She barely dodged in time. It slammed into the ground.
The lich was fighting with a glaive, the way Lila did, but with far less
speed and elegance. Helena had never fought a lich, but this one didn't
seem accustomed to the body. If she could hit it with the obsidian once,
it would sever the reanimation in the body. If she stabbed close enough
to the talisman, it would kill whoever he was.
"You're quite the alchemist," came Althorne's voice. The glaive rushed
past, so close its wind nearly sliced her cheek open. "What are you?"
Helena was too winded to reply. Her focus was on his weapon and
getting past it. She could see Althorne clearly now. His face was grey,
and he had a festering head wound. He was in armour, which made it
harder to stab him.
When she finally got too close for his glaive, he backhanded her. She
went flying but the obsidian caught his wrist, slicing the grey skin wide
open. She hit the ground so hard, she couldn't breathe. She forced her
head up, gasping as she watched the reanimation unspool from Alt-
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840 • SenLinYu
horne's corpse, like an infection moving up his arm.
She struggled to her feet. The necrothralls were still coming but
slower. The lich didn't fend her off as she closed in again.
Helena only had one fully functional hand, and she hardly managed
to grip the obsidian in her left hand while her right ripped the armour
out of the way. The lich noticed then, tried to grab at her, but she caught
him by the throat and wrenched. Althorne's oesophagus came out. He
dropped. She swayed, shoving his armour out of the way, trying to feel
for the talisman, to identify where to stab. Purple dead blood oozed
from his throat, covering everything, the clothes and armour and the
silver chain that hung around his neck. A pendant, coated in blood, had
nearly tumbled into the gaping wound.
It was a dragon, with wings arched above it and its tail caught in its
teeth.
She paused staring. This was Atreus Ferron.
She tried to grip the dagger, but her left arm was numb. Was it better
to kill him, or to give the talisman to Kaine and let him choose what to
do?
No. She had to do this. Kaine shouldn't have to kill his own father.
She reached out with her resonance again, trying to feel for the talis-
man.
Thwack!
Red exploded in her vision as something slammed across her skull.
She toppled across Althorne's corpse, and when she tried to get up, ev-
erything spun. She got halfway up and collapsed again.
Lancaster stumbled towards her, half his chest coated in blood. He
was gripping the glaive. He'd used the pole section to crack Helena
across the back of her head.
"I'm going to kill you," she said, trying again to push herself up.
He gave a wheezing laugh. "Try." He gestured at her. "Get her up."
Two Aspirants pulled Helena off the ground, kicking the obsidian
knife out of her hand. Her legs would barely hold her. Everything
swayed, but the drug still screamed through her veins, and her reso-
nance was razor-sharp. She didn't fight, instead slumping against the
more heavily armed of the two.
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Alchemised • 841
They were stupid to fall for the same trick twice.
She found a knife loose enough to slip from its sheath as they
dragged her over to Lancaster. Standard-issue combat knife. She was
very familiar with the model.
Lancaster was pale with blood loss, but he smiled and kept his dis-
tance, clearly preferring to risk his compatriots. "I'm going to have so
much fun with you. Once I'm Undying, I'm going have them keep you
alive as they turn you inside out."
She used the last of her strength to lunge at him.
She would have stabbed him straight through the heart, but he man-
aged to dodge. It was a pity for him that she had such broad resonance.
She rammed the knife through his armour as if it were paper. She trans-
muted it, twisting, mangling his lungs before her hand went for his
throat.
Fingers clawed into her hair, wrenching her off before she blew his
brains apart with her resonance. She clawed at everyone gripping her,
her fingers sinking through flesh, tearing at anything she could grasp.
"Break her hand. Break her fucking hand!" Lancaster was screaming
as he clutched at the knife buried in his chest, unable to pull it out with-
out ripping out his own lungs.
A hand closed around her forearm, and there was a horrifying crunch
as a boot came down on her right wrist.
She watched the heel grinding her wrist into the stones.
They let go and she lay there in the street. Lancaster had already col-
lapsed.
She tried to push herself up with her dislocated arm.
Run, Helena. You have to run.
One of the Aspirants only had one hand left, but he pulled out his
sword and brought the hilt down on her head.
Helena woke to screaming.
She was lying on something cold and hard, and when she tried to
open her eyes, they were crusted shut. She lifted a hand to rub them,
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842 • SenLinYu
and white searing pain set her entire brain on fire. Her eyes tried to
wrench open, but they still refused to part.
"It's all right. Gentle. There's blood in your lashes." It was a familiar
voice. She felt fingers rubbing along her eyes. "There."
Helena peered out, vision swimming, and found Matron Pace star-
ing down at her. Helena was lying with her head in Pace's lap. It was still
dark, the only illumination torchlight.
Her senses trickled back. She was in so much pain, but she could tell
that she wasn't even feeling all of it yet. She could smell blood. Dried
blood and fresh.
There was screaming that kept going on and on.
And laughter, too.
She tried to sit, but Pace held her down.
"None of that. You're badly injured," she was saying. "I got your
shoulder back in place, but they took your chest brace and your wrist is
badly broken."
"Where are we?" Helena managed to ask. Her eyes wouldn't focus,
but she recognised one of the healers as well as medics and orderlies.
They were clustered around her.
Pace gave a strained smile. "At Headquarters. In the commons."
Helene looked past Pace; there was something overhead. They were
in a cage. A large kind used for animals. There were dozens of cages
scattered around them.
"Let me up." Helena struggled to sit up, her body beginning to
scream in protest as the stimulants and sedative wore off. Without her
chest brace, the strain bore down on her sternum as she peered past the
bars. Looking for the source of the screaming.
Hanging by her wrists, Rhea was screaming. Titus stood beside her.
He was covered in blood, and there were knives and sticks and spears
sticking out of him. He pulled a knife from his leg and began slicing
Rhea's skin off with it.
Then he put it in his mouth and ate it.
He was dead. He had to be dead, but the sight of it still left Helena
horror- stricken.
And Rhea was not dead.
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Alchemised • 843
Beside her there were pieces of meat dangling from chains. Helena
squinted in the low light.
Severed arms.
A torso.
Alister's head.
Her throat contracted, and she rolled to her side and vomited so vio-
lently, there was tearing pain through her back as her body convulsed.
She looked up again as Pace used a scrap of fabric to wipe her mouth
for her.
Helena turned away. "How long have they been—"
"It started at dusk," Pace said, her voice wavering, "once they were
sure that Headquarters were secured. They don't have Luc, though, or
Sebastian. There's still hope."
Helena's throat tightened so much, she thought she'd choke. She
couldn't bring herself to tell Pace that Luc wasn't coming, that he
couldn't.
She looked down at herself. She'd been stripped completely and put
into a grey smock. Everything was gone: hairpins, ties, hospital call
bracelet. The only thing that remained was Kaine's ring, hovering in the
corner of her vision even when she looked directly at it. It had worked;
even resonance hadn't found it in a strip search.
Now her left wrist bore a suppression shackle, like what had been
locked around Lila's wrists. Her right wrist was bare, apparently too
swollen for the matching shackle to fit around.
Rhea's screams were growing fainter.
There was a roar of excitement, and Helena looked up, terrified of
what would come next.
A long, low motorcar was pulling in through the gates. Helena's
heart dropped as it stopped at the steps leading to the Tower. The door
opened, and Luc stepped out, his expression hesitant, almost bashful, as
if arriving late to a party.
A hush fell across the courtyard. Everyone stared in shock as he
surveyed the scene around him.
"No . . ." Helena said at the same time as Pace.
Luc turned and gave a low, obsequious bow as someone else emerged
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844 • SenLinYu
from the back of the motorcar. The person was tall, dressed in intricately
decorative robes and a cloak of blue and gold, with a crescent-shaped
crown rising from his head. Morrough.
He walked in front of Luc, ascending the marble stairs, which ran
red with blood. All the remains of the Eternal Flame's military leaders
were in pieces on the ground or dangling against the walls.
Morrough turned as Luc ascended behind him, revealing a masked
face; the crescent, like an eclipsed sun, concealed the upper half. The
little bit of skin that showed was pale, lipless mouth.
Helena had never seen Morrough. There had been stories of his ap-
pearance at a few early battles, but he'd let the Undying fight his war.
So this was Cetus. The first Northern alchemist.
The silence remained as Luc followed him up the steps obediently as
a dog, while Morrough surveyed his audience.
"Paladia has followed this family of false deities for too long," Mor-
rough said in a rasping voice that barely seemed like it could carry.
