The tubes running between her ulna and radius were nauseating,
evoking a deep sense of wrongness. She couldn't even twitch her fingers
without feeling the way her muscles, tendons, veins, and nerves in that
narrow space were all forced to accommodate the nullification driven
through her.
"Very good," Stroud said to herself before she turned to leave. Just
before the door shut, Helena heard her say, "No one enters this room
without my approval."
There was a heavy click and the grind of a lock, and Helena was left
alone.
She lurched up, but the drug had burned itself out of her blood and
her muscles were cramping, contracting as though pulled taut. She tried
to straighten, but the instant her feet touched the ground, her legs col-
lapsed under her.
She slumped to the floor.
Run, a voice kept telling her. But she couldn't; her arms and legs
couldn't hold her. In the absence of any physical ability, her thoughts
turned inwards.
Had she really forgotten something?
Perhaps the Eternal Flame was not gone but remained as a hidden
ember, waiting until the time was right. The possibility sparked a glim-
mer of hope. But how had she been made to forget?
Transference. Animancy.
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38 • SenLinYu
Both words were unfamiliar.
She turned them over in her mind. Trying to contextualise the com-
ments that had been made. Souls and minds and occupying the mental
landscape of another person to transmute them from within. And the
Eternal Flame had discovered this?
Surely not. Souls were considered inviolable among those of faith.
The Eternal Flame considered even the physical alterations of vivi-
mancy and necromancy a risk to an immortal soul.
Alteration of a mind, the transference of a soul: Surely that would be
seen as infinitely worse.
Yet Shiseo claimed that the Eternal Flame had developed a way to
perform this animancy-transference process. Something that Mor-
rough, who'd unlocked the secrets of immortality, had not discovered.
Who was Elain Boyle? Helena didn't know the name, and she was
sure there had never been any other healers, much less a personal one,
designated for Luc alone.
Luc would never have consented to receiving anything that wasn't
equally distributed to all the rest of the Resistance, and that included
medical care and healing. He'd struggled with having paladins sworn to
protect him, despite it being a tradition older than Paladia.
Stroud had to be mistaken.
Yet there was something hidden, changed about her. A secret so
painstakingly concealed, Helena could not even guess at what it was.
Her muscles cramped harder. She lay on the floor, her body curled
and contorted inwards like a dead spider, but her mind raced on.
What would Luc do if he were the one still alive? Captive. He'd al-
ready have a plan. He would have charmed Grace into passing a mes-
sage for him, begun coordinating a way to escape, and plotted to rescue
everyone on the Outpost.
That's what he would do. Now it was up to Helena.
She couldn't fail him. Not again.
Helena had expected the transference to begin immediately, but
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Alchemised • 39
instead she spent what felt like days barely able to move as her muscles
gradually un- cramped.
"Withdrawal," Stroud said with a look of condescension as she
forced a feeding tube down Helena's nose and inserted a saline drip into
her arm to keep her sedated. "No matter. I imagine they taught you to
enjoy suffering. After all, sacrifice is a healer's calling, isn't it?"
Stroud was unveiled in her disdain for Helena with the revelation
that they were both vivimancers, but on opposite sides in the war.
Stroud considered her a traitor.
"I don't like those spasms," Stroud later said during an examination,
her mouth pursed when Helena's fingers seized, making her drop a cup.
"It's not caused by the nullification set; do you remember when they
began?"
Helena shook her head, flinching as the cold burning sensation of
Stroud's resonance sank into her left wrist, winding through the bones
as she twisted and manipulated it for several minutes.
"From the condition of it, it appears you've broken this wrist several
times. There's old nerve damage. Do you remember when it happened?"
Helena had no recollection of ever seriously injuring her hands.
Dexterous hands were vital for channelling and controlling resonance
in both an alchemist's practice and a healer's work. She'd always been
very careful with them.
"There wasn't any mention of it in your student files, so it must have
been during the war, but there's no records there, either."
Helena's academic records had been unearthed, and Stroud liked to
use them to interrogate her about the smaller details of her life. She
suspected it was because Stroud was allowed to punish her for refusing
to answer.
Where was her alchemy resonance first tested? At the Paladian em-
bassy in her homeland, the southern islands of Etras. How old was she
when she immigrated to Paladia to study at the Alchemy Institute? Ten.
How many years of education did she complete at the Institute? Six.
Did she remember Principate Apollo Holdfast's death? Yes, she had
been in class with Luc.
When did she join the Resistance? When the guilds overthrew le-
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40 • SenLinYu
gitimate government and there was a Resistance to join.
Stroud had not liked that answer.
When did she become a member of the Order of the Eternal Flame?
Helena tried to avoid answering, but Stroud had the book of members,
with Helena's vows and name all written in her blood.
"Did the Eternal Flame's Council know you were a vivimancer when
you joined?"
Helena shook her head.
Stroud sat glaring at her, waiting for a verbal response.
"I didn't know I was a vivimancer," Helena finally said. "And after—
once everyone knew—Luc didn't care. He didn't think a person's abili-
ties changed who they were, only what they did with them."
"How magnanimous." Stroud's voice was chilly. Her fingers were
creasing the file in her hand. "A pity he didn't also step down. A great
many people might still be alive then."
"His family was Called," Helena said, despite knowing there was no
point in arguing.
"Yes, by the sun," Stroud said, scoffing, her voice growing sharp. "I
know they didn't teach modern astronomy at the Institute, but did you
ever study the newer astrological theories? You're from the trade islands,
after all; you must have been exposed to all kinds of ideas. Did you really
believe that the sun, thousands of miles away, looked at the earth and
chose a favourite? That a drop of sunlight endowed Orion Holdfast
with such godlike abilities that all his descendants deserved to rule Pal-
adia like gods themselves?"
Helena set her jaw, but Stroud would not stop.
"According to your academic records, you were considered bright.
Surely you didn't swallow every story you were told about the Holdfasts.
Look me in the eyes and tell me: Do you really think the Holdfasts had
a right to rule?"
Stroud's fingers dug beneath Helena's chin, forcing her to look up.
She stared squarely into Stroud's face, feeling the threat of her reso-
nance. "Better them than people like you."
Stroud's hand dropped, her resonance vanishing before she slapped
Helena across the face so hard her head cracked against the wall.
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Alchemised • 41
"If you'd joined our cause, you could have been great." Stroud was
breathing heavily as she stood over Helena. "You would have been
somebody. You're nothing now. You spent yourself on the wrong side.
No one will ever remember you. You're ash, like all the rest. And a trai-
tor to your kind."
Once she was alone, Helena cradled the swollen side of her face,
head throbbing.
The Resistance had considered the war a holy war—a divine battle
between good and evil, a testing of the Faith. But Helena's motives had
been more personal than that.
