Chapter 41
Symond
Symond woke to the familiar scent of medicinal herbs and clean linen, the sharp tang of healing tinctures cutting through the haze in his mind.
The Hive’s infirmary. He recognized the low ceiling even through blurred vision, the worn wooden beams that had watched over countless of his other injuries.
Superficial wounds, mostly. A knife slash from training.
Burns from the forge. Nothing like this.
He should have felt relief. Safety. Somehow, large golden eyes followed by a crunch played on repeat in his mind. Gerard was gone; he knew that. But his body remained tense, muscles coiled as if waiting for the next blow.
Violette’s face swam into focus next to him, her lips pressed into a thin line, the tiny muscle at the corner of her left eye betraying her—that familiar twitch she could never control when suppressing a frown.
Beside her stood an alchemist he barely recognized: an older woman, graying hair pulled back tight, hands stained with residual materials from recent castings.
“You’re safe,” Violette said softly. “Don’t try to move too much yet.”
He opened his mouth, the movement instinctive after a lifetime of words serving as both weapon and shield. His throat contracted, and what came out was the sound of wet leather scraping against gravel, a noise that made Violette flinch and the alchemist’s eyes widen just a fraction.
Symond touched his mouth, the words he wanted to speak trapped inside.
He tried to move his tongue, but his whole mouth felt numb.
His instincts told him that he should be able to move it, to form words, but his brain was already playing the memory on repeat.
The moment Gerard hacked it from his mouth.
His gaze settled on the alchemist. Healing alchemy could mend broken bones in days instead of months. It could knit torn flesh, purge infection, and repair nerves. Surely, they could fix this. Whatever Gerard had done couldn’t be beyond repair.
The alchemist’s eyes locked with his, her expression balanced between professional detachment and quiet compassion. With a single, firm movement of her head, she delivered her verdict.
“We can’t restore missing tissue,” she said, voice steady. “The damage was... extensive.”
Permanent, then. Great.
Symond let his hand drop from his throat, forcing his breathing to steady. His mind immediately began cataloging what this meant. No more speaking. No more arguing. No more shouting when the rage burned too hot to contain.
He’d spent so long choosing silence that it had become a habit. A default. Not always a choice. Now the choice had been made for him.
Violette’s hand landed lightly on his shoulder. “We’ll find another way.”
Another way for what? To warn people? To tell Elora that he remembered? To explain to the children why he couldn’t answer their questions anymore?
He swallowed, wincing at the raw pain that accompanied the motion. I’ve survived worse, he told himself. This was just another adaptation, another way to navigate a world that had never been particularly gentle with him.
The alchemist pressed a small clay cup into his hand. “Drink this,” she instructed. “It will help with the pain and prevent infection.”
Symond forced himself to swallow it all, each gulp sending fresh spikes of pain through the raw wound where his tongue had been.
He sank back against the pillows, exhaustion already wanting to pull him back under.
He wanted to ask how they’d found him, how they’d gotten him away from Gerard, but the questions remained trapped inside his head, a growing pressure with no release.
The alchemist moved to check his bandages. “I applied a regenerative salve to your chest burns as well,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “The skin should heal cleanly, though you may have some light scarring. Nothing too severe.”
Symond frowned, not recalling any chest injuries. He pulled at the loose shirt someone had dressed him in, drawing it down to reveal his torso.
What he saw made his breath catch. The skin across his chest was unnaturally taut, shiny in places, with raised welts forming distinct lines—as if someone had repeatedly struck him with a heated rod.
The pattern was methodical, almost deliberate.
He traced a finger along one of the marks, feeling the ridged texture beneath his touch.
“The burns were deep,” the alchemist continued, watching his reaction carefully.
“But the tissue is responding well to treatment. The regenerative properties in the salve will continue working for several days.” She gathered her supplies, tucking vials back into a worn leather case.
“You can remain here for observation, or if you prefer, continue healing in your own quarters. The choice is yours.”
Heal?
