like you," she said venomously. "If you hurt me to teach me
a lesson, I need time to recover. And when I'm exhausted, I just make
more mistakes. I'm not staying here to see how much you have to hurt
me before you manage to remember that a trivial injury for you can
paralyse me. You're lucky you didn't just now."
His lips turned white. She turned away, sheathing the knife and
shoving it into her satchel.
"This isn't combat training," he said when she was at the door. "You're
going to get killed if you don't learn how to defend yourself. That's the
only way to survive."
"Well, whatever it is, you're a terrible teacher," she said as she opened
the door and slammed it behind her.
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CHAPTER 41
Octobris 1786
The war had always moved slowly, but as autumn set in, it
slowed to a crawl. The two sides held almost equal territory. The ports
had made a significant difference in the Eternal Flame's strength, but
they lacked any clear path to victory. The West Island was even more
vertical than the East. The way the towers and buildings interlocked
and intersected made it almost impossible to retake without risking
mass casualties.
The current balance was thanks to Kaine, but it was a tenuous stale-
mate because they had no idea when he might someday stop or, worse,
betray them.
At his reappearance, the pressure from Ilva and Crowther resumed
tenfold, but Helena had no idea how to make progress. Kaine was angry
and perpetually on his guard around her, and his methods of training
offered few openings, although he was noticeably careful not to hurt her
again.
Under his exacting eyes, she learned to key up her resonance until it
filled the air around her, sensing attacks coming before they hit.
"Finally," he said after she finally managed to block a light-speed
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Alchemised • 491
blow without breaking form at all and immediately followed it with an
attack.
It was the closest thing to praise she'd earned.
She slumped against the wall, breathing hard. The muscles in her
forearms and biceps felt raw and coppery from all the metal transmuta-
tions she'd done over and over. Her resonance ached inside her nerves,
brain buzzing, a hum that made her teeth itch.
It was no wonder Lila was always jittery when she came back.
She flexed her hands.
"You need a better knife; that alloy's wrong. It's slowing you."
She looked away. It was raining outside, water streaming across the
windows. She was so hot that she wanted to walk out and douse herself
in the fresh autumn rainfall.
"I don't have the rank for anything else," she said.
The Resistance metallurgists had years' worth of projects on their
dockets: tools, base weapons, rappelling harness gears, armour, pros-
thetics, not to mention the expectation that they invent new weaponry
as the war progressed. Without the Institute able to train new metallur-
gists, those they had were a critical resource. The generation who should
be learning the craftsmanship were all either in combat or dead.
Standard- issue was what everyone in the Resistance got. If they couldn't
fight with that, they couldn't fight as alchemists.
To obtain bespoke weaponry was something combat alchemists
dreamed of: weapons forged to perfectly match the owner's specific
resonance strengths and combat style. They were versatile, felt impos-
sibly light, and took almost no effort to transmute. They were also much
harder to defend against.
"What do you mean you don't have the rank? Aren't you a member
of the Eternal Flame?"
"Yes," she said quietly.
"I thought that was part of the package deal: You swear your life to a
set of asinine religious ideals and get a valuable weapon in compensa-
tion."
She stared at her shoes.
It was traditionally a part of joining the Order of the Eternal Flame.
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492 • SenLinYu
They were issued following a vow ceremony, a weapon to defend the
ideals they'd sworn to uphold. They were deeply symbolic.
But when Helena joined, it was just after Principate Apollo's death.
Many people had joined at the time. She'd been sixteen, just starting
basic training. New members going immediately into combat had
greater need. Helena didn't even know what type of weapon would be
suitable.
The matter had been forgotten when she became a healer. Weapons
were for those in combat. She was not, and never would be.
"There are more immediate needs than making me a special weapon
that I'd barely use," she said.
"Consider it an immediate need now. After six years, surely there's
been time," he said. "How many swords and suits of armour does Hold-
fast have?"
She bristled. "Luc fights at the front lines."
Kaine scoffed, his lip curling. "With fire. Get a better knife."
She returned with the same knife.
Kaine was across the room the instant she pulled it out. Moving
impossibly, terrifyingly fast, he was right in front of her. He ripped it
from her hand.
"Why do you still have this?" he hissed. "I told you to get a new one."
She tried to snatch it back. "I can't just show up on the docket like
that. People know weeks out before they're up for testing. It'd be notice-
able if I'm suddenly prioritised." She tilted her head back, meeting his
eyes, and recited verbatim, " 'Your request has been declined. It would
raise too many questions.'"
Ferron looked like he wanted to strangle her. He raised his hand as
if to fling the knife out the window but then drew a measured breath.
"Give me your resonance alloy then," he said, slamming the knife
onto the table.
"What?"
His eyes turned flinty. "Surely you can manage that at least?"
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Alchemised • 493
"Yes— but—" She was flabbergasted.
