favouring her hands, and went to the window.
The mountains were white, but snow hadn't reached the river basin
yet. The winter solstice to mark the new year must be at least a few
weeks away.
Fourteen months. She tried to remember the last date she could re-
call during the war. It would have been late summer when the final
battle occurred, but she couldn't remember the month or lunar phases at
the time. The hospital ward did not change with the seasons.
As she was peering out, the door behind her opened. Her spine
prickled as she turned, anticipating Ferron.
Instead it was Aurelia who entered in a swirl of blue fabric, gilded in
metal once more as if she were a filigreed exoskeleton. If the Ferrons
were short on money, it was likely because Aurelia's skirts required a
dozen yards of imported silk.
Aurelia might have an unusual resonance for iron, but she seemed
new to money. Not that Helena had ever had any herself, but it was
unavoidable knowledge when among the noble families that served the
Holdfasts and the Eternal Flame.
Country dress was supposed to be less formal. Luc used to always
tell her about his family's country home in the mountains, how much
more comfortable the clothes were. Every year after the summer sol-
stice parades that celebrated the Principate's birthday, he'd invited her
to come, to escape the city's heat and the river sicknesses that came with
the warm season.
She'd always chosen to stay with her father.
Years later, she did see the country home, but she'd gone there alone.
Luc had been right. It had been beautiful, the clothes comfortable, but
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70 • SenLinYu
she'd hated every minute of it.
Aurelia stood staring at Helena in disgust. "Why are you still wear-
ing that? Haven't you washed since you got here?"
Helena hadn't. It felt safer to be dirty.
"I knew you were foreign, but I assumed there was basic hygiene in
whatever hovel the Holdfasts found you in."
Helena's jaw clenched.
"Stroud called. That procedure is to happen tonight. Be washed and
do something with that awful hair of yours before I come back, or I'll
have the thralls strip you and do it instead. We have some nice stinking
ones now, and I'll call them in if I ever see you looking like this again."
She turned, skirts swishing as she walked out.
Helena went to the bathroom, tearing off the slip dress and quickly
twisting the taps for the shower. The pipes spat several times before
water finally emerged with a hissing whine. She scrubbed herself from
head to toe with a cloth as quickly as possible and tried to work her
fingers through her hair. There was no comb anywhere.
Did Ferron think she could somehow slit her throat with it?
Not a bad idea, actually.
When she was suitably clean, she dressed in the clean, scratchy un-
dergarments and then forced herself to pull on the dress, trying not to
look at the red.
Then she sat, wrestling the remaining knots out of her hair. Her
hands and wrists were aching, but she didn't want to find out if Aurelia
meant her threat.
Paladians had always found Helena's hair disorderly. Northern hair
was generally fine and extremely straight; curls were only acceptable
when forged with a heated iron bar that singed the hair into the shape
of a corkscrew.
When Helena been a healer, she'd learned to keep it in two tight
braids coiled at the base of her neck. She tried to plait her hair, but her
wrists couldn't manage the twisting motion.
The door swung open with an abrupt bang, and Aurelia stood in the
doorway, her sharp blue eyes flicking up and down with overt disdain.
Helena sat tense, bracing for the verdict.
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Alchemised • 71
Aurelia gave a sniff, lips tightening. "Come."
Helena followed Aurelia, silently, trying to focus on the intricate
metal filigree of her clothing and not on the shadows around her.
Her escort did not appear to enjoy the silence. "Kaine says all that's
valuable about you is your brain." She looked over at Helena as if ex-
pecting the pronouncement to be hurtful in some way. "I figure that
means I can do whatever I want with all the rest of you."
She transmuted her iron-ringed fingers as she said this.
For all the power of her iron resonance, Aurelia's movements were all
for show. The weapons she'd transmuted would break half her fingers if
she tried to use them.
Helena doubted she had any formal training. In general, the guilds
only sent sons to the Institute; daughters were for marriage. They might
be taught alchemical parlour tricks, but they were rarely certified.
Still, Helena pretended to flinch back, her eyes carefully averted so
they wouldn't betray her critical appraisal.
Aurelia's corseted chest swelled as the rings transformed again. "I bet
you wish you hadn't joined the Holdfasts now. The guilds were always
going to win. You all tried to hold us back, and look at what that got
you."
She tossed her head and continued on.
The foyer was empty, Aurelia ascended the steps quickly, hurrying
down the second-floor corridor before stopping short outside the first
door to the left, touching a panel on the door above the knob. There was
a click of the lock unfastening.
"Here. Go in and wait," Aurelia said, her eyes darting around, and it
dawned on Helena far too late that she was walking into a trap.
"Kaine will be along shortly. Don't come out until he arrives," Aurelia
added.
With that, Aurelia hurried on towards the far end of the hallway,
leaving Helena in the corridor with the overwhelming sense that she
was not supposed to go into this room.
She glanced around. Should she try to go back? Or was there a
chance that this would get her in enough trouble that Ferron would kill
her?
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72 • SenLinYu
Before she could weigh her options, the corridor began to stretch,
ballooning until every surface started to slide out of reach. The door-
knob was shrinking away from her, leaving her in the open amid the
gaping shadows.
She lunged forward and caught the knob, managing to twist it and
drag herself into the room.
Inside, it was smaller than the corridor.
She leaned against the door, palms and fingers tracing the grain of
the wood as the enclosed space settled around her.
Helena was surprised to find the room like hers. Two windows. A
bed and wardrobe, but a desk and chair rather than an armchair. It could
have belonged to an ascetic.
She went to the desk by the window. There was a neat stack of paper.
She lifted the top sheet of paper, holding it up in the dim light to see
if Ferron's correspondence might have pressed through to the lower
page, but the paper was thick and pristine. She ran her fingers across the
surface of the desk; there was delicate silverwork across it, intricate
leaves and vines set in the wood with perfect alignment. Undoubtedly
the work of a talented silver alchemist.
The desk was perfectly maintained. A stark contrast with the cob-
webs coating the iron filigree throughout the rest of the house.
She turned away, tense and trapped inside a room she was nearly
certain she was not supposed to be in. She doubted she could make it
back to her own room, and if Aurelia caught her disobeying, she was
sure to do something nasty.
But what might Ferron do when he found her? Would intruding
into a locked room merit lethal punishment? She doubted he was that
impulsive, and if Stroud knew so many vivimancy punishments that
weren't technically torture, Ferron undoubtedly did too.
Her mouth went dry.
