CHAPTER 17
H ELENA’S ARMS WERE STRAINING AGAINST THE IMPLACABLE iron, the edges scraping across her skin, shoulders screaming as she struggled, trying to wrench herself free. The room around her was only half visible, and all in ruins. Her terrified breathing was the only sound. The house was utterly quiet.
It seemed an eternity before Helena heard the distant sound of footsteps in the hall. The door warped, opening, and then Ferron was kneeling in front of her, blocking the ghastly sight of Aurelia from view as the iron around her wrists melted away. She collapsed towards him.
Her chest was spasming with suppressed panic.
He tilted her face up towards his, and his expression grew horrified. He touched her cheek and held her face as he drew several deep breaths.
“Your eye is out of the socket, and you have a deep puncture in the white,” he said, his voice shaking. “How do I fix it?”
Helena stared dazedly at him, shuddering as tears tracked down her face, running along his fingers. Her breath came faster and faster.
She should know the answer to the question, but she couldn’t re member. She could only feel the spot where Aurelia’s iron talon had punctured her eye.
Ferron gripped her firmly by the shoulders. “Look at me. I need you to stay calm and tell me how to fix this. You know how to do it.”
She choked back a sob.
Think, Helena. She was a healer. Someone had an injured eye. She needed to work efficiently if she was going to preserve their sight. Focus.
“F-F-For a punctured sclera,” she said in a wobbling voice, casting her mind back, trying to recall the technique. She had no idea how to explain it to a novice vivimancer; she’d never taught anyone to heal.
It was pointless anyway. Ferron might be able to repair damaged tissue, but he wouldn’t restore her vision. She’d still be blind in one eye. She crumpled.
Ferron gripped her tighter, holding her firmly upright. “Come on. You know how you’d do it. Tell me.”
She swallowed hard. “The resonance has to be very close,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“You start at the deepest part and replicate the tissue exactly like the surrounding tissue; it won’t matrice the way skin will on its own.
You have to regenerate each structure fully. Layer by layer.”
That answer alone would have been enough to deter any knowledgeable healer.
Basic regeneration was one thing, but matricing tissue was technically taxing and mind-numbingly repetitive, like watching one’s skin being rubbed off.
It made the brain itch, but concentration had to be maintained the entire time.
Ferron was ignorant of this.
He placed his hand over hers, their fingers aligning, and she could dimly feel his resonance through her own fingertips before it cut off at her wrists.
“Show me.”
Her wrists were ringed with bruises. Pain shot through the bones as she moved her fingers. She ignored it, focusing on the intuitive sensation that had been absent for so long, dimly feeling her eye where his resonance ran through her fingertips.
Transmutation always started with an initial touch to forge the con nection. Once it was established, the alchemist could allow their fingers space to manipulate the channel.
Her fingers moved cautiously, prompting his, weaving invisible filaments of energy into a lattice of fragile tissue.
Ferron’s silver eyes were almost luminous as he imitated the motions.
A tug came from the centre of her eye.
She whimpered, trying to hold still.
It was like a needle being poked into the puncture, a thread pulled through, on and on.
It took all her willpower not to jerk away, to focus on the feeble sense of resonance, to keep creating the complex regenerative structure.
Despite how small the wound was, it took ages. Ferron didn’t stop even when Helena’s fingers cramped and failed and fell away, the sensation leaving her ready to scream.
“And now?” Ferron asked the moment it was finally over, not giving her even a moment’s respite.
She drew a deep breath.
“For—for a—a luxated eye,” she said in a voice far calmer than she felt, “you have to morph and retract it carefully or you’ll strain the optic nerve—more.”
The motion was like turning a dial. Her eye slid back, squeezing and morphing before settling back into place with a nauseating pop.
She blinked slowly. Her eye hurt; it had grown dry and sticky after being so long exposed.
“H-How much can you see?” Ferron asked, tilting her face up towards his, his fingertips pressed against her jaw, his thumb running along the place where Aurelia had sliced her cheek open.
She stared at him and covered her right eye with her hand. His face was mere inches away, but there was only a dark blur.
“I can’t—” Her voice cut off, chest constricting. Her hand slid from her eye to clamp over her mouth as she fought not to sob.
“What else do I need to do? How do I fix it?” He gripped her shoulders, still not letting her slump.