Symond made a quiet snorting sound, the closest thing to laughter he could manage right now. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
Violette caught his expression, reading him as effortlessly as she always did. She moved closer, her hand settling on his shoulder with a gentle pressure that anchored him to the present moment. She leaned down, her voice pitched low enough that only he could hear.
“Do you want to take a salve with you... for anywhere she missed?”
The question hung between them, loaded with implication.
Symond tensed, not meeting her eyes. She wasn’t asking about his chest or his tongue.
She was asking about the other wounds—the ones people didn’t talk about, the ones they pretended not to see.
The ones Gerard had always been careful to hide.
He didn’t like what her question suggested, the assumption of violation that came with it, but he recognized the intent behind it.
Not judgment. Not pity. Just Violette, trying to help in whatever way she could, crossing into uncomfortable territory because he needed someone who wouldn’t flinch away from the truth.
Someone to be his voice. At least for now.
Symond shook his head once, definitively. If Gerard had hurt him in other ways, he couldn’t remember it. Couldn’t feel it. Maybe that was a mercy—another gap in memory that protected him from something worse.
The corridors of The Hive had a chill to them.
Each step sent jolts of pain through his chest where the burns pulled tight beneath their bandages. The medicinal salve had dulled the worst of it, but movement awakened fresh waves of discomfort that had him gritting his teeth.
They hadn’t made it far when the first mercenary approached. “What happened to him?” Tortoise asked, eyes fixed on the bandages visible above Symond’s shirt. “Was he hurt at the rally?”
“It doesn’t concern you, Tortoise,” Violette cut in, her voice carrying a sharp edge that left no room for argument. “He needs rest.” Symond couldn’t muster a laugh like he typically did when anyone referenced the mercenary.
Three more times they were stopped. Three more times Violette intervened, her responses growing progressively terser with each interruption. “Not your business.” “He’s recovering.” “Leave him be.”
Not long ago, Symond would have bristled at her speaking for him, at being treated like someone who needed protection. The old anger would have flared hot and immediate, driving him to push her away, to prove he didn’t need anyone’s help.
Now, he felt only a dull gratitude. Each time she deflected attention, he could feel his shoulders relax a fraction, the constant vigilance easing. She was a buffer between him and explanations he couldn’t give, questions he couldn’t answer. For once, he didn’t mind being shielded.
By the time they reached his door, the pain in his chest had dulled to a persistent throb, overtaken by the greater numbness spreading through him.
His room looked unchanged—the narrow bed with its rumpled blanket, the desk cluttered with scraps of metal and half-finished projects, the bookshelf lined with empty vials.
“I’ll be right back,” Violette said, her voice quiet but steady. “Try to rest.”
Violette returned sooner than he expected. She carried something flat and gray tucked under her arm. A slate. Simple, unadorned. Beside it, she placed a small piece of chalk.
She didn’t look at him as she arranged them, didn’t draw attention to what she was doing. There was no pity in the gesture, just practicality.
“If you need anything,” she said, turning toward the door, “come find me.”
He nodded again, the motion becoming his new language of acknowledgment. She hesitated for a moment, as if there was more she wanted to say, then slipped out, pulling the door closed behind her.
The silence of the room pressed in on him after Violette left.
Symond rested on the edge of the bed, his fingers absently tracing the seams of the linen.
His eyes settled on the bookshelf, on the rows of empty vials.
Each one a memory deliberately erased. Each one a choice he’d made to forget something that had been too heavy to carry.
Symond reached out, his fingertips brushing the cool glass of the nearest vial. He’d been so certain then, so desperate to escape the weight of what he’d done, what had been done to him. The choice to forget had seemed like the only way to survive. The choice to remember had brought him here.
Now here he was—unable to speak, unable to explain. But not helpless. Not like before.
He crossed to the desk where Violette had left the slate. He hadn’t held chalk since his earliest days at The Institute, before they’d decided his hands were better suited to metal than to books. Symond pressed the chalk to the slate and spelled out one word, “Choice.”
He propped the slate against the empty vials, hiding some of them. He absorbed the word into his mind; it didn’t haunt him. It was what he needed to remember. Lying in bed, he looked at the slate one more time, then let the exhaustion pull him under.