She still didn't know what transference would entail. Despite the
frequent references made to it, no one had explained to her what Ferron
would be doing. Helena could only guess based on the comments Shiseo
had made, even though they made no sense because Helena had been
the one who'd healed General Bayard when he was first injured. She'd
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Alchemised • 73
tested the limits of her knowledge and abilities trying to save him,
painstakingly regenerating the damaged brain tissue. When he'd sur-
vived, people had called it a miracle, declaring Helena's hands to be
blessed by Sol.
That praise had ended when General Bayard woke. He was like a
child. A huge, powerful general with the emotions of a toddler. A once
brilliant tactician who couldn't find his way through a door without
help.
Helena had saved his body and learned the bitter lesson that a mind
was a thing apart and she had not saved it. She'd tried and failed for
years to fix what she'd done. Somewhere in the hidden spaces of her
memory, Elain Boyle had materialised, a cure in hand, a procedure then
used on Helena as well. Now the Undying had learned of it.
The door clicked, breaking Helena from her thoughts. She turned as
Ferron strode in. His hand was at his throat, pulling the collar loose.
He stopped short at the sight of her.
"Well," he said, "this is a surprise."
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CHAPTER 5
Helena said nothing. She had no idea what to expect or
what to do, so she watched Ferron like a cornered animal.
His eyes flicked from her to the door.
"Aurelia brought you here, I presume." He sighed. "I suppose it is
time that we begin."
He came forward. Helena stiffened, but he strode past her to the
wardrobe and jerked it open.
Apparently, he was not quite an ascetic. The door of the wardrobe
held an entire row of decanters. He snatched one up and poured several
fingers of amber liquid into a tumbler before turning back, taking a long
sip as he stared at her over the glass, his gaze starting at the floor and
working slowly up.
His attention turned away when he reached her shoulders. He
looked down at the tumbler with another sigh as if the situation were
deeply inconvenient for him.
"Let's get this over with."
Helena didn't move.
His gaze lifted. "Come here."
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Alchemised • 75
When she didn't obey, a slow smile curved along his lips. "I can make
you, if you don't."
He raised his hand and gestured lazily, long fingers curling with per-
fect precision, knuckle by knuckle.
Helena's limbs began moving against her will, like a puppet manipu-
lated across a stage. Her legs bent, lifted, weight shifting, step, another
step. She fought against it, tensing, but it only made her bones feel like
they'd snap.
It stopped once she was within arms' reach. He tilted her chin up
with a fingertip, their eyes meeting.
"See?" he said. "It'll be easier if you obey."
She would have spat at him, but when she tried, her jaw clenched,
teeth locking together. His eyes gleamed.
"Don't test me; it won't get you what you want," he said, his eerie eyes
hooded. "You know, this is new for me. I don't generally keep prisoners."
He drained his glass and set it down.
"Sit." He gestured towards the chair.
Her limbs came free. She considered trying to bolt, if for no other
reason than to be annoying, but she could feel his resonance through
her nerves like a trip wire.
She sat, and the instant she was in place, she couldn't move again.
Ferron stepped behind her. She could hear him but not see him,
which made her heart beat faster, ears straining for any sound.
One of his hands caught her jaw, tilting her head back until she was
staring at the ceiling. She couldn't see his face, only his other hand,
which bore a dark ring that glittered in the low light. Two fingers
pressed against her temple, and his thumb settled between her eyes.
He leaned forward just enough that she could glimpse his face.
"Now then, let's see what it's like to be you."
She tensed as a weight enveloped the front of her skull, pushing
down with slowly increasing pressure. It grew and grew until something
gave way, as though Ferron's fingers had gone through her forehead and
into her brain.
Her mind and body were abruptly sheared apart. She could sense
that her skull was still intact, his hands still on the surface, but it felt as
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76 • SenLinYu
though her head had been broken open, cracked like an egg, her brain
exposed as Ferron's resonance poured inside.
It wasn't a channel of energy like normal resonance, but something
immense and fluid that pushed into the space until she was suffocating
under it, the grooves and crevices of her mind filled with the oppressive,
growing sense of an Other trying to occupy the plane of her cerebral
existence. When there were no more crevices, her consciousness was
crushed as though collapsing in on itself.
Everything went red.
She was screaming.
She could hear it. Feel it. The physical part of herself still immobil-
ised in the chair was screaming, but Helena's mind was elsewhere, fis-
suring beneath the growing pressure of Ferron's consciousness.
Ferron didn't stop. He pushed deeper. She was drowning inside her
brain, trapped as the water rose and the pressure grew and there was
nowhere to go. He swallowed her whole.
There was a seismic hum, then light like a mist evaporating.
She was still staring up, eyes locked on the ceiling. A pale face hung
straight above her, staring down.
Her eyes moved jerkily, startled at Ferron's cruel features, at how
alien and unnatural he was. She realised sluggishly that he was in her
mind, looking at himself through her eyes.
Then he was gone. His resonance and mind ripped out like an inva-
sive taproot.
Everything inside her mind collapsed around the empty space, the
integrity of her own consciousness crumbling.
She fell sideways out of the chair, the room tumbling with her.
Her thoughts rolled like dice in her skull.
Where was she?
"Get out."
She knew the words, but they came from far away. Sounds. Not
Etrasian. Etrasian was prettier. Melodic.
This was—
Dialect.
Her thoughts were very slow.
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Alchemised • 77
She tried to lift her head, but the room kept moving.
She must be on a ship. Crossing the sea. Leaving the cliffs and is-
lands behind.
Where was she going?
To school. Yes, she was going to study alchemy.
There was something wet on her face. She tried limply to lift her
hand and managed to smear it away.
Her fingers came away red. Why red?
"Get out!"
The room shook. Helena was picked up by an unseen force and
shoved towards the door. She collapsed dazedly, but the jolt knocked
her back into herself, remembering.
Ferron. The transference.
Her stomach turned over. If it hadn't been empty, she would have
vomited.
She looked back. He was right there, his face white and terrifying,
twisted with fury. The room hummed.
"I said get out!" He looked like an animal, ready to lunge and rip her
throat out with his bare teeth.
Absolute terror flung Helena into action. She pushed herself up,
wrenched the door open, and fled.
The ground rolled beneath her feet. Her vision was stained red no
matter how much she blinked, as if the walls were dripping with blood,
shadows turned to gore. She kept smearing her hands across her eyes as
she tried to find her way.
All she could hear was her panicked breathing and her feet on bare
wood, the iron in the floor like ice.
She reached the top of the stairs. She could feel herself going into
shock, her limbs turning leaden, dragging her down. Her body growing
colder and colder as a feverish chill consumed her.
