My knees were about to give way. This had to be a last ripple of fever, a terrible hallucination.
“I could have gone on. There seemed to be no end to your gullibility. But the time has come for me to return to the blood-sovereign, and to share all I have learned,” Arcturus said. “We will crush every pocket of revolution. Together, we will claim this world.” The corner of his mouth crooked in a taunting smile. “The Rephaim are in your debt, Underqueen.”
I had sometimes wondered whether I could tempt him to smile. Not like this. That smile was a dissimulator on him, twisting him into a stranger. I drew my first breath in what felt like an eternity.
“Nashira is . . . taking you back,” I said. “As her blood-consort.”
“Such is her mercy. She knows that all I did, I did for her. Would you not say I have earned my reward, Paige?”
Hearing my name on his tongue had never felt like mockery before.
“Tell me.” I raised my chin. “How exactly were you serving her when you came to my door the other night?”
No answer. Just that awful, ill-fitting smile.
“You are Arcturus Mesarthim, a leader of the Ranthen. You were loyal to the Mothallath. You despise the Sargas,” I said, forcing myself to sound calm and reasonable, “and you have done everything in your power, for centuries, to bring them down. Do you deny it?”
“I was a traitor then. But the Mothallath are gone,” he said, “and it is because of humans.”
“Arcturus—”
“After Jaxon betrayed me in the first rebellion, I realized that the blood-sovereign was right about you. Humankind must be bridled. Portugal is defeated, and the King of Spain is dead. You will lose.”
“Enough.” I stepped closer, fear boiling into panic and anger. “Arcturus, please, stop this. However she’s threatened you, whatever hold she has over you, we’ll find a way out. We can—”
“There is no we, fleshworm,” he cut in. “Your reign is ended. You are nothing but corrupt flesh, rotting on the bone.”
Against my will, I flinched in the face of his contempt. The night in my room gleamed across my mind, and for an unbearable moment, I saw it through a lens of Rephaite hatred. I rendered myself lewd and disgusting.
Our gazes locked. I searched for any trace of him from that long, dreamlike night, when everything had made sense. Any remnant of his warmth, his tenderness. All I could see before me was a statue. An automaton. A mimic. Something that wore a human shape, but was not, and had never been, human.
Through the ringing in my ears, I became aware of the dreamscapes beyond the walls. I was out of time—but I had to try, once more, to wake him up. To pull him from the brink. Not just for myself, or for him, but for the revolution.
“Arcturus. Warden.” I stood as close as I could without touching him. “Listen to me. The world Nashira wants is not the answer. Don’t go back to her. Don’t stay here to be displayed like a trophy for the rest of your days. Do not be complicit in our extinction.”
I might as well not have spoken for all the response I got. Abandoning all caution, I reached up and took his face between my hands, as I had not long ago, forcing him to look me in the eyes. A void looked back at me.
“I know this isn’t you. Even if—even if it started out as a pretense, I don’t believe you were pretending. Not that night,” I said. “Remember the person you were before. The person who fought for the Mothallath. For clairvoyants. For humans.” I grasped his gloved hand. “The person who held back a blade with his bare hands to stop Nashira Sargas.”
He looked down at my fingers, wrapped around his leather-clad ones.
“I want to spend my life with you,” I told him. “I want to bring Scion to its knees with you. I want a future with you.” My throat ached. “It’s not too late to do the right thing. You don’t have to tell Nashira about the syndicates. Don’t condemn thousands of people to death. And don’t choose the side I’m not standing on, because I don’t think I can bear to be your enemy.”
Nothing. I tried to use the cord, to make him understand, but it was frozen solid. I was screaming into an abyss.
“Walk out of here,” I whispered. “You will never be a war trophy to me.”
His gaze seared into mine once more.
“You are not escaping,” he said. “Not this time.”
He shoved me off, hard enough to jar my bad wrist, and then—suddenly, terribly—his hand swung up to strike me.