Luc didn't need to be divine for her want to save him. He could have
been entirely ordinary, and she would have made all the same choices.
Was there something she could have done that could have changed
things?
When she'd first immigrated to Paladia, she'd thought it was para-
dise. Etras did not have much metal as a natural resource. Resonance
was rare. There were a few alchemy guilds, but they offered no formal
training. Reaching Paladia had felt like coming home; like finding the
place she'd always been meant to be.
She'd been vaguely aware that there was a hierarchy among alche-
mists that divided even the student body, splitting the devout families
in close alliance with the Holdfasts apart from the guilds, but she wasn't
familiar enough with the city-state's politics to understand the intrica-
cies of it.
All she knew was that some students wouldn't speak to her, laughed
when she asked questions, and mocked her accent and way of gesturing
with her hands when she talked. Later she learned that those were the
guild students and to be wary of them.
It was Luc who'd had to explain that the guild students thought
Helena's enrolment had taken a spot that should have gone to the
guilds—though Luc assured her that they were wrong. His family's In-
stitute hadn't been founded for guilds but for people like her, the ones
who didn't have opportunities to study alchemy on their own. The guild
students didn't even need to attend; their places and futures were all as-
sured. For them, enrolment at the Institute was a status symbol. Once
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42 • SenLinYu
they had their certification, they'd all leave.
Helena was special, though. She'd be the one who'd stay beyond Year
Five, who'd study more than just the principal foundations of alchemy.
She'd ascend to the highest floors, make discoveries, and do the kind of
work that would change the world. Her name remembered forever.
Why would his family want another guild student at their Institute
when they could have someone like her?
Luc had always had a talent for making Helena feel like she was
special rather than painfully out of place. She'd wanted to prove him
right— that she was something, that she'd be worth believing in. His
family wouldn't be wrong about her.
She'd focused on her education and ignored the political hostilities
around her.
Luc would mention things from time to time, how the guilds were
convinced that his family was stifling alchemy's scientific progress and
preventing industrialisation, and then he'd wave towards the factories
below the dam filling the sky with black clouds of smoke. That his fa-
ther was being accused of allowing the country to fall behind because of
his derelict governance. Or that the guilds had proposed that the Prin-
cipate's power be limited to religious affairs, and that they be the ones to
run the country.
It had seemed that nothing Principate Apollo did was ever enough
for the guilds; their complaints and demands were endless.
When Principate Apollo was murdered, the guilds didn't see a trag-
edy at all, but an opportunity. They used Luc's age, only sixteen, as a
pretext for declaring a reformation: No longer would religious elites and
a warrior class rule Paladia. The city-state would be governed by the
newly formed Guild Assembly.
The guilds' sedition should have been easy for the Order of the Eter-
nal Flame to stop if it hadn't been for Morrough. He appeared amid the
upheaval seemingly from nowhere, offering immortality. Not an endless
life of decay, but one impervious to age and injury, discovered not
through any divine power but through science.
The guilds seized the opportunity, and the Undying began to appear.
A select few at first, revealing themselves to be not only immortal but
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Alchemised • 43
also capable of advanced forms of alchemy. Power and eternal life were
suddenly within the grasp of anyone prepared to prove themselves loyal
to Morrough. Aspirants flocked to join them, aligning with the guilds.
The ideas of "New Paladia" being promised by the Guild Assembly
spread through the population like a disease.
When the Eternal Flame moved to restore order, the Undying re-
vealed another ability: necromancy. On a scale never seen before. Rather
than recruiting heavily from among the Aspirants, when attacked they'd
kill the Eternal Flame's soldiers, and then use reanimation to turn them
back on their own compatriots, building an army with the Eternal
Flame's dead.
Luc, newly crowned as Principate, had been certain that the citizens
of Paladia would be shocked into reason once they realised they were
aligning themselves with necromancers. Necromancy had been a mortal
crime throughout most of the continent for centuries. Not even the
guilds would go so far.
He had been wrong.
"If you were a healer, why aren't you mentioned more in the hospital
records?"
Stroud had returned in a state of high dudgeon, a stack of files with
her.
Helena's name was almost nowhere to be found. Stroud had only
managed to find her signature on inventories of medical supplies, an
application for a base-level alchemy knife, and a few request forms for
the chymistry and metallurgy departments for certain compounds. The
only interesting thing in the entire stack was a preliminary casualty list
that had Helena listed among the presumed dead.
All told, in all those years of military files, Helena had scarcely ex-
isted at all. Stroud seemed personally affronted by it.
"Well?"
"Healing is a miracle; it's not something you're supposed to put your
name on," she said, reciting what she'd been told long ago. "There's a
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44 • SenLinYu
symbol placed on medical records to indicate acts of—intercession."
"Do you mean— " Stroud flipped through a file and turned it to-
wards Helena. In the corner was a crescent shape with a slash across it.
"This?"
Helena gave a short nod.
Stroud stared at it. "Then how on earth do you keep track of proce-
dures?"
Tightness spread from her chest to her throat. "Healing's not a pro-
cedure."
Falcon Matias, the spiritual counsellor of the Eternal Flame's Coun-
cil and Helena's direct superior, had been strict in his demands that the
use of vivimancy not be documented in any ways which might glorify it.
The act of vivimancy, he said, could only be purified through intentions
of selflessness.
Although healers were relatively common in the remote parts of Pal-
adia, vivimancy was rare enough that there were all kinds of claims
about what vivimancers were capable of—that they could enthral the
living just as necromancers enthralled the dead, for instance, and per-
form unspeakable transmutations upon living flesh.
Helena used to think these views of vivimancers unreasonably harsh,
but now as Stroud's subject, she began to understand.
Stroud was not enthralling, but she was expert in paralysing and
transmutationally manipulating Helena at the slightest provocation. If
Helena twitched too much, Stroud would fuse her bones together to
keep her still. She seemed to take delight in the technicality of it not
being torture. Sometimes she left Helena like that for hours.
It was a relief when Stroud finally seemed to lose interest, announc-
ing that she had no more time to deal with Helena. Several times each
day, two necrothralls would come to retrieve her and make her walk
along the corridor that ran around the lift.
Her vision recovered, the necrothralls were horrifying to see. The
adipocere gave a taut waxy sheen to the greyish-purple mottling of their
skin, and the sclera around their clouding pupils were red or vivid yel-
low. Their fingertips were blackened and rotting off. The smell of chem-
ical preservatives and rot made Helena sick, but they wouldn't let her
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Alchemised • 45
stop walking until her legs gave out and they had to drag her back into
the cell.
The walks blurred together along with the days. Helena didn't know
how long she'd been in Central; the lights never went out, and all the
windows were covered and sealed.