She swayed and nearly toppled down the steps, clinging to the ban-
ister to keep upright, staring down into the foyer.
The roses rippled as if underwater, floor shifting, and around it cir-
cled a black dragon.
It was curled inwards around the table, wings spread out, head curved
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78 • SenLinYu
down so that its tail was caught within its teeth, consuming itself.
An ouroboros.
In her red-stained vision, it looked as if it were swimming in blood.
What if she just threw herself over the balcony?
There was no one to stop her. The secrets Luc had entrusted to her
would be safe, and Ferron would have failed.
She leaned forward, hands trembling.
Headfirst.
Dead on impact or Ferron could use vivimancy to keep her alive.
Just a little—
A vise-like grip closed around her arm and wrenched her back an
instant before she toppled over the railing.
She whirled and found Ferron glaring at her.
"Don't. You. Dare."
She tried to jerk loose, lunging towards escape, but he dragged her
back from the railing and down the stairs as she beat and clawed at him,
trying to rip herself free. He didn't stop. He pulled her through the
house, practically kicking in the door of her room before shoving her
onto the bed.
Helena collapsed, breathing unsteadily, hands and wrists throbbing.
"Did you think I didn't know you'd try to kill yourself ?" Ferron asked
venomously. "As if there's anything the Eternal Flame loved more than
dying for their causes."
"I thought you liked us dead." Her head hurt so much, she wanted to
vomit.
He gave a barking laugh. "Consider yourself the sole exception to
that rule. The High Necromancer wants your secrets, and until he has
them, you will not die."
He glanced around her room, and his eyes seemed to glow.
He closed them, shaking his head. "I thought transference would be
enough for one night, but it seems you're determined to make this as
difficult for yourself as possible."
He leaned over her.
Helena stared at him in dread.
"Let's see what other ideas you've had." His cold fingers pressed
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Alchemised • 79
against her temple.
It wasn't transference, and she was so relieved that she almost relaxed
when she realised he was only violating her memories.
His resonance swept through her mind like a breeze, sending her
thoughts fluttering.
He moved slowly. Instead of a long pass across time, he took interest
only in recent events, winding through her memories like a current.
He seemed to pore over every detail. Exploring her room. The way
the hallway frightened her, and her musings over him and his family.
Her attempts at exercise.
When he finally stopped, the blood on her face had dried in tracks
down her cheeks.
"Industrious as always," he said mockingly, pulling his hand away.
Her jaw clenched.
He was still leaning over her, hand pressed into the mattress by her
head. "Do you really think you can trick me into killing you?
She stared stonily at the canopy.
"You're welcome to try." He turned to leave, then paused as if just
remembering something. "Don't enter my room again. If I want to deal
with you, I'll come here."
Once he was gone, Helena didn't move.
She hadn't placed much faith in her plans. She'd known the odds of
success were impossibly small, and yet she'd tried to convince herself
otherwise. Luc wouldn't give up. If it were him, he'd fight to the very
last. How could she betray him by doing less?
But Luc was dead.
No matter what she did, it wouldn't bring him back.
Her shivering grew uncontrollable. She curled onto her side, bur-
rowing into the bedding. The wounded feeling in her head grew until it
was a sinkhole drawing her inwards, her skin growing taut like a mem-
branous exoskeleton.
The sheets became damp with her sweat as her fever rose. Her body
was freezing, but her brain was on fire.
Time morphed, twisting, and she lost track of everything beyond her
misery.
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80 • SenLinYu
There were voices. So many voices. Vile things were poured down
her throat, making her gag, burning concoctions that blistered her or-
gans. Hot and cold and slimy things on her skin. She was picked up and
plunged into ice-cold water, dragged out to breathe, and then shoved
under again.
Her mind burned on like an ember, charring everything around it.
There were needles. Little pricks she hardly felt, then large agonising
lances of pain that punctured her arms.
The pain in her head grew until it blotted out all thought.
Finally, she slipped away, her mind untethering itself in a free fall.
There was blood everywhere.
She was in the hospital in Headquarters. The bells were ringing.
There were bodies being rushed in by nurses and medics whose faces
blurred as they passed.
There was a boy in her arms, dying. She tried to calm him, trying to
focus, not to feel the building panic of the room catching like claws
through her lungs, but he wouldn't let her heal him. No matter how she
tried, he'd shove her back. Blood kept pouring out in dark spurts. The
sticky warmth seeping into her skin. People kept calling her amid the
clamour, but she had to save this boy.
She was right here.
Finally, he stopped fighting. She felt him through her resonance. A
rush of hope in her heart at the vibrant sense of living. Then he was
gone, like a fist through her chest. Too late.
She looked up at the bodies piled around her, one on top of the next,
a wall rising endlessly, rivulets of blood running down it as it swayed,
threatening to crush her.
She tried to breathe. The smell of bile, charred flesh and blood, sweat,
filth, and antiseptic burned in her nose and lungs, suffocating her.
Everywhere she turned, there were more bodies, even under her feet.
She crushed them when she moved.
Choose.
Who lives and dies. She had to decide.
It would be her choice.
She reached out, fingers trembling, but a hand caught hers, stilling it.
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Alchemised • 81
It was Luc.
She gave a panicked gasp of relief, clutching at him.
He was standing in his golden armour, helmet off so she could see
his face. He smiled at her. For a moment the nightmare vanished.
Then blood began to trickle down his face.
Lila was just behind him, glaive in hand, pale hair a crown around
her head, but half her face was rotted away, peeling back to reveal her
skull. Someone else stood just beside her, but Helena couldn't remem-
ber his face.
Beside them were Titus and Rhea, and after them the Council and
the Eternal Flame, all standing in a ring around her.
Their faces were blank except Luc's.
Luc was still alive. He was bleeding, but she could heal him. Her
hand shook as she reached out, but he spoke.
"I'm dead because of you."
She shook her head, voice failing her.
"Look, Hel," Luc said. He touched his breastplate, and the golden
armour melted away, revealing his bare chest. A gleaming black knife
was shoved between his ribs, a bloodless wound. The incision grew, run-
ning down his torso until the knife fell, shattering on the ground, and
his organs came sliding out, blackened with gangrene, the smell of
decay filling the air as if he'd been rotting for months.
"See?"
"No. No . . ." She tried to reach for him anyway, but he melted away,
leaving her fingers stained with his blood.
Her mother was there now. Helena couldn't make out her face, but
she knew it was her mother. The scent of dried herbs clung to her as she
stood in front of Helena.
Helena reached for her, but her mother vanished into mist.