One of the first things Nick had taught me was how to duck a punch. Plenty of fists came at you in the syndicate, no matter who you were. Avoiding this one should have been second nature.
But in that moment, I just stood there, too stunned to move. Time seemed to slow. I came to the far-off realization that one solid blow from that fist would crumple my skull. He actually meant to kill me.
He had revered my body with those hands. Now they would break it.
Death never came. Just before Arcturus could land the blow, his eyes gave a livid flare, and he pulled his arm back, so hard it was as if it had been wrenched by a string, or a shield had flown up in front of me. Such was my shock, all I could do was stare at him in silence.
“No,” he said, after a long beat. He was still all over again, eyes flat. “Even with gloves, I will not dirty my hand.”
My knees shook. I was rooted to the spot. Arcturus Mesarthim, as I had known him, would never have raised a hand to a human. Not to me.
Not for anything.
New footsteps sounded on the marble. In a stupor, I turned to see the architect of all my suffering. Nashira Sargas, the Suzerain, her golden hair combed to a high shine.
She was flanked by Situla Mesarthim, who looked no worse for wear after the fire, and Graffias Sheratan, who I remembered from the first colony. The sight of Nashira filled me with dread in a way it never had before my torture. I was alone and virtually unarmed with three—four—enemy Rephaim.
My nerves hardened to steel. I was twofold. Paige Mahoney was in too much pain to breathe, but Black Moth had to stand and do her duty. She had to warn the syndicates of the betrayal.
It was my fault. Now I had to fix it.
Nashira joined Arcturus and laid a hand on his arm. The sight of it tore my guts out.
“He’s a flesh-traitor, Nashira.” Bitter hatred almost strangled me. “Why would you take him back?”
“Be assured, 40,” Nashira said to me, “that I will cleanse Arcturus of your influence. His flesh-treachery was for a cause, but he accepts that he will need to be punished for it. I will deliver.”
Hers was the voice that so often disturbed my sleep. I remembered the way she had looked at me in the Westminster Archon just before I escaped her. Hellfire in her eyes.
There was a draft in the room. The rear doors to the chapel stood ajar. I had to keep her talking.
“Can he not speak for himself ?” I asked.
“Arcturus is not himself after months of your words in his ear.”
His dreamscape gave a strange vibration. I scrutinized his face, but his expression stayed the same.
“You escaped me in London,” Nashira stated. “I would have let you die there. It would have been excruciating—humiliating—but it would also have been over in one night. Now I think I will keep you alive for a little longer before I claim your spirit. Arcturus will need to wean himself from the flesh. And to feed. Perhaps you can continue to tend to his needs for a time.”
Disgust shivered through me. “I take back everything I ever said,” I told him. “You are a coward. And a fucking hypocrite. You’re a monster.”
Still the same callous gaze.
“It is you who is monstrous, fleshworm,” he said. “You are an affront to the natural order.”
The Devil. I thought of the card Liss had shown me. They’ll make you think you’re tied to them forever.
We are bound together by a golden cord . . .
“Arcturus is no coward to commit flesh-treachery for the cause,” Nashira said. “He will
tell me everything about the Mime Order and Le Nouveau Régime. And when they are driven into the open, your thieves will soon be trapped by their own citadel. Because now that I have you back . . . I also have Senshield.”
The implication sank in. All she needed to reactivate the scanners was the spirit of a dreamwalker.
“Fear not. I will ensure your people understand precisely how it happened,” Nashira continued, softer. “That their Underqueen invited a wolf into her flock. Into her bed.” She motioned to the other two Rephaim. “Take her to the Bonbec Tower, and tell the others to feed on her whenever they desire. Together, if they choose.”
Before I could run, they had seized an arm each, and they were hauling me away from the blood-sovereign and her betrothed.
“Don’t think you’ve won this,” I shouted at Nashira. “We are everywhere now. Not just in London. Not just in Paris. We are under the ground and over your heads, on every street and rooftop. We will multiply, like the rats you claim we are, and bring the plague that will consume you—”
“No,” Nashira said, and turned to put her gloved hands on Arcturus again. “You will consume yourselves. As you always have.”