"They showed you fire and gold, and you thought these paltry tricks
divine." The mouth twisted in derision. "I have conquered death. Im-
mortality is my gift, and I do not hoard this secret knowledge but grant
it to all who are worthy."
There were loud cheers at this. But that was the not the worst of it.
As Morrough spoke, Luc sank to his knees as if he were one of those
begging for immortality.
Helena watched Luc's every movement, trying to make sense of
what she saw.
Luc was dead, she knew he was dead. Morrough must have found
and reanimated him, made him seem so life-like in order to the have
the satisfaction of being his executioner.
As everyone watched, Luc leaned forward, pressing his head to the
stones which were slick with blood; it stained his clothes, his skin, his
hair. The blood of those who'd followed him and his family so faithfully.
"Do you beg for immortality?" Morrough asked.
Luc paused as though hesitating, as if ashamed, then he lifted his
head, looking up at Morrough like a supplicant, blue eyes wide, and
nodded.
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Alchemised • 845
"You are unworthy," Morrough said, but he held out a long bony
hand as if extending it to Luc. Then his wrist turned, palm faced down,
above Luc's head.
Even from the distance, Helena felt the resonance in the air, and
Luc's head slammed down into the marble, skull splitting, breaking
apart like a cracked egg. His face caved in, and his body toppled over,
brains smeared across the blood-soaked marble.
The air filled with screams of horror.
Morrough turned away from the body. "Store him. He will never
burn."
Then he entered the Alchemy Tower, the monument his brother had
built to memorialise necromancy's defeat.
Time passed in a haze. Those who hadn't gone into the Tower with
Morrough began sorting the remaining prisoners, dividing them up,
marking the numbers on the shackles into files.
Now that the "festivities" had come to an end, more cars were arriv-
ing. The more decorated members of the Undying, in their black uni-
forms. Others who appeared to be government officials. The Guild
Assembly. Governor Greenfinch.
Most were entering the Alchemy Tower, which had been rinsed of
all the blood.
The door of the cage Helena was in screamed open, and guards
began pulling the prisoners out, shoving them towards various areas.
"Careful!" Pace snapped as Helena was seized by the arm and dragged
to her feet. "Her wrist is broken. She needs medical care. These are
smart, capable women. You should—"
The guard sneered at Pace. "We've got plenty of prisoners of all
sorts." He looked Helena over. "She'll go in the cull group, same as you,
crone."
He ignored Pace's attempts to reason with him, not for herself but
for Helena, trying to convince him of her exceptional abilities, as he
copied the number on Helena's shackle onto a list along with Pace's.
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846 • SenLinYu
They were pushed towards another cage and grabbed by another guard,
who shoved them carelessly inside.
Pace tried to resist, still protesting, and she tripped, falling too fast
for Helena to react. Her head struck one of the iron bars with a sharp
crack, and she didn't move.
Helena's left hand was shaking as she braced herself against the bars,
using her body to cover Pace as more prisoners were shoved into the cull
cage, searching desperately for a pulse. Everyone shoved inside was ei-
ther badly injured or extremely old. The cadet guarding the war room
was slumped beside her, deathly pale, his bowels oozing through his
fingers as he tried to hold them in.
She couldn't help him.
She slumped down next to Pace, lifting her head onto her lap, hop-
ing she was dead, that she wouldn't witness whatever happened next.
A shadow fell over her.
She looked up, heart in her throat, and then froze at the sight of
Mandl.
"My, my," Mandl said, her wide mouth splitting into a smile, "I
thought I recognised that hair of yours."
Helena was too exhausted to feel anything at the sight of her.
Mandl gestured with a quick flick of her wrist. "Take her out."
The guards who'd shoved Pace glanced over. "This is the cull cage."
Mandl turned on him. "I don't care what 'cage' it is, get her out."
Helena was dragged out, her hand bumping roughly against other
bodies. She bit back a moan of pain, and her shoulder was nearly
wrenched from its socket again.
"It really is you." Mandl appraised her as Helena was dropped at her
feet. "You certainly put up a fight. Were you afraid I'd find you?"
Helena had scarcely thought of Mandl since she'd finished interro-
gating her.
"I hoped I would." Mandl's breath rushed across Helena's. She
smelled sharp and acrid, like formaldehyde. "I'm going to make sure
Bennet gets you for one of his special projects."
The guard cleared his throat.
"What now?" She turned on him sharply.
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Alchemised • 847
"They're saying Bennet's gone."
"What?"
The guard lowered his voice. "Rumour is that Hevgoss was respon-
sible. Bombings are—their sort of thing. No one's saying much, though.
Stroud took a whole batch earlier and had to bring them all back. Says
the whole lab's gone. Bennet and all the rest. But word's not supposed
to get out among the— " He gestured around the commons.
A glimmer of triumph sparked in Helena's chest. Bennet was gone;
he would never hurt Kaine or anyone else ever again.
Mandl stood, stunned. "But then what about the stasis warehouse.
Will it be decommissioned?"
Before the guard could reply, she answered herself. "Of course not.
The Undying will still need pristine bodies in reserve. Even without
Bennet."
She looked down at Helena again, who tried not to look as if she was
listening.
"Well, if he's gone, that means that I'm responsible for the selection
process." She leaned forward and grabbed Helena by the back of the
arm. "I think I'll have you as my first pick."
Mandl's resonance stabbed through Helena's hand. Her nerves were
suddenly on fire, being torn apart. Agony shot up her shoulder, through
her body, and into her brain as if a splintering spike were being driven
into her.
Her muscles began spasming as she screamed.
"Oh dear," Mandl said with false concern, still holding Helena fast.
"That wasn't what I meant to do. I was trying to do this." She grabbed
Helena by the back of the neck.
Renewed pain burst through her, shooting down her spine and along
every nerve ending. Building and building until Helena's heart threat-
ened to explode. She'd break all her own bones if it would let her escape.
She'd chew her limbs off.
She could feel her mind scrabbling to break free from the agony. Just
break. Just break.
"I'm not fragile. I am not going to break. Please believe that about me."
She'd promised. Her body was seizing, but eventually it stopped. She
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848 • SenLinYu
was dropped heavily to the ground. Her muscles kept twitching. Mandl
knelt, reaching towards her again, and Helena cowered away.
Mandl's wide mouth stretched across her face. "See how quickly you
can learn to be afraid?"
She took Helena's right hand, resetting and healing the broken
bones. She would indeed have been an exceptional healer if she hadn't
been a psychopath.
Then something cold pressed against Helena's newly healed wrist,
clicking as it was locked in place.
She stared at it dazedly, struggling to breathe. It was another cuff.
The number was different. She couldn't quite make it out.
Mandl stood, brushing herself off. "Put her in the transport lorry."
As Helena was being dragged up off the ground, a young man
stepped forward, stammering.
"Wait. That—that one, we got her. She's supposed to be interrogated.
I think. Pretty sure someone said something about that."
Mandl gave a slow reptilian blink. "She was in the cull cage."
He flushed and scratched his head. "We had orders."
"Whose orders?"
"Um, it was one of the dead ones. I don't remember. He told Lan-
caster something about it."
"And Lancaster is?"
"Well, he's in surgery."
Mandl's lips pursed, and she looked as if she were about to eat the
Aspirant. "So you want me to do what? Put her back into the cull cage?
Do you have jurisdiction to take her?"
He stammered and backed away. "I just—it's what I heard. Maybe
someone else would know."
Helena wasn't sure if she'd just been saved or damned. Interrogation
was what Atreus had wanted. To find the bomber. She struggled to
think. Her body kept spasming. All the drugs in her body had her mind
spinning as they faded away.
Several liches came over and dragged Helena and several other pris-
oners towards a lorry, shoving them into the back.
Interrogation would be dangerous. If anyone realised she was the
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Alchemised • 849
bomber, they'd want to know how. Why.
She knew all too well now the dangers of interrogation. There were
points where the mind broke, where pain became all there was. The
Undying would hurt her in whatever ways were necessary to get the
answers out.
Kaine said animancy was special. Rare. If Bennet was dead, Kaine
and Morrough might be the only ones left with the ability, which meant
they might bring him in and torture her in front of him or make him
torture her.
If Morrough interrogated her personally, he'd find Kaine in her
thoughts and memories. No amount of evasion could hide him; he was
the fabric of her thoughts. Her every action tied to him.
Even if her death was quick, Kaine's punishment for his betrayal
would be eternal. Or else they'd use her, just as they had his mother.