Then her father.
He stood out among the Northerners. His eyes were dark, and his
black hair curled just like hers.
He wore his white medical coat, and when she met his eyes, he
smiled at her. Just below his jaw was a gash mimicking the curve of his
smile, running from ear to ear.
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82 • SenLinYu
"Helena," he said, "I'm dead because of you."
He stepped towards her, a scalpel gleaming in his hand.
She didn't move, didn't resist this time when he took her in his arms
and slit her throat.
When the world swam back into focus, Helena wished she'd died.
Her head throbbed, and her hair was plastered to her cheeks and
forehead. The room was stiflingly hot. Her mouth was so dry, her tongue
threatened to crack.
She managed to roll onto her side. The bedside table bore a pitcher,
a cup of water, and several vials. She fumbled for the cup, gulping it
down.
She slumped back, kicking off the blankets. The smell of a mustard
poultice burned in her nose. She craned her head, looking at the vials on
the table again. There were iron and arsenic tablets, smelling salts, and
ipecac.
She reached for the arsenic, but she'd no sooner lifted her hand than
the door opened, and that nervous stuttering man from Central en-
tered, accompanied by Ferron.
"It's unlikely the fevers will improve as the procedure continues," the
man was saying, looking as terrified of Ferron as he'd been of Mor-
rough.
Ferron didn't appear to be listening; his gaze had gone instantly to
the table and the vial that Helena had been about to steal. He strode
across the room, sweeping up all three vials and pocketing them with
the barest glance down at her.
Bastard.
"I'm expected to put up with this every week?" Ferron asked, scowl-
ing down at Helena as if she were a stray he wanted to drown.
The man's head bobbed. "As I understand, the assimilation process of
transference that the Eternal Flame developed was intended to culti-
vate a progressive degree of tolerance. As with traditional mithridatism,
there will be side effects. The next time should result in further progress
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Alchemised • 83
on your part, but as a result the brain fevers will likely be of a similar
magnitude. You must understand, it's hardly a natural state of being. A
living body surviving even a brief presence of another soul has never
been achieved before. That she's alive at all should be considered a mir-
acle. As the purpose of this is only to keep her alive long enough to re-
verse the transmutations, the long-term deterioration will be immaterial."
"I don't have time to play nurse," Ferron said, sneering at him. "Your
cure was nearly as bad as the disease. At this rate, I can't see how she'll
survive long enough for me to find anything. Getting her to tolerate
transference and manage a full reversal of what's been done to her
memory will only be the first steps. I'll still have to find the information.
That could take months. I will not be set up for failure because you've
decided something is 'immaterial.'"
The man shrivelled, his neck seeming to sink into his chest cavity,
shoulders rising past his ears. "I assure you, High Reeve, the arsenic is
unlikely to kill her. She may begin to show symptoms of poisoning, but
based on our theories, this procedure will be complete before she devel-
ops any serious necrosis or—significant liver damage."
"How do you know how long this procedure will take? We don't
even know if it worked on Bayard." Ferron's voice had grown deadly. "If
you're certain that she will not die before the High Necromancer has his
answers, and I am to follow your advice, then you will go attest to this,
now, before our preeminent leader, and make clear to him that I am act-
ing on your advice and assurances."
The man lost all remaining colour. "W-Well, when considered in
that light, it's possible that if the sessions were spaced out more gener-
ously, we might reduce the side effects and brain fevers. But I would not
dare make recommendations on my own. I'm no expert in this new sci-
ence, you know. This would be for Stroud or the High Necromancer
himself to decide."
"I was sent you. I'd expect you to at least have enough expertise to
have an opinion," Ferron said.
The man mopped his forehead. "I will strongly advise Stroud to visit
so that she can make a recommendation," he said, avoiding Ferron's
stare.
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84 • SenLinYu
"Get out!"
Helena flinched.
Ferron watched him disappear through the door before glancing
scathingly down at her, as if it were all her fault.
He reached towards her and she shrank back, but his hand passed
harmlessly and slid under the pillow instead, searching the bed to en-
sure she hadn't managed to squirrel away any of the arsenic. She glared
at him until he was satisfied that she had no poison hidden anywhere
and left again with a slam of the door.
Her legs were wobbly when she got up. She had to sit on the floor
under the shower spray because it was too tiring to stand, but she felt
vaguely human again when all the sweat and smell of poultices had
washed away.
The awful red dress had been washed, pressed, and put away in her
wardrobe, along with several more dresses, also all red. Some were al-
most burgundy, while others were luridly bright. Freshly dyed. There
were hints of the original sage green and pale pink barely visible along
the hems.
Clearly Aurelia did not move on once she had an idea in her head.
Stroud arrived the next day, followed into the room by a dead
servant and Mandl, or rather the corpse that Mandl now occupied.
The servant was an older woman, dressed as household staff of some
kind. She had light-brown hair that was neatly combed back, and age
lines around her mouth and eyes. Her eyes had an eerie lack of focus
which contrasted sharply with the glowering resentment in Mandl's
new face.
"Sit up," Stroud said to Helena, setting a medical bag on the table.
Helena obeyed without a word, remaining impassive while Stroud
prodded her, noting the way Helena's wrists had shrunk inside the man-
acles, and checking her vital signs, tsking with irritation.
"Well, this is disappointing," she said at last. "I'd really hoped you'd
handle it better."
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Alchemised • 85
Helena said nothing, a gleam of triumph rising in her chest.
"I suppose it was too much to hope you had the physical resilience of
a man like Bayard," Stroud added with a disgruntled huff after another
minute of running her resonance intrusively through Helena's organs.
She pressed her fingers against Helena's head, pushing a little frisson
of energy into her mind, making Helena wince. Her mind still felt raw.
"This degree of inflammation after seven days is worrying. None of the
test subjects show symptoms like this."
She sucked her teeth and glared at Mandl. "A pity you didn't report
her at the time. This would all be so much easier."
Mandl bobbed her head stiffly, which was not enough penitence for
Stroud.
"You should be grateful that I haven't pointed out to His Eminence
that if we'd learned about her sooner, we might have retained Boyle's
corpse and had an animancer for one of the Undying to use."
"I said I was sorry," Mandl said. "I don't know what else you want me
to do, or why you dragged me here."
"You were gifted ascendance on my recommendation. If I am going
to be inconvenienced by this, then so will you," Stroud said. "And if this
costs me anything, I will see that it costs you more."
Stroud turned back to Helena, examining her once more with an
increasingly sour expression. "We'll need to delay the next procedure
until she's stronger. If she dies prematurely, we'll lose the information."