"What?"
Outside of the Eternal Flame, bespoke weaponry was prohibitively
expensive. That was why the weapons were such an honour. Especially
during the war, most of the metallurgists who hadn't joined the war ef-
fort on one side or the other had fled Paladia altogether and taken their
valuable talents to safer countries.
She kept staring wordlessly at him until he looked away. "You can
consider it thanks for healing my back."
She seized the opportunity. "Did it—did the scar tissue set properly?
I came back to check—but you—"
"They're fine," he said in a stiff voice, his posture rigid. His head was
turned so that she could only see his jaw. "I hardly feel them."
She exhaled. "Good. I was afraid that maybe something had gone
wrong and that's why you didn't come—"
He whirled on her. "It's not any of your fucking business."
She started back. "I just meant—"
"Fuck off, Marino." His voice was deadly soft. "I'm not your pet. I
don't need you."
Before she could reply, he ripped an envelope out from an inner
pocket and slammed it down on the table beside the knife, before stalk-
ing out.
Helena stashed her knife in the outer pocket of her satchel and set
out, vigilant until she passed the first checkpoint; then she let her foot-
steps slow, ignoring the rain.
What was it he'd said about the array? That it didn't countermand his
behaviour but wrote in new aspects. That it was easier for him to be
ruthless, and harder to resist impulses and what he wanted.
She'd spent so many evenings staring at it, she could still see when
she closed her eyes.
Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing,
Unhesitating, and Unyielding.
What Kaine was driven to do was unstated and thus left to his dis-
cretion. No doubt he'd thought himself clever, leaving himself that
loophole.
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494 • SenLinYu
Except Helena was the one who'd exploited it.
The decision to refuse Kaine's demand for a weapon had been a
gamble. Ilva and Crowther wanted to see what Kaine would do if he
was told no. Their excuse was within reason, but the choice itself had
been a test. They were forcing him to show his hand, and he had.
Helena was making progress.
She should be proud of that, but all she felt was the treachery and
danger of it.
She blinked and found she'd wandered to the rain garden. The creek
was swollen, overflowing its banks. The water streamed around Luna's
pedestal, but despite it, even after months, the prayer tower she'd built
still stood. All Helena's prayers were rejected.
She reached out and almost toppled them herself.
She looked up at all the buildings looming above, the rain splatter-
ing her face. It still startled her sometimes how beautiful the city could
be.
Even in the downpour, the buildings gleamed.
She looked at the abandoned shrine again.
Survive, Kaine kept saying. The only goal. She was learning to fight
not to win, but to escape. As if she were a prey animal.
She knew very well that if it ever came down to her and Kaine, she
would die. No matter how similar their abilities, murder was exclusively
within his purview.
She smiled bitterly at the difference between them.
Her death count was the numerical representation of her failures.
All the lives she hadn't saved, the ways she fell short.
For Kaine, it was a mark of power. His victims, even Principate
Apollo, all represented what made him so valuable.
They were the inverse and counter to each other.
A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.
As the Resistance had reestablished control of the island, their
base of operations broadened. Headquarters remained most defensible,
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Alchemised • 495
but forcing combat units and supply dispatches to travel the island from
end to end was a waste of time and resources. There was now a second-
ary base of command near the ports, with secondary hospital there. Ma-
tron Pace was currently stationed there to get it up and running.
It meant that Luc came back less. Even Crowther was often gone.
She took her report to Ilva, who never left Headquarters.
"Well?" Ilva asked when Helena entered her office.
"He's asked for my alloy," Helena said, sitting down in front of the
desk and handing over the envelope. "He said he'll take care of it."
Ilva looked up, a gleam like sunlight in her pale-blue eyes. "Did he?"
Helena looked down at her nails. The nail beds were all stained with
dirt, and her skin was tinged green from cuttings. "He said it's thanks
for healing him."
"I'm sure." There was a melodic note of sarcasm in Ilva's tone.
Helena bit her lip. She hated debriefings like this, disclosing all her
conversations and interactions, laying out Kaine's words, his tells, his
lack of tells. Letting Ilva or Crowther dissect him as if performing a
kind of emotional vivisection, identifying his weaknesses and vulnera-
bilities so that Helena could be sent back to try to exploit them with
greater precision.
"Anything else?"
She looked up to find Ilva studying her closely. The brusqueness had
thawed after Kaine had resumed training her. Now that Helena had
potential use, she was worth their time again.
"With the way things are going, I don't think we should discount the
possibility that Ferron may kill me."
Ilva straightened, her thin lips vanishing. "Are you asking to be
pulled out, Marino?"
There was a sudden intensity in her voice.
Helena's chest tightened as she shook her head.
"No. We need the information. I just—I want to know what I should
prioritise. Elain is probably best suited as my replacement, but there's