"Is this her?" A man with a ghastly pale face and a sharp, needle-thin
nose suddenly stepped out from a room and into Helena's path as she
was being shoved along the perpetual route.
Helena gave a gasp of shock. Standing before her, in elaborate em-
broidered clothes and jewellery, was Jan Crowther, one of the five mem-
bers of the Eternal Flame's Council.
"Crowth— "
A heavily ringed hand shot out, gripping her by the shoulder and
dragging her close, peering at her.
"You knew him?" he asked, his fingers and rings digging into her
skin.
She tried to pull free, but the necrothrall escorts held her in place as
Crowther leaned in, closer and closer, drawing a deep breath, and a
thick purple tongue flicked out as if he meant to lick her.
She recoiled, but he was close enough now that she could make out
details. There was a slight yellowing in his sclera and faint patterns of
dark veins beneath his vaguely clouded eyes. His skin was powdery,
smelling strongly of lavender.
This wasn't Crowther.
One of the Undying was wearing his corpse.
On the rare occasions when they couldn't regenerate anymore, so
grievously wounded in battle that their immortal bodies could no lon-
ger heal, the Undying could move themselves into their necrothralls
instead. It was why the Resistance had called them liches.
It was an imperfect solution; even when maintained, the bodies rot-
ted slowly around them and lacked the regenerative qualities of the
near- impervious originals. Helena suspected this was why Morrough
was so interested in transference—the method had the potential to
allow the Undying to move into living bodies instead.
The lich using Crowther's body drew back. He looked at her again, a
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46 • SenLinYu
strange expression sweeping across his face.
"I know you," he said softly.
He gripped her face, twisting her head so that light fell on it from
different angles. His eyes were crawling over her skin as if looking for
something. He grabbed one of her hands, the dark heavy rings digging
against her bones, shifting the manacle and sending a shock of pain
down her arm. He looked at her fingers and then back to her face.
The necrothralls did nothing.
Was this the High Reeve?
"Yes. That's her." Stroud had appeared, her voice much softer than
Helena was accustomed to. She looked irritated at the way Helena was
being manhandled but seemed reluctant to protest. "She'll be ready
soon."
The lich gripped Helena by her hair, his expression twisting as he
leaned in again, a hungry, desperate look in his eyes unlike anything
she'd ever seen on Crowther's impassive face.
"I've seen her somewhere." He gripped her tighter, shaking her so
hard that her head snapped back. "Where did I see you?"
"This was the Holdfasts' pet, Guildmaster. You probably saw her at
the Institute."
The lich's face contorted with contempt at the mention of the Hold-
fasts, and he let go, abruptly losing interest. Now he looked angry, a
deep purple rising along his neck, mottling his face. "I expected more
than this. I was told this assignment was something special."
Stroud sucked at her teeth. "Appearances are not everything. You can
tell the High Reeve she'll be ready for him soon. Now, you wanted to
see the preparations for the chambers." Stroud gestured towards the
lifts. "I intend to begin with a test batch very soon to see how quickly
we can get things started. The interest has been almost overwhelming. I
have dozens of applications, and the announcement is still weeks away."
Stroud gave a nervous laugh but caught herself, clearing her throat as
she pressed her hand against a panel on the lift. "It's been difficult to
determine the most promising combinations. I've taken what I can from
the hospitals' records. The guilds' archives are quite useful, too, truly
ahead of their time. But you're the only one who produced exactly what
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Alchemised • 47
we're hoping to replicate here, so I'm very eager for your insight."
The lich's expression grew stony despite the praise. The lift arrived,
and he and Stroud were gone before he gave an answer.
The necrothralls nudged Helena forward. She released a slow breath.
Not the High Reeve, then. It was a relief that the first reanimated body
she'd recognised had been Crowther, one of the more detached mem-
bers of the Council, and not someone she'd known well.
She looked up and flinched at the sight of the only portrait that
hung in the corridor.
The Tower used to be full of art and decorations, lined with portraits
of significant alchemists who'd studied or taught at the Institute. Now
there was only one, and it depicted a sallow, sullen-looking man with a
large forehead and heavy chin.
The name artemon bennet was hammered into the plaque be-
neath it, with two dates below, spanning more than eighty years.
Helena remembered with visceral clarity the reports associated with
that name. Once the Undying had established a strong position in the
city, they put out a call for all the vivimancers and necromancers in hid-
ing to join their cause, setting up laboratories where such supporters
could explore their powers, freed from the oppression of the Faith.
When Resistance fighters weren't simply killed and reanimated into
necrothralls, they were sent to those laboratories as research subjects.
Artemon Bennet had been the head of New Paladia's science and re-
search departments. It was reported that he had a particular interest in
experimentation on alchemists.
The only good thing about the portrait was knowing that Bennet
was somehow dead.
Another walk was finally coming to its end. Helena still struggled
with breathing deeply, a habit ingrained by the stasis tank's limited oxy-
gen and worsened by the necrothralls' stench. Her head was growing
light, vision threatening to blur. Her footsteps began to falter.
The necrothralls gripped her, not letting her slow. Her feet began to
drag across the floor.
A strangled gasp jolted her to alertness.
"Marino?" A dark-haired girl in a wheeled chair was passing her. She
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48 • SenLinYu
was gaunt, almost collapsed in on herself, but she straightened, leaning
forward as her eyes fastened on Helena's face. She had scars like Grace,
and there was a blanket over her lap. She wore the same manacles
around her wrists that Helena did. She was being pushed down the hall
in the direction of an operation theatre that Helena had vaguely noticed
was open.
Helena staggered, trying to find her feet. "Penny."
Penny had been a year older than Helena. One of the few other girls
at the Institute to pursue undergraduate studies in alchemy. She'd been
among the first to enlist with the Resistance, determined to go to the
front lines and fight.
The orderly pushing Penny walked faster, turning the chair to block
the exchange.
Helena and Penny both craned their necks, trying to keep sight of
each other as they pushed apart.
"Penny, what are they—" Helena didn't get the whole question out as
she was shoved towards her room.
Penny leaned over the arm of the chair, looking back, her face
stricken. "You were right. I'm so sorry. We should have listened to you."
There was no time to ask what she meant. The orderly sped up, and
Penny disappeared.
"I'm delivering you today," Stroud said, walking in with a stack of
files she was immersed in. She'd been increasingly distracted every time
Helena saw her. "Get ready."
"I'm leaving?"
Stroud looked up and gave an irritated, nervous smile. "Yes. Central
has other purposes. The High Reeve has been waiting for you. Come.
Now."
There was no readying for Helena to do. She was bundled into the
lift with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pair of wool slippers
too large for her feet.
