Page 393 of Alchemised
“If it saves you, it’s worth it.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
She looked around. She didn’t even feel any sense of hope or trust that this could work; she simply couldn’t sit in idle despair any longer. “Then I’ll die knowing I tried everything, which is more happily than I’ll live if I leave you here. She has nothing to gain from betraying us. She’s already lost everything.”
He shoved the obsidian knife back into its sheath. “Well, I imagine we’ll find out in short order.”
He left and returned with two knives, one the obsidian and the other a part of her old set he’d recovered from the bombing, and a suicide pill. If Ivy betrayed them, and he couldn’t reach her in time, she’d have a chance of a quick escape for herself and the baby.
The day passed with a relentless intensity. Night came, and nothing happened except word that Shiseo’s envoy was crossing into Novis. A few days were all that was left, and time would run out, regardless of what Ivy did.
When the house was dark and silent, Kaine came to her. They took every moment together slowly. There was no time left; they couldn’t waste it by rushing.
She lay in his arms, listening to his heart. When she tried to picture home, this feeling was all she could imagine. She rolled onto her back and found his hand, pressing it against the swell between her hips.
“That’s her,” she said. “I’ll—” Her throat grew tight. “I’ll probably be able to feel her move within the next month. The book says it feels like fluttering at first.”
She had to swallow hard to keep speaking.
“It’s called quickening—when you first feel a baby move.” She drew a deep breath. “If you use your resonance, you’ll be able to feel her now. If you want.”
His hand twitched and he hesitated.
“We can do it together,” she said. “You should meet her.”
THE NEXT DAY, RATHER THAN walk the hedge maze, Kaine took her back to the courtyard.
She froze, heart in her throat at the smell of old blood and decomposition trapped there in the still summer air. Her stomach threatening to upend.
At least thirty prisoners had been brought to Spirefell since Atreus had returned. Helena didn’t know if it was better or worse if any of them were still alive.
“Do we have to walk here?” she asked.
Kaine looked at her. There was a risk they were being watched, and so his expression was chilly and indifferent, but his voice was soft. “Just this once. It won’t take long.”
She forced a nod.
The courtyard was much more beautiful in summer. The vines that had covered the house like blackened veins in winter had bloomed into climbing roses.
There were still two necrothralls stationed at the front of the house, barely more than bones now, and Helena eyed them warily as Kaine led the way across the courtyard garden.
“You don’t need to worry about them,” he said under his breath. “Morrough is too preoccupied with himself to waste effort on his necrothralls. Their senses are nearly gone, and he hasn’t noticed. Come. There’s a reunion that’s rather overdue.”
It dawned on her then where they were going.
“Amaris …”
Kaine unlocked the stable door. “She had a hard time when you first arrived.”
The door swung open, and in the dim light of the stable, an enormous black shadow unfurled itself from the corner and stood, wings arching and stretching. The chimaera came forward, the heavy chain dragging behind her.
“I was afraid she’d give us away if I let her near you. She has quite the reputation nowadays,” he said. “You were the only other person she’s ever taken to.”
Helena considered that a rather generous description of her relationship with Amaris.
Her mouth went dry. Amaris had grown. She was several hands taller, and her immense yellow eyes glowed in the low light. Helena remembered the chimaera being so careful and gentle around Kaine when he was injured, the way she used to curl against Helena’s back, blocking out the cold, but she had a far starker memory of entering the stable and being nearly bitten in half.
She took a nervous step back. “I’m not sure that she remembers me.”