That was when I surrendered to it. The hopelessness, the terror and confusion and rage. I pulled it all in.
And let it all out.
It came exploding from my dreamscape. An unearthly flare of pressure, violent as the surface of the sun, that seemed to come both from within and without. I called, and in the distance, something answered.
All four Rephaim stiffened. A windstorm raged in the æther—a storm charged by my wrath. Situla and Graffias dropped me as if I had burst into flame. Without so much as touching them, I had brought gods to their knees.
Hatred burned white-hot in my veins. I could barely keep hold of it. With what little control I had left, I concentrated it all on Nashira. Shockwaves slammed into her, one after the other, and for the first time since the colony, when I had briefly taken hold of her dreamscape, her composure slipped. Her eyes blazed as I forced her, at last, to take a step back.
Wetness ran from my nose and soaked into the collar of my shirt. I fitted my mask over my face.
“Tell Gomeisa the moths are coming,” I told Nashira, “and there are more of us than you can count.”
As I turned, Arcturus snared my gaze across the hall. And for a heart-stopping moment, I could have sworn his eyes became lambent and alive once more, and I could have sworn that—for a fraction of a heartbeat, a whisper of time—he looked like himself, and not a shell.
Then it was gone, and I ran for my life.
Out through the doors to a roofed balcony. On my right, scaffolding. I flung myself onto it and climbed, muscles screaming. The two Rephaite guards came after me, but I was already clambering over the top, onto a flat and icy roof. My arms shook with the effort.
Straight ahead loomed a sheer wall, no handholds whatsoever. Sensing the Rephaim follow, I drew the pistol Léandre had given me, pointed it to my right, and fired into the nearest window. Without so much as a breath, I hurdled through it.
Straight across a deserted room. I aimed my shoulder and smashed through another window, back into the frigid air, landing hard on my side in the snow. I shoved myself straight up, cleared a gap, swerved left, and pounded down a stretch of snow-covered roof. Behind me, a searchlight glared on at the highest point of the Forteresse de Justice and performed a slow rotation. It illuminated my footprints and caught up with me just as I climbed to a new section of the roof. The siren doubled in volume.
The Forteresse de Justice must be packed with soldiers. I ran as I never had in my life—not even on the night I was arrested, the night that started all of this. They had caught me that time. This time, thousands of lives depended on every inch I put between myself and the enemy.
He could always find me. Just like I could always find him. For the rest of my life, I would be chained to a traitor.
Sparks near my boots. The first hail of bullets. I was running out of roof, melted snow carrying me too far, too fast. I managed to twist at the last moment and grab hold of a window frame, the force almost pulling my arms out of joint. Desperate for breath, I scrambled down using sills and ledges and landed in a crouch on a tiled slope, only for ice to throw off my footing and send me over another edge. The snow on a lower rooftop broke my fall.
One spring took me down to a parked car. I hopscotched across two more, hit the ground running, and slammed out of the Forteresse de Justice. The wrought iron gate clanged shut in my wake.
My boots splashed into slush. I stumbled, bruised and dazed. People stared at me, and I realized how it must look for a masked figure to have just burst out of the home of the Inquisitorial Courts.
Somewhere behind me, a pair of doors crashed open. Voices roared at me to stop. I sprinted away from the gun-mounted lights, past frightened people, toward the dreamscape ahead. Soon I could see him as well as sense him, standing by his moto near the Pont au Change.
“Léandre,” I shouted.
His face flicked toward me. Seeing my pursuers, he snapped down his visor and flung me a helmet. The moto was moving before I had even fully climbed into the saddle.
“Where is he?” he called to me as I threw an arm around his waist. “Where is Warden?”
“Just go!”
He twisted the handlebar and gunned the moto over the bridge. Bullets ripped into the pavement behind us, and then we were speeding away from the Île de la Citadelle, back into the shadows of Paris.