The lift descended to the fifth floor, where the Alchemy Tower was
connected by skybridges to the surrounding Institute buildings. In a
city as vertical as Paladia, skybridges were frequently used to intercon-
nect buildings, some like slender passages, others large enough to hold
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Alchemised • 49
plazas and gardens dozens of storeys above the rest of the city. As the
city had grown, the lower parts saw their sky almost blotted out, creat-
ing a damp, darkened underbelly that festered with diseases.
She could see the commons below, grassy patches bisected by geo-
metric footpaths that ran between the dorms and the Tower and the
Science Main.
White marble steps led up to the vast Tower doors. Helena's mem-
ory instantly superimposed the wave of blood and gore and bodies that
had covered it when she'd seen it last.
She looked away.
She had to focus on the present.
Helena was pushed into the back seat of a motorcar, a necrothrall
cramming her towards the middle as it seated itself beside her. The
smell of rot immediately began to fill the enclosed space.
Her throat convulsed, and she clamped a hand over her nose and
mouth.
Stroud climbed in on the other side, seemingly immune to the
stench, flipping through her perpetual stack of files.
The motorcar drove down a long tunnel, amber light from the elec-
tric lanterns flickering across Helena's lap, giving way to drab grey when
the motorcar emerged from underground. She peered out, taking in the
sky. It was dark and overcast, a grey that seemed to leach the world of
colour. Looking out at the city, she was shocked by the scars still starkly
visible from the war: huge gaps in the skyline, burned-out buildings,
and collapsed ruins. It hardly looked as if any rebuilding had begun. The
road was the only thing that appeared new.
When the motorcar crossed from the East Island to the West Island,
nearly all traces of the war disappeared behind them.
Paladia had been founded on a river delta in the basin of the Novis
Mountains. The original island had a high northern plateau which
sloped down to the southern tip. The Alchemy Tower had been built on
the highest point of the island, and the town—eventually a city—had
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50 • SenLinYu
grown around it until every inch of land had been built on. The island
of Paladia, later called the East Island, was home to industry, trade,
government, the perihelion cathedrals, and the Alchemy Institute.
The West Island was built centuries later, engineered to accommo-
date the exploding population. All of it was newer, bigger.
During the war, the Undying held diluted control over the West Is-
land, while the Resistance had headquartered in the Alchemy Institute,
giving them an established point of defence on the East Island and
splitting the city-state in two. Because the East Island held most of the
crucial infrastructure and the main ports, it had borne the brunt of the
war as the Undying tried to seize control.
Contrasted with the ruins of the East Island, the West Island looked
almost unscathed, its vast interconnected buildings vaulting up towards
the sky, gleaming and unmarred.
When Helena had first sailed up the river and seen Paladia, it had
looked as if some great deity had laid their crown in the dip of the
mountains, the spires and gleam of the city reflecting across the water.
She hadn't thought anywhere on earth could be so beautiful.
The motorcar felt tiny as it sped through the West Island, crossing
another bridge towards Paladia's mainland, which spanned the miles
from the river shore to the mountain tree line.
The mainland was mostly mines and agriculture, and the little that
wasn't commercial was owned by the oldest families who'd joined the
Institute centuries ago at the time of its founding.
If she was being taken to the mainland, then the High Reeve must
have an estate of some kind. Either one was seized and bestowed post-
war, or perhaps he was from one of the wealthy guild families. There had
been a number who'd seen their fortunes explode from the industriali-
sation of the last century.
She leaned forward, looking towards the front window, searching for
any signs of their destination.
Removed from Central, Helena was finally beginning to develop a
vague shape of a plan.
Realistically, her chances of escape were negligible. Even without the
manacles impeding her dexterity and suppressing her resonance, she
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Alchemised • 51
had minimal combat training. Her resonance had always been her
greatest asset. Assuming she could somehow escape, she had nowhere
to go, no idea who was alive or who could be trusted, or who would trust
her.
If she was cooperative, there was a chance she'd survive transference,
but if she did survive, she'd be betraying the Eternal Flame, giving up
information she'd sacrificed her own memory to protect.
Her hands clenched, pain sparking like fire in her wrists.
In the stasis tank, she'd told herself over and over that she'd survive,
that she had to hold on. She couldn't explain why.
After all, the whole point of her healing had been to ensure the sur-
vival of the others, to be a fail-safe so that Luc would not die. There was
no use in a healer when everyone was dead.
She wouldn't be a traitor. Whatever she'd allowed to be hidden in her
mind, she wouldn't let the Undying discover it. Surviving didn't matter.
She'd kill herself before they learned anything from her.
Perhaps her violent captor could be her means to that end.
If what Grace said was true, the High Reeve preferred murder to
strategic choices like interrogation. Men prone to violence were gener-
ally thoughtless, acting with emotion first and applying reason after.
If she could provoke him, he might kill her on impulse. One mistake
was all she'd need, and her secrets would be lost. No amount of necro-
mancy could bring a mind back from death.
What would Morrough do to the High Reeve then? Undoubtedly
something even worse than what was done to Mandl.
Helena hoped it would be.
She might not be able to avenge Luc, but she could get justice for
Lila.
The thought of Lila Bayard, dead, her face ripped off, her corpse
used to imprison the people she'd once protected, made Helena's chest
grow so tight, it ached.
Lila had been one of the few who wasn't bothered by Helena being
a vivimancer. During the war, they'd even shared a room. They hadn't
been close—as a paladin, Lila was often gone, fighting at the front—but
she'd never treated Helena like she was lesser for not being in combat.
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52 • SenLinYu
Lila had been considered a once-in-a- lifetime talent as a combat
alchemist. She'd joined the crusades of the Eternal Flame at fifteen,
travelling the continent, investigating rumours of necromancy. Her life
had revolved around becoming a paladin and serving the Principate.
People used to call Lila the embodiment of Lumithia, the warrior
goddess of alchemy.
Helena couldn't imagine how anyone could have killed Lila, espe-
cially not after Luc had been killed. Lila would have died a thousand
times over before she'd live to see Luc captured. She had lived and
breathed her vows of protection.
Helena blinked as they stopped at a checkpoint.
The trees along the road were all skeletal, bare-limbed. The motorcar
drove a few miles farther and turned off the main road.
A building loomed through the trees as they drove down a long lane
and a heavy, ornate gate swung open. The motorcar drove through, to-
wards a towering house.
It was an old thing, its façade covered in bare vines which crawled up
the front like blackened veins. The architecture was far from the modern
elegance in the city. There was a dark, heavy quality to the ornate details,
which appeared to have weathered at least a century. It bore five dark
spires that jutted across the sky, three on the main portion of the house,
and one on each wing that sprawled forward to form a half circle.