It would be everything he'd feared.
If they found him in her memory.
If.
She had to push him away, like she had pushed away the memory
of—
Soren.
She would redirect her thoughts, transmute her memories until her
mind stopped running to him. She couldn't confess to something she
didn't remember.
She pressed her hands against her temples, wincing as she moved
her right hand. The bones were repaired, but the tissue damage and
bruising remained. The nullium in the manacles hummed, blurring her
resonance, but suppression like that was imperfect.
She still had her resonance, though it wasn't as powerful. But she
didn't need power; she needed precision and patience. She closed her
eyes, using that feeble strain of resonance on her own consciousness.
After spending so much time navigating the minds of others, it was
easy to manipulate her own mind— no reaction, no resistance.
The last two years of her life, she pushed down beneath the surface
as if to drown them. There was no other way. Kaine was almost every-
thing now.
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850 • SenLinYu
Without him, there was just emptiness. Her routines. Hours and
days in the hospital that bled together, years of an unending nightmare.
Alone. Everyone dead. Because they always died. She tried to save
them, but in the end, they always died. Her life was a graveyard.
Where there was space she couldn't reconcile, she filled it with Luc.
Not his death, not Luc from the war; the Luc she'd promised to save.
The version of him he'd tried to be. The Luc who'd always believed in
her.
It was the way he deserved to be remembered.
She was lost in her own mind when the lorry pulled into a ware-
house. An old slaughterhouse with meat hooks overhead and metal ta-
bles everywhere, and a cement floor that could be easily sprayed down
to wash away the blood. The other prisoners began to panic, jostling her
from her thoughts.
"They're not going kill us yet," Helena said, her voice raw. "They're
putting us in stasis. To keep us fresh."
They were pulled out, one by one, and injected with something.
The process was horrifyingly well synchronised. Rote. As the prison-
ers went limp, they were hoisted onto long tables, side by side. A guard
went down the line stripping their clothes off.
A few tried to fight. One boy got kicked in the gut for his efforts
before the needle went into his neck. He called out for his mother, for
Sol, for Luc.
The woman— Mandl, her mind belatedly supplied—stood observ-
ing, and when Helena was pulled out, she waved her towards the far end
of the warehouse. "Put her over there. I'll deal with her personally."
A needle sank into the side of Helena's neck. It was thick, the dose
of paralytic was unnecessarily large.
Her muscles went numb, but not her sensory nerves. She could feel
things, just not move.
Mandl's face appeared above her, a satisfied smile on her lips, eyes
skimming from head to toe. "You think you know what's about to hap-
pen to you, don't you?"
Helena lay there as Mandl pulled her hair out of the way and placed
something adhesive at the base of her neck, over her spine.
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Alchemised • 851
"This is to keep your muscles in order."
An electric pulse caused Helena's body to seize, muscles contracting
and releasing several times.
Mandl's fingers trailed across Helena's cold skin, seeming to tremble
with excitement. Needles with tubes sank into her arms.
"Pity about Bennet," Mandl said. "I always found his ideas inspira-
tional. If he got you, he'd keep you alive for ages if I asked. Interroga-
tions are so quick, and you'll be completely spoiled after that."
She placed a mask over Helena's face that stretched from above her
eyebrows all the way down over her chin. There was some kind of adhe-
sive that sealed it against her skin. It was transparent enough that Hel-
ena could just barely see through it and watch as Mandl picked up a
large syringe with a pale-blue liquid inside. "This would put you in a
nice little coma. Bennet said it's like keeping meat tender by keeping
the pigs calm before slaughter."
She squeezed the plunger. Helena heard it spatter onto the floor.
Then there was the sound of paper tearing as Mandl ripped a form
off a clipboard, crumpling it. For a moment she could make out the
number at the top, 19819.
Without that form, there would be no record that Helena was there.
She'd vanish. A clerical error.
Mendl combed her fingers through Helena's hair. "While you're
waiting, I want you to think about all the things I'm going to do to you
when I come back."
Mandl turned away. "All done here. Put her under with the rest."
Helena was lifted onto a cart that went rattling across the floor into
a second room. It was bitterly cold. Helena could see the rows of sec-
tioned tanks from the corner of her eyes. The photographs from the raid
flashed in her memory, all the bodies floating inside them. All dead.
The guards, wearing large rubber gloves to their shoulders, lifted one
prisoner after another and slid them into the tanks, hooking the tubes
and wires into a row of machines that ran along the far end.
Helena's heart was pounding harder and harder as she was picked up
and the cold fluid closed around her.
She couldn't move. She was trapped inside her own body, like a cage
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852 • SenLinYu
sealing her within her mind. The cold seeped into her, slowing her heart,
dropping her metabolism. It felt like forever and like no time at all be-
fore the light vanished, too.
Helena was left in darkness and silence.
Her heart was pounding in unadulterated terror. The lid was inches
from her face, but she couldn't see it. Freedom so close but utterly be-
yond reach.
She tried to breathe slowly but couldn't. She started panting, heat
and steam filling the mask over her face.
She tried to scream, but all that came out was a weak uneven whim-
per. Her body grew colder and colder, and her lungs spasmed as her
panic used up the limited oxygen coming through the mask. Her chest
began aching and burning for air. She kept trying to breathe, but there
was nothing to breathe.
She was relieved when she passed out. It was better than being
awake.
Something burning hot jolted her back to consciousness.
She'd forgotten where she was and panicked as it all rushed back.
The tiny, enclosed space beneath the surface, in the dark. Not enough
air, and she couldn't move.
The burning came again, cutting her panic short as she tried to place
where the sensation was coming from. She knew that feeling.
Her hand. Her left hand was burning. The ring. Her heart stalled.
Kaine. He'd come back and found her gone. She'd told him she'd be
waiting, and she wasn't there. The ring burned again and again and
again.
He was looking for her. He'd come for her.
He always did.
But she could not think about it.
She had to forget. If she was remembered and interrogated, Kaine
could not be found.
She couldn't think about him. Trapped, frozen, without use of her
hands, she could only draw her resonance inwards. She was used to
pushing it out for combat. Now it was like a net she closed around her
own mind.
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Alchemised • 853
She could feel the faint texture in her mind of her manipulations,
altering her thoughts, bending then around all the things she must not
think about. She followed the new paths, over and over, wearing new
grooves into place, teaching her mind to settle there and look no further.
She counted. She made routines. She tried not to remember.
If Kaine found her, he'd understand.
She could wait.
Hold on. You promised you wouldn't break.
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CHAPTER 66
Maius 1789
Consciousness split Helena's mind open.
She lurched up, head throbbing, mad with pain. All she could think
was Get away, run. The need to escape consumed her. Everywhere she
looked, it was all darkness.
She tried to move, but her body failed her. Her motions jerked, and
pain bloomed from her wrists, across her hands, and into her arms when
she tried to get up. She struggled to breathe as her ribs had clamped
tight around her lungs.
It wasn't the tank, but it was still so dark, and she could barely move.
A hand brushed against her shoulder.
She gave a strangled scream, her head snapping up. It was Kaine. He
was leaning over her, his pale hair and silver-bright eyes visible in the
dark. His fingers trembled as he stared at her.
She studied him in shock.
He was different. Older. He wasn't old, but his eyes had a look as if
it had been decades since she'd last seen him.
She gave a sob and reached for him.
"You're alive," she said.
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858 • SenLinYu
He flinched back as despair swept across his face. She didn't under-
stand why. Then Grace's fearful voice rose from some distant corner of
her mind.
"Lila Bayard was the first one he brought back."
It all came rushing back: The manacles. Transference. Imprisonment
in Spirefell. Everyone was dead because the High Reeve had killed
them.
He was the High Reeve.
Her blood ran ice-cold and she snatched her hand back, shoving
herself away from him, ignoring the screaming pain in her wrists.
Something was tangled around her elbow, and she ripped it out as she
scrambled away. Her arms and legs shook under her own weight, and
she nearly toppled off the far side of the bed. She slid onto the floor and
knelt, peering across the mattress at him in that dark room in that dark
house where she was a captive.
Kaine was still alive.
But if he was alive, that meant he had not come for her, and she had
waited.
The mental dissonance made her want to scream. The past and pres-
ent shattering against each other as she knelt in their ruins.
It couldn't be him. Ferron had hurt her. He'd raped her. And he killed
everyone.
Kaine wouldn't.
