CHAPTER 19
H ELENA TRIED TO MAKE HERSELF GO OUTSIDE the next day.
She was desperate for fresh air, to escape the oppressive weight of the house, but when she reached the doorway, a warm spring breeze rushed across her face, filling her lungs with the scent of loam and spring blossoms. She could see little clusters of crocuses and snowdrops peeking through the dead grass.
The blackened vines covering the house were tipped with specks of green, and flocks of birds chirped as they soared overhead.
It was beautiful, and it felt like a betrayal.
The world was not supposed to be beautiful any longer. It was supposed to be dead and cold, forever mirroring the misery of Helena’s life. Instead it had moved on, tilting into a new season, and she could not. She was trapped forever in winter, in the season of death.
She retreated into the house.
When the door to her room opened in the afternoon, she was relieved to see Stroud instead of Ferron.
Stroud looked amused. “I thought I’d stop by and make sure there wasn’t any damage from this first time. We wouldn’t want an infection interfering. Was there blood?”
Helena hadn’t looked, but she shook her head slowly.
Stroud’s eyes flicked curiously up and down. “Well, you are over twenty. There isn’t always.”
Helena tried not to react to Stroud’s resonance when she laid her hand on Helena’s pelvis, but when she felt the resonance wave glide through the most intimate parts of her body, she shuddered uncontrollably.
“We likely won’t know if you’re pregnant for a few weeks after, but we will know soon enough.
I’ve grown quite adept at detecting them early.
” There was the most unnerving sensation of something inside her lower abdomen being adjusted, and Helena gave a sharp gasp.
“Yes, this is definitely the right window. You’re as ready as I can make you. ”
Helena’s skin crawled until Stroud stopped.
“So, how was it?”
“Horrible,” Helena said, looking away.
Stroud made a sound of false sympathy. “Not surprising. You’re high-strung.”
Helena stared towards the window, her jaw trembling.
Stroud’s lips stretched like rubber, and she set the file down, running her fingers idly across Helena’s name and the two prisoner numbers stamped across the front.
“Did you know, I studied in the Alchemy Tower. It was years before your time, obviously. My repertoire and resonance levels weren’t good enough to keep ascending, but I was allowed to transfer to the science department and study as a medical assistant.
That’s where I first heard of vivimancy.
It wasn’t until years later that I realised what power I had and began the struggle of mastering it.
I would never have imagined I’d become one of the few vivimancers to survive the war. ”
Helena didn’t understand why Stroud was telling her this.
Stroud rummaged in her bag and pulled out a vial of tablets, breaking one in half. “Open.”
“Why?” Helena asked, locking her jaw.
Stroud did not answer, she just stepped forward and, using her fingers and resonance to pry Helena’s mouth open, pushed a crumbling piece into her mouth and forced her to swallow as it began dissolving. Helena recognised the taste as it moved down her throat.
“Artemon Bennet saved people like me. Gave us a chance to test our abilities openly and be proud of them.” Stroud was still gripping Helena’s jaw; her fingers were digging into the skin.
Helena could feel Stroud tinkering with her physiology, tuning her.
It was wholly different from what Ferron had done when acclimating her to the house.
Rather than feel physiologically detached from her mind, she realised that her skin had begun to warm, starting at the surface and slowly sinking deeper.
Stroud kept talking. “I’m not saying he was perfect; Bennet considered other vivimancers too feeble-minded to appreciate his genius.
” Her pale eyebrows rose. “But I served him without question, gave up my personal ambitions to stay by his side. That’s why I’m still here, even though everyone always underestimated me. ”
Helena tried to pull away, but Stroud’s resonance had strangled her motor nerves. A pulsing tension bloomed from her lower abdomen, and her skin was growing so sensitive, it ached.
“There.” Stroud let go, letting Helena topple sideways on the bed. “You’ll enjoy it much more now.”
Helena lay paralysed, unable to resist or scream as Stroud arranged her on the bed, flat on her back, legs parted.
No. No. No.
“I’ll tell the High Reeve you’re ready for him on my way out,” Stroud said as she left.
Helena waited for what felt like hours, want carving itself into her bones. Her body screamed for movement, for touch, for friction, need crawling beneath her skin.