The gate and wall and other buildings all curved in to create an en-
closed courtyard with an overgrown garden in the centre. The motorcar
crunched over white gravel as it pulled around and stopped.
At the top of a wide flight of stone steps stood a young woman.
Helena was shoved out of the car behind Stroud. She drew a deep
breath of clean air and shivered. It was bitterly cold, the damp country
air immediately seeping into her bones. She'd forgotten the brutality of
Northern winters.
The woman on the steps was barely more than a girl, and she stood
out starkly in the drab surroundings. She had light-brown hair that fell
in perfect ringlets around her pale face. Her dress was poison green,
embellished with a black external corset resembling a rib cage, and a
gleaming plated bird skull was fastened so that the long beak ran down
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Alchemised • 53
between her breasts. Several of her fingers bore alchemy rings, and she
swung a short staff idly in her hand as she watched the party ascend the
stairs towards her.
She stared past Stroud to Helena, pale- blue eyes narrowing. "Well,"
she said as they reached her. "I suppose fanatics must come in all sizes."
Her attention turned to Stroud, and she donned a brittle smile.
"Welcome to Spirefell. My husband is waiting for you."
Stroud fell in step with the lady of the house, while Helena was
nudged to follow by the necrothrall guard.
The door of the house was held for them by a dead butler, and the
sight made Helena's blood run cold.
Unlike the necrothralls in Central, the butler was freshly deceased
and immaculately dressed. She thought for a moment he was alive, or
that he was a lich. His skin lacked the waxy adipocere sheen, and he
moved with none of the sluggishness she'd come to associate with
necrothralls. But his expression and eyes were completely blank.
He must have been recently killed. Grace had said the Undying kept
necrothralls as staff, and a wealthy family wouldn't want to deal with the
smell, which meant they'd be replaced frequently.
Her stomach knotted as she stepped inside and took in the trappings
of the house.
The foyer was large and cold, and the first thing she saw was a bright
smear of blood.
Helena gasped, eyes and head instinctively averting.
"What's the matter?" Stroud asked sharply.
"The blood," she forced herself to say, unable to look again. All the
executions flooded through her mind, the smells and sickening taste in
the air, washing like a flood across the white marble.
Stroud glanced around the room. "Where?"
Helena tried to indicate, and Stroud only looked confused. She
looked again and discovered her mistake. There was no blood.
A bouquet of roses sat arranged on a table in the centre point of the
room. She flinched just looking at them.
"Never mind," she muttered.
The girl in green was watching. She looked between Helena and the
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54 • SenLinYu
roses, and then a slight smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she
turned away, heading towards a set of doors across the foyer.
"Wait here," Stroud said. The door shut, leaving Helena with the
dead. She glanced around, trying to look anywhere but the roses.
The gloom felt heavier inside than under the oppressive grey sky. The
house was a cavernous thing, shadowed with filigree metalwork. There
was a large, ornate stairway to the right, leading to multiple landings
that looked out over the foyer.
Darkened hallways led farther into the house, illuminated by weak
electric sconces that hummed and hardly penetrated the gloom. The
windows high overhead seemed designed to direct the light only to the
table at the centre. There was a distorted black shape inlaid as a mosaic
into the marble floor, encircling the table. From her angle, Helena
couldn't work out what it was.
The house felt dirty. There was no visible dust, but Helena couldn't
shake the sense that the place was untended. The air was stale, as if the
building also were a mouldering corpse.
The door across the way opened. "Come, Marino," Stroud said as if
summoning an animal.
The room she entered had two immense latticed windows looking
out into gardens with a large hedge maze. The winter curtains were
drawn back to let in cold light. The girl in green had set the short staff
aside and was seated on the edge of a spindly-looking chair, her skirts
spread to show off the fabric. Across the room, by the windows, stood a
dark figure.
The hair on her arms rose.
Stroud pulled her past the spindly chairs and chaises towards the
figure.
Winter light silhouetted him, and it wasn't until she drew near that
Helena could begin to make out any details.
Pale skin. Silver-white hair.
He was old, then. He must be one of the guild patriarchs.
She'd met a few of them at the Institute. They were always the same.
Prideful, obsessed with their power and perceived status, always de-
manding more respect.
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Alchemised • 55
This was exactly the kind of person who would be easy to manipu-
late. Helena would only need to be insufficiently cowed, and he'd snap
her neck.
With luck, she might be dead within a fortnight.
He turned. Helena's throat closed as the world around her vanished,
footsteps faltering.
He was not old at all.
It was the iron guild heir. Kaine Ferron.
She stared at him in stunned recognition.
He'd been one of the few guild students who'd stayed at the Institute
for undergraduate study. They'd been the same year, shared classes, even
worked as assistants on the same research floors.
Her mind refused to accept what it was seeing, because it could not
be Kaine Ferron.
His hair had been dark, now it was colourless. While the pallor of his
skin didn't come from age, he looked if he'd been bleached in moon-
light.
For an instant she thought he must be a corpse, like Crowther's body
at Central, but the silver-grey eyes that met hers were sharp, the sclera
white, pupils black, no darkened veins anywhere beneath his skin. There
were no veins visible at all, as if his blood were quicksilver.
"The last member of the Order of the Eternal Flame for you, High
Reeve," Stroud said as if presenting him with a medal. "I believe you
knew each other at the Alchemy Institute."
His eerie silver eyes flicked away. "Hardly."
"I know you've made preparations," Stroud said, seating herself, "but
I wouldn't worry much; she has no training or combat experience to
speak of. She'll be quite manageable for you."
He looked at Helena again, no emotion on his face, but there was a
predatory calculation in his eyes, like a wolf. "I'm sure."
Stroud cleared her throat, seeming uncomfortable with Ferron's
terseness. "Now then. The High Necromancer wishes to have results
before the winter solstice. Per his commands, you're to perform the
temporary transference method upon her as frequently as possible to
achieve singularity without extinguishing her soul. Once that is accom-
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56 • SenLinYu
plished and you've accustomed yourself to her mind, I believe that re-
versing the transmutations of her memory should be a small matter for
you. You may examine what's concealed, and when it's done, I'll come to
retrieve her. The High Necromancer intends to extract the memories as
well."
Ferron gave an idle nod.
"I'm sure you know, but this is an absolute priority. All other obliga-
tions should be considered secondary until completion."
The girl in green made an abrupt sound, and all her perfect ringlets
trembled.
"You mean, we really have to keep her?" she burst out. "I just don't see
how it's fair. She's not even Paladian. Why can't she stay at the Outpost
with the rest of them? Why are we keeping her here? I had all these
parties planned this season. I've already had to cancel three dinners and
make up excuses about why. No one asked me if I wanted a prisoner."
Her voice was fluting with a note of tearful petulance. "And what is she
wearing? If anyone sees her, it'll be all anyone talks about."