She shook her head, pressing her hands against her temples. “The optic nerve’s probably damaged. I can’t—help, though—it’ll be too—”
His fingers pressed around her eye socket, and she could feel his resonance moving along the nerve towards her brain.
Her body convulsed violently at the sensation, but he held her still.
She felt heat and the same agitating regeneration process as he found the damage hidden between her eye and brain.
An animal-like whimper escaped through her clenched teeth.
He pulled his hand away and stared at her. It was lighter now, like peering through a heavily fogged window.
“Anything?” His voice was hoarse.
“Your hair’s pale. I think—I can make out your eyes and mouth a little—”
“Good, we’re getting somewhere, then. Now what?”
He wanted to do more?
“Um … Atropine drops, from belladonna. It would dilate the pupil, keep it from straining while the tissue’s recovering.”
“Get the kit,” Ferron said to the servants, all of whom had been frozen in place, inanimate while Ferron’s full attention was on Helena. One of them sprang to life and hurried down the hallway.
“I need to deal with Aurelia now,” Ferron said. “Wait here.”
Helena nodded, slumping back.
She watched through her blurred vision as Ferron turned to face his wife.
He didn’t even need to touch the twisted metal that wrapped around her. A flick of his hand and the tangle of iron slipped away, slithering back into the floor and walls.
Ferron knelt, pressing two fingers against Aurelia’s neck.
The imbalance in Helena’s vision made it hard to track how injured Aurelia was as Ferron began setting bones and popping dislocated joints back into place as easily as if he were assembling a puzzle.
He set a hand on Aurelia’s chest, and Helena expected to watch Ferron create a new necrothrall. Instead, Aurelia screamed, lurching up from the floor, her eyes wild with terror.
“What? How did you—?” Aurelia was spluttering, her hands flying to her chest and sides, touching herself all over in confusion. “How? How are you here ?”
“This is my house.” The rage in Ferron’s voice was palpable in every word.
“But you—you were in the city!” Aurelia seemed more hysterical about that than anything else.
Did she not remember what Ferron had done to her? Or was it simply too much for her to comprehend?
“Yes, I was. It was incredibly inconvenient of you, forcing me to leave in the middle of a ceremony.”
“But—how did you—” Aurelia looked around the ruins of Helena’s room.
“Did you think the thralls were the only things I can control from a distance? This is my house, and my family metal.”
Helena stared at him in shock. What he was claiming wasn’t possible.
There was no way that anyone could possibly transmute iron from a distance, especially not in that manner.
Ferron’s resonance might be beyond anything Helena had ever seen, but even he couldn’t reach all the way from the city and control the inner workings of Spirefell with such accuracy. He would have been acting blind, with no idea of what he was doing, unless—
She looked towards the eye in the corner.
No. It still wasn’t possible, even with that. Every inch of distance from a transmutational target increased the effort. Even if he’d merely been in a different wing of the house, he’d be dead, dissolved into nothingness like a collapsing star, to use that much power.
It happened sometimes in the factories when the transmutational array sourcing was too powerful. The alchemists would disintegrate.
“That’s impossible,” Aurelia said, echoing Helena’s thoughts.
“Underestimating your husband twice in one day? That’s not very wifely of you.”
“Oh, are you here for me? No, you aren’t, you’re here because of her.” She pointed accusingly at Helena. “You nearly killed me, and you did kill Erik Lancaster, because of her!”
“Yes, I did. Do you know why? Because she is the last member of the Order of the Eternal Flame, which means that she is important. Infi nitely more so than you will ever be. More important than Lancaster dreamed. My job is to keep her mind intact. When your father had you educated, did he ever mention that the eyes have a nerve connecting directly to the brain? What do you think happens if you just rip them out?”
Aurelia glanced towards Helena in horror.
Ferron kept talking in his cold, unsympathetic voice.
“I’ve tried to be patient with you, Aurelia.
I’ve been willing to overlook your indecent behaviour and petty interferences, but do remember, aside from being somewhat decorative, you are useless to me.
If you ever go near her again, or speak to her, or so much as set foot in this wing again, I will kill you, and I will do it slowly, perhaps over the course of an evening or two.
That isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. Now get out of my sight. ”
Aurelia scrambled up clumsily, her face contorted in fear and pain as she fled, limping, from the room.
Ferron stood, breathing deeply before he turned back to Helena. His eyes were still blazing silver.