She had to think slowly, laboriously, struggling to keep her focus razor-sharp because when she let it falter, her thoughts turned nebulous. She was surreptitious as she curled her fingers against her palm, just enough to send her resonance through her own body, trying to reverse Kaine’s tampering, but it had settled.
“If you die, who’s going to stop Morrough?” Her voice was dull.
His expression turned cold. “He can have Paladia for all I care. If the Eternal Flame wanted to win, they should have made better choices. They all knew the risks, but that was never enough incentive for them. They refused to pay the price that victory demands, and I am sick of watching you try to pay it for them.”
He tried to take her hand, but she recoiled from him. Hurt flashed in his eyes, but he swallowed, his jaw set.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed and grew flintlike. “You gave your word.”
Helena inhaled through clenched teeth. “I know. And I will go, per your demands, but I need to speak with—Shiseo. If I can teach him how to use the obsidian I have left, he can pass on the information to the survivors, and then at least they’ll have a chance—”
“You gave your word.”
Helena met his eyes. “You know I will always choose the Eternal Flame first.”
He stared at her, eyes widening as if she’d struck him. His mouth pressed into a hard line, and his gaze dropped. She watched his throat dip, and she kept talking.
“If you force me to leave without speaking to Shiseo, the last thing you will ever do is betray me and everyone I love. A traitor is all you’ll be to me, but if you let me do this, maybe—someday I’ll be able to forgive you.”
Hurt shone from his eyes, an empty look of despair, but she glared back. Too drugged to show more emotion.
“Fine.” His voice was raw with bitterness, and he didn’t look at her again.
She sat up laboriously and drew a map that showed which part of the city the off-site lab was in, hoping that it had escaped notice. She added a vaguely termed list of things she wanted Shiseo to bring. “He should be there if no one’s found him. I’ll need him to bring all this so I can explain how it works.”
Kaine stared at the map and list, his eyes narrowing. “Who is he exactly?”
“An Easterner. He helps here and there.”
“And you trust him?”
“More than I can trust you,” she said.
Kaine turned white, but he crumpled the list into his pocket. “Don’t leave,” he said.
She turned away from him. Lila lay beside her, still unconscious.
The instant he was gone, Helena pushed herself and began ransacking the suite, finding and prying free every piece of metal she could. She was indiscriminate in her destruction; anything that was not immediately visible, she ripped out, and then identified its components and transmuted it down into compact bars of various alloys and metals, pausing every few minutes to clear her head of the drug.
She was certain that Kaine would take her and Lila into Novis first. It was in range. He’d use Amaris to get across the river without dealing with checkpoints or the paperwork of commandeering a boat. However, large as Amaris was, Helena doubted the chimaera could carry three. The river was wide in the basin. Two riders would be enough to wind Amaris and require her to rest before returning.
Helena didn’t trust Novis with Lila, not now with Luc dead. In the hands of Novis, with Falcon Matias circling him, Luc’s son would be little more than a pawn, a Principate raised with the same lies and manipulation that had haunted Luc.
Lila would have to be hidden.
Kaine had somewhere already in mind, but travel arrangements would not be quick. Even if he had money on hand, obtaining safe and discreet passage would be complicated.
She went to the window, peeking out, trying to gauge how high she was, and found a street only a few storeys below. The suite was in one of the higher parts of the city, far removed from the violence, but there was a large skybridge connected to all the nearby buildings, with a plaza and gardens overlooking the lower parts of the city.
There was also a fire escape just outside the window. Not a functional one, but a decorative sort of balcony made of wrought iron.
She heard footsteps sooner than she’d expected and rushed back to the bed, trying to look dazed when the door opened and Kaine entered, Shiseo behind him.
She pushed herself up, rubbing her eyes. “You found him.”
“Give him your information so he can go.”
Helena slurred her reply. “He’s just an assistant. I’m going to have to go over everything.”
Shiseo blinked at Helena, and she was grateful then for how unreadable he was.
Kaine gave a hiss between his teeth, hands clenching into fists. “Fine.”
She was interfering with his timeline. She could feel his desperate impatience.
“You’ll use Amaris, right? To take us across the river?” she asked.
Kaine’s eyes flicked to Shiseo, but he gave a faint nod.
“Can she carry all of us that far?”
His jaw went tense. “It’ll have to be two trips.”
She nodded vaguely and went to him, noticing the way he leaned towards her without seeming to be aware of it.
She stopped short and lowered her voice. “You should take Lila, before she wakes.”
He drew up. “You want me to go?”
Her expression twisted bitterly. “Well, there’s no point in teaching you any of this, is there?” She lifted a shoulder. “I just thought—if you took her first, maybe we’ll have some time to say goodbye when it’s my turn. But maybe that doesn’t matter.”
She turned away, grateful that she was so drugged, she could finally lie without effort. She could feel Kaine’s eyes on her as she found a stack of thick, high-quality paper in the desk drawer and searched for a pen.
Helena’s heart was pounding, a slow drumbeat of dread as she sat and began to write, slowly and methodically, not looking at him again.
“When I get back, you’ll go, whether or not you’re ready.”
Helena’s heart was in her throat. It took a moment to speak.
“Fine.” She didn’t dare look up.
She watched from the corner of her eye as he went over and hauled Lila up.
He stopped at the doorway and looked back at her. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t leave this room.”
Helena’s throat tightened. She looked over, and her lips parted, to say—
To say—
She looked back down to the paper in front of her. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
The door shut and she didn’t move, expecting it to burst open again. There was a long silence before she finally looked up.
“How did he bring you here?” she asked Shiseo, pressing her hand against the side of her neck and trying to alleviate all the tampering in her body enough to think coherently.
“There was a motorcar. He took it underground. He had a special card that let us through, and we came up in a long lift.”
She turned and went over the box of supplies Shiseo had brought, sorting them as quickly as she could, laying them all out in the small kitchen. She had to work in rushed spurts to stay ahead of the sedative. Taking an etching sheet, she hastily began sketching an array to stabilise her component construction.
“He said you needed me,” Shiseo said after several minutes.
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Helena said, her fingers quickly shaping the various metal bars into a multitude of spheres. “I just needed an excuse so he’d leave and bring me these supplies. I imagine he told you, we lost. Luc’s dead. You should get to Novis, you’ll be safe there.”
Shiseo seemed unconcerned. “What are you doing?”
She paused. “I’m building a bomb. I need to blow up a laboratory.”
There was a long silence. “We used the Athanor components already.”
Helena twitched one shoulder as she began divvying up materials, calculating how much she had. Not enough. She scrounged through the kitchen cupboards and found a bag of flour.