"Shut up, Aurelia," Ferron said, his voice like ice, not even bothering
to look over.
"I—wasn't sure what clothes would be appropriate," Stroud said, her
voice tight with embarrassment. "Of course, you don't have to keep her
in that. It was simply what was on hand."
The windows rattled, and a low meandering howl of wind floated
through the house. Stroud jumped. Ferron and Aurelia didn't seem to
notice it.
"It's hardly a concern," Ferron said. "I'm sure we'll find something
for her to wear. Aurelia has so much."
Aurelia's eyes went wide. "You want me to give her my clothes?"
"We don't want anyone mistaking her for staff. Unless you prefer I
have something made?"
Aurelia gave a horrified gasp, as if the idea were more scandalous
than keeping a prisoner or running a house with dead servants.
"Excellent," Stroud said in a bright voice as everyone pretended not
to notice that Aurelia was on the verge of spontaneous combustion.
"Now then, you're free to examine her, High Reeve. She's all yours." She
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Alchemised • 57
gestured towards Helena.
Ferron looked at Helena without moving. "Here?"
"Just a preliminary exam, to see if you have questions before I go. Do
you— prefer privacy?"
"No. You're welcome to watch." He stepped towards Helena. He was
all in black, dressed in city clothes. His coat and waistcoat were intri-
cately detailed with black embroidery that only showed when it caught
the light. At his throat, he wore a pristine white cravat.
Helena had never seen a guild alchemist wearing so little metal. Al-
chemists tended to keep metal everywhere: as jewellery, and woven into
their clothes, walking sticks, weapons. Unusual alchemists like pyro-
mancers always wore their ignition rings unless they were forced to re-
move them.
Aurelia was covered in metal, but not Ferron.
He pulled off a black glove, revealing a pale, long-fingered hand.
A vivimancer, Grace had said. Of course, he didn't need metal.
Helena tried to flinch back, all too familiar with the danger of
Stroud's grasping fingers, but when she tried to move, she couldn't.
Without Ferron touching her, a frisson of resonance fine as spider
silk had insinuated itself through her body, so subtle she hadn't felt it.
Now it held her fast. It wasn't like Morrough's; it didn't fill the air until
everything hummed. If she hadn't tried to move, she wouldn't have re-
alised it was there.
Ferron's eyes gleamed, as if he could feel her struggling. His index
finger barely touched her temple, and then she truly felt his resonance,
vivid as a live wire.
Sharp and finely honed, it sank through her skull. The room and Fer-
ron all vanished as her memories sprang up before her eyes like a zoe-
trope.
The drive to Spirefell. Penny. Stroud's interrogations. The lich in the
Tower wearing Crowther's body. The discussions of how best to extract
the memories from Helena's mind. Shiseo emerging from the darkness
with his little case and awl. As Ferron went further back, the memories
dimmed, flashing by as though her mind were a book he was flipping
through to see if there was anything of interest inside.
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58 • SenLinYu
He went all the way back to the stasis and the nothing that went on
and on and on, then even further to the Tower and blood and the years
in the hospital.
She hadn't realised how small and repetitive her life was until she
experienced it being skimmed through like that.
When it stopped, Helena's mind was reeling. Ferron's touch re-
mained a moment longer, and she could feel his resonance through her
brain, turning her vision red.
Finally, his hand dropped away and he stood there, staring at her.
"Well," he said at last.
"Extraordinary, isn't it?" Stroud said from somewhere behind him.
"Quite," he said, his gaze splinter-sharp. He raised an eyebrow, still
looking at Helena. "The war is over. What is it you think you're protect-
ing in that brain of yours?"
She met his stare without flinching.
Luc. She was protecting Luc.
"Holdfast is dead," he said sharply, as if he'd seen the answer in her
eyes. "The Eternal Flame extinguished. There's no one left for you to
save."
He turned away, his expression venomous.
"Anything else?" he asked Stroud.
She shook her head.
The paralysis on Helena vanished. She'd been fighting it, and it hap-
pened so suddenly her knees gave out. She dropped, trying to catch
herself, and the weight of her body slammed into her hands. Tearing
pain exploded through her wrists, white-hot fire searing all the way to
her shoulders.
She hit the floor.
Aurelia stifled a laugh.
"You met with Shiseo and went over everything several times before
he left, I believe," she heard Stroud saying. "After the first session, I'll
send someone for appraisal, so we can establish a timeline for results."
"Yes, this plan has all been laid out for me in excruciating detail,"
Ferron said tonelessly. "I'll get it done. Now if you'll excuse me."
He stepped over Helena's body and walked out of the room without
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Alchemised • 59
a backwards glance.
Helena tried to sit up. Without use of her hands, she had to roll
carefully onto her side and use her elbows, cradling her wrists protec-
tively near her chest.
When she finally looked up, Stroud had gone, and Aurelia was
standing impatiently a few feet away. The short staff was clasped in her
hands.
"Get off the floor," she said. "I'm to show you your room."
Helena stood and followed Aurelia warily back into the foyer. Her
wrists were throbbing. The necrothrall from Central was still there and
shadowed them as Aurelia led the way down a hallway, up a flight of
stairs, through a series of rooms, and into another hallway.
It was darker there. A different wing based on the angle of the light.
Most of the windows were heavily draped, the furniture shrouded with
dustcloths.
"To be clear, just because we have to keep you doesn't mean I want
to see you," Aurelia said, walking quickly.
Helena already felt short of breath from the stairs and could barely
keep up.
"I understand those bracelets keep you from using alchemy. Al-
though that hardly matters here. The Ferrons built this house with pure
iron, and there's a reason I was chosen as Kaine Ferron's wife."
Aurelia paused and looked back at Helena, lifting one hand. Her
wrist swished dramatically, and the alchemy rings decorating her fin-
gers transformed, lengthening into knives that made her fingers look
spider- like.
Helena watched the transmutation with trained interest. Natural
iron resonance was considered somewhat rare among alchemists—
though not as unusual as gold resonance or pyromancy. Raw iron was
naturally intractable, to the point of being considered generally inert.
Most alchemists couldn't transmute iron without having it repeatedly
exposed to lumithium emanations in an Athanor Furnace, and even
then they fared better with steel than iron alone.
Aurelia's transmutational work was quick and flashy. In class, she
would have been docked for excess movement and imperfect iron dis-
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60 • SenLinYu
tribution, but the ease with which she'd transformed her rings meant
she had an extremely high degree of iron resonance, and if the house
was iron, that meant Aurelia could wield it like a weapon, too.
Helena looked down, noticing then the wrought iron running
through the floor and decorating the walls.
"We don't use this wing," Aurelia said, continuing down the hall.
