CHAPTER 14
H ELENA WAS SEATED ON A STOOL IN a laboratory. Lying on the table before her were rows and rows of transmuted metals and compounds, some shaped into hollow spheres, others still in small vials, waiting for testing.
Directly across from her sat Shiseo, studying a sphere grasped in his fingers, as he made notations on a slip of paper.
“You have an interesting repertoire,” he said in a quiet voice as he reached towards a vial in the third row. “Very unusual. Good attention to detail. I am surprised you are not a metallurgist.”
“I wasn’t sure what to do,” Helena said, handing another sphere over for grading.
“It felt like whatever I chose, someone was disappointed. Everyone—” She started to move her fingers but stopped, folding her hands.
“Everyone wanted a lot for me, and I’m not sure I ever knew what I wanted.
” She shrugged. “Probably good that I didn’t, since it didn’t matter in the end. ”
Shiseo didn’t reply. He was studying his notes; then he looked at her folded hands before his impassive eyes reached her face. “I don’t think a steel weapon would suit you.”
“What?”
“You are exceptional with titanium. I met the titanium guildmaster once, and even his work was not so perfect.” Then he picked up a piece of her nickel work, studying it as well. “Have you ever tried nickel-titanium alloy?”
She shook her head.
“It would make a better weapon for you. Very light. You’d waste your strength with steel.”
“This isn’t for a weapon,” Helena said quickly. “It’s just—curiosity.”
Shiseo made a little click with his tongue. “Well … if you wanted a weapon, I would advise you to use nickel and titanium. Don’t limit yourself to what Paladians do.”
T HE ENTIRE RIGHT SIDE OF Helena’s body was vaguely sore, and her tongue had the sensation of oversensitive, newly regenerated tissue across its surface as she struggled to wake.
She stared dazedly at the canopy over her, trying to remember what had happened.
Ferron—she’d been talking to Ferron. She looked around for him, but he was gone.
She’d been telling him that Morrough was dying, that killing the Undying somehow hurt him; she’d finally pieced it all together and then—
There was nothing after that.
She sat up slowly. It must have been another seizure. She shifted her shoulders, opening her mouth cautiously, expecting the muscles to catch, residual tension holding her back, but it didn’t.
She looked down at herself. She’d been treated.
Seizures were not something she’d encountered much in a military hospital, but Titus Bayard had suffered from them after his brain injury.
Muscle tension wasn’t something that could be treated with a mere touch of vivimancy. Resonance could loosen the knotted muscles, but the tension had to be manually massaged away to help the limbs to stretch and extend again.
Which meant that someone had, at minimum, touched the entire right side of her body. She shuddered and hoped it hadn’t been one of the necrothralls—but then reconsidered when she reviewed the alternatives.
She took a long shower until all the remaining aches in her body faded, tilting her back and letting the water stream through her hair, replaying the memory.
Shiseo. So, she had known him. She didn’t want to believe it, but he was right there in her mind now.
They couldn’t have known each other well. He probably performed resonance tests for lots of people. Maybe he’d done it as a way of spying on the Resistance.
But why hide that memory? She was bewildered by the span of her memory loss.
Why would the Undying trust Shiseo if he’d worked and lived among the Resistance for the entire war? Countless Paladians had been killed or imprisoned for less, but instead he was entrusted as envoy.
It made no sense.
After its founding, Paladia had courted foreigners from the world over. The Holdfasts had wanted the Institute to be the alchemy capital of the world, where alchemists of every kind might come and study and share their techniques and methods. Paladia had quickly outgrown that dream, though.
Especially once the Institute neared capacity, sentiments of welcome soured.
After Principate Apollo’s death, when talk of war began, Helena’s father had wanted to return south. He’d said it wasn’t their fight, and his responsibility was keeping her safe, but Helena had already promised Luc she’d stay, and so her father had stayed because of her.
And died because of her.
She drew a sharp breath, tracing along the scar on her throat as she stepped out of the shower.
As she towelled off, she froze at the sight of her reflection.
Since the meals had improved, she’d begun avoiding her reflection, hating the changes she saw, as the version of herself that she knew vanished.
In her memories, she’d been gaunt from stress. Her skin sallow from the absence of sunlight. Her nearly black hair always carefully restrained by two tight braids coiled at the back of her head. Bony and thin-limbed. Her eyes, large and dark, but with fire in them.
When she’d come to Spirefell, there was still something of that girl in her reflection.
Now her face was no longer gaunt, or her cheeks hollowed, and her eyes weren’t sunken from exhaustion. Her colour had improved. Without a comb or ties for her hair, it hung loose, cascading past her elbows. Her bones barely jutted out.
She looked healthy.
Pretty, even.
A Helena from a different life.
But her eyes—
Her eyes were dead. There was no fire in them.
The spark she’d once regarded as the most intrinsic part of who she was had gone out.
She was a vibrant corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.
F ERRON REAPPEARED A DAY LATER while Helena was eating dinner.
He was wearing his “hunting” clothes, but they were clean, so she assumed he was heading out rather than returning. She watched him warily as he entered. Without his coat and normal layers, he was noticeably slender.
As he came closer, her eyes narrowed. His clothes were a dark grey, made to blend into the city shadows, but there was a metallic sheen in some places. It was most obvious over his forearms, chest, and legs.
A woven body armour. That was why she hadn’t been able to stab him.
He stopped in front of her, his expression unreadable, hands somewhere behind his back. “What made you realise?”
The tines of her fork caught against the plate. “Realise what? That Morrough’s dying or that he’s been creating the Undying as some sort of power source?”
His mouth curved. “Let’s start with the latter.”
She looked towards the window. “Everyone always acted like the war was inevitable, a part of the cycle in the eternal battle of good and evil, but I just—never understood. Why did Morrough want Paladia? The Council thought Hevgoss was involved, that they were creating a pretext for their military intervention so they could absorb Paladia into their borders. But what did Morrough get out of it, then? No one ever seemed to wonder. There’s just always an evil necromancer somewhere that the Eternal Flame needs to kill.
No one talks about why, what could drive someone to that.
” She shook her head. “I just don’t think immortality seems like much of a gift, especially not one that someone would give away like Morrough does, unless there was more of an advantage for him than everyone who got it.
Things that seem too good to be true usually have a price you don’t know about until it’s too late. ”
Ferron said nothing.
“Am I right?” she asked.
His expression and posture were unreadable. “Does it matter?”
She looked away.
“Actually, I’ll tell you … if you tell me what it was that ended up being too good to be true for you.”
She swallowed hard, staring at the mountains. “Paladia.”
She drew a deep breath and looked at him. “Well?”
He met her stare, eyes glittering with a strange look of satisfaction. “Yes, he’s dying.”