She tried to pull away, eyes casting around. They were in the open, endless forest around them. Danger could come from any direction. It wouldn’t even need to be the Undying. It could be anyone.
He turned her so she’d face him. “Look at me. We have not left any trace to follow. I’ve hunted fugitives, I know how you get caught. And we are not going to get caught. You’ve seen me fight carelessly because I could afford to in the past, but I have learned to be more careful. Slower regeneration has taught me caution. Look at me: I trusted you, and you got us here. It’s your turn to trust me.”
She nodded jerkily.
“Now then,” he said, reaching towards her lap, “are you going to tell me what’s wrong with your hand?”
She looked down. The last two fingers of her left hand were curving inwards and didn’t move with the others. She curled her hand into a fist to hide it.
“The array had quite a pull to it. It took a bit of straining to manage everything. The ulnar nerve just—came apart. I tried to fix it, but—there was too much long-term damage, it wasn’t really salvageable.”
Kaine took her left hand gently in his and straightened all her fingers. When his thumb stroked the last two, Helena couldn’t feel it. Not in her fingers or along the outer part of her palm. His fingers trembled.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s not even my dominant hand, so I can still do most alchemy. I bet I’ll barely notice.”
“Don’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t act like it’s fine.”
She pulled her hand free. “It is fine if I get you instead.”
There was food in the saddlebags, and Helena used retrieving them as a pretext for digging out her daggers and concealing them in her clothes.
The day wore on. The longer they were free, the more anxious she grew.
Kaine was restless, too, although he hid it better. The more he recovered, the more he wanted to patrol and verify that they were as safe as he claimed they were, but he stayed beside her so she could bury her face against his chest, fingers tangled in his shirt, sleeping restlessly.
After flying that night, they reached another hunting cabin. The travel exhausted them both. They barely spoke, just slept tangled in each other’s arms until it was nearly evening. When she woke, Kaine was sitting beside her. His eyes had the faintest gleam to them again.
He looked almost like a painting.
She could see the possessiveness in his eyes, enough to realise how absent it had been in his attempts to let her go. He leaned over her and kissed her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting him nearer, under her skin, beneath her ribs, inside her heart. To hoard him so close nothing separated them and the terror of losing him would finally end.
Time always ran out for them. They’d spent years surviving on stolen moments, and now she finally felt how starved it had left her.
It was only after, as she lay beside him, her fingers tracing absently along the scars of the array, that she realised her back didn’t hurt. That it should have by then, but it didn’t.
She craned her arm around, touching her shoulders. Kaine sat up.
“What did you do? Did you heal me?” She whirled on him. “I told you, I warned you not to use any vivimancy.”
He looked completely unapologetic. “I’m fine. I was careful, and you know that plenty of healing doesn’t use any vitality. You’re already too injured for this amount of travel without my father’s torture still seared across your back.”
She reached for him, fingers shaking as she pressed her hand against his chest, terrified of what she’d find, that he was already slipping away from her.
What if she’d woken up and found him dead beside her, and been left alone there to realise why? She checked over and over.
Her throat worked several times before she could speak.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her voice shaking. “It wasn’t worth it. Plenty of people heal from burns without any vivimancy. I was fine. I was.”
He held her face in his hands. “Helena, look at you. You have broken yourself into pieces, over and over, because of me, and you don’t seem to understand that it kills me. Living is not worth it to me if you’re the one who keeps paying the price for it. Let me fix what I can.”
She closed her eyes, her face buried against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, willing herself to believe that he was all right.
“We have to stop hurting ourselves for each other,” she finally said. “Both of us. We’re not going to last if this is the only way we know how to love.”
When it was nightfall, they flew onwards. From the darkness, something vast and faintly silver rose before them. Helena’s breath caught.
It was the sea.
They veered off, travelling away from the river, the sea gleaming to their right.
Kaine seemed to know where he was going, despite the darkness. They passed over several small bodies of water, the lights of a village, and onwards through the dark until they saw a small flickering light visible through shutters.
Amaris descended straight towards it. The shutters rattled violently as Amaris’s wings fluttered. Helena slid off, legs aching.
A door flew open, and warm light poured out. Helena squinted.
Haloed in the doorway stood Lila.
CHAPTER 76
Julius 1789
LILA GAVE A HEAVING, GASPING SOB AND stumbled down the steps. She had a rough prosthetic and a crutch, but it did not stop her from dragging Helena into her arms and hugging her ferociously.
“Hel, Hel. You’re really alive.”
Lila’s hands were running over Helena, touching her face and shoulders as though she couldn’t believe that Helena was real.
Helena stared at Lila in equal disbelief. Even though she’d known Lila was alive, she was so accustomed to the thought of everyone dead that she couldn’t fully take it in even while staring at her.
Lila looked so different. Her blond hair was dyed brown, and there was a haggard weariness about her. The jagged scar still ran down her face, and she was crying as she hugged Helena.
“Lila …” Helena’s heart felt as though it might explode. She’d been unprepared for how viscerally the reunion would remind her of everyone who was gone.
“I thought I’d never see anyone again. Look at you. You’re so thin.”
Her eyes ran down Helena’s body, stopping at her stomach, and she froze.
Helena’s chest clenched. “You know, right? Kaine said he was in contact with you.”
Lila nodded slowly.
Behind them, Kaine dismounted.
Lila’s head snapped up, as if she hadn’t noticed him until that moment. “What are you doing here?”
Without warning Lila lunged towards him.
Helena had to throw herself between them, pushing her back. “We escaped together. Lila, don’t hurt him, he’s not Undying anymore.”
A savage light came into Lila’s blue eyes. “Really?”
“You’re not going to have any more luck killing me now than you have at any point in the past, Bayard,” Kaine said. “Lose any more limbs, and you won’t be much protection for that little Principate of yours.”
Lila gave a snarl like a wildcat, looking ready to tear out Kaine’s eyes.
“Stop, both of you,” said Helena, furious that they’d managed to ruin the reunion in less than a minute.
Lila stopped trying to assault Kaine and simply glared at him. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you weren’t really going to die saving her in the end.”
“Shut up, Lila,” Helena said sharply. “I brought him here. If you want to be angry that he’s still alive, then you’ll have to be angry at me.”