He'd promised he'd always—
Pain lanced through her brain. Her vision disappeared. An anguished
moan escaped her. She buried her face in her hands as it grew, boring
through her mind, so excruciating she could hardly keep conscious.
Her head was on fire, skull cut open, pressure emulsifying her brain.
She screamed, trying to let it out. She kept screaming until she was
gasping for air. When she looked up again, she was alone.
Perhaps she always had been, and Kaine's face had been an appari-
tion she'd conjured.
Perhaps this was all a dream. He was dead, and she was still in the
tank, rotting and forgotten in the dark where no one would ever find
her.
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Alchemised • 859
She slumped, and a hand grasped her shoulder before she hit the
floor. She started, and he was there again. As their eyes met, his expres-
sion crumpled.
"You're remembering, aren't you?"
She managed a nod, reaching up and gripping his wrist, feeling his
skin and bones beneath her fingers. He was real.
He was still alive. She'd been so sure that everyone was dead, but he
wasn't, and yet that felt worse.
She turned her face away, pressing it into the duvet, wanting to
scream again. All the contradictions and horror clamoured as she tried
to untangle her mind. Nothing felt real. Everything was lies.
Clarity struck, and she gripped him tighter, nails biting against his
skin.
"The obsidian—Mandl and the rest— was that— was that you . . . ?"
". . . it was."
Her jaw trembled, her eyes burning. "Was it—always you?"
"Yes."
All the Resistance fighters, secret members of the Eternal Flame
that she'd convinced herself were out there, all melted away until only
Kaine remained. Her captor and nightmare.
She nodded, looking away, unable to reconcile her simultaneous re-
lief with the horror she felt.
He was alive. She'd kept him alive. That was what she'd wanted
but—
Not like this.
"Why'd you kill Lila?" Her voice cracked.
"I didn't. She's alive."
She stared at him. The pain in her head seemed to make him glow.
"Grace saw her body. Everyone at the Outpost saw it. Mandl kept her
at the gate."
"She was pregnant, and she was the only surviving Bayard. They
weren't going to stop looking for her until they found a body. I produced
one. It was your idea."
Helena had no memory of that. She didn't know how to believe
anything he said, so much deceit lay between them.
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"She has a son now. An exceptionally noisy child, named for his
grandfather. And every time I've seen her, she's tried to murder me at
least twice."
That did sound like Lila. Helena lifted her head, her throat aching
with the desire to believe him. "Where is she?"
He shook his head. "Not in Paladia, but you'll see her soon. You
promised Holdfast you'd take care of them, remember? They've been
waiting for you."
Her heart rose, but then she remembers all the other things he'd told
her, said to her. She shrank away.
"I don't believe you." Her jaw trembled uncontrollably.
"I know."
She shook her head. "I don't understand. I can't remember—I only
remember you."
She wanted to reassure herself that he was real, but he couldn't be
real. The person in her memory couldn't exist because Kaine Ferron had
killed everyone. Eradicated the Eternal Flame, hunted down anyone in
the Resistance who'd dared to run. He was drenched in blood.
His throat dipped. "What—do you remember of me?"
He was familiar and yet so utterly changed, as if he'd been carved out
of the likeness of the person she'd known.
"You— you spied for the Eternal Flame," she said, her voice barely
more than a whisper. "You used to call me, and I'd come and heal you—
and— annnn— "
Her tongue stuck on the word as bright scarlet pain burst through
her head and everything tilted.
She blinked rapidly, struggling to think. She'd been saying
something—something . . . Her tongue was fuzzy. When she tried to
open her mouth, her jaw jerked, snapping repeatedly.
Her limbs and fingers all curled rigidly inwards as if she were a dead
spider. She toppled, and Kaine caught her just before she slammed face-
first into the floor.
She couldn't speak.
Her jaw kept snapping, lungs rattling as she gasped. Her head began
jerking, slamming against his chest until he pressed his hand flat, hold-
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Alchemised • 861
ing her still. Her heart raced with panic.
"It's all right," he said. "Give it a minute. It'll pass."
She felt him inhale as she kept jerking in his arms.
"Did quite a number to that brain of yours." His voice was calm. "All
your transmuted barriers are coming apart now. It'll pass."
Her throat contracted, and every tendon and muscle inside her body
seemed to be drawn inwards, threatening to snap. He'd said it would
pass but it wasn't passing.
"Just a little longer," he said.
Her head finally stopped jerking, and her body went limp in his
arms, mind hazy and disjointed. He picked her up. Her bones jutted
out, the joints pressing against him as he placed her back onto the bed,
tucking her under the duvet. She wanted to protest, but her jaw was
rigid, mouth refusing to move properly.
There was a reason he shouldn't hold her. She didn't want him to, but
she couldn't remember why anymore. Yet she was terrified that if he let
go, he'd disappear into the dark and leave her there alone.
He moved quietly around the bed and lit a candle, sorting through a
tray of vials beside the bed. The dim light flickered between them.
"You've been unconscious for a week," he said without looking up, as
if he could feel her watching him. "You—" He stopped, lips pressed
together as he inhaled. "You had a seizure and wouldn't wake after-
wards. A-Apparently you've been subconsciously maintaining all those
barriers inside your brain. All this time. When you got pregnant—the
Toll from it all was too much. Burned yourself out."
Pregnant? She'd forgotten that she was pregnant. A panicked rasp-
ing gasp shook her as it came back to her. The baby that Morrough
wanted. She'd just lain there and let it happen and—
"Why—" One word was all she could manage.
Kaine wavered, eyes darting from the items in front of him to her.
He set them down and leaned over.
"Look at me. I know you want to remember everything, but your
mind has to stabilise; everything is fragile right now." His eyes were
imploring. "It will make sense eventually."
He didn't use resonance as he spoke. It would have made things
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862 • SenLinYu
worse if he had. Just being close to him, her body intuitively calmed
even though she remembered so vividly all the ways he'd hurt her inside
this cold prison of a house.
A tremor ran through her.
"It's just a little longer," he said, "and this will all be over."
She had so many questions, though. What happened? Why didn't you
come? Why did you hurt me? Why did you rape me?
Why did you become High Reeve?
"Why—" Her voice broke. "—why did you kill everyone?"
He seemed startled by the question, as if he'd expected one of the
others. "I was trying to find you."
Her heart stalled, body and mind torn between horror and relief.
"You looked for me?" Her voice cracked.
A look of anguish flashed across his eyes. "Of course I looked for
you. I looked everywhere for you. Did you think I left you there?"
She tried to remember what she'd thought. "I was supposed to be
interrogated. There was so much of you in my head. I thought, if I didn't
remember, they wouldn't be able to find you. No one ever came. I
thought everyone must be dead."
He looked as though she'd gutted him and stepped back, turning
away from her.
"I looked for you everywhere. In the wreckage first, then Central and
the Outpost, but you'd disappeared. There was a transfer slip about a
person of interest captured near West Port, and you'd been listed as too
injured for rehabilitation and culled. I went through all the dead trying
to find you, but you weren't there. I went through every prison, every
file, but you'd disappeared, so I volunteered to track down anyone miss-
ing. I thought eventually something would lead to you." His jaw
clenched. "I had to bring them all back. If I'd failed, the job would have
been reassigned."
He didn't meet her eyes as he said this, staring across the room. "I
went to Hevgoss quite a few times. Thought maybe you'd somehow
ended up there. I was even in that warehouse once, checking all the files
there for anyone who might match your description. But I didn't open
the tanks so—"
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His jaw trembled visibly, and he didn't say anything else—just turned
back to sorting through the tray.
"Why didn't you assume I was dead?" she asked.
His hands stilled. "I had to know."
He drew a deep breath. "This room is safe, but Morrough has eyes in
the house. He watches from the hallway sometimes. Now that you're
pregnant, he's unlikely to have you brought in again, but as long as it
was a risk, there was always the chance he'd see anything that happened
here."
Understanding slowly dawned on her. All these months, Kaine had
been performing for Morrough through Helena's eyes, knowing that at
any moment that passed between them might be seen.
What had been real, then? Any of it? None?
A wave of exhaustion struck. She felt as if all her memories had been
shaken and lay jumbled and upended, out of order. It was hard to even
think clearly.
She wanted to sleep, to sink back into the abyss, but she was afraid
that her memories might slip away again. That Kaine would vanish, and
when she woke it would be Ferron again, ice-cold and cruel.
Try as she might, the two were categorically separate in her mind.
Kaine, she knew.
