She took a long shower until all the remaining aches in her body faded, tilting her back and letting the water stream through her hair, replaying the memory.
Shiseo. So, she had known him. She didn’t want to believe it, but he was right there in her mind now.
They couldn’t have known each other well. He probably performed resonance tests for lots of people. Maybe he’d done it as a way of spying on the Resistance.
But why hide that memory? She was bewildered by the span of her memory loss.
Why would the Undying trust Shiseo if he’d worked and lived among the Resistance for the entire war? Countless Paladians had been killed or imprisoned for less, but instead he was entrusted as envoy.
It made no sense.
After its founding, Paladia had courted foreigners from the world over. The Holdfasts had wanted the Institute to be the alchemy capital of the world, where alchemists of every kind might come and study and share their techniques and methods. Paladia had quickly outgrown that dream, though.
Especially once the Institute neared capacity, sentiments of welcome soured.
After Principate Apollo’s death, when talk of war began, Helena’s father had wanted to return south. He’d said it wasn’t their fight, and his responsibility was keeping her safe, but Helena had already promised Luc she’d stay, and so her father had stayed because of her.
And died because of her.
She drew a sharp breath, tracing along the scar on her throat as she stepped out of the shower.
As she towelled off, she froze at the sight of her reflection.
Since the meals had improved, she’d begun avoiding her reflection, hating the changes she saw, as the version of herself that she knew vanished.
In her memories, she’d been gaunt from stress. Her skin sallow from the absence of sunlight. Her nearly black hair always carefully restrained by two tight braids coiled at the back of her head. Bony and thin-limbed. Her eyes, large and dark, but with fire in them.
When she’d come to Spirefell, there was still something of that girl in her reflection.
Now her face was no longer gaunt, or her cheeks hollowed, and her eyes weren’t sunken from exhaustion. Her colour had improved. Without a comb or ties for her hair, it hung loose, cascading past her elbows. Her bones barely jutted out.
She looked healthy.
Pretty, even.
A Helena from a different life.
But her eyes—
Her eyes were dead. There was no fire in them.
The spark she’d once regarded as the most intrinsic part of who she was had gone out.
She was a vibrant corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.
FERRON REAPPEARED A DAY LATER while Helena was eating dinner.
He was wearing his “hunting” clothes, but they were clean, so she assumed he was heading out rather than returning. She watched him warily as he entered. Without his coat and normal layers, he was noticeably slender.
As he came closer, her eyes narrowed. His clothes were a dark grey, made to blend into the city shadows, but there was a metallic sheen in some places. It was most obvious over his forearms, chest, and legs.
A woven body armour. That was why she hadn’t been able to stab him.
He stopped in front of her, his expression unreadable, hands somewhere behind his back. “What made you realise?”
The tines of her fork caught against the plate. “Realise what? That Morrough’s dying or that he’s been creating the Undying as some sort of power source?”
His mouth curved. “Let’s start with the latter.”
She looked towards the window. “Everyone always acted like the war was inevitable, a part of the cycle in the eternal battle of good and evil, but I just—never understood. Why did Morrough want Paladia? The Council thought Hevgoss was involved, that they were creating a pretext for their military intervention so they could absorb Paladia into their borders. But what did Morrough get out of it, then? No one ever seemed to wonder. There’s just always an evil necromancer somewhere that the Eternal Flame needs to kill. No one talks about why, what could drive someone to that.” She shook her head. “I just don’t think immortality seems like much of a gift, especially not one that someone would give away like Morrough does, unless there was more of an advantage for him than everyone who got it. Things that seem too good to be true usually have a price you don’t know about until it’s too late.”
Ferron said nothing.
“Am I right?” she asked.
His expression and posture were unreadable. “Does it matter?”
She looked away.
“Actually, I’ll tell you … if you tell me what it was that ended up being too good to be true for you.”
She swallowed hard, staring at the mountains. “Paladia.”
She drew a deep breath and looked at him. “Well?”
He met her stare, eyes glittering with a strange look of satisfaction. “Yes, he’s dying.”
CHAPTER 15
HELENA’S CAPTIVITY SANK BACK INTO MONOTONY.
She only saw Ferron when he came to check her memory, and then a few days later to perform transference again.
She didn’t struggle. Her mind still felt tenuous as spider silk. She was afraid that if she unravelled, Ferron would have free rein.
He didn’t try to push into the hidden spaces but simply settled himself into the landscape of her mind and stayed there. He blinked, and her eyes fluttered. Her left hand rose; she watched it open and close. Her consciousness was split between herself and him, but with every passing second, she felt more like him than she did herself. Slowly devoured.
She tasted blood.
It was streaming from her eyes and nose.
When it was over, she stayed limp where she was, head tilted back, gazing at the ceiling until the necrothralls came and picked her up, putting her to bed.
Because of her lack of resistance, she was only mildly feverish for a few days. It seemed she was the animancer after all.
The realisation lay like a stone on her chest. She’d been sure her memory loss had been part of the Resistance strategy, intended to protect some vital secret for Luc. That it was something grandly self-sacrificing that she had cooperated with, entrusting her mind and memories to the mysterious Elain Boyle.
Had it just been her, hiding herself all this time? Was that all it was in the end? Surely there was something, but nothing she remembered, none of her glimmers of returning memory, hinted at anything of importance.
Ferron was constantly busy, spending most of his time trying to hunt down the last members of the Eternal Flame. When she did happen to see him from the courtyard windows, he looked visibly ground down. Sometimes he came back covered in blood.
She couldn’t help but notice the strain around his eyes and the stiff way he often moved.
She began to suspect that Morrough was torturing him regularly.
Since Ferron couldn’t stay dead, Morrough got the pleasure of killing him over and over.
He wasn’t returning to the house pale with fury; he was in shock from torture. The symptoms showed more distinctly every time she caught sight of him. It was as though he were mentally eroding as the physical ramifications vanished.
She tried not to notice. When she couldn’t help it, she tried not to care.
He was trying to hunt down the Resistance. Every time he was tortured was a sign he had failed. Hadn’t she wanted him punished?