She went utterly still, heart faltering, and it came again. Fluttering.
She stared down, pushed her dress flat so she could run her hands over the swell between her hips.
She still forgot sometimes that she was pregnant.
As unbelievable as Lila getting pregnant during the war had been, she had always liked children; they were drawn to her, and Lila knew exactly how to make them laugh.
Helena had never had that kind of allure. She didn’t know if she could be a good mother, or if wanting to keep this baby wasn’t just her selfishness rearing its head. Her inability to let go.
To love someone. To be needed.
Her hand trembled violently as she pressed it against her stomach, letting her resonance reach hesitantly inwards, sensing the tiny bones softer than cartilage, veins like threads.
Soon this would be all that was left of Kaine in the whole world.
“I’m going to take care of you,” she whispered. “It’s—our way.”
She’d barely spoken the words when the door opened and Kaine strode in. It had been nearly a day but his colour was still unsettling, his eyes too bright.
“Stroud’s coming,” he said, his voice tense. “I came as fast as I could, but I have to—”
As soon as he reached her, he was removing the manacles and sliding the nullium tubes into place. Helena winced as her resonance vanished like an extinguished light.
Kaine was barely done fastening them when his eyes lost focus. “She’s here. Make sure everything’s hidden.”
When Stroud arrived, it was clear that the current tensions disagreed with her. There were hollows beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were red from split capillaries.
“Central is specifically designed to accommodate gestation,” she was saying in a strident voice. “Marino is our most crucial subject. She should be there, where I can keep a close eye on the foetal development and we can move quickly once viability is achieved.”
“And you think that the ‘gestational environment’ you’ve set up is conducive for someone with a heart condition agitated by stress? You might as well ask her to attempt a spontaneous abortion,” Kaine said, sneering at Stroud. “Marino is my prisoner. The High Necromancer entrusted her to me, and he has not changed his mind on that point. I will not have you tampering with my assignment just because you’ll no longer have Shiseo’s work to legitimise yourself with.”
Stroud turned a furious shade of red, as if a fresh wave of capillaries were splitting beneath the surface of her skin. “I will be appealing this.”
“You’re welcome to try, but I did tell him of your interference and its contribution to her current state. She might not have a heart condition at all if you hadn’t rushed her interrogation by injecting her with a nearly lethal dose of stimulants and threatened to cut her tongue out if she didn’t get pregnant. Now get on with whatever pretence brought you here.”
Stroud’s entire face was nearly beet red as she performed a perfunctory check of Helena’s heart condition and pregnancy. She’d seemingly hoped to sneak into Spirefell and commandeer Helena while Kaine was busy.
In a few minutes, she was done and furiously repacking her satchel so that Kaine could escort her back out.
Helena watched from the window as Stroud climbed into a motorcar and pulled away. The car was barely through the gates when the lights in her room flickered, and she heard the distant buzzing from the main wing. Kaine was already being summoned again.
She watched through the window as Kaine emerged from the house, swinging up onto Amaris’s back. The chimaera ran half the length of the courtyard and was airborne.
Helena pressed her hand on the window, the nullium tube pressing against the tendons of her wrist.
The day’s paper arrived with lunch. The photograph on the cover was enough to turn her stomach.
It was taken from the main gates of the Institute, which opened directly across from the steps of the Alchemy Tower. There on the steps stood Kaine, no helmet, nothing concealing his identity; his face was visible for all to see, his eyes so bright they distorted the photograph. Between him and the gate, covering the commons, were rows of bodies.
She kept waiting for Kaine to come back, but hours passed and he didn’t. It wasn’t like him to leave her in the house with Atreus unless she could secure the door.
Night fell and Lumithia was little more than a sliver of light, as if the night sky were a black curtain concealing the daylight, and someone had pierced it with a knife.
A low howl floated through the house. Helena went to the window.
Amaris was standing in the courtyard, a huge shadow, only her edges catching the moonlight. Her head kept dipping down to nuzzle something on the ground, and then she’d tilt her head back and give a soft breathy howl with those horse lungs of hers, like a moaning gust of wind.
As Helena watched, Amaris circled and pawed the ground, wings fluttering nervously. For an instant the feeble moonlight reached the ground, illuminating pale hair.
Helena ran to the door, finding one of the servants in the hall.
“Get Davies and the butler, I don’t know his name,” Helena said. “Kaine’s in the courtyard.”
It moved, but very slowly.
Helena barely had time to think about the dark or the shadows, clutching at the wall as she descended the stairs, willing her heart to stay steady. She faltered at the doorway. The house was all dark; there were no signs of Atreus. She tried to tell herself that it was good it was dark, Morrough wouldn’t be able to see well if he was watching.
She drew a deep breath and rushed across the gravel to where Amaris was giving another helpless howl.
The chimaera snarled, whirling when Helena got close. Helena stopped, showing her empty hands.
“It’s me,” she said. “Remember? I’ll help him.”
Amaris stopped snarling, but her muzzle remained curled back. She let Helena kneel and crawl the remaining distance to Kaine.
He was lying face down and when she rolled him over, her hands came away wet with blood. He smelled of rot, of that awful hall underground. His skin was cold, and he was barely breathing.
“Kaine? Kaine? What did he do to you?” She shook him gently. She’d seen him injured by nullium before, but she’d never seen anything like this. She had no resonance to reach out and find what was wrong. It was so dark outside, she could scarcely see more than his outline. She felt his pulse, but it was irregular in a way that would kill a human. Stopping intermittently and then restarting, pulsing and stopping again.
She tried to lift him, but with the nullium in her wrists, she couldn’t hold him. She hooked her elbows under his arms but didn’t have the weight or strength to move him across the ground. She sank back into the gravel, and his head lolled against her shoulder.
“Kaine—”
He didn’t respond.
She looked around for the servants and spotted Davies and the butler and several other servants coming out, carrying electric torches. They moved as if only half there.
Amaris snarled, and Helena quieted her, petting her ears and urging her back enough for the servants to reach Kaine.
“Take him to my room,” she said softly. “Be gentle, I don’t know where he’s hurt.”
The butler pulled Kaine carefully over his shoulder.
Amaris was trembling, a low groaning whine as her nose followed Kaine up the steps, head bobbing like she wanted to go with him into the house.
“He’ll be all right. I’ll take care of him. You did everything you could.” Helena stayed a moment longer, pressed against the immense, reassuring warmth of the chimaera, and then she forced herself to turn and cross the open gravel back to the far door.
Calm. Stay calm, she told herself over and over, willing her heart to stay even, not to let her mind slip into the shadows. You have to get upstairs to Kaine.
She reached her room before the servants did, in enough time to turn down the bed and clear the table of everything except what medicine she thought might be useful. She started wetting towels while she waited.