If he did, what would happen to Kaine?
When she slept, she had endless nightmares of digging through Morrough’s corpse in the darkness with her bare hands, arms coated in his blood, ripping out his bones, trying desperately to find the piece that held Kaine’s life. In her dreams, Luc always approached, like a rising sun.
She would plead for time, try to explain herself, but Luc never heard. Every time she burned, too.
In the cold light of day, she knew it wouldn’t be like that. She would be in Headquarters, in the hospital. She wouldn’t know anything until it was too late.
Every day she wondered if she was working towards her own doom and Kaine’s destruction.
After how poorly he’d reacted to Helena’s mere involvement in the war effort, she didn’t tell him about the bomb. It wasn’t difficult to hide it; he was so busy with the ambassador, they scarcely had any time to do more than exchange urgent information.
It was only when she and Shiseo completed all the components that she went to the roof and called for him. She had to wait a long time. When Kaine arrived, he was dressed in formal attire, sharp and polished.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “What is it?”
“We have a new weapon,” she said quickly. “Is there a time or place where a lot of the Undying will be in proximity? Somewhere you won’t be. It could be planted up to two days in advance.”
His expression hardened. “A bomb?”
She gave a tense nod.
“Obsidian?”
“And nullium, so you need to be well clear.”
He nodded and looked at her pointedly. “I hope they’re not building it at Headquarters.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s off-site.”
He exhaled. “Well, the Resistance is taking this final assault seriously at least. The Hevgotian force will cross the western border within the week, but several militocrats and officials will arrive in a day. There’s to be a welcome banquet for them the following evening. Most of the Undying will be in attendance; even Morrough may be there briefly.”
She nodded. That would work. “Can you place it without suspicion? And then get away?”
His eyes softened. “No one pays attention to necrothralls the way they should. They assume anyone using them must be on their side. If I rip out the reanimation, I can take over someone else’s and use them to make a delivery. It won’t be easily traced back to me.”
“And you won’t be there? When it goes off.” She was afraid that he was evading the question.
Standing there, the two of them looked worlds apart. He was clean and pristine, in a tailored uniform, wearing a row of intricate medals, while she stood ragged, in male-sized standard-issue clothes washed to threads.
“How far away do I need to be?”
“Far enough not to breathe it in. There will be micro-shards in the air. We don’t know what effect they’ll have. You should be far away.”
“I’ll run an errand around that time. The ambassador enjoys making himself inconvenient. I’m sure I can convince him to want something unreasonable and distant.”
She nodded. “Make it a long errand. I’ll bring it tomorrow evening.”
“No.” His voice cracked like a whip, and all the softness vanished. “Crowther’s not using you to transport a bomb.”
She shook her head. “It won’t be activated until the components are joined, and there’s a countdown. I’m not going to get blown up carrying it,” she said. “You can’t put it together on your own if you don’t know how to join the pieces.”
“I don’t care. Tell Crowther to figure out another way.” He’d turned bloodlessly pale, that inhuman gleaming rising beneath his skin.
“But if I don’t come,” she said, ready to resort to anything if he’d just cooperate, “that means I won’t see you again until—until after.”
He didn’t waver. “Then I’ll see you after. Send someone else.”
Her breath caught in her lungs. “Kaine …”
He glared at her. “I found you after a bombing. I had to watch them cut you open, trying to get the shrapnel out. You nearly died so many times on the operating table, I lost count. If you’d been an inch closer to the blast, that shrapnel would have gone through your heart. You want me to set a bomb, I will do it, but you will not touch it. Do you understand?”
She swallowed bitterly, grateful that she hadn’t told him any details that might have revealed her involvement. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”
She turned to go. There was so much she needed to do. Take inventory, finish the bomb, help prep the hospital. She’d been assigned to the casualty ward again.
Kaine pulled her to him. “Come back here in a few hours.”
She shook her head. “Now’s hardly the time.”
He didn’t seem to remember that he was the one who couldn’t linger. He wouldn’t let go. She wished that all of this had begun sooner; there was so much time they’d missed.
“All right,” she said finally, giving in. “But you have to leave now.”
He let go slowly. “I’ll call for you.”
After reporting to Crowther, she headed to the off-site lab where she and Shiseo used their resonance in tandem to assemble the final components. They’d built the bomb to be as compact as possible, but it was still nearly the size of a child. It would need to be placed in the centre of a room.
Bombs themselves were not a new alchemical development, but they’d been banned for almost a hundred years after it was decided they were uncivilised. Although banning them had done nothing to stop their development; Hevgoss was famously partial to such technology, viewing it as an equaliser against alchemists.
With the right manipulation of the air and flames, Luc held firebombs in his fingertips. A great deal of his homework had involved arrays and technical studies, drilling all the various ways in which fire could be manipulated and weaponised. Helena had utilised much of it.
The trick had been designing something that would cause a powerful explosion without melting their obsidian.
Shiseo had taught her a technique for a combination alloy fusion utilising dual array transmutation. It was complicated and dangerous. Even with all the arrays stabilising their resonance, Helena burned several fingertips nearly to the bone.
“Are you all right?” Shiseo asked as she sat trying to quickly regenerate the tissue.
Her fingertips hurt so much, it was hard to even feel her resonance, but years of practice made it natural to soothe the damaged nerve endings and regenerate them. Later she’d fix the dermal layer so that it wouldn’t be obvious to the eye.
“It’s nothing,” she finally managed to say, blinking hard and staring at her hands, at the lines that ran across her fingers and palm. Out of habit, she pressed her fingers against her sternum, feeling the faint dip in the bone. The scar had faded some, but the ache where the bone had split lingered. “Is it done?”
He set the two pieces on the worktable, and she eyed them wearily.
He looked at her. “We’ll finish this tomorrow. Your hands need to recover, and you need rest.”
She gave him a faint smile. “I will tonight.”
SHE STAYED PREOCCUPIED UNTIL LATE into the night, rechecking the medical inventory. Her epinephrine injections were nearly out, but there was no record of who’d taken them. Helena left a brusque note. If Elain was going to run everything, she could at least enforce the rules.
She was rolling a mountain of sterilised bandages into spools when her ring burned.
Amaris barely landed; Kaine swept her off the roof and they were airborne. The instant they were inside, he had her pinned against the wall, his lips ravenous on hers.
She gripped him tightly. Her fingertips were still numb, but she hardly noticed.
His hands slid up until her face was cradled in them. His forehead pressed to hers, breath mingling a moment before he kissed her again, drawing her farther inside. Their every step hurried. They were always running out of time.