But Ferron was a monster. Her fear and hatred of him was rooted in
her bones. That horrific chair of bodies, his pile of victims. She couldn't
forget that.
Her head throbbed, her skull threatening to crush her eyes out of her
head. She squeezed them shut. The bed dipped, and Kaine took her arm.
She felt her veins swell, and there was a prick of a needle as he put in a
new intravenous drip.
"Don't pull this one out," he said as he worked. "All your years in a
hospital, and you're still a terrible patient."
He laid her arm down and began going through the vials again, find-
ing one and adding it to all the tubes that joined with the saline running
into her arm.
"You should sleep now," he said. "We'll talk tomorrow."
"What if I forget again?" Her voice was small, nearly trembling with
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864 • SenLinYu
fear.
He didn't answer.
"Will you—will you go back to being the way you were, if I forget?"
"It's almost over now," he said, not answering the question.
She could feel the drugs in her veins, a heavy shroud bearing down
on her. She fought to keep her eyes open, to stay awake, to remember.
"Then what?"
The room seemed darker.
"You'll take care of Lila, the way you promised you would."
There was a crack of faint light cast between the curtains when her
eyes opened again. She could see the room, her prison. Kaine was gone.
She was only awake a few minutes before the door opened, and one
of the necrothralls entered. Helena stared.
"I saw you before . . ." Helena said as the necrothrall set down a tray
with a bowl of soup on it. "I was here, before."
Why would she have been here?
"Shhhhh . . ." The necrothrall released a soft, hissing breath through
her teeth, shaking her head as if in warning.
She reached into a pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper,
holding it out to Helena.
There was only one word, written in heavy clear strokes.
rest.
The paper slipped from her fingers and the necrothrall took it im-
mediately, returning it to her pocket before offering soup.
Helena forced a few bites down, but her body recoiled, trying to hurl
them back up. She tried not to think, to stop trying to remember, but it
was like trying to ignore Lumithia in Ascendance.
All that time, Kaine had known her. From the moment she'd arrived.
The transference process . . . it was on her idea. The procedure she'd
wanted to use on Titus Bayard.
And Shiseo . . .
She looked down at her wrists in renewed horror.
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Transference, the manacles— those weren't things that Kaine had
known of. It was Shiseo who'd known. Transference was the reason
Morrough had wanted the repopulation program started.
Her throat convulsed, and she vomited all the soup onto the floor
beside the bed.
She tried to stop thinking about it. To remember herself from before,
to reconcile who she was with the person she'd forgotten. In the process
of forgetting, she'd flattened herself, forgotten all her anger. Her capac-
ity to be monstrous.
That was the person Kaine wanted. Who he'd done all this for.
But that Helena didn't exist anymore. All that was left now was a
shadow. A ghost.
It was dark when Kaine returned.
Her heart rose with relief, but dread rushed through her at the sight
of him. She stared at him in the dark as he stayed by the door, clearly
not intending to linger, coldly appraising her from across the room.
She didn't know what she wanted him to do. She didn't want him
there, but not seeing him was worse because when he was gone, he
might be dead; she'd never see him again.
"Are you angry with me about something?" she asked when he didn't
speak.
His lips vanished into a line, and he entered, shutting the door. "No."
He went to a window, pushing back the curtains enough to let in a
soft gleam of silver light. He was in uniform.
Helena watched him, trying to pinpoint what it was about him that
was so different now.
"You are," she said. "I feel like I know you are, but I don't remember
why."
He didn't look at her. "It doesn't matter. It's all in the past."
"Why look for me, then, if the past doesn't matter?"
His jaw clenched. "Do you remember how you were captured?"
She nodded. "I blew up the West Port Lab."
He gave a short nod, still staring out the window. "Do you remember
why?"
She furrowed her eyebrows. The answer felt obvious, but she couldn't
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866 • SenLinYu
remember exactly.
"Don't push if you can't recall," he said, glancing towards her sharply
when she was silent.
"It was because of you, wasn't it?" she asked, somehow sure it had to
have been, although she didn't remember anything except the fire, her
ears throbbing, trying to run.
He looked away again but nodded.
Helena wasn't sure why he'd be angry about that. She closed her eyes.
She felt so tired now that he was there, as if she'd waited for him in
order to rest.
"When you were asleep, I used to promise I'd take care of you," she
said.
"No." He said it harshly. "That was me. I was the one who used to say
that."
She opened her eyes. "I used to say it back. I guess you didn't know."
His expression grew stricken and then he looked away, flicking the
curtains closed so that it was too dim to make out his face anymore.
"What's the plan?" she asked into the darkness. "You said it was al-
most over? What does that mean?"
His eyes seemed to glow. "We're just waiting for the summer Abey-
ance. Get you as far away as possible. You'll blend in if you go south."
"Is that's where Lila is? South?"
"Yes, she's still on the mainland, near the coast. She stayed at a mid-
way point while we tried to find you."
"We?" Hope rose in her chest. There were survivors.
"Shiseo."
Helena recoiled at the name.
Kaine was closer now, she could tell by his voice, but the room was
so dark that she couldn't see him. "He turned himself in, providing pa-
pers and a seal identifying him as a member of the imperial family, and
offering research. He designed those manacles in the hope that if you
ever showed up, he'd be the one called in to put them on."
"Well, he certainly managed that," Helena said hoarsely. "This is all
his fault. If he hadn't told them about transference—"
"Morrough would have vivisected your brain the day they found you
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Alchemised • 867
if Shiseo hadn't intervened," Kaine said. "He had no way of knowing
what Morrough would do with the method."
She fell silent.
"It was the only thing he could come up with that would give me
access to you and buy enough time. He'll be the one to take you to Lila."
"But what's the plan for Paladia?"
Kaine was silent for several moments. "Morrough's weakening. He
tried to use Holdfast for spare parts, but it wasn't enough, even though
he mutilated himself adding his bones. Enough of the Undying are
gone now that he can't move or breathe without that monstrosity of his.
That's why he's so desperate for an animancer—he thinks it'll let him
start over."
Luc's bones. He'd used Luc's bones.
"It's all about striking at the right moment," Kaine was saying. "Mor-
rough's activities and the extent of the slaughter here have begun to
impact the continent. The surrounding countries will intervene soon.
There are rumours of an alliance that even Hevgoss is cooperating with.
Paladia's a critical source of lumithium, and it's an industrial power that
isn't easily replaced when so many alchemists are dead. The other coun-
tries may not have cared when it was a civil conflict, but now they'll act
to secure their interests. Once they're confident Morrough's weak,
they'll move quickly."
There was an assurance in the way he said it, as if it was all arranged,
every detail already in place. Helena brightened with interest, trying to
remember what she'd read in the papers.
"How will you—?"
"You don't need to worry about the specifics," he said, cutting her off.
"You'll be gone before then. If you want to help, eat and get strong
enough to travel."
He left without another word.
He didn't come back again for several days.
It made her anxious as evening after evening passed and he failed to
even briefly appear. She couldn't stop herself from trying to remember,
piece together answers of why he was angry and why he didn't come
back. Memories would burst open, staining her vision red, upending her
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868 • SenLinYu
thoughts, leaving her drowning in disjointed spurts of emotion and
snatches of conversation.
She had fits all through the day. Davies added vials of various drugs
to the saline drip until Helena lay in a stupor, unable to think.
It was dark when the mattress dipped and a cool hand brushed back
the curls clinging to her face, tucking them behind her ear. Her hand
was picked up, long fingers entwining with hers. Kaine's thumb stroked
across her knuckles, finally stopping at her ring finger, spiralling some-
thing there slowly.
The ring.
She'd forgotten all about it.
Once the fits stopped, Kaine withdrew again, but he didn't disappear
entirely. At first she thought she was imagining it, but it was undeniable
that he was distancing himself.
He'd stand, hands clasped behind his back, not even looking at her,
giving only short answers to her questions. She rarely knew what to say;
everything felt either trivial or too devastating to put into words. She
didn't know where to begin.
Hold on, she'd told herself over and over inside the tank. Don't break.
She'd thought she had, but now she knew, there were only pieces of her
left.
She sat in bed, watching him stare out the window. It was night and
there was nothing to see; he simply didn't want to look at her. She knew
he'd leave in a moment, if she didn't say something.
"How—have you been?" she finally asked in desperation, then
winced because it was a stupid question.
"Fine," he said.
She blinked down at her lap. "You're married."
He went rigid at that, and she watched him inhale. "Yes, to Aurelia
Ingram."