She turned to the other necrothrall in the room. "High Reeve!"
The servant turned her head, cloudy eyes focusing on Stroud.
"I will speak with you. Privately."
The necrothrall servant nodded and gestured towards the door.
Of all the uses of necromancy that Helena had witnessed, the cre-
ation of the Ferrons' servants seemed a particularly vile choice. In a war,
she could see the horrific rationale leading to the act, but the servants in
Spirefell were all civilians, murdered for the sake of cheap convenience.
With every minute she spent in the house, her hatred of Ferron
deepened, because she knew his history—the luxury and privilege of his
family. His easy life. The Ferrons would have been nothing without the
Holdfasts and the Alchemy Institute; their wealth would never have
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86 • SenLinYu
existed.
They should have been grateful, loyal to Luc for what his family had
enabled them to become, but they'd turned traitor and chosen Mor-
rough.
Perhaps that ouroboros dragon was not merely a pretentious decora-
tion but something the Ferrons prided themselves in. An omen of a
destructive, insatiable hunger which left nothing but ruin in its wake.
Ferron strode into her room the next day. Helena's body went
rigid, dread sweeping through her like a tide. The physical pain of trans-
ference twinged inside her psyche like an aftershock.
He stopped at the door, and his pale eyes slid over her, flickering as
they paused on her fingers, which spasmed uncontrollably when she
was startled. She hid them behind her skirts.
"Stroud wants you going outside," he said. "She believes fresh air will
improve your constitution." He tossed a bundle towards her. "Put it on."
Helena unfolded it and found it was a thick cloak, dyed crimson. She
grimaced.
"Something wrong?"
She looked over. "Is red the only dye you have in this house?"
"It'll make you easy for the thralls to spot. Come!" Ferron stalked
into the hallway.
She followed tentatively. The sconces in the hallways were lit, driving
back the shadows as he headed to the far end of the wing, descending a
new flight of stairs to a set of doors that opened onto a veranda in the
courtyard.
It was raining, and a gust of wind swirled along the house, whipping
across her face. She gave a startled gasp.
Ferron turned sharply. "What?"
"I—" Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. "I'd forgotten what wind
feels like."
He turned away. "The courtyard's enclosed. You may wander as you
wish."
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Alchemised • 87
She looked around, taking in the details of the house and the other
buildings. The veranda they stood on continued past the end of the
wing and became a cloister walkway, connecting the main house to the
other buildings, walling them in. A person could travel all the way to
the gate without stepping into the rain, the house and buildings form-
ing an iron ring.
"Go." Ferron waved her off and then seated himself at a nearby table
with two small chairs, pulling a newspaper out of his overcoat.
Helena's eyes instantly locked onto the headlines.
eternal flame terrorist seized! screamed the words at the top
of the fold in all- capitals.
She stepped closer without thinking.
Who had they found?
Grace said they were all dead. But here was proof of survivors. Fer-
ron hadn't killed them all.
He looked up. She froze in her tracks, unable to tear her eyes away
from paper, looking desperately for a name.
"Care to see?" he asked in a slow drawl that made her skin prickle.
He snapped the paper open, and Helena stared dumbfounded at a
photograph of herself, drugged and sedated in Central. Her face was
gaunt, her expression contorted, strained from the withdrawal of the
interrogation drug, her hair tangled around her face.
It was clearly intended to make her look like a dirty, feral extremist.
The last fugitive of the Eternal Flame terrorists has been apprehended
and taken for interrogation, proclaimed the lede just above the fold.
"You're finally famous, and look— I'm included, too." Ferron's eyes
glittered with malice as he indicated a photo of himself farther down
the column, in that very courtyard, the spires of the house silhouetted
behind him. "Just in case anyone wants to know where you are. Or who's
keeping you."
Helena looked at him in confusion. Why would they want to publi-
cise her capture and location? And why now? She'd been in Central for
weeks. Her apprehension was old news.
"I thought it was a rather obvious trap," Ferron said with a sigh, flip-
ping past the front page. "Then again, your Resistance was never known
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88 • SenLinYu
for its intelligence. Anything more subtle would elude them. The High
Necromancer hopes that if there's anyone left, they'll feel morally obli-
gated to rush in and save the Flame's last ember." He glanced sidelong
at her. "I have my doubts, but no harm in trying, I suppose."
He leaned back, idly returning his attention to the next column.
Helena staggered back.
Was that why they'd sent her to Spirefell rather than keeping her in
Central? To be used as bait?
A strangled sound tore from her throat. She turned and stumbled
down the steps out into the rain. There was nowhere to go, but she had
to go somewhere.
The cloak, clasped at her throat, choked her, dragging her back. Her
fingers tore at it until it came loose, setting her free. She ran across the
courtyard.
The icy rain soaked through the thin, fashionable fabric of her dress,
but she scarcely felt it. She could see the towers from the city, rising
beyond Spirefell. She looked for the beacon, the light that had always
shone from the top of the Alchemy Tower, the Eternal Flame which
had been kept burning since the day of Paladia's founding, but it was
not there. It was gone.
Still she went towards them, but as she neared the far side of the
courtyard, all the towers vanished behind the wall. She moved back and
forth, looking for some way out, finally going to the gate, knowing it
would be futile but unable to help herself.
It was locked tight, made of wrought iron too ornate to squeeze
through. She rattled it so hard, it made her wrists spasm.
She tried to climb it but her slippers shredded, the iron cold enough
to burn her skin, and when she tried to pull herself up, the pain inside
her wrists left her hands numb.
Across the courtyard, Ferron was reading the paper, unconcerned by
Helena's attempts at escape.
She wanted to scream. She gripped the gate, rattling it again.
What if someone came, not knowing they were being lured into a
trap?
Someone who'd managed to survive all this time, captured because
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Alchemised • 89
of her.
She drew in a gasping breath. Her chest felt as though it might split
open. She slumped, shaking the gate again and again, as if the iron
might bend for her if she were only persistent enough.
Finally, she turned back to the house in despair.
Everywhere she looked was grey: the dead grass and leafless, skeletal
trees, the dark house with its black vines and spires, even the washed-
out slope of the mountains, white peaks shrouded by the mist of an
overcast sky.
As if all colour had been leached from the world. Except her. She
stood there in blood red, stark against the monochrome.
The wind drove the rain into her, striking like droplets of ice, making
her shudder. She was drenched through. Her hands were turning white,
the tips of her fingers aching with every gust of wind. The metal from
the manacles sent a chill radiating into her bones.
