Helena clutched at Kaine’s hand.
In the next bulletin were the words ETERNAL FLAME BANNERS RISE AGAIN: AS THE COUNTRIES UNITE AGAINST PALADIA, SOME DO SO IN REMEMBRANCE.
Lila finally spoke. “Did you know this was happening?”
Kaine said nothing.
Helena answered quietly, reaching across to squeeze Lila’s now bare wrist. “We knew that there was an alliance developing, but we didn’t know how fast it would move, or if they’d believe news of the death.”
Lila sat back, clutching Pol in her arms, but she was looking out the window, back towards the mainland as the ship horns sounded, signalling cast-off.
Lila kept shaking her head. “I had no idea.”
HELENA WAS SEASICK FOR MOST of the journey, the pregnancy making what would have been mild symptoms much worse. She still felt green when they arrived on one of the major trade islands. Kaine offered to get a room at an inn and complete the journey the next day, but Helena knew he wanted to leave as little trace of their journey behind as possible. The fewer places they stopped, the fewer people they spoke to, the harder they’d be to track down. They took a bus across the island. It was so different from the North. The city sprawling rather than climbing vertically as Paladia did. Stonework was a world apart from architecture utilising alchemy. They rode in a cart across a sea road leading to their destination.
The sea road was an immense causeway built up and paved smooth to allow crossing to the island during most of the monthly low tides. With the Abeyance dragging the tides away completely, the seabed lay bare, far below the causeway. There were people wandering across it, gathering whatever treasures the tide had left.
Helena and her father used to go down for the tides, searching for shells and treasures, studying the fish trapped in the tide pools. Treasure hunting was popular during Abeyance. There had been countless cities washed away in the Disaster, and even millennia later, their remnants lingered beneath the waves.
She looked over to see Lila’s and Kaine’s reactions to it all. Kaine was impassive, his eyes scanning the horizon. However, Lila looked more frightened than Helena had ever seen her. It took a moment to remember that the sea was regarded as terrifying in the North. Even the coasts were considered fraught with risk, as if it were a suicidal act of bravery for humanity to persevere in such a place. To those inland, the idea of living with the sea was simply too foreign.
“Don’t worry,” she said to Lila. “I’ll teach Pol to be careful of the sea. But he’ll like it. You both will.”
Lila gave a nervous nod.
The residence they arrived at was high up on a cliff. It was a large stone two-storey house with a stable and a few other buildings. The island, Kaine mentioned off-handedly, was privately owned, and the house had belonged to the previous owner, which was why it was so much larger than those in the village they’d passed through.
It came mostly furnished. A woman in the village had been paid to maintain it and unpack the items that had arrived. There were warm stone floors, and raw beams, and sunlight streaming through all the open windows, carrying the strong scent of the sea.
Kaine entered the house first, walking through quickly. Helena could feel the wariness about him, his resonance tingeing the air. She bit her tongue, wanting to remind him to be careful, but his paranoia was ingrained—object and he’d just revert to deception.
“I need to make sure everything’s in order here,” he said, leaving Helena and Lila in the house.
“Well, this is definitely bigger,” Lila said, cradling a sleeping Pol in her arms and looking around. “Shall we find the bedrooms? My arm’s about to fall off.”
They went upstairs, peeking into the various rooms in search of beds.
The first bedroom they managed to find was very large, but it also looked more like a library with a bed in it. Lila took one look at it and scrunched her nose. “I think this one’s supposed to be yours. You should rest—you still look green. Pol and I will find somewhere else. What do you think the odds are that Ferron will let me have a sword if I promise not to use it on him?”
Lila departed, and Helena stepped into the room.
It was not too large; the ceilings were whitewashed with exposed beams overhead that made the space less overwhelming than the dark rooms in Spirefell. There were windows on the far side of the room, where the bed was, looking out over the sea.
She moved carefully along the wall, tracing her fingers over the shelves, noticing the various titles and collections. Alchemy books but also literature and histories, and travel diaries.
There was a desk and chairs, and a sofa, with a soft rug underfoot. She paused at the desk and found papers and pens, and etching plates and styluses, all arranged in the drawers as if waiting for her.
There was enough in this room to keep her busy for a lifetime.
That was what the room was, a life Kaine had tried to set her up with.
She wanted to appreciate the effort it must have required, but it felt all wrong. Too perfect. As if it were all a trap set specifically to lure her in and lull her with a false sense of safety.
Kaine was so vulnerable now.
Lila wasn’t anywhere near fighting form, and even if she were, her priority would always be Pol’s safety. If Helena let herself believe they were safe, let down her guard for an instant, something would go wrong. She was sure it would.
Her life was a perpetual countdown to disasters that she always failed to see coming. She huddled in the corner, between the bed and wall, her right hand gripping her chest, trying to keep her heart steady.
Calm down. She squeezed her eyes shut. Breathe.
Where was Kaine? Outside of Spirefell, he wouldn’t know that she needed him …
Her eyes popped open, and she grasped at her left hand, finding the ring on her numb ring finger. Gripping it tight, she used her resonance to send a quick flare of heat through the silver.
A moment later, warmth pulsed back in response.
She stayed where she was, eyes closed, hand pressed against her heart, until she heard the door open.
“Helena?”
“Here.” Her voice came out thin, wavering.
In an instant, Kaine was there in front of her. “What’s wrong?”
She swallowed several times before she could speak. “I thought I would be glad to get here, but—what if they catch us? What if someone finds us because we’ve stopped running?”
His eyebrows furrowed as he ran his thumb across her cheek. “Do you want to keep running?”
Her stomach threatened to upend at the thought of more ships and new places and never stopping, always looking over her shoulder. “No, but why does everything feel wrong? Like it’s not even real. This is what we wanted.”
He pulled her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin. “I don’t think that an ordinary life will ever feel real for either of us.”
Exhausted despair tore at her as she realised that he was right. “I think I always saw running away as the destination. I never actually thought about what would be left of me by the time I got here.”
She stayed there, numb at the realisation.
“Do you like the house?” he finally asked.
She looked around the room, trying to rally herself. “I do. How did you manage this?”
“It was mostly by correspondence. You talked about the sea, so I started looking before the war was over. I thought it would be easier for you, if you were going somewhere you liked.”
“Just me. In this big house?” She said it lightly, but she was horrified at the idea.
“Lila was part of the arrangement by then. I came here briefly last summer. It was one of my last trips,” he said quietly. “Before that, I’d just sent things along as I thought of something I thought you’d like.”
She looked around again. All this, while he hadn’t even known if she was alive.
“Come on now. You’ll like it better once you’ve rested.”