Ten days until my execution. It must be meant as a cruel delay, giving me time to wonder what kind of agony awaited me. The sword would be too good for the human who had dared to stand against the blood-sovereign. Perhaps she meant for me to die in one of the ways she had told me about, to prove that my faith in humanity was misplaced. They must expect me to crack under the pressure, to beg Jaxon to spare my life and take me with him to France.
I didn’t. I waited quietly for death—but before I joined the æther, I wanted to know that Alsafi had destroyed Senshield.
When the drugs came, I was grateful. I submitted willingly to the Vigiles’ hands, to the needles I no longer felt—they took away the fear that my death would be in vain. With every hour that Alsafi was unwilling or unable to take action, the Mime Order remained in the Beneath.
One night, the Vigiles got me out of bed and put me on the waterboard again, seemingly for their own amusement. When they dumped me back in my cell, soaked and exhausted, there was a supper tray waiting. I inched toward it and choked down as much of the mush as I could.
That was when I found the tiny strip of paper, buried in the food. It was stained, but legible.
DOCK
I breathed easier. Dock. Patience. He must be biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to reach the core without compromising his position. The thought was comforting for a while.
But more days passed, and I heard nothing. And no more notes came with my food.
December 31, 2059
New Year’s Eve
I was woken one morning by a Vigile aiming the beam of his flashlight into my eyes.
“Rise and shine, Underqueen.” I was lifted to my feet. “Time to die.”
I was too tired to fight.
First I was transferred to another cell, on one of the Archon’s main upper corridors. The door was made up of bars.
The New Year Jubilee was set to be the biggest event in years. It would take place in the Grand Stadium, which was only ever used for ceremonies. There was a screen at the end of the corridor, and I could just make out the broadcast.
Murmurs echoed between the walls as dignitaries and ministers from the Archon filed past my cell on their way to watch the show. Several of them stopped to scrutinize me. Among them were the Minister for Surveillance; the portly Minister for Arts; the sallow-faced Minister for Transport, whose nose betrayed her illegal drinking habit. Luce Ménard Frère and the French emissaries spent a considerable amount of time observing what a frightening creature I was. All the while, I fixed them with a dead-eyed stare. When the French party got bored, Frère stayed behind, one hand on her rounded abdomen.
“I am pleased,” she said, “that my children will grow up in a world without you in it.”
She walked away before I could think of a reply.
Now I understood why I was in this cell. For my last hours, I was to be displayed as a war trophy.
Jaxon came to the door for one last look. I thought I could see authentic sorrow on his features.
“So this is the end,” he said. Somehow he sounded both angry and solemn. “I present you with an opportunity to live, to keep your gift from fading into nothing, and you spit at it.”
“That’s my choice,” I said. “It’s called ‘freedom,’ Jax. It’s what I fought for.”
“And how hard you fought,” he said gently. He turned away. “Goodbye for now, O my lovely. I will remember you fondly, in your absence, as my unfinished masterpiece; my lost treasure. But bear this in mind: I do not like to leave things unfinished. Not masterpieces, and certainly not games. And perhaps our game is only just beginning.”
I raised one eyebrow. He really was a madman.
With the softest of smiles, he was gone.
Unfortunately, Jaxon was not my last visitor. The next was Bernard Hock, the High Chief of Vigilance—one of the few people in the Archon who was permitted to be voyant, whom I had seen once before in the penal colony. He looked less than pleased to be in a suit as he entered my cell.
“Don’t cry now, bitch.” He grasped my arm and stabbed a needle into it. “Just lie there nice and quiet. The executioner will be here after the Jubilee . . . then you’ll cry.”
I shoved him off me. “How does it feel to hate yourself as much as you do, Hock?”
In answer, he backhanded me and left the cell. Soon, the sounds of conversation waned from the corridors.
I shivered on the floor, cold to my bones. It was a short while before the Sargas finally passed, accompanied by Frank Weaver and several other high-ranking officials, including Patricia Okonma, the Deputy Grand Commander. They must be going separately from the rest.
Alsafi brought up the rear. The sight of him made the hairs on my nape stand on end.
None of them so much as glanced at me, but as Alsafi walked by, I saw—as if in slow motion—a tiny scroll fall from his cloak and land within my reach. I waited until they were out of sight before I snatched it.
EUPATORIUM ICE PLANT CLEMATIS GROUND LAUREL
Eupatorium: delay. Ice plant: your looks freeze me. Clematis: that could either mean mental clarity or artifice, if I remembered correctly. Ground laurel: perseverance.
I read it several times.
Delay—it hadn’t happened.
Frozen