She pressed her fingers over her eyes, trying to think. What could
she do? Surely there was something.
No. Her plan remained the same. Die, by Ferron's hand or her own.
The rain was streaming through her hair and down her face as she
forced herself to walk back towards the house. There were two necro-
thralls stationed outside, at the top of the stairs leading to the main
wing. She recognised them from Central. Weathering outside, they
were so decrepit that they almost blended in with the stones, but both
watched as she neared Ferron.
Ferron glanced up, his eyes hard. "You haven't been out long enough.
Keep walking."
She slunk back into the courtyard. There were a few trees in the cen-
tre that hid her from view as she huddled in the cloistered walkway
across the courtyard, trying to warm herself. She could see her cloak
lying in the gravel, soaked with rain. She wrapped her arms around her
chest, trying to conserve body heat.
Gradually the shivering stopped. Another gust of wind tore through
her. She felt thin as paper, so tired she could fall asleep out there.
Which might indicate hypothermia . . .
If she fell asleep, her organs would begin to shut down, and she'd die.
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90 • SenLinYu
She'd read it was a gentle way to go. She let herself sink into the obliv-
ion until everything grew comfortingly vague.
"Creative." Ferron's voice was colder than the wind. Fingers gripped
her arm, and heat surged through her, her heart suddenly racing, hot
blood pulsing through her body.
She gave a startled gasp, wrenching herself away from him, but it
was too late.
He glared at her. "Get up."
She pushed herself awkwardly to her feet, wrists twinging. She was
still blue with cold, limbs stiff with chill, but now too warm to die.
"Don't make me drag you," he said through clenched teeth as he
turned and walked away.
She followed him sullenly. There was a servant waiting at the door.
The third she'd seen. Dead like all the rest. This one was younger, uni-
formed as a housemaid. She was holding a brush and cloth. Helena
tried to slink past but found herself trapped in place.
"Aurelia will throw a fit if you track mud into her house. Sit."
"I can clean myself," Helena said stiffly.
"I didn't ask," Ferron said. His resonance twanged through her
nerves, and Helena's knees gave out, dropping her onto a chair. The
maid knelt and began cleaning Helena's wet slippers while Helena sat
rigidly, torn between horrified fascination and shame.
The Faith said that a soul and body remained joined together as one
until cremation. It was only when fire consumed the flesh that the ethe-
real soul was untethered from the crude earthly form. A person who
had lived devoutly and without vice would release a pure soul that could
ascend to the highest of the heavenly realms.
If a body was not burned, the soul was left trapped, unable to ascend
and in danger of becoming tainted by the body's putrefaction. Left too
long, the impurity of the body could metamorphise the soul into mag-
gots and insects, plagues, and other grotesque forms of evil, doomed to
sink beneath the surface of the earth to be consumed forever in the dark
wet fire of the Abyss.
Reanimation risked that metamorphosis. And tethering both body
and soul to a necromancer meant that even the purest souls could be-
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Alchemised • 91
come too corrupted to ever ascend unless they were freed with sacred
fire.
Helena couldn't help but peer into the maid's face, looking for any
sign that there might be a soul still inside, slowly decaying, trapped in a
state of neither life nor death. The maid's gaze was empty. If there was
any trace of her soul, it was smothered beneath Ferron's will.
She looked up at him. "You're a monster."
He raised an eyebrow. "Noticed that, have you?"
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CHAPTER 6
Ferron left as the maid finished with Helena's slippers, and
Helena immediately stood, refusing to let the corpse touch her further.
The maid headed inside. The instant her back was turned, Helena
snatched up Ferron's discarded newspaper, hiding it behind her back as
she drew a deep breath and stepped inside.
She focused on the paper in her hand as she hurried towards the
stairs.
The shadows loomed but Helena refused to let herself look at them,
counting each step, hand pressed against the banister and then along
the wall, focusing on the amber pools of light cast by the sconces, until
she reached her room.
In her absence, it had been aired out. The bed stripped, linens
changed. The air was almost as cold as it had been outside, but the win-
dows were closed and locked again.
Helena was drenched and freezing but Ferron might realise he'd left
the newspaper and come for it. She had no time to waste.
She huddled near the window where the light was strongest, her
eyes drinking in every word, starting at the very top. novembris 1788.
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Alchemised • 93
She stared at the date in shock. That couldn't be right. Her last mem-
ory with a clear date was the hearing about Lila Bayard resuming pala-
din duties and returning to combat early in 1786.
If the war had ended fourteen months ago, that would have been in
late summer of 1787. Which meant that she had no memory of nearly
nineteen months of the war. It blurred out of focus when she tried to
think back, to remember anything more than the hospital shifts. She
had no recollection of anything, not of conversation or the seasons, or
Lumithia's Ascendance and Abeyance, of anything but the endless loop
of shift after shift in the hospital, like an eternal scream.
She squeezed her eyes shut, racking her brain. There must be some-
thing. She couldn't have lost that much, but it was like trying to catch
the wind with her fingers. A sharp pain splintered through her skull.
She blinked, vision flickering red as her eyes opened.
There was a newspaper in her hands.
She clutched it tightly. She had to read quickly before Ferron no-
ticed she'd taken it. Her eyes raced to the first article.
The last fugitive of the extremist group calling themselves
the Order of the Eternal Flame has been apprehended and
faces interrogation. New Paladia's Central office has con-
firmed the identity of Helena Marino, a foreign alchemy stu-
dent from the southern islands of Etras. The Etrasian
government denies any involvement in or support of the
Eternal Flame's terrorist activities. To protect the citizens of
New Paladia from further violence, Marino has been impris-
oned outside the city at Spirefell while her fate is decided.
Spirefell, the renowned Ferron estate, was built of iron by
Urius Ferron. With a unique structure, built as a celebration
of the family's exceptional resonance, the house makes a se-
cure location for dangerous prisoners.
The Ferrons, one of New Paladia's oldest families, have a his-
tory in the region that predates the Holdfasts. They were fre-
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94 • SenLinYu
quent victims of the Eternal Flame's persecution. Iron
Guildmaster Atreus Ferron was arrested and executed for
speaking against the Holdfasts' oppressive regime, and his
son, Kaine Ferron, was baselessly accused of assassinating
Principate Apollo Holdfast. All charges against father and
son were later dropped . . .
Ferron had been accused of killing the Principate? The assassination
responsible for causing the war?
She stared at the words until they blurred.