Her rings were pretty bands around her fingers once more. "I don't want
you seen, particularly when I have guests. Stay out of the way unless
you're sent for. The thralls all have instructions to keep an eye on you, so
we'll know if you cause problems."
Aurelia stopped, setting the short staff on one of the iron bars in the
floor and giving it a little twist. The iron shifted with a groan, and a
door, heavily decorated with more iron, swung open.
It was a large room with two long windows and a canopied bed be-
tween them. There was a single wing-backed chair beside one window
and an ornate table beside it. A large wardrobe sat against the far wall,
a heavy rug covering most of the floor.
There was nothing on the walls except a clock too high to reach, but
it was all clean and smelled freshly aired out.
Helena stepped into the room, taking it in carefully.
"Meals will be sent," Aurelia said, and the door closed behind her.
It was only when she was alone that it struck Helena as odd that
Aurelia had escorted her.
Perhaps the Ferrons weren't as wealthy as their home would make
them seem.
The house did appear understaffed. Their butler was a corpse—
perhaps all the servants were. If they were desperate for money, that
would explain why they had no choice but to keep Helena, and why
Ferron spent his time hunting down Resistance fighters rather than
managing his family's guild and factories.
She remembered the Ferrons being among the wealthiest families in
Paladia. They'd invented industrial steel manufacturing, allowing them
to monopolise more than just Paladia's steel industry. Most neighbour-
ing countries had sourced from the Ferrons, too.
Clearly their fortunes must have turned if their house was in a con-
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Alchemised • 61
dition like this.
She went to the nearest window. There was a radiator bolted beneath
it, and the window was latticed with wrought iron and locked tight. No
jumping then.
She touched the iron with a fingertip and felt nothing. No connec-
tion to the cold metal, just that dead, empty feeling emanating through
her wrist.
She pressed the length of her hand against it, bitterly missing her
resonance. The world she'd known was always full of energy, humming
with power that she'd been attuned to since birth.
Now everything was still. The constant sense of inertia was disori-
enting.
Peering through the paned glass, she saw wilderness and mountains.
She reconsidered her plans. If the necrothralls were there to watch
her, they'd likely been commanded to keep her from killing herself.
She drummed her fingers on the windowsill, ignoring the little
shocks of pain it sent up her arm.
Ferron, unfortunately, was not the stupid, deluded patriarch she'd
hoped for.
His resonance was like Morrough's, beyond anything she'd known
was possible, but what worried her most was the way he'd gone through
her memory. Morrough had done something similar, but that mental
violation had been brutal and haphazard; Ferron had been surgical.
She'd assumed his quick kills were a sign of impulsiveness, but there'd
be no need to keep prisoners if he could look inside their minds and
take the answers.
How could she outwit someone like that? Could he see memories
alone or her thoughts, too?
She turned from the window, surveying the room, wondering if his
strange appearance was an effect of his abilities.
The Undying didn't change after their ascendance. It was a part of
the "gift." Unless their bodies were so destroyed that they became liches,
they were immutable. They could lose entire limbs and grow them back.
What would make Ferron look like that?
He seemed—distilled. As though he'd been taken and sublimated
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62 • SenLinYu
until all that was left was an essence—something deathly cold and
gleaming. The High Reeve.
Not a person, but a weapon.
Well, Helena would be sure to treat him as one.
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CHAPTER 4
It took Helena mere minutes to explore every corner of her
room and the adjoining bathroom. She was provided with only the
most essential objects: soap, towels, a toothbrush, and a metal cup for
water. She squeezed the cup, trying to bend it and work it. If she could
break it, she'd have a nice sharp edge to slit her arteries open.
After several minutes of trying, all she had were dents in her thumbs
and throbbing pain in both wrists.
Next she tried pulling down the mirror, but it was welded to the wall
so firmly she couldn't even get her fingers under it. It didn't break when
she tried hammering it with the cup, either.
She stepped back, glaring at the glass, and winced at her reflection.
She scarcely recognised the person scowling back. Sallow skin that
had seen no light in more than a year, long black hair tangled almost to
mats around her face. Her features were all sunken. She'd look like a
necrothrall herself if not for her furious dark eyes.
She went back to the bedroom and was disappointed to find that
there weren't any drape cords for her to try to hang herself with. She
checked behind all the curtains, just in case one had been missed.
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64 • SenLinYu
Just live, Helena, a voice in her mind begged.
She paused, fingers tracing the pattern on the curtain, trying to stifle
it.
Luc . . . oh, Luc. Of course he would haunt her, refusing to accept a
pragmatic choice. If he were there, he'd be telling her that her plan was
terrible. He'd hated that kind of thing. People sacrificing themselves
because of him or his family. He always felt responsible, convinced that
if he was just better, he could save them all.
She could hear him now, telling her stubbornly that she wasn't going
to die. She could come up with a better plan if she'd just stop fixating on
this one.
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Luc. This is the best I can do."
She went to the door leading to the hallway.
The instructions to stay out of sight implied she could leave her
room. Her body trembled in anticipation, heartbeat quickening.
She gripped the knob, and it turned easily. The heavy door swung
open, revealing a long corridor spilling into darkness, but rather than
exhilaration at this freedom, Helena's heart stopped.
The sconces along the wall were no longer illuminated. She hadn't
noticed how ominous the corridor was, thin and winding, full of creep-
ing shadows like teeth that gave way to a mouthlike darkness.
She was used to constant light in Central.
She stood frozen. It was irrational. It was a house. She'd seen too
many real, awful things to be afraid of shadows and hallways, but her
legs wouldn't move. The doorknob rattled in her hand.
The darkness was like a pulsing oesophagus, the long shadows sway-
ing with the wind, threatening to swallow her. If she stepped out, she'd
fall into the cold, awful, unending dark again.
She would never be found.
Terror coursed through her body like a spike as the shadows stirred
again, crawling towards her.
Her chest spasmed, sending a shock of pain through her lungs. She
shrank back into the room and shut the door, her body pressed close
against the reassuring surface of it, lungs and heart pulsing. She couldn't
breathe.
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Alchemised • 65
She knew the terror of the stasis tank would haunt her, but she had
not realised the way it had rooted itself inside her, grown through her
nerves and organs to paralyse her.
She stayed crouched, without sense of time, until there was a rap at
the door, the soft clatter of dishes, and retreating footsteps.
She cracked the door open and found a cloth bundle and a tray of
food. Pulling them inside quickly, she tried not to see the vanishing
darkness again.
The door safely closed. She stared in revulsion. The meal was pig
slop, as if someone had taken kitchen scraps and the day's leftovers, put
them in a pot, and boiled them. She'd sooner starve.
She shoved the tray aside.