****
Léandre abandoned the moto under an archway. We ran north, taking narrow streets and shortcuts wherever we could. All the while, I choked out tearless sounds, as if I was being ripped apart from within. He grabbed an umbrella from a hotel, pulled me close, and opened it against the snow.
Sirens echoed all across the citadel, and a helicopter shone its light onto a nearby street. Léandre knew his way. He walked me down to the river, into the shadow of another bridge. There was a set of steps beneath it that led straight into the swift-running waters of the Seine. He pulled me down to sit on them, so we could speak without anyone seeing our faces.
“Is Nadine safe?” I asked.
“She’s fine. We have to keep moving,” he muttered, “but tell me what happened. So I know where to take you.”
I shook uncontrollably. Léandre draped his coat around my shoulders, but nothing could keep out the chill in my bones. The chill of shock.
“Paige.” He grasped my shoulder. “Is he dead?”
All I could do was stare at the black river. I moved my lips, tried to explain.
“I wish he was,” was all I could say. “I wish—”
The tears were silent at first. Then came sharp breaths, then huge, brutal sobs that wrenched my ribs and stemmed from deep in my stomach. Léandre edged an arm around me, and I wept into his coat, so hard I was almost choking. Hideous sounds that racked my whole frame.
The first meeting of our lips. The long nights. The lilt of my own laughter when he danced with me in a derelict hall. He had crafted that music box by hand, each part chosen to reflect me.
“Sorry.” I mopped my cheeks, chest heaving. “Sorry, Léandre.”
He gave me a last, uncomfortable pat on the head before he backed off, looking relieved.
“Has he changed sides?” he asked me.
I nodded, then shook my head. Hot tears drenched my cheeks. “No. Maybe. I don’t think he was ever on my side.” I scrunched my hair into my hands. “Fuck. I don’t understand.”
Léandre delved into his backpack and unscrewed a flask. I accepted it and took a few gulps of brandywine.
“Tell me what happened,” he said again. “Be quick.”
With effort, I wadded down my panic enough to make room for my breath. “He said he was working for the enemy all along. Spying on us. He’s one of my high commanders—” My mind darted ahead. “I have to send someone to London. To warn them. Nadine and Zeke, they could go.”
“Do they have papers?”
“No.”
Léandre considered.
“The merchants,” he said, more to himself than to me. “They’ll have a way.” He scooped an arm under both of mine and hauled me to my feet. “Come. I will arrange it with them.”
“Call Nadine first. Now,” I said, “before she gets rid of her burner or goes underground. Tell her to get Ivy and Zeke and meet us somewhere near Gare du Nord.” Raw-eyed, I looked across the river. “We have to warn London. Before this destroys everything.”
24
Steel Queen
The train left Gare du Nord at ten past nine. Since I had my dissimulator, we risked the Métro, keeping a sharp eye out for night Vigiles. By half past eight, we were in a cookshop opposite the station, waiting for the others. The dissimulator was giving me a headache, and my knee ached where I had bruised it on the roof. It was the only physical reminder of what had happened.
Léandre took a sip of his coffee and observed the other customers, fingers drumming on the table. Now and again, he shot me a disconcerted look and pressed his lips together.
If the blood-consort had already told Nashira everything he knew, soldiers could be descending on the Mime Order at this very moment. I could only hope they were no longer all in one place. That they had returned to the cell-based structure as soon as Senshield had failed. Glym would have done that—he was rigid in his efficiency—but Ivy had told me they were still using the underground shelter.
My hand shook as I lifted my cup of saloop. It took all my restraint to just sit and wait. Stillness was a threat. It let me think. If I faced what had just happened, I would snap, and I had to be as cold as rock for just a little longer. For the syndicate. For the revolution.
At ten to nine, Nadine and Zeke arrived, both ruddy-cheeked with cold, the latter with a backpack on one shoulder. They both squeezed into our booth. Nadine wore a peaked hat at an angle.
“Ivy can’t risk coming in here.” She moved her fringe out of her eyes. “What happened?”
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