“These too.”
“I THINK—I’VE FIGURED OUT THE array and all the materials I’d need to restore your soul,” she said when Kaine came the next day. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, empty-handed, her meal untouched.
He paused, shutting the door. “Oh?”
Her left hand kept spasming uncontrollably, and her heart was beating like a fist inside her chest.
“If we alter the base of the array, I could use the inner components of it to hold the energy while I use my animancy to separate your soul from the others.”
“But?”
She swallowed. “When Luc died, it happened slowly. Cetus—Morrough had damaged him so much, his soul couldn’t hold on once Cetus was dead. I didn’t know how to—Your soul was ripped out of your body. If I can get it back in, with time maybe it might reintegrate, but we’d need to secure it at least initially, like—like the servants’ souls are doing now, to the phylactery.”
“You’d need a sacrificial soul.”
She nodded. “They’d have to be willing. It wouldn’t hold together, it wouldn’t work if they weren’t.”
“Ah,” was all he said.
She swallowed hard, jaw trembling. “Maybe if I start over, I can find something else. I might have come at it from the wrong angle.”
He was silent.
Her chest convulsed. “Or—I was thinking, what if we prioritise just getting the phylactery first, and go. Then I’ll have another month to study it, right? I could build a bomb—we could—you have an old forge here. It wouldn’t be high heat or a large detonation. If we used nullium, once Morrough was injured—you could get the phylactery and then we’d run, and—and I can figure something out then.”
Kaine’s expression was closed, his gaze infuriatingly patient as he walked over to her. “Can you safely handle explosives while pregnant?”
Her throat closed. “We could work together—I could tell you how to—”
Kaine picked up her hand and laid it against his. His fingers twitched several times, and Helena’s entire hand spasmed.
“Which of us has hands steady enough to build a bomb?”
Helena snatched hers away, curling her fingers into a fist so tight she could feel metacarpal bones under her fingertips. The room swam, threatening to topple her from the bed. She braced her other hand firmly against the mattress to steady herself. “Well, maybe if I—”
“Helena, I’m tired.”
She looked up and saw it in his eyes. The war had eaten him; it had carved him to the bone and not stopped even then. He was scarcely more than a ghost.
She had known, from the moment she’d seen the array on his back, that if he survived it, it would drive him to distil his world to a single point and he would never stray from it. He had made that point her.
He could not stop so long as she was in danger, and it had worn him almost to nothing. He just wanted an endpoint to look towards.
Her shoulders shook. “But … I want to save you back.”
“I know.” He said it gently. “And if anyone could, it would be you. But I would like to say goodbye to you before you’re gone, and you are losing yourself in this.”
He pulled her into his arms, his chin resting on the top of her head.
But her mind would not stop racing. When he left, she went back to her research. Starting from scratch. When she heard him coming, she put everything away and didn’t mention it. He knew anyway, but they pretended.
She kissed him. Pushed him back against the bed and slid her legs up until she was on his lap, fingers threaded through his pale hair as she moulded her body to his, wanting all of him.
As he kissed down her neck, she found the buttons and fastenings on his clothes until she could touch his skin, shoving his shirt down off his shoulders, guiding his hands to her waist.
His hands gripped her, thumbs pressed against her lower ribs, arching her closer.
Her hands shook as she began unbuttoning her dress, fingers trembling so badly that they fumbled with the buttons. Kaine tried to close his hands over hers, but she jerked them free.
“I want this,” she said, voice shaking. “I want this on our terms before I go—please …”
Her voice cracked.
“This was ours …” She swallowed, blinking hard. “They took it from us, but it was ours.”
She managed the rest of the buttons and let her dress slip off, pooling at her waist. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him close, kissing him.
She stayed astride him, her thighs bracketing his hips as their bodies joined. His fingers curled against her waist, but he didn’t push her down, didn’t make her move beyond the pace that she felt ready for. He gave a low groan as she rolled her hips forward.
She tried not to remember, not to compare it to any other time, just trying to dwell on the now, grounding herself in the moment, but it was familiar …
She remembered it being like this before, slow and intimate. The burning reverence of his touch when he’d made love to her.
That’s what it had been. Making love. It was what they’d had.
CHAPTER 71
Julius 1789
HELENA WAS CORRODING LIKE METAL; DISSOLVING, DECAYING, flecking away into pieces. There was a constant pain in her chest as she felt herself come apart.
There were so many things she wanted to say to Kaine, but she could scarcely think them without her throat beginning to ache and her heart pounding and she would start crying. She’d never been particularly prone to crying before, but the pregnancy seemed to rip it out of her. The countdown to her departure was slowly tearing her apart.
One day, instead of crying, she snapped and raged at him.
His plans were stupid and selfish. It wasn’t fair that he got to die and she was left to live with everything. If he’d let her help rescue Lila, none of this might have happened. If he’d just trusted her and not been so controlling, if he’d let them work together—everything might have been different. It was all his fault.
He let her say it all, until she was gasping for breath, hand clawing at her chest, trying to force her heart to beat evenly, and when he had to do it for her, she tried to tear his hands off.
When his father called him away, she was left to seethe and realised he was doing this intentionally.
He knew the destructive ways her mind tilted. Since the moment she’d arrived at Spirefell, he’d gone out of his way to needle and antagonise, trying to provoke her. He’d given her a target. When she’d hated him, she’d been less self-destructive.
If she was angry now, it would make leaving easier.
He was managing her. She swallowed her anger, but all her emotions sat like poison inside her.
A LORRY BROUGHT A FRESH batch of prisoners to Spirefell, and Kaine was gone again.
Helena couldn’t help but wonder at the relationship between Kaine and his father. They were both unveiled in their contempt for each other. Atreus seemed to find so much in his son to despise, and yet seemed to constantly find reasons to need him. Kaine blamed his father for the tragedy of his mother, and yet Atreus was among the Undying he’d spared, despite seeming an easy target.
Helena was sitting numb with despair when the door opened.
She looked up, blood running cold as one of the uniformed lorry guards stepped into the room.
He tilted back the cap on his head, and it was Ivy.
Helena stared with deadened surprise as Ivy gave a tentative smile.
“You were hard to get to.”
Helena didn’t move. “What are you doing here?”