Untying the bundle, she found sets of underclothes, wool stockings,
and one dress, red as blood.
There were stitch marks along the hems and the neck and bodice
from where the details and lace had been carelessly ripped off to make
it as plain as possible.
Helena wished bitterly she hadn't flinched at the sight of those roses.
She looked over at the food again. She'd have to be careful around
Aurelia.
At the bottom of the bundle were three sets of slippers. Dancing
slippers by the look of them, impractically thin-soled and delicate shoes
with ribbon laces, cast off because the fabric on the toes was wearing
thin and they'd lost their satiny sheen.
Aside from the stockings, Helena put it all into the wardrobe, pre-
ferring to remain in the thin scratchy dress from Central.
Another tray arrived the next morning, somehow worse. Helena was
hungry enough by then to pick out the few bites that hadn't been so
boiled that the colour leached out.
She wanted to try leaving her room again, but the thought made her
stomach twist into a vicious knot.
Instead, she preoccupied herself with exercise, performing callis-
thenics. She needed to at least be able to climb a flight of stairs without
having her legs threaten to give out. Her arms were weak, too, but any-
thing that required her to put weight on her wrists was out of the ques-
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66 • SenLinYu
tion.
She stared bitterly at the manacles. She'd always been so proud of
her hands— all the things she could do with them.
The longer she spent preoccupying herself with excuses not to leave
the room, the guiltier she grew.
Anyone else in the Resistance would have already mapped the house,
identified potential weapons, and murdered both the Ferrons.
Lila would never allow herself be so weak. It wouldn't matter what
she was scared of. But Helena had never been much like Lila. She had
to do things her way. Better to wait, let Ferron come to her.
He was sure to turn up soon.
She could only guess at what transference would entail.
She thought of Crowther's corpse in Central with the lich inside it.
Perhaps that would be her soon, except still alive, aware of what was
happening to her as Ferron took over, possessing her mind and body.
At least if she had to see Ferron frequently, she'd have opportunities
to figure out what made him tick. To find a weakness.
She racked her memory for what she knew of the family. The Fer-
rons were entwined with the alchemical industrialisation of the last
century.
They had formed the very first iron guild shortly after Paladia's
founding. Iron was one of the eight traditional metals associated with
the eight planets: lead for Saturn, tin for Jupiter, iron for Mars, copper
for Venus, quicksilver for Mercury, silver for Luna, lumithium for
Lumithia, and gold for Sol.
Being intractable and highly prone to corrosion, iron was regarded as
lowly and ignoble, especially when compared with incorruptible sub-
stances like silver, lumithium, and gold. The Ferrons themselves had also
been common. Blacksmiths and ironworkers making ploughs and farm
tools more often than holding illustrious jobs like forging steel weapons
for the Eternal Flame the way other iron alchemists had.
As time passed and new metals were discovered, iron remained a
stubborn and base fixture until the Ferrons developed a method of ef-
ficient alchemical steel manufacturing. With the precision of their iron
resonance, they could assure quality at an industrial scale that no one
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Alchemised • 67
else could match. It had changed the world, and it had changed the Fer-
rons. They'd transformed from trade workers to a new and incredibly
wealthy working class, the world transforming with them.
It didn't matter whether theologically iron was classified as celes-
tially inferior; the modern world was built with Ferron steel. Factories,
railway lines, motorcars, even Paladia itself as its architecture shot sky-
wards, climbing with the industrial boom.
Spirefell, deteriorated as it now was, had clearly been built as a mon-
ument to that growing influence and wealth, and the family's immense
pride in it.
Helena's first memory of Kaine Ferron was during Year Two, not as
a person but merely a name on a list. Helena had ranked first on the
National Alchemy Exam for their year, beating out Ferron, who'd taken
the spot the year before.
Luc had been so proud of her, loudly proclaiming that Year One
barely counted, because it had been Helena's first year ever studying
alchemy, and she was doing it in her second language.
Helena had almost fainted with relief. Her scholarship at the Insti-
tute depended on her academic performance, and the exam was a sig-
nificant part of her evaluation. Her father had given up everything in
Etras to bring her to Paladia; they would have been ruined if she'd lost
her scholarship.
During the six occasions Helena took the national exam, top rank
had swung like a pendulum. Helena Marino. Kaine Ferron.
A rivalry, albeit an indirect one, never openly acknowledged.
He was guild. Guild students didn't speak to "the Holdfast pet."
She couldn't imagine how he'd become High Reeve.
He'd been academic track like her. Not a specialised combat alche-
mist like Lila, or double track, the way Luc had been. Why would a
guild heir be hunting down and killing all the surviving Resistance
members?
The more time she had to think about it, the more a seething sense
of hatred filled her at knowing, even distantly, someone so evil.
In a way, it was strangely poetic that it was Helena who'd been
brought as a captive to Spirefell.
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68 • SenLinYu
She'd beaten Ferron before. If she was careful, and clever, she would
do it again.
When Ferron didn't appear on the second day, Helena forced herself
into the hallway, ignoring the way her organs shrivelled and her throat
closed. She hugged the wall, letting her fingers trace the wainscotting,
not caring that the dust crept into the grooves of her fingerprints, black-
ening them like an infection.
You can do this, she told herself as she edged slowly towards the dark-
ness, trying to evade the sharpest shadows. She tried the nearest door
along the hallway and found it locked. She kept going, just a little far-
ther.
The wind moaned through the halls, twisting into a scream, win-
dows rattling. The house creaked like shifting bones.
Helena tried to breathe but she couldn't, not in the hallway with the
shadows crawling up her like fingers.
After the third door, she couldn't go any farther. She turned back, the
hallway swaying, the dark moving closer.
Before she reached the open door, her legs gave out. Everything
blurred, blackening around her.
Lila Bayard emerged from the darkness.
It was not the Lila that Helena remembered. Not the beautiful, stat-
uesque girl in armour who wore her pale-blond hair plaited in a crown
around her head like the statues of Lumithia.
Lila's hair was cropped short as a boy's. She looked shrunken, despite
her unusual height.
She stared at Helena. The right side of her face and neck was mot-
tled with scarring, a long cruel gouge across her cheek that ran down
her throat. Her eyes were red.
"Lila. Lila, what's wrong. What happened?"
Helena felt herself growing cold, fingers numb as she reached out.
Lila opened her mouth to answer but then faded away.
"Lila . . ."
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Alchemised • 69
When Helena opened her eyes, she was lying on the floor in her
room, head throbbing.
Something niggled in the corner of her mind, dangling just past the
edge of recollection.
She tried to focus, but sharp red pain splintered her mind. Whatever
it was vanished like water through sand.
The windows rattled, and the house groaned, sending a vibration
through the floor as though it were coming alive. She pushed herself up,