He grumbled but didn’t resist, clearly preferring Resistance captivity to the Undying.
“You are all currently in custody for your violation of orders,” Althorne said, once the boat was pushed off. There was no bite to his words.
They’d rescued Luc; any censure for that would be a formality.
Helena slumped against the side of the boat. The journey passed in a blur—docking on a concealed wharf, being herded up a staircase and into the back of a lorry.
When they arrived at Headquarters, Penny, Alister, and Luc were taken away to the hospital ward. Wagner was placed in a cell. Helena and Sebastian were checked, cleared of serious injury, and escorted to their rooms to be locked inside with guards stationed at the doors.
Helena was glad not to be kept in the hospital, even though she could have used the saline and plasma expanders. She stripped out of her wet, ruined clothing, hands shaky and trembling, and took a shower, washing away the filth of the tunnels and spring melt.
As the traces vanished, she grew eerily removed from what had happened, as though at some point during the battle, she’d left her body and couldn’t return to it. Back in her room where everything looked familiar, it felt as if it had been a dream.
Soren wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be.
She would go out and see him sitting next to Luc in the hospital.
The memory of him, dead in her arms, felt like a tear in the fabric of her mind, as if the way she’d tethered him back to life had been ripped out when the connection between them broke. The person she knew and the body she’d reanimated had been tied together, and now there was a wound left.
He couldn’t be dead.
It was a horrible dream.
She stared down at her hands. Somehow she’d expected them to be stained or blackened by her necromancy.
What would Sebastian tell the Council? He’d have to tell the truth in a report. Once the truth came out, there’d be consequences.
It would have been a lesser crime to have murdered Soren. Murder was only a mortal crime; necromancy was a crime upon this life and the afterlife.
She packed away all her possessions in her trunk and sat waiting.
There was a loud banging on the door. She stood, ready.
“Helena! Helena! There’s something wrong with Luc!” It was Elain outside. “We need you in the hospital!”
All thoughts of arrest vanished.
“What’s wrong?” Helena opened the door, and the guards stepped back to let her out. She rushed towards the lifts with Elain.
“We’ve done all the examinations and doubled-checked for talismans, and he’s clear. But his organs—they’re all poisoned. I don’t know what they could have done. We tried reversing the damage, but they won’t regenerate. We were trying to get his fever down and Pace had me wake him, but he started screaming. Now he won’t stop, and he doesn’t let anyone near. He’s hurting himself.”
Luc was in a quarantine room at the far end of the hospital. She heard him before she saw him.
His eyes were deranged, his face gaunt with scarlet stains in the cheeks. There was a ripple of heat coming off him as if he were molten gold.
Ilva was standing helplessly in the doorway, along with Althorne, Maier, Pace, and several medics. Ilva kept trying to talk to him, but Luc didn’t seem to hear anything. The screaming faded as his throat stripped itself raw. He’d seemingly forgotten how a body worked. He seized, his arms and legs and fingers and head all tilting into bizarre angles, and then he slammed himself into the wall.
“I brought Helena,” Elain said breathlessly.
Luc’s head swivelled. He stared at Helena. His eyes seemed to grow, bulging from their sockets, head weaving like a snake.
“Hel—” he croaked. He reached for her. His fingers looked broken, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Hel—”
“Careful, he’s been violent,” she dimly heard Pace say. She paid no mind.
She reached out, laced their fingers together, and touched the side of his face with her knuckles. His skin was so hot, it almost burned. He somehow bent his fingers, not seeming to notice the pain, clutching her hand, pulling her close.
“I’m here. What’s wrong?” She numbed his hand, setting his fingers quickly.
His eyes had gone out of focus, and he started shuddering. “Out—” he moaned, shaking his head. “Inside—”
She pressed her hand against his forehead, ignoring the way his skin scalded her hand, letting her resonance flow into him, trying to find the source of what was wrong. What was she missing?
“Hel—” Luc was saying again.
Pain exploded through her chest.
The world went careening, spinning. Vicious red burst across her vision, slamming into the back of her head. An endless ringing filled her ears.
She struggled to focus her eyes. She couldn’t breathe.
She clutched at her chest. Noises were elongated. Faces loomed over her.
Something grabbed her. She gave a panicked scream, going for her knives, but they weren’t there. She clawed wildly to free herself.
“Calm down, Marino,” Matron Pace was saying. “You’re all right, just a bad scare. Knocked your breath out.”
The raw terror ebbed. The room came slowly back into view.
She was on the floor, breathing raggedly, pain consuming her chest as she tried to make sense of what had happened.
Luc was on the other side of the room. His expression had turned scorchingly lucid.
“You—” His eyes were suddenly clear and burning. “You used necromancy on Soren.”
The accusation hung in the air like the lull between lightning and thunder.
Everyone froze.
Helena pushed herself upright.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped, struggling to speak. Her lungs were seizing for air, sending jolts of pain through her ribs. She knelt and almost doubled over on the floor of the hospital. “I tried to heal him. I’m sorry.”
“He was alive. Why didn’t you just heal him?” Luc’s voice was racked with grief.
She couldn’t breathe enough to explain herself, to describe how quickly Soren was gone, that he’d known he’d die, and that he’d asked her to do it.
“I’m sorry, Luc.”
“Get out …” He wasn’t looking at her anymore. His gaze lost focus, and he swayed.
“Luc, you’re sick—”
“Get out!” He closed his eyes, starting to shudder again, his breathing coming faster and faster as if being in the same room with her was about to drive him mad. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
He started clawing at his chest, screaming, tearing grooves into his skin as if trying to tear his own heart out.
“Luc?” another voice broke in.
Lila stood in the doorway, a crutch under one arm. Rhea was beside her, helping her walk.
The scars on Lila’s face and chest showed vividly where she was stitched together.
Luc’s eyes shot open at the sound of her voice.
“Lila …” he said, his voice both grief-stricken and filled with relief, as if he hadn’t believed she was still alive until that moment.
Several people tried to hold her back, murmurs of Careful, but Lila let go of her mother, reaching desperately towards Luc. She let her crutch fall and toppled into his arms, clinging to him.
“I told you to run,” Lila was saying, clutching him close. His hands were shaking as he touched the laceration running down her face.
Lila brushed across the gouges he’d clawed in his chest. “What did they do to you?”
He just shook his head and pulled her closer, burying his head against her shoulder, arms wrapped around her.
It was painfully intimate. If there had been any doubts about whether or why Luc had handed himself over, they were all gone now.
There was a touch at Helena’s elbow. She looked up and found Ilva, who nodded towards the door.
Helena pushed herself to her feet and slipped out before Luc noticed her again. When she passed Rhea, she looked away.
It was Lila who coaxed Luc into bed, who persuaded him to let Pace and Elain examine him again, to accept an intravenous drip in his arm, and take the medicine needed to bring his fever down.