Page 384 of Alchemised
She stood at the edge of the array, surveying all the careful work to obscure what had been there, trying to superimpose the sketch that Wagner had provided and the drafts in Bennet’s folio. Somewhere amid those three was the complete array.
Her fingers moved slowly, trying to feel out potential patterns, but it had been so long since she’d done more than simple vivimancy.
She got on her knees and began to trace her fingers across every shape and pattern. It was incomprehensible the first several times she crawled across the floor following the lines, trying to visualise the patterns of the energy. It was the third time that it finally began to make sense.
It was an animancy array. She recognised the feeling of the energy, the patterns it would follow.
Her resonance trailed through her fingers as she swept them along one line of the array. Yes, she knew that feeling. Another line. False. The energy would never twist that way.
She crawled across the floor again, more slowly, tracing every line again and again, ignoring the splinters catching in her fingertips.
Her heart began to pound with relief. She could solve this. She could figure it out. An ache spread through her chest at the unsteady tempo of her heartbeat, but she ignored it, trying to finish. It began to race faster and faster, until her lungs began to hurt. Just a little more. She needed to have the whole array complete in her mind so she could etch it.
The floor blurred. She blinked hard, trying to focus.
Her fingers were bleeding as she reached up to press them against her heart, her body going cold. Her heart was racing uncontrollably. She tried to slow it, but it was like trying to catch a running horse.
The room swayed. The iron cage and the door gracefully swung to the side, upended as her shoulder hit the ground.
The room dimmed, the lights’ flickering click fading away.
SHE WOKE, DAZED, LYING IN bed in her room, her chest aching as if there were a lead weight crushing it. Kaine was sitting beside her, her hand in his.
She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there. Her wrists throbbed, and she could feel the dead sensation of nullium inside them.
“The doctor just left,” he said without looking at her. “It seems you developed an irregular heartbeat from the strain and distress of your imprisonment and pregnancy. They detected it during your coma, but I was told that if I could keep you calm, it might resolve itself. Seems unlikely now, though.”
Helena didn’t know what to say.
His jaw worked several times. “Do you have any idea what it was like, finding you collapsed in the middle of that damned array inside that torture chamber?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to make you go back in.”
He exhaled, his head dropping. He’d seemed furious except he was clutching her hand in his.
“It wasn’t a panic attack,” she said. “I think I know how Morrough used the array—how the design works. I’ve figured out how he did it. I was just relieved. My heart lost control.”
He looked at her, his eyes burning. “Do you think that makes it better? Your heart could fail, and if I’m not here, you’ll be gone. Just like—” He went silent. “Don’t do this to me.”
Her mouth went dry. “But I have to save you.”
“No.” The word was sharp. “You don’t. And you can’t. You are the only person who has never understood that.”
She opened her mouth, but he cut her off.
“We made a deal to tell the truth to each other, and that is the truth. You cannot save me. I cannot be saved.”
She struggled to sit up, her chest aching as if her sternum had split again. “You don’t know that. Let me try.”
He wrenched away from her and stood. She thought he’d storm out. She slipped from the bed, reaching after him.
“Kaine.”
He stilled at the foot of the bed. “You don’t get to have everything, Helena,” he said at last. “There’s a point when you have to realise that you aren’t going to get everything you want. You have to choose and let it be enough for you. You have other people. You promised Holdfast you’d take care of Lila and her son. You have a baby who needs you, and you know that.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to choose. I always have to choose, and I never get to choose you. I’m so tired of not getting to choose you.”
He looked back at her. “You’re not choosing. You promised me anything I wanted. I want you to stop breaking yourself trying to save me. Go. Live. Tell our daughter I saved you both. That—is what I want.”