She remembered Principate Apollo's death. He was found brutally
murdered in the Alchemy Institute's commons, and an investigation
had immediately been opened. She didn't remember there being any
conclusion. There'd been so much happening at the time: the funeral,
the preparations for Luc to be crowned Principate. What should have
been a joyous occasion was shrouded by grief and shock, Luc in denial
even as his friends were swearing oaths to die protecting him. The cer-
emony was barely over before the sedition and the Undying, and the
war that never seemed to end.
Had Ferron killed Principate Apollo? Surely not, he would have
been only sixteen. Perhaps the claim had been fabricated to further por-
tray the Ferron family as victims of the Holdfasts? That seemed more
likely.
She read the rest of the article, hoping for more information but
finding simply a reiteration of the Undying's usual narrative about the
war: that they had not started it; that in fact there had never been a
"war" but instead civil unrest caused by a small group of religious ex-
tremists who refused to acknowledge the democratically elected Pal-
adian Guild Assembly.
It made Luc out to be a power-hungry monster who'd tried to burn
down the entire city rather than let anyone else have it.
Luc, who'd gone up onto the roof of the Alchemy Tower the night
before becoming Principate, standing alone on the very edge.
Helena had followed him and stood as close as she dared, promising
him that she would do anything for him if he would just step back and
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Alchemised • 95
take her hand.
He hadn't listened, not until she swore that if he jumped, then she
would, too. He'd stepped back to save her.
They'd sat together there on the roof until sunrise. She'd gripped his
hand and talked the whole night, telling him about Etras, the cliffs, and
the little villages with the donkeys pulling painted carts, the olives, all
the farms, and the sea on summer days. They'd go there someday, she
told him. Once everything was better, she'd take him and he'd see how
beautiful it was.
Luc had never wanted to be Principate. If there had been anyone
else, he would have given it up in a heartbeat.
Helena turned the page of the newspaper, blinking hard.
A column within listed executions performed by the High Reeve
that previous week. There was a picture of wretched-looking men and
women on their knees on a platform. Dressed all in black, with an intri-
cate helmet obscuring his face and hair, stood Ferron, one pale hand
outstretched.
She could tell it was Ferron just by his posture and the familiar tilt
of his long fingers, but the article only referred to him as the High Reeve.
There was no reference anywhere to Kaine Ferron being the High
Reeve.
Was that a secret?
Who would benefit from that? If the deteriorating condition of the
estate was anything to go by, it was not the Ferrons.
No. Morrough must be responsible. After all, keeping the High
Reeve's identity hidden provided the High Necromancer with an ex-
ceptionally powerful tool. If the High Reeve could be anyone, people
were kept paranoid, always wondering. It would also prevent Ferron
from gathering his own followers or accumulating enough power to
overthrow Morrough.
Perhaps Ferron had ambitions that Morrough feared. That was a
tantalising possibility. Something Helena might take advantage of.
It also made Spirefell the perfect trap. If anyone tried to save Helena,
they would assume they were attacking a guild heir; they'd have no idea
who her captor truly was.
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96 • SenLinYu
She read the rest of the paper quickly. There were some vague allu-
sions to grain shortages. It was strange. The countries on both sides of
Paladia were significant agricultural exporters. The Novis monarchy had
historical ties with the Holdfasts, so an embargo by Novis was predict-
able, but Hevgoss, their western neighbour and a heavily militaristic
country, had been angling for better trade agreements with the guilds
for decades.
The Holdfasts had always blocked the negotiations, refusing to have
alchemy used for industrialised warfare. Guilds found to be violating
the trade restrictions with Hevgoss had their access to lumithium cut
off, preventing them from alchemical processing on an industrial scale.
Why wouldn't Hevgoss be pouring grain into Paladia now?
The political section of the paper was almost funny in a horrible way.
The Guild Assembly, whose formation was ostensibly the reason for the
war, was three weeks into negotiations over the lift fare, as if New Pal-
adia had nothing more urgent to do before the hibernal solstice ushered
in the new year.
More interesting was a paragraph mentioning that a Paladian envoy
had arrived at the Eastern Empire and been permitted to cross the bor-
der. It was the first time any Paladians had been allowed into the East-
ern Empire in several hundred years. Was that where that traitor Shiseo
had been headed?
Helena mostly skipped the society pages, but she couldn't help no-
ticing how often Aurelia Ferron's name was mentioned. Quite the so-
cialite, it seemed.
Then an editorial caught her eye. It was almost innocuous, describ-
ing the current labour shortage and lamenting the recent loss of so
many talented alchemists in the "conflict" caused by the Eternal Flame.
There were statistics presented about how Paladia's economy was ex-
pected to continue to shrink due to a multigenerational loss of alche-
mists. The solution, the author declared, was sponsored births. The
article suddenly stopped being editorial and read more like an adver-
tisement. The head of the new science and alchemy department at Cen-
tral, Irmgard Stroud, was heading up a program to bolster the next
generation of alchemists using new scientific selection methods to give
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Alchemised • 97
them the best start.
Volunteers were wanted. Participants would be provided food and
lodgings, and upon completion of the program, those with criminal
convictions would be eligible for retrial.
Helena read the editorial several times, hardly able to believe what
she was seeing. It was a breeding program being passed off as an eco-
nomic solution. As if alchemists were dogs to mate in pursuit of eco-
nomically desirable transmutation abilities.
It wasn't an entirely new concept. Marrying into the resonance was a
well- known term for the guild families' tendency to marry those with
either the same or a complementary alchemical resonance. Aurelia and
Ferron were just such an example.
While an alchemist's resonance repertoire was as heritable as hair or
eye colour, resonance could also appear or vanish at random.
Neither of Helena's parents had been alchemists. Her father had
possessed a minor resonance for steel and copper, but not enough to
merit training or qualify for a guild. Her mother had no resonance at all
that Helena could remember. While Luc's great-aunt, Ilva Holdfast,
was famously a Lapse, a child of alchemists who never manifested reso-
nance.
Now it seemed Stroud had every intention of testing exactly how
heritable resonance was or wasn't, and she intended to use the prisoners
on the Outpost to do it. After all, who else would volunteer for a breed-
ing program because of incentives like food, lodgings, and a retrial?
She thought of Grace, starving and desperate, with brothers too
young to work, willing to sell an eye. Helena could only guess how many
others were like her.
All those files Stroud had been constantly going through. This must
have been what she was working on, winnowing out eligible candidates
from the Resistance records.
Helena hid the newspaper in her wardrobe, resolving to drop it
somewhere when she next left her room. Her joints were stiff with cold,
and she went to the shower, peeling off her wet clothes.
