“It’s hardly a concern,” Ferron said. “I’m sure we’ll find something for her to wear. Aurelia has so much.”
Aurelia’s eyes went wide. “You want me to give her my clothes?”
“We don’t want anyone mistaking her for staff. Unless you prefer I have something made?”
Aurelia gave a horrified gasp, as if the idea were more scandalous than keeping a prisoner or running a house with dead servants.
“Excellent,” Stroud said in a bright voice as everyone pretended not to notice that Aurelia was on the verge of spontaneous combustion. “Now then, you’re free to examine her, High Reeve. She’s all yours.” She gestured towards Helena.
Ferron looked at Helena without moving. “Here?”
“Just a preliminary exam, to see if you have questions before I go. Do you—prefer privacy?”
“No. You’re welcome to watch.” He stepped towards Helena. He was all in black, dressed in city clothes. His coat and waistcoat were intricately detailed with black embroidery that only showed when it caught the light. At his throat, he wore a pristine white cravat.
Helena had never seen a guild alchemist wearing so little metal. Alchemists tended to keep metal everywhere: as jewellery, and woven into their clothes, walking sticks, weapons. Unusual alchemists like pyromancers always wore their ignition rings unless they were forced to remove them.
Aurelia was covered in metal, but not Ferron.
He pulled off a black glove, revealing a pale, long-fingered hand.
A vivimancer, Grace had said. Of course he didn’t need metal.
Helena tried to flinch back, all too familiar with the danger of Stroud’s grasping fingers, but when she tried to move, she couldn’t.
Without Ferron touching her, a frisson of resonance fine as spider silk had insinuated itself through her body, so subtle she hadn’t felt it. Now it held her fast. It wasn’t like Morrough’s; it didn’t fill the air until everything hummed. If she hadn’t tried to move, she wouldn’t have realised it was there.
Ferron’s eyes gleamed, as if he could feel her struggling. His index finger barely touched her temple, and then she truly felt his resonance, vivid as a live wire.
Sharp and finely honed, it sank through her skull. The room and Ferron all vanished as her memories sprang up before her eyes like a zoetrope.
The drive to Spirefell. Penny. Stroud’s interrogations. The lich in the Tower wearing Crowther’s body. The discussions of how best to extract the memories from Helena’s mind. Shiseo emerging from the darkness with his little case and awl. As Ferron went further back, the memories dimmed, flashing by as though her mind were a book he was flipping through to see if there was anything of interest inside.
He went all the way back to the stasis and the nothing that went on and on and on, then even further to the Tower and blood and the years in the hospital.
She hadn’t realised how small and repetitive her life was until she experienced it being skimmed through like that.
When it stopped, Helena’s mind was reeling. Ferron’s touch remained a moment longer, and she could feel his resonance through her brain, turning her vision red.
Finally, his hand dropped away and he stood there, staring at her.
“Well,” he said at last.
“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Stroud said from somewhere behind him.
“Quite,” he said, his gaze splinter-sharp. He raised an eyebrow, still looking at Helena. “The war is over. What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours?”
She met his stare without flinching.
Luc. She was protecting Luc.
“Holdfast is dead,” he said sharply, as if he’d seen the answer in her eyes. “The Eternal Flame extinguished. There’s no one left for you to save.”
He turned away, his expression venomous.
“Anything else?” he asked Stroud.
She shook her head.
The paralysis on Helena vanished. She’d been fighting it, and it happened so suddenly her knees gave out. She dropped, trying to catch herself, and the weight of her body slammed into her hands. Tearing pain exploded through her wrists, white-hot fire searing all the way to her shoulders.
She hit the floor.
Aurelia stifled a laugh.
“You met with Shiseo and went over everything several times before he left, I believe,” she heard Stroud saying. “After the first session, I’ll send someone for appraisal, so we can establish a timeline for results.”
“Yes, this plan has all been laid out for me in excruciating detail,” Ferron said tonelessly. “I’ll get it done. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
He stepped over Helena’s body and walked out of the room without a backwards glance.
Helena tried to sit up. Without use of her hands, she had to roll carefully onto her side and use her elbows, cradling her wrists protectively near her chest.
When she finally looked up, Stroud had gone, and Aurelia was standing impatiently a few feet away. The short staff was clasped in her hands.
“Get off the floor,” she said. “I’m to show you your room.”
Helena stood and followed Aurelia warily back into the foyer. Her wrists were throbbing. The necrothrall from Central was still there and shadowed them as Aurelia led the way down a hallway, up a flight of stairs, through a series of rooms, and into another hallway.
It was darker there. A different wing based on the angle of the light. Most of the windows were heavily draped, the furniture shrouded with dustcloths.
“To be clear, just because we have to keep you doesn’t mean I want to see you,” Aurelia said, walking quickly.
Helena already felt short of breath from the stairs and could barely keep up.
“I understand those bracelets keep you from using alchemy. Although that hardly matters here. The Ferrons built this house with pure iron, and there’s a reason I was chosen as Kaine Ferron’s wife.”
Aurelia paused and looked back at Helena, lifting one hand. Her wrist swished dramatically, and the alchemy rings decorating her fingers transformed, lengthening into knives that made her fingers look spider-like.
Helena watched the transmutation with trained interest. Natural iron resonance was considered somewhat rare among alchemists—though not as unusual as gold resonance or pyromancy. Raw iron was naturally intractable, to the point of being considered generally inert. Most alchemists couldn’t transmute iron without having it repeatedly exposed to lumithium emanations in an Athanor Furnace, and even then they fared better with steel than iron alone.
Aurelia’s transmutational work was quick and flashy. In class, she would have been docked for excess movement and imperfect iron distribution, but the ease with which she’d transformed her rings meant she had an extremely high degree of iron resonance, and if the house was iron, that meant Aurelia could wield it like a weapon, too.
Helena looked down, noticing then the wrought iron running through the floor and decorating the walls.
“We don’t use this wing,” Aurelia said, continuing down the hall. Her rings were pretty bands around her fingers once more. “I don’t want you seen, particularly when I have guests. Stay out of the way unless you’re sent for. The thralls all have instructions to keep an eye on you, so we’ll know if you cause problems.”
Aurelia stopped, setting the short staff on one of the iron bars in the floor and giving it a little twist. The iron shifted with a groan, and a door, heavily decorated with more iron, swung open.
It was a large room with two long windows and a canopied bed between them. There was a single wing-backed chair next to one window and an ornate table beside it. A large wardrobe sat against the far wall, a heavy rug covering most of the floor.
There was nothing on the walls except a clock too high to reach, but it was all clean and smelled freshly aired out.
Helena stepped into the room, taking it in carefully.
“Meals will be sent,” Aurelia said, and the door closed behind her.
It was only when she was alone that it struck Helena as odd that Aurelia had escorted her.