“I’ll have to put the nullium back in when Stroud visits, or she’ll notice. I hope you understand why I couldn’t do this sooner.”
She nodded again.
He drew a deep breath and took her other wrist, removing the manacle from that one, too. He let her have a minute, twisting her wrists and feeling her resonance reach her fingertips.
“I didn’t realise how much a part of me it was till it was gone,” she said, pressing her palms against her head and calming the frenzied inflammation of her brain. Her mind was a bizarre landscape, as if two versions of herself were overlaid with each other, her consciousness veering between them.
She looked up. “I think I can eat.”
She kept unfurling her fingers, relishing the sensation of her resonance. Kaine watched, clearly torn between his desire to keep her in a state and place that he could fully control and not wanting to be her captor any longer.
He’d had to choose, and he’d set her free.
She didn’t want him to regret that.
She spent several minutes trying to repair the muscle and tendon damage done by the tubes, but most of it was too old and compounded upon to restore. Time and injury had left her fingers clumsy, their previous dexterity all but gone. Eventually she gave up and held out her wrists towards him, so that he could wrap the copper ribbon around them.
Kaine pocketed the nullium tubes. “I’ll send what I can find of the research.”
He started to stand, but Helena caught his hand. She could grasp at things now without forced feebleness, and so she held on until he looked back at her.
“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t—” The word caught in her throat. She squeezed his hand. “Come back to me, all right?”
“I will.”
IT WAS MIDDAY WHEN DAVIES brought in a folio and Helena sat deciphering a variety of accumulated notes. Most of it was written in an unfamiliar hand, using an alchemical shorthand and notation that she wasn’t familiar with, but there were some notes that she recognised as Shiseo’s flowing script, and even Kaine’s handwriting.
There were numerous partial arrays and formulas. Some felt oddly familiar. She kept staring at them, racking her mind until symbols blurred, smearing across the pages.
She curled on her side, arms wrapped around her head, and passed out.
When she woke, Kaine was sitting next to her. He had her pregnancy guide open, eyes skimming across the pages.
She winced at the sight of it.
She didn’t want to think about the pregnancy. She knew it was there, but it was too much. Other things were of greater urgency.
He closed the book immediately.
Her head still hurt, so she closed her eyes. “Where are those notes from?”
“Some are Bennet’s, I believe. Shiseo collected any non-metallurgical array work he encountered. Said it was something he saw you working on.”
A new gap in her memory seemed to rise to the surface. She’d worked on something like that?
“I don’t remember.” How much was still missing?
“I’m sure it’ll come to you,” he said.
But there was so little time. She opened her eyes, mind grinding like jammed gears. “I never used arrays for vivimancy, or animancy, I don’t think.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “Maybe they wouldn’t work with celestial or elemental formulas. Have you ever used any other numbers for an array?”
Kaine shook his head.
The conversation was painfully stilted. She was walking blind through her own memory, trying to solve a puzzle without remembering which pieces she held. As she talked about her ideas, Kaine nodded, expression appropriately attentive, but his eyes kept glancing at the clock, and he showed no emotion when she tried to engage him in the subject.
She slowly began to realise that he was indulging her. The notes, removing her manacles: It was all an attempt to appease her. It was the library. He was keeping her occupied and motivated to recover her strength, but he had no expectation that it would make any difference. He was managing her.
She stopped talking.
He nodded again, as if agreeing with something she’d said, and stood. “I’ll make sure you have what you need.”
He started for the door, then halted suddenly and turned back. He stood staring at her and the room for a long time before he finally spoke.
“I know we—” He stopped, and his hand curled into a fist, vanishing behind his back. He blinked, staring just past her.
“From what I understand,” he finally said, his voice eerie and removed, “simple methods of abortion are unlikely to be feasible by the time you’ll escape. There are other methods that can be done by vivimancy or surgery. When you go, I’ll try to ensure you have the materials necessary to resolve it, but if there’s anything in particular you’ll need, just tell me. I’ll make sure that you have it.”
Before she could respond, he turned and left.
Helena leaned back, pushing the folio away and forcing herself to look at her body.
Hesitantly, reluctantly, she reached down and pressed her fingers against her stomach, just below her navel, finding the slight swell of her uterus. Her hand trembled almost violently as she let her resonance reach in.
She’d seen the resonance screen, but it was different reaching out herself.
It was startling how small it was.
She snatched her hand away, her heart pounding unsteadily.
Helena had never thought about children. Not until they were something that she couldn’t have and so it didn’t matter what she wanted. A month ago and she would have killed herself in an instant to prevent a baby, any baby, from falling into Morrough’s hands. The pregnancy had not existed for her beyond that context.
But if she escaped, if the choice was hers, what would she do?
When Davies arrived that evening with dinner, she brought etching plates and a stylus. Helena held the stylus in silent disbelief at first. If she’d ever found one searching the house, she would have tried to stab herself through the heart with it.
Kaine really had known her too well.
“Is Kaine here?” she asked.
Davies shook her head.
“When he comes back, can you tell him that I want him?”
It was dusk, the light soft when the door opened and Kaine stood there as if he wasn’t even sure he should step over the threshold.
Helena looked up from the folio, hating the space.
“Had I told you I was sterilised?”
He entered then, shutting the door. “No, but I assumed. It was standard practice for the Faith. It was one of my father’s greatest concerns if I were ever found using vivimancy—that they’d cut me and end the family line.”
“Oh.”
She was glad they’d never had that conversation, then.
His jaw clenched. “It hadn’t occurred to me that Stroud could reverse it. I thought you were safe from the program.”
Her hands crept towards her stomach. “I want to talk about what you said earlier, before you left.”
His expression closed.
Helena’s chest tightened. There were too many moments, both past and present, when he’d looked at her like that. She closed her eyes, trying to block them out.
“Can you come closer?” Her mouth had gone dry. “It’s hard to talk when you’re so far away.”
It was clear that he didn’t want to be anywhere near her for this conversation, but she needed him near.
She stared at her hands. “I didn’t realise you expected me to terminate the pregnancy when I escaped. I mean, I understand why you would, but I’m not going to.”
She looked up, trying to gauge his reaction, but he wasn’t looking at her.
“You may change your mind once you’re free,” he said, his voice void of emotion, as if it had nothing to do with him.
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
His jaw ticced, tension growing visible around his eyes. “There’s no reason to make any commitment like this to me.” His voice shook. “Do whatever you want.”
“I am,” she said. “And I want you to know. If I didn’t, I’d wonder about everything. If our baby would get your eyes or mine. What kind of resonance they’d have. If they’d have any, or if they’d just get to be ordinary.” She was speaking quickly, because her throat was growing thick. “I’d wonder if they’d have hair like mine or if it would be straight like yours. If I have to go without you—if you—if you die—I’d want to tell them all about you.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve never gotten to tell anyone about you. I’d want someone to know what you were like.”