Helena had never been inside Luc’s consciousness, but she knew from her interrogation work that a mind was like a home. It had the feeling of the person. Luc’s mind was like walking into a house and finding the walls covered in blood and torn apart. A parasite had grown through his consciousness and fed on every glimmer of the person who should be there.
Cetus had cannibalised Luc, wearing him like a skin.
She ripped her consciousness back out and nearly doubled over with nauseous horror.
Cetus’s eyes danced even though his face was strained by his inability to breathe.
“Luc, come back,” Helena asked, her voice tremulous. “I know there’s still a part of you in there. It’s Hel. Come back. I’ll help you.”
She moved the paralysis enough to let Luc breathe.
Cetus studied her with interest. He was not afraid at all. “You’re talented. If you joined me, your abilities would be valued.”
She stared coldly at him. “Let me talk to Luc.”
There was a strange hunger in his eyes. “You’re the one making that obsidian, aren’t you? I should have realised. Crowther was so tight-lipped. Tell me how you do it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Let me talk to Luc, and I’ll tell you.”
Anger flashed across Cetus’s face. “Why bother with him? He’s weak and useless, just like Orion, so satisfied with mere tricks that he suppressed his true power, denying his animancy.”
“Luc is an animancer?” she said in shock.
Cetus’s expression was jeering. “You never noticed? Never felt the way he could alter a room, entrance an audience?”
Yes, but she’d always assumed that was related to his pyromancy. The feeling of pressure that could come over her when he was upset. She shook her head.
“That’s not animancy.”
“It’s a form of it, one Orion was especially talented in. He wanted people to love him and he made sure they did, while he repressed and rejected all the rest of it. And then hunted everyone else with similar abilities out of existence.”
She shook her head again, but Luc had always had an uncanny magnetism. She had never questioned it. Had he even known?
“Let me talk to Luc,” she said again, “and I’ll tell you how to make the obsidian.”
Cetus’s expression morphed. “Hel?” The voice was wavering.
Helena’s fingers clenched into a fist, closing his throat, choking him. She shook him. “That’s not Luc. You think I can’t tell? Give me Luc.”
Cetus glared at her, and his eyes rolled back. This time Helena felt a shift through his mind as though something were being ripped out from beneath layers of membrane.
Cetus gave a ragged groan, and his eyes rolled dazedly back into focus.
Luc’s face drained of all colour.
“Run,” Luc rasped. “Hel, run. He’s going to kill you.”
“No, I’m not going anywhere,” Helena said, wanting to cry. “I’ve got you. I’m here now. I’m sorry I’m so late.”
She sensed the landscape of Luc’s mind shifting again. That he was being dragged back under, but she’d paid attention, found the shape of Cetus, how he was entwined through Luc. After years as a healer, months of interrogations, and the difficult task of learning to sense Lila’s baby—one spark of life hidden inside another—her resonance was surgical. It wrapped around Cetus, crushing him into submission.
Luc’s eyes went out of focus, and he gave a pained gasp, wavering as if he were about to faint.
“Luc?” Helena said sharply. “Luc, focus. Listen to me. I am going to figure out a way to save you. I’ll get rid of him.”
Her voice was shaking, as her focus was split between talking to Luc and trying to keep Cetus at bay without injuring Luc further. “I just need you to hold on a little longer.”
“Hel …” Luc’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I tried to—fight. He killed Ilva.”
“I’m so sorry.” Tears welled up in her eyes and fell onto his face. “I’m going to fix this. I promise.”
Luc shook his head. “No. Kill me, it’s the only way to stop him.”
“No!” she said sharply. “Look at me. I’m going to save you. That’s why I became a healer, remember? So that someday, when you needed me, I could save you.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. He was talking, the words all coming out in a rush.
“Lila—she thought he was me—”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else she could say.
His jaw trembled. “Don’t tell her.”
“You’re not going to die, Luc.”
Her mind felt as if it were about to rip in two from the effort of keeping Cetus subdued.
She could barely see straight.
“You have a chance. Kill him. No one else can—”
“No—”
There was a knife in Luc’s hand. She saw it too late.
She was so focused on keeping Cetus back, she’d let the paralysis slip.
She didn’t think.
She blocked it on instinct and completed the parry exactly the way Kaine had taught her to: a quick sweep of her knife, so fast it knocked the blade from his fingers. In the same motion, the obsidian knife sank to the hilt into the left side of Luc’s chest, in the place under the arm where the armour was weak.
He gave a guttural gasp, body seizing uncontrollably. Helena gave a panicked scream as he collapsed in her arms.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said.
She ripped the knife out, wrenching his armour out of the way with her resonance, trying to reach the wound.
“No! No, no. Don’t do this to me. Luc, don’t.” She closed the wound as quickly as she could. It only took seconds to stop the bleeding and repair the place where her knife had sliced the aorta.
Fingers clamped around her throat, digging into her trachea, and she looked into Cetus’s expression of pure hatred.
“You stupid—bitch,” he said as she felt a quick pulse of that dead energy.
Luc’s face cleared as he gave a gasp of relief.
“Got him,” Luc said, letting go of her, forcing a smile.
Before Helena could speak, there was a hard knock on the door. “Principate, are you all right?”
Helena expected the door to burst open, for the room to fill with soldiers who’d find her kneeling over Luc with a bloody knife while Sebastian lay slaughtered beside them.
“I’m fine,” Luc immediately called, his voice straining. “Be out soon.”
The footsteps retreated, but Luc wasn’t fine.
Helena had closed the wound, there was nothing physically wrong with him, but she knelt there and felt that he was dying. It was happening slowly. Not a sudden cold pulse, but as if he were bleeding to death, his vitality slipping out rather than blood.
There was no cause for it, nothing to fix, but she felt it through her resonance. As though he were unravelling.
“What’s happening?” Her fingers scrabbled, trying to find a way to fix it, but she had never encountered a death like this.
His hand closed over hers, squeezing tight enough to stop her resonance. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, trying to pull her hands free. “I can figure this out. But if you’d given me time—I would’ve—”
“I died months ago, Hel—” he said, his breathing forced.
“No—you’re still alive—I’ll fix this if you just—” She tried to pull her hand free.
“Stop,” he said more forcefully, pulling her close and making her look at him, at his gaunt, nearly skeletal face. “Listen to me. You have to get out of here before anyone realises. I’ll help you. I think I can last that long. Get Lila, take her far away, where Cetus—Morrough—whatever he is, can’t find her. She won’t leave if I’m still alive.”
“She won’t leave if you’re dead, either. You’ll come with us. We’ll all go. I’ll heal you, and then—”
Luc swallowed hard. “She has another—another Holdfast to protect. Not me—anymore.”