When Ferron finally arrived, if she could have moved, she would have shuddered just at the vibration of the door shutting, but she could only lie there, eyes fastened on him, begging him to notice that something was wrong.
He wasn’t looking at her, though. He was staring past her, through her, his gaze in an unseeing mid-distance as he slid off his coat and draped it over the sofa.
She watched him move, her eyes suddenly ravenous, intent on cataloguing all the details about him. The wait had left her hollow inside, a pit of harrowing want that kept growing.
His hands, she knew, were warm.
A tremor swelled inside her.
Stop thinking.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the need she felt corroded her willpower.
The bed shifted. A shiver ran down her spine. Her skirts were shifted, pushed up, and the brush of fabric against her thighs made her inhale raggedly. The only reaction she could muster.
“Breathe,” Ferron said, as he had the night before.
She was keenly aware of him, more so than the day before, except now her wants were inverted. She could barely feel his weight. She wanted to arch up, press into him even as an endless scream throbbed inside her skull. Her eyes snapped open, and she stared up at him.
She felt as though she’d never truly looked at him before.
There’d always been a sharp and wary distance between them. When she observed him, it was in search of tells, for weakness. She’d never looked at him as something human or hot-blooded.
Now he felt very human to her. She wanted him to touch her. She remembered what his hands felt like, the press of his fingertips along her jaw. She craved it so much, her skin ached. The weight she’d been desperate to escape from the night before—she wanted it.
Tears burned a hot trail down her temples.
For the briefest moment, Ferron’s eyes flicked to her face before averting again. He went still and looked at her again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She stared at him, willing for him to understand.
He drew away, wrenching a glove off. He was still wearing them, even now.
He barely touched her, but that was all it took. The paralysis melted away.
Helena’s body shuddered back into motion, and she instantly curled onto her side with a sob, pressing her legs tight together as her body throbbed, gasping raggedly. Even her breath burned in her lungs.
“What did she do to you?”
She couldn’t look at him.
“She said it was to make it b-better.” Her voice shook uncontrollably. “Because I—complained. H-How long do those tablets you gave me last?”
“Eight hours.”
“She gave me half.” She drew a ragged breath. “Can you—change it to something else?”
“Not once it’s taken effect,” he said. “It has to wear off on its own.”
She nodded. She’d assumed as much but hoped to be wrong.
She tried to draw another breath.
“Can we—can we wait till—after?” Her voice was strangled.
There was a silence.
“I have to leave after this. I won’t be back until late tomorrow.”
She lay there, trying to think clearly, not sure that she was rational anymore.
This, or maybe not pregnant. For all the accidental pregnancies she’d treated, she knew that children didn’t always come easy. For her parents, it had taken years; she’d arrived after they’d given up. A miracle, they’d said.
Two months, and then she’d go to Central, to Stroud, and—
She was going insane. She couldn’t do this. A choice like this—it wasn’t fair to make her choose between things like this. No good choices, just worse and worse, which way to hate herself forever.
This was the cruellest thing Stroud could have done.
“Just—do it now,” she said, rolling back onto her back, refusing to look at him.
She stared up at the canopy, willing her mind away. There was a long pause before the bed shifted.
She hadn’t thought it could be worse the second time, but it was a thousand times worse. Now her body wanted him.
She tried closing her eyes, but she was restless.
She couldn’t keep them shut. They fluttered open and she looked at Ferron again, taking in all the details she’d never cared to notice before.
His sharp cheekbones and eyes, his thin lips, the precise lines of his jaw, and the way his pale throat disappeared in the collar of his shirt.
She wanted to press close and breathe against his skin, to feel the warmth of another body.
“Hurry up,” she said through clenched teeth, trying to hold herself rigid.
There was no need for oil, but he used it anyway. She arched back until she could see the headboard, spine trembling, burying her face in her hands, biting down viciously on her palm, and felt ruined.
Whimpers formed in her throat when he moved. Her fingers twisted, clawing the duvet, threatening to tear it.
She was nauseous with horror. She hated every fibre of her being—the physicalness of herself that she could not overcome, that was perpetually scared, and weak, and now wanting—and she could not escape from any of it. Perhaps Matias had been right all along, and it was her nature to be feeble.
She wished she could tear herself out of her body. Slice it to pieces and watch it burn away so that she was not human anymore.