“Good, we’re getting somewhere, then. Now what?”
He wanted to do more?
“Um … Atropine drops, from belladonna. It would dilate the pupil, keep it from straining while the tissue’s recovering.”
“Get the kit,” Ferron said to the servants, all of whom had been frozen in place, inanimate while Ferron’s full attention was on Helena. One of them sprang to life and hurried down the hallway.
“I need to deal with Aurelia now,” Ferron said. “Wait here.”
Helena nodded, slumping back.
She watched through her blurred vision as Ferron turned to face his wife.
He didn’t even need to touch the twisted metal that wrapped around her. A flick of his hand and the tangle of iron slipped away, slithering back into the floor and walls.
Ferron knelt, pressing two fingers against Aurelia’s neck.
The imbalance in Helena’s vision made it hard to track how injured Aurelia was as Ferron began setting bones and popping dislocated joints back into place as easily as if he were assembling a puzzle.
He set a hand on Aurelia’s chest, and Helena expected to watch Ferron create a new necrothrall. Instead, Aurelia screamed, lurching up from the floor, her eyes wild with terror.
“What? How did you—?” Aurelia was spluttering, her hands flying to her chest and sides, touching herself all over in confusion. “How? How are you here?”
“This is my house.” The rage in Ferron’s voice was palpable in every word.
“But you—you were in the city!” Aurelia seemed more hysterical about that than anything else.
Did she not remember what Ferron had done to her? Or was it simply too much for her to comprehend?
“Yes, I was. It was incredibly inconvenient of you, forcing me to leave in the middle of a ceremony.”
“But—how did you—” Aurelia looked around the ruins of Helena’s room.
“Did you think the thralls were the only things I can control from a distance? This is my house, and my family metal.”
Helena stared at him in shock. What he was claiming wasn’t possible.
There was no way that anyone could possibly transmute iron from a distance, especially not in that manner.
Ferron’s resonance might be beyond anything Helena had ever seen, but even he couldn’t reach all the way from the city and control the inner workings of Spirefell with such accuracy. He would have been acting blind, with no idea of what he was doing, unless—
She looked towards the eye in the corner.
No. It still wasn’t possible, even with that. Every inch of distance from a transmutational target increased the effort. Even if he’d merely been in a different wing of the house, he’d be dead, dissolved into nothingness like a collapsing star, to use that much power.
It happened sometimes in the factories when the transmutational array sourcing was too powerful. The alchemists would disintegrate.
“That’s impossible,” Aurelia said, echoing Helena’s thoughts.
“Underestimating your husband twice in one day? That’s not very wifely of you.”
“Oh, are you here for me? No, you aren’t, you’re here because of her.” She pointed accusingly at Helena. “You nearly killed me, and you did kill Erik Lancaster, because of her!”
“Yes, I did. Do you know why? Because she is the last member of the Order of the Eternal Flame, which means that she is important. Infinitely more so than you will ever be. More important than Lancaster dreamed. My job is to keep her mind intact. When your father had you educated, did he ever mention that the eyes have a nerve connecting directly to the brain? What do you think happens if you just rip them out?”
Aurelia glanced towards Helena in horror.
Ferron kept talking in his cold, unsympathetic voice. “I’ve tried to be patient with you, Aurelia. I’ve been willing to overlook your indecent behaviour and petty interferences, but do remember, aside from being somewhat decorative, you are useless to me. If you ever go near her again, or speak to her, or so much as set foot in this wing again, I will kill you, and I will do it slowly, perhaps over the course of an evening or two. That isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. Now get out of my sight.”
Aurelia scrambled up clumsily, her face contorted in fear and pain as she fled, limping, from the room.
Ferron stood, breathing deeply before he turned back to Helena. His eyes were still blazing silver.
He approached her slowly and knelt, turning her face up towards his again, studying her eyes. “The pupils are different sizes,” he said. “I’ll call a specialist. See if there’s anything else to be done.”
She stared back at him. He looked haggard, his skin pallid grey, his eyes too bright in contrast, but maybe it only seemed that way because of how her vision blurred.
“Were you in the house when you—” She gestured at the wreckage of the room.
He glanced over. “No. Or I might have managed it more neatly. I’d reached the edge of the property.”
“How—?”
He gave a tired grimace. “The ability came compliments of Artemon Bennet, although he didn’t have any idea at the time of what he was doing. It was intended to be a punishment.”
Helena’s eyebrows furrowed. She had no idea what could be done to make a person’s resonance so powerful that they could control iron from a distance like that.
“How could anything—?”
“I don’t want to discuss it right now,” he said, cutting her off.
There was a pause. She still felt like she should say something.
“How did you know I’d be able to fix my eye?”
“You were a healer.”
“Yes, but …” Her voice faded. She was unable to explain why she felt dissatisfied with the answer.
“Where did you learn to heal?” she asked, thinking back not only on how easily he’d imitated her directions but also how he’d dealt with Aurelia, and repaired the nerve damage on his own.
“Well, you see, there was a war, and I was a general. Picked up a few things.”
A headache was developing in Helena’s temples from her imbalanced vision.
“Well, you—you have a natural talent for it. In another life, you could be a healer.”
“One of life’s great ironies,” he said, glancing towards the door, his jaw tight.
The maid had returned carrying a satchel, the kind that field medics wore, strapped over the shoulder and belted at the waist.
Ferron took it, rummaging through the pockets. She heard the rattle and clink of glass vials.
“Just atropine?” he asked, looking towards her with a vial in hand.
She shook her head. “Five drops of atropine diluted in a teaspoon of saline.”
There was more tinkling, unscrewing, pouring, and then he pocketed something and snapped the satchel shut. The maid immediately took it back.
Helena started pushing herself unsteadily to her feet.
“I should—lie down so it doesn’t run,” she said. Her balance felt off and her hands and arms shook, refusing to bear her weight. She sank back to the floor. Perhaps she’d just lie there.
A hand closed around her elbow and drew her to her feet.
“I’m not leaning over you on the floor,” Ferron said in an irritated voice. Rather than pull her to the bed, he led her out of the room and down the hallway to another room.
The air was stale, the bed stripped and bare. Ferron wrenched a dustcloth off a sofa, and Helena lay down flat on it.
He leaned over her, vial in hand. His face went in and out of focus every time she blinked. Dark. Light. Dark. Light.
“How many drops?”
“Two, twice a day, for two days. Then euphrasia compresses for a week.”
Ferron leaned closer, dripping two drops of the belladonna atropine into her eye. She closed her eyes to keep from blinking it away.
His fingers brushed against her cheek, and she felt the cut there vanish. “The servants will have this room made up.”
She counted his receding footsteps, covering her left eye so she could see.
He stumbled as he left the room, catching himself against the doorframe and righting himself slowly, as if unsteady on his feet.