She nodded. She didn't know why it mattered given everything else.
She'd never at any point imagined Kaine marrying her. Yet her mind
couldn't move away from the detail. He had a wife now. Which made
her—
She wasn't sure what she was. What she'd ever been.
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Alchemised • 869
"Morrough ordered it," he said, even though she hadn't said anything
else. "The Guild Assembly wanted a high-profile event, proof that
things were back to normal. I didn't have any choice."
She nodded again wordlessly.
"I— " He looked towards her and started to speak again but then
stopped.
The space between them was like a chasm filled with every sin they'd
ever committed against each other, but even from that distance, she
could feel his anger.
No matter what he said, she knew he was angry at her.
"You're able to travel now?" she asked. "You said you went to Hevgoss
lots of times."
". . . yes."
She twisted the linen hem of the sheet between her fingers. "Then . . .
after things here are done, will you—will you come south, too?"
"Lila has a rather abiding hatred for me."
Helena just kept waiting for an answer. We're supposed to run away
together. You promised.
He glanced away, back out into the courtyard. "With luck, I won't be
in Paladia for long afterwards."
"So you'll come—eventually?" Her voice was hopeful.
It felt impossible for things to ever be repaired within the suffocat-
ing confines of Spirefell, but if they went somewhere far away, maybe it
could be done. They'd found each other, after all. With time, they could
do it again.
She'd find Kaine where he'd buried himself beneath the High Reeve,
and for his sake she would try to piece herself back into the Helena
Marino she'd been.
Then maybe he'd stop standing so far away.
His eyes glittered for a moment, and the briefest curve of his lips as
he quietly said, "If that's what you want."
It felt like a lie.
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CHAPTER 67
Maius 1789
Time did not heal all wounds, but it did make a difference for
Helena's mind. With each day, her memories seemed to settle, falling
into a semblance of order.
She gradually remembered tricking Kaine and finally understood
why he'd been so deeply paranoid from the moment of her arrival. Why
he had checked her mind, wanting to know even her most inconse-
quential occupations.
He'd underestimated her once; now he would never trust her again.
He was still lying to her.
She'd suspected, but it was difficult to rely on her judgement or in-
terpretation of anything. Lacunae were scattered across her conscious-
ness. Her thoughts still turned away from their conclusions sometimes,
and her mind was still habitual in its tendency to overlook what was
missing. But as time passed, she grew certain of his deceit.
He was managing her, "maintaining her environment," and trying to
trick her even now. What the deceit was, she wasn't sure. She mulled
over it, trying to sense the holes in the carefully crafted narrative he'd
begun feeding her from the moment she'd regained consciousness. She
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Alchemised • 871
needed more perspective, a stronger sense of what was real and what
was not.
She went out into the hallway, staring down the passages. It used to
terrify her, the hallways, the house, the ghastly sense of death and
mourning that permeated it.
She stood there watching the space around her disappear into shad-
ows. It was haunted after all.
She had been the ghost.
She wandered slowly down the hallway, her feet bare. The cold iron
in the floor kept her present, sure of what was real.
Kaine appeared on the landing below her as she reached the stairs.
He was all in black except the pristine white at his throat, and the barest
edges of his cuffs visible at the wrists. His colouring was so stark now,
he looked almost like an ink drawing, the sharp lines and contrast of
black and white.
"I thought you'd be out," she said when he didn't speak.
"I noticed you were up. Do you think you could manage a trip to the
main wing?"
No, but she nodded, curious where he'd take her.
He maintained a conscientious distance as they made the journey,
warning her quietly of the places where Morrough could be watching.
She kept looking at him, noticing the edge to him, the over-precision.
He was exacting to a degree that left him nearly inhuman. It was the
array, she realised with slow horror. He was more than distilled. It had
transmuted him until there was nothing left but the qualities it permit-
ted.
In his search for her, he'd let it consume him.
They stopped outside a large pair of doors that had always been
locked during Helena's exploration of the house. Opened, they revealed
a library.
"I would have brought you here earlier, but I worried Aurelia might
be suspicious if you were in this wing too often," he said, stepping to the
side so she had space to enter. "I'll be gone until evening, but I thought
an incentive to exercise and a way to pass the time might suit you."
Helena didn't move, peering into the cavernous space. On the far
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side, she could see a few north-facing windows. Even in late spring, the
light in the wing was feeble, the aisles shadowy, and the ceiling so high
she could scarcely make it out. The darkness threatened to drop down
and swallow her.
She'd just disappear.
"Aurelia might notice now," she said, not stepping through the door-
way.
"She's gone."
She looked at him sharply.
"Staying in the city at present. I doubt she'll come back, but you'll be
warned if she does."
Helena swallowed. "Maybe—maybe we could come back later."
Kaine had clearly expected this to tempt her. After all, she had been
desperately bored in captivity, and now he was offering a world of pre-
occupations. His eyes ran over her in a rapid catalogue.
Helena rested her fingers on the wall, feeling the texture of the wall-
paper as she wet her lips.
"It's just a bit dark—in there," she said. "The ceiling. It wouldn't be
very good if I had a fit . . . and there's the—the baby." She tripped over
the word. It was the first time she'd managed to acknowledge it since
she'd regained consciousness. Her mind swerved hard around that real-
ity, unable to face its implications.
Kaine flinched, too.
"I'd rather not go in. If that's all right," she said.
"Hel—" He started to move towards her, but she tensed, and he
stopped short.
He stood, staring at her, one hand barely outstretched. Her cheeks
burned, and she looked away.
What must it be like to be stuck with this version of her when she
used to be so much more? She couldn't even fully remember and still
found it intolerable. Her jaw trembled.
"I know it's illogical—being scared of the dark. I know," she said, and
her voice shook. "I'm trying—I know . . ."
He stepped back, pulling the doors shut, and her heart dropped as
the distance between them grew larger. Even though she didn't want
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him to touch her, she felt desperate for him to hold her again. Her mind
and body were at perpetual odds.
He could not occupy the impossible in-between where she wanted
him because there was no distance large enough to erase what had hap-
pened that still left him within her reach.
"It's fine," he said without looking at her. "I thought you might want
to, but of course, you're not familiar with the space. If there's anything
you want, I'll bring it to you."
She gave a stilted nod.
"I'll walk you back," he said.
"No, you should go," she said, pressing her hand against the wall
until the manacle twinged inside her wrist. "I'll slow you too much. I
know the way."
His eyes flickered. "If that's what you want."
He turned away, and she reached out on instinct. "Kaine . . ."
He stopped, and she instantly withdrew her hand.
She forced a tight smile. "Be careful. Don't die."
He stood unmoving for a moment, staring at her and then turned
away. "Right."
It was past nightfall when he returned. Helena was sitting on the
sofa in her room, staring at the pattern on the rug as she waited. She
had spent the whole day trying to be sure of the lie, piecing everything
together again and again.
He paused in the doorway, not entering, as if to make clear that it
was to be a brief, impersonal visit. She watched him carefully. He'd al-
ways been prone to being still. She remembered that about him.
"Do you know what books you'd like?" he asked at length.
She shook her head. "I've been thinking today."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Your plan doesn't make any sense to me," she said.
"Well, not all of us have your exceptional intellect," he said lightly,
but he didn't move from the doorway.
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Helena studied the space between them. If Morrough were watch-
ing, what would he see? Nothing. There was nothing to see, there was
only emptiness between them.
"Today, you didn't say you'd always come for me," she said. "You used
to say that when I had to go. When I—" She blinked, one hand spas-
ming. "I think. Didn't you?"
Kaine's face twisted into a grimace, and he stepped into the room,
shutting the door, and leaning against it. "I thought it a rather empty
promise at this point."
She shook her head. "It wasn't your fault. You looked everywhere.
Mandl— "
He gave a harsh laugh. Helena started, her heart slamming into her
throat.
"Right. Thank you. Of course," he said the sarcasm bright in his tone.
"Everywhere. Yes, I looked everywhere, didn't I?"
She stared at him as his voice turned musing but his eyes remained
hard and glittering.
"Through wreckage, and piles of corpses, through prisons and mines
and laboratories, and across a damned continent. I looked everywhere—
except the one place that mattered." His voice cracked, but he grinned.
"Thank you, truly, for crediting my exceptional efforts."
There was something familiar about the way he was speaking. Her
stomach curdled, and her vision flickered. His face suddenly loomed
and she wasn't sure where she was. Past? Present? Both?
He gave another laugh, startling her back into the moment.
