He flinched, his grip loosening enough that she pulled free, turning again. He caught the door as she opened it, shoving it closed.
“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.” He searched her face. “They didn’t tell you.”
She shook her head, giving a broken sob and—before she let herself think—she kissed him.
CHAPTER 51
Aprilis 1787
KAINE CRADLED HER FACE IN HIS HANDS as he returned her kiss, pulling her closer, his arms wrapping around her.
She was half crying as she kissed him, tracing her fingers along his face and under the curve of his jaw, trying to memorise every detaiclass="underline" his pulse under her fingertips, his lips pressed against hers. The taste of him.
Her eyes fluttered shut, trying to savour it all. This one moment. She could have this.
She’d earned it.
Then, all too soon, she forced herself to step back, pulling away. “I have to take care of the others.”
He didn’t try to stop her again, but the rest of the team wasn’t outside the door as she’d expected; Kaine’s necrothralls had moved them deeper.
Her fingers trembled as she checked for pulses. They were still alive, although Luc’s skin almost burned to touch.
“How do we get out?” she asked as she started checking for injuries, trying to work out how hurt everyone was, how much work it would take to get them conscious and moving.
“Down this tunnel. Go right, then right again, and then straight. There’s an upper floodgate in the far north.”
“Where they released the chimaera?” She remembered the place.
“You’ll have to break it down, but it’ll get you out.”
She nodded. “You have to go before I wake them.”
“I know,” he said, but he didn’t leave, lingering until she looked up. His eyes shone in the dark, as if there were moonlight underground.
He touched her cheek, tilting her face up and kissing her. “Use the ring, call me, if you ever need anything.”
She wanted to say she would, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
He was a spy that they depended on. And she was—
Not his handler. No, that role belonged to Crowther.
She was—
A prison.
“Go,” she said instead. He disappeared down one of the tunnels, his necrothralls following him, as silent as wraiths.
She woke Sebastian first, hoping that he’d be calm and easier to manage. He’d also know what to do. She searched what supplies they had. She’d lost both her daggers, and everything in her satchel was contaminated with floodwater. Only one of the electric torches still worked, providing dim light in the darkness.
When he woke, Sebastian just sat silently staring at Luc’s still face while she gingerly fixed his dislocated shoulder and several shallow wounds that had already stopped bleeding on their own. Finally, he looked at her.
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Everything went black. When I woke, you were all unconscious. I was afraid more of the Undying would show up, so I brought everyone here.”
His eyes swept pointedly over her. “Helena, I know you used necromancy. There’s no chance you moved us all here on your own.”
She started to shake her head in denial.
“You reanimated Soren. There was no surviving the blow he took.”
She went still. She didn’t know if it would be better or worse to tell Sebastian that Soren had asked her to.
“That was why he brought you, wasn’t it? I did wonder.”
Helena said nothing. Soren’s death felt like a wound too deep to even wrap her mind around. She didn’t think she could even say his name without choking.
“Is he still—nearby?” Sebastian’s voice was wistful.
Helena’s throat ached. “No. He—he’s gone. I’m sorry.”
There would be no holy fire to liberate Soren’s soul from his body. Somewhere downriver, he would decay into the earth. Lila would never see her twin again. Not even in the afterlife.
Sebastian said nothing for a long moment. “We’ll tell the others we brought them here together.”
There was blood crusted around Alister’s eyes, ears, and nose from the strain of all the transmutation he’d done. She woke him slowly, but he seized into consciousness, clawing at his neck, his eyes wild as they locked on Helena.
“What happened?” he gasped.
“We’re not sure,” Sebastian said, leaning over him. “Are you all right? We need to move before we freeze. Luc’s sick.”
“Where’s Soren?”
“Killed in combat,” Sebastian said shortly. “Marino, can you get Penny up?”
Penny’s leg was wrecked, the tendons ripped out with teeth. There was no saving it. Helena blocked the nerves and fused the bone so she could limp on it. Penny didn’t even cry when she woke, just scrubbed at her face and struggled to her feet.
Wagner was unscathed. Of course he was. Coward. At least she didn’t have to waste any of her energy healing him.
Helena tried to wake Luc. His fever was searing. He’d somehow gotten hotter in the minutes after she’d left him. She tried to cool him, but his body kept fighting it, pushing the fever higher and higher. She’d drugged him too much.
When he regained consciousness, he screamed. The noise reverberated through the tunnels.
“Knock him out!” Sebastian said, lunging forward. “Keep him cold. We’ll carry him back.”
It was fortunate they could smell clean air ahead, because Helena couldn’t have explained how she knew the route out.
Sebastian had an entangled medallion like Helena’s ring. He used it to send a pulse code to Headquarters.
A few times, they heard sounds echoing through the tunnels. Screams. Roars. Splashing. They moved quietly. Helena worried first whether Kaine could have gotten clear and then began to wonder if the reason they did not run into anyone was because he was lurking in the shadows.
When they reached the locked floodgate, Alister broke through the stone wall to get past it. A torrent of icy water rushed by. They struggled through, fighting to find stable footing as they clambered out.
A dense fog hung in the air, and a slim smuggling boat shot into view, moving silently across the water towards them.
Sebastian sighed with relief. “Althorne.”
General Althorne glared at them from the boat as it pulled to shore. His men silently slipped into the water, not even splashing as they came towards the straggling unit.
“Where’s Soren?” Althorne asked, his expression hard as Luc was carefully lifted into the boat.
“Killed in combat,” Sebastian said quietly.
One of the men was lifting Penny into the boat. Alister scrambled aboard himself, smearing away the fresh blood around his eyes with shaking hands, clearly on the verge of burnout.
Althorne looked at Luc, his expression a mixture of concern and relief. “We’ll need to keep him restrained until he’s cleared.”
Helena gestured towards Wagner. “We found him in a cell. I think Crowther wants him. Don’t trust him, he killed Sofia Purnell.”
Althorne jerked his head, and two of his men came over and seized Wagner’s arms.