She stood under the hot water until feeling seeped back into her
body and the bone-deep cold faded away. She began washing slowly, in
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98 • SenLinYu
no hurry to go back into her freezing room.
As she looked down, she discovered scars that she had no memory
of.
The largest was right in the middle of her chest, running between
her breasts. The roping scar was raised, slightly puckered, as if her ster-
num had been split open and stapled back together.
She traced her fingers across it, finding a divot in the bone, the odd
sensation of severed nerves.
It didn't seem like healing had been used. The bone could have been
regrown. She could have easily knit the nerve endings back together to
avoid the loss of sensation, and then arranged the matrices so that the
scarring was less visible.
None of that had happened. The wound had been left to heal with-
out any vivimancy.
Perhaps this was the extensive injury Stroud had mentioned.
No, she couldn't have been placed in stasis with an injury like that.
She began to search her body carefully and found more scars.
Her mind seemed trained to overlook them, but she focused, taking
note of each one.
There were traces of a large circular wound that went straight through
her calf. Hairline scars, one on her stomach and another between two
ribs. Vivimancy had undeniably been used to heal them.
In her right palm there were more scars. Slits in the palm and fin-
gers, as if she'd gripped a knife blade in her hands, and more oddly,
seven tiny punctures. They were perfectly spaced into a circle in her
palm. Not large but distinct in the way they marred the skin. She stared
at them. The shape felt familiar.
She put her hand down, unsettled, and finally reached up to find the
one scar that she did remember.
It was hardly visible, hidden below the shadow of her jaw. It ran long
and thin across the left side of her neck, stopping just short of her throat.
Ferron brought Helena's dried and cleaned cloak with him when
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he arrived the next day and threw it at her head.
Helena followed him, surreptitiously dropping the newspaper along
the way. On the veranda, he pulled out another paper. The cover story
was about a monument the governor, Fabien Greenfinch, was having
built in honour of Morrough as New Paladia's liberator. It would be
unveiled the following year.
It was raining again. Helena glanced around, not sure what to do,
finding no appeal in strolling about in circles under Ferron's supervi-
sion.
Perhaps she could find a very sharp stick somewhere and stab him
with it.
She wandered along the veranda until she was bored, and then sat
observing the stillness of the house, trying to guess at how many rooms
there must be in a place so large.
She'd thought the Bayards' house, Solis Splendour, enormous. It had
been one of the few freestanding houses in the city, a remnant from long
ago. Spirefell was much larger.
When Ferron stood and left, she assumed it was a sign to go back
inside. She cast her eyes around and was disappointed to find he hadn't
forgotten his newspaper.
She went to the door. The winter light spilled like quicksilver across
the dark floor, but the hallway beyond disappeared into darkness like
the opening of a mouth. With the winter drapes the light was blotted
out, creating the dusty suffocating feeling of a tomb. The lights were off.
She groped along the wall, trying to find a dial or switch.
Wind rushed out of the dark, and the smell of dust and rot struck
her face like a cold breath, followed by a low, shifting groan that made
the house vibrate.
Helena stumbled back outside, heart racing.
If the clouds would lift, it would get brighter. She huddled on the
veranda, waiting. Through the obscuring rain, the house around her
looked almost like an immense slumbering creature, curved inwards,
the spires like spines.
The rain did not cease. Instead the sky dimmed as dusk fell. At this
point in the lunar cycles, even Lumithia, the brighter moon, had waned
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too much for her light to penetrate the cloud cover.
The light in the doorway had shrunk and weakened.
Helena drew a deep breath; she'd taken the route before. There were
steps not far into the shadows. If she found them, she could feel her way
back.
It was only shadows. It wasn't the tank. It wasn't the nothing. Just
shadows.
She wavered in the doorway, and everything grew darker, the re-
maining light outside beginning to vanish.
Helena felt herself disappearing into it. Terror sharp as talons clawed
through her as she forced herself forward. She stumbled, colliding with
a table, barely feeling the pain that shot up her shin.
Find the stairs.
It's only a house.
But she felt the darkness swallowing her, dragging her in, the end-
lessness so close. She gripped the table, hands shaking so violently that
the wood rattled. Something fell, crashing onto the floor.
Breathe. Just breathe.
She fought to breathe but pain splintered her chest. Her heart was
racing, beating like a caged bird inside her, breaking itself against her
ribs.
She made it a few steps before her legs gave out. She curled up on
the floor, the wood like bones beneath her hands. She was disappearing
into the nothing again. Into the nothing where she couldn't move . . .
couldn't scream . . . and no one ever came . . .
She was gripped her by the arms and wrenched off the floor.
"What are you doing?"
She blinked in the sudden light, staring into Ferron's incensed face.
An electric sconce on the wall glowed, a halo in the dark illuminat-
ing only them.
She focused on his face, trying not to see the ocean of black sur-
rounding her.
"It was— dark," she forced out.
"What?"
Her breathing was so rapid, her head swam.
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"You're scared of the dark?" His silver eyes were burning, his voice
thick with disbelief.
She tried to pull away—she'd rather suffocate in the hallways than
be near Ferron— but he didn't let go, pulling her over to the stairs, mere
steps away, and dragging her to her room, refusing to let her collapse
back onto the floor.
"Calm down," he snarled at her as soon as she was inside the familiar
space.
The door slammed.
Helena dropped into the chair, doubling over and gripping the fab-
ric. Her fingers kept twitching, sending shocks of pain to her arms, but
she didn't care. She needed to feel that things were real and tangible, not
an abyss of nowhere with her body and nothing else.
The air sliced through the inside of her lungs.
She was in her room. The house had not eaten her, because houses
did not eat people. Her mind cleared slowly, that suffocating terror
gradually ebbing away allowing reason to seep back in.
It was almost worse to be rational again, to sit knowing her fear
made no sense. It didn't matter. The part of her that was afraid did not
care about being rational.
"What's wrong with you?"
She started, looking up.
Ferron was still in the room, apparently having lingered to interro-
gate her now that her fit of panophobia was over.
She averted her eyes.
"If you won't tell me, I'll pull the answer out of your head."
Helena flinched. The thought of his resonance set her teeth on edge.
There were parts of her brain that still felt bruised, caved in from the
transference.
Her mouth twisted, throat going taut. "I don't like places I can't see."
"Since when? I haven't noticed you keeping the light on in here con-
stantly. Or are these shadows different."
Heat rose across the back of her neck. She stared at the iron bars in
the floor. "I know this room. It's the places I don't know, that I can't see
the end of. I-In the stasis tank, it was always dark no matter how hard I
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