His expression had warped. "Not my fault?" he was saying, his teeth
showed, bared at her. "Is that what you expect me to tell myself ?" He
laid a pale hand over his heart. "Do you think embracing eternal victim-
hood will make me feel better?"
He was seething with so much rage, she could feel it in the air. She
looked down, trying to breathe slowly.
There were so many things she was trying not to think about, strug-
gling to keep her face above the surface before she drowned in the mo-
rass of her mind.
But she knew that he was lying to her. There was something he didn't
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Alchemised • 875
want her to know, that he was determined keep her from realising, and
if she could remember more clearly, she'd know what it was.
"That's not my point," she said. "I'm not trying to talk about that.
What I don't understand is why you're waiting until I'm gone. Mor-
rough will know you've either betrayed or failed him if I escape."
He drew a breath, composing himself, sharp and cruel as a steel trap.
"As I said, there is very specific timing to it all, but none of it concerns
you."
He was trying to wound her into silence, but she refused to let him.
"If I'm gone, Morrough will know you're the traitor," she said stub-
bornly. "Even if he doesn't, he'll blame you for letting me escape. He's
desperate, and this—this baby is his best chance. If you could hurt him
enough to topple the regime, you would have already done it unless
there's something holding you back."
Now Kaine said nothing.
She drew a deep breath. "You said things are unstable, and that's
true, but there's one thing that's keeping everything together, one thing
preventing a collapse. The High Reeve. That's who everyone is afraid of.
They all assume that if anything happens to Morrough, the High Reeve
will take over. And now the world knows that's you.
"Considering it in that light, then there's only one thing I can think
of that would make Morrough seem weak enough for the other coun-
tries to finally attack."
He gave a smooth shrug. "I'd hardly consider you well-apprised
about the current political climate. Just because you can only think of
one thing doesn't mean that nothing else exists."
She met his eyes. "Why don't you tell me what you're planning, then?
And we can see if I'm missing something."
He cocked his head, a freezing, mocking intensity suddenly surfac-
ing. "Which part of 'it doesn't concern you' do you not understand? Has
the meaning of one of those words slipped your mind? Should I bring a
dictionary, perhaps?"
Her throat tightened, her fingers spasming. He was always cruellest
when he was vulnerable.
She met his eyes. "If you had a way to weaken or kill Morrough, you
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876 • SenLinYu
would have done it already. You wouldn't have—" Her throat closed. "I
wouldn't be— pregnant. Which means there's something preventing
you from doing it. And it's me, isn't it? You're waiting until I'm gone,
because it won't matter then if Morrough knows you're a traitor, because
you'll be dead. Because that's the only way left to weaken Morrough,
losing the High Reeve."
He stood unmoving a moment longer, and then the façade fell. He
gave a long sigh.
"I had really hoped the library would keep you busy for at least a
week," he said, looking exhausted.
Helena waited for him to explain himself, but he didn't.
"That's your plan?" Her voice rose trembling with disbelief. "All this
time and you've gone with the same plan of hiding me somewhere and
getting yourself killed as a traitor, and you think I'll be all right with it?"
He gave a laugh so low, it hummed in her bones.
"Do you have a better solution for us this time, too?" he asked quietly.
"After all, not every single horror that I've ever imagined has happened
to you yet. Losing you and spending fourteen months trying and failing
to find you. Finally getting you back, tortured and broken. Keeping you
prisoner— the transference—raping you—" His voice was growing raw
with grief and rage.
He had gone white, that scalding gleaming white. "Is this not
enough? There are, undoubtedly, still unexplored depths to the potential
misery between us. Shall we endeavour to achieve all of it?"
She was silent. There was so much she wanted to say, but finding a
way to begin, to reconcile it, felt impossible. Her mind was too small
now, too simple to contain it. If she tried, it would shatter.
He released a sharp breath, and his expression closed, the gleam van-
ishing. His jaw trembled. "This is the best I can do, Helena. I'm sorry, I
know it's never been enough for you."
"Kaine—" His name came out jagged.
He sighed, resting a hand against the doorframe as though it were
propping him up. "I know you want to save everyone; you always do.
Unfortunately, that's not a talent I possess. At least this way you'll see
the war ended. I can give you that."
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"No!" she said forcefully.
He looked up at her, his face hardening. "You always said you'd
wouldn't choose me over everyone else. I am chained to a sinking ship.
I will not take you with me."
"I was lying!" The words came out a scream. "I didn't—I couldn't—I
wasn't g- g— "
She gasped for air, clutching at her chest. Her heart was pounding so
unevenly, it wouldn't let her breathe. She pressed one hand hard against
her sternum, ignoring the pain that shot through her arm. The room
swam.
Kaine's fury vanished, and he came towards her hesitantly, kneeling
as if she were a skittish animal. He gently took her by the shoulders,
holding her upright.
"Helena . . . breathe. Please. You have to breathe." His eyes were
pleading.
She remembered him. This. That they were like this once. She
grasped at him, fingers clutching at his shoulder, her forehead meeting
his.
"Please breathe," he kept saying, the weight of his hands on her
shoulders grounding her until her chest stopped spasming.
"There has to be another way," she said, when she could speak again.
"We said we'd run away together. Remember? Why can't we run away?
You said you travelled; we could run and I'll find a way to reverse what
happened to you. The other countries will deal with Morrough if you're
gone. Why can't we do that?"
"I would have already taken you away if I could've. Morrough al-
lowed me to have my phylactery while I was hunting fugitives, but he—
grew suspicious last year. That's why it has to be Shiseo who takes you."
She shook her head. "No . . ."
He took her hand in his. "You promised me whatever I wanted if I
saved Bayard for you, remember? Well, here is what I want. I want you
to leave this accursed country behind and go live a whole life some-
where far away. You swore to Holdfast that you'd protect Lila and his
heir. I expect that promise will keep you busy for a long time."
"I promised to take care of you first," she said, snatching her hand
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878 • SenLinYu
back. "Always. I promised you always. If you'd gotten your way, you
would have sent me off, and I wouldn't have even remembered you.
Wouldn't have had any idea until it was too late—"
"Well." His voice was strained. "The last time I was honest with you,
you disappeared and never came back."
She flinched, and her breathing stalled again. "But I tried. I was—I
was coming back. I tried to—"
"I know you did. You were quite the force of destruction, if the re-
ports were anything to go by. If my father hadn't been there, and you
hadn't realised, you might have escaped. I know you tried." He drew
back. "But it wasn't enough in the end, and that wasn't your fault, it's just
the way it is."
She gripped him, not letting him pull away, keeping his face close to
hers. "But what if we'd been there together? If we'd saved Lila together,
it could have all been different. Why can't we work together now?"
Something flashed across his face, and he just looked at her, eye-
brows drawn together. She realised the absurdity of her question. Be-
cause she was not even that person anymore; she was little more than a
ghost.
He just looked down. "We have a long goodbye in front of us. I don't
want to fight you, but I will not do anything that puts you at further
risk."
"Let me try to find another way," she said. "If I could research, there
might be something we haven't considered yet."
He was silent. She watched him weighing the costs and the risks,
and finally he sighed. "I will let you try under two conditions. If your
health deteriorates from the stress, you will stop, and when Shiseo ar-
rives, regardless of how close you think you are to a breakthrough or an
answer, you will go without making me force you. You won't trick or
manipulate me again; you will say goodbye, and you will go." He met
her eyes. "Do you agree?"
Helena swallowed hard. "One condition."
His jaw ticked. "What?"
"Don't lie to me anymore. I don't want to wonder, every time, whether
you're telling the truth."
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CHAPTER 68
Maius 1789
As soon as he'd agreed, Kaine stood, letting go.
"It's late. You should rest," he said. "Tomorrow I'll see what I can
find. I think Shiseo collected some things for you."
"Wait," she said quickly, grasping at him, the equilibrium threaten-
ing to vanish as the physical space between them reopened. "Don't—
don't go."
He looked at her sharply before that feigned look of detachment slid
back into place. "Why?"
Her fingers curled into a fist. "Whenever you leave, I never feel sure
of what— what version of you will come back. My memories— they're
all out of order, and it gets confusing. You're always so—so cold when
you're out of reach."
His hand spasmed as it vanished behind his back. "What would you
like me to do then?" he asked, the words seeming forced.
"I want you to stay," she said, her voice a whisper.
She stood up and went towards her bed. It was as she passed him
that she slid firmly back into the present, but not this present.
She was going to the bed, and he was taking off his coat to drape over the
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880 • SenLinYu
sofa. She would lie down and look at the canopy and try to stay still . . .
She froze midstep, lungs closing until she was suffocating and her
head throbbed, threatening to split it apart.
How would they ever fix this?
"Helena . . ."
Kaine's voice snapped her out of her reverie. She looked back at him.
He shook his head. "Let's not do this," he said. "I'll come back to-
morrow, and I'll—try too— "
"No." She shook her head. "I need to get used to you again. I need to
remember it."
He exhaled and sat on the edge of her bed, as he so often had before,
her hand laced in his, staring across the room.
His fingers kept spasming. He was trying to keep them still, but
tensing only made it worse. She couldn't understand why he'd have
tremors.
"Why don't you heal anymore?" she asked.
He didn't look at her. "With so few of the Undying left, Morrough
pulls more heavily on those remaining. Regeneration takes longer now.
But— I don't know why my hands won't stop. Price of hubris, I sup-
pose."
All these months, she'd watched him crumbling. He'd been slowly
eradicating the Undying, despite knowing that with every kill, the pun-
ishment he'd be subjected to would grow as his ability to recover from
it diminished.
"I'm so sorry, Kaine," she said softly.
He flinched and nearly ripped his hand away from her.
"Don't apologise to me," he snapped, glaring down at her.
"But you're angry with me, aren't you?"
He looked back across the room, throat working. "That doesn't mean
you have any reason to apologise."
"Why not?"
"Because—" His voice failed him, and he looked down. "I have to
apologise first and I—I . . . don't know how to begin. I'd hoped you'd
never remember any of this. If I'd just lied to you about how I got Ba-
yard out. If I'd just let you go, none of this would have happened."
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Alchemised • 881
Helena sat up. "It would have killed me. If you'd sent me away and
I'd found out later you were discovered because I made you go back for
Lila, it would have killed me. I'd do it all again, every second, to save
you."
He turned to look at her, shock and rage sweeping across his face.
"You didn't save me," he said when he was finally capable of speech.
"You just put us in hell for two years."
If he'd struck her, it would have hurt less. The blood drained from her
face, her body going ice-cold.
"I tried to come back—" she said, her voice shaking. "I really did."
His expression had turned regretful. "I know. I didn't mean—"
She drew away from him, feeling like she might throw up if she
looked at him then.
"You shouldn't have assumed I'd be willing to lose you," she said, her
voice shaking. "Did you think I cared less because I had other obliga-
tions? That I don't feel things as much as you? I did everything I could
to keep you safe. You don't know all the things I did."
"I just meant— "
"Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren't
any exemptions or expirations dates on always."
Helena woke to a crushing pain in her head. She lay in the dark,
trying to find her bearings. She could feel Kaine's fingers, still entwined
with hers. She searched for him and found him on the floor, sitting
beside the bed, his head slumped to the side.
She shifted closer, studying him in the dim light.
It was the in-between spaces she struggled with, when her memories
spun like a flipped coin, warring between past and present. But this
close, despite the alterations of time, he was hers. Still. Just as he had
been.
He'd loved her, even though he never expected them to be anything
but doomed. He'd loved her all the same.
"I'm going to take care of you," she mouthed silently.
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She felt the moment he woke. Tension shot through his body, eyes
snapping open, fingers spasming. He went rigid and then relaxed for a
moment when he saw her. His eyes narrowed and he stood, leaning over
her. "Are you all right?"
"Just a headache," she said.
He touched her forehead, his resonance numbing the pressure be-
hind her eyes.
"Can you get me the research today?" she asked.
His eyebrows knit together. "I think you should rest."
"No. I'll be anxious if I don't have something to think about."
He sighed but didn't argue, but she could tell he was debating some-
thing as he studied her. Finally he drew a breath, picking up her hand.
"I'm trusting you—begging you— not to make me regret this."
She wasn't sure what he meant until he wrapped his fingers around
her wrist and the ribbon of metal suddenly unspooled.
She watched, wide-eyed, as he unwound it and the tube of encased
nullium slid out of her wrist. The puncture was torn along the edges,
scarred from all the occasions when she'd fallen or used too much force
on her wrists.
She was startled how small the tube and puncture were. It had felt
larger— as though it had filled all the space between the bones in her
wrist. Her fingers unfurled, feeling her resonance inside them for the
first time in so long.
"You'll still have to wear the cuffs," he said, voice strained. "But I'm
trusting you to be careful and not murder the servants or run away."
Helena managed a shaky nod, too overwhelmed to do anything else.
"I'll have to pull the nullium back in when Stroud visits, or she'll
notice. I hope you understand why I couldn't do this sooner."
She nodded again.
He drew a deep breath and took her other wrist, removing the man-
acle from that one, too. He let her have a minute, twisting her wrists and
feeling her resonance reach her fingertips.
"I didn't realise how much a part of me it was till it was gone," she
said, pressing her palms against her head and calming the frenzied in-
flammation of her brain. Her mind was a bizarre landscape, as if two
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Alchemised • 883
versions of herself were overlaid with each other, her consciousness
veering between them.
She looked up. "I think I can eat."
She kept unfurling her fingers, relishing the sensation of her reso-
nance. Kaine watched, clearly torn between his desire to keep her in a
state and place that he could fully control and not wanting to be her
captor any longer.
He'd had to choose, and he'd set her free.
She didn't want him to regret that.
She spent several minutes trying to repair the muscle and tendon
damage done by the tubes, but most of it was too old and compounded
upon to restore. Time and injury had left her fingers clumsy, their previ-
ous dexterity all but gone. Eventually she gave up and held out her
wrists towards him, so that he could wrap the copper ribbon around
them.
Kaine pocketed the nullium tubes. "I'll send what I can find of the
research."
He started to stand, but Helena caught his hand. She could grasp at
things now without forced feebleness, and so she held on until he looked
back at her.
"Be careful," she said. "Don't—" The word caught in her throat. She
squeezed his hand. "Come back to me, all right?"
"I will."
It was midday when Davies brought in a folio and Helena sat deci-
phering a variety of accumulated notes. Most of it was written in an
unfamiliar hand, using an alchemical shorthand and notation that she
wasn't familiar with, but there were some notes that she recognised as
Shiseo's flowing script, and even Kaine's handwriting.
There were numerous partial arrays and formulas. Some felt oddly
familiar. She kept staring at them, racking her mind until symbols
blurred, smearing across the pages.
She curled on her side, arms wrapped around her head, and passed
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884 • SenLinYu
out.
When she woke, Kaine was sitting next to her. He had her preg-
nancy guide open, eyes skimming across the pages.
She winced at the sight of it.
She didn't want to think about the pregnancy. She knew it was there,
but it was too much. Other things were of greater urgency.
He closed the book immediately.
Her head still hurt, so she closed her eyes. "Where are those notes
from?"
"Some are Bennet's, I believe. Shiseo collected any non-metallurgical
array work he encountered. Said it was something he saw you working
on."
A new gap in her memory seemed to rise to the surface. She'd worked
on something like that?
"I don't remember." How much was still missing?
"I'm sure it'll come to you," he said.
But there was so little time. She opened her eyes, mind grinding like
jammed gears. "I never used arrays for vivimancy, or animancy I don't
think." Her eyebrows furrowed. "Maybe they wouldn't work with celes-
tial or elemental formulas. Have you ever used any other numbers for an
array?"
Kaine shook his head.
The conversation was painfully stilted. She was walking blind
through her own memory, trying to solve a puzzle without remember-
ing which pieces she held. As she talked about her ideas, Kaine nodded,
expression appropriately attentive, but his eyes kept glancing at the
clock, and he showed no emotion when she tried to engage him in the
subject.
She slowly began to realise that he was indulging her. The notes, re-
moving her manacles: It was all an attempt to appease her. It was the
library. He was keeping her occupied and motivated to recover her
strength, but he had no expectation that it would make any difference.
He was managing her.
She stopped talking.
He nodded again, as if agreeing with something she'd said, and
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Alchemised • 885
stood. "I'll make sure you have what you need."
He started for the door, then halted suddenly and turned back. He
stood staring at her and the room for a long time before he finally spoke.
"I know we—" He stopped, and his hand curled into a fist, vanishing
behind his back. He blinked, staring just past her.
"From what I understand," he finally said, his voice eerie and re-
moved, "simple methods of abortion are unlikely to be feasible by the
time you'll escape. There are other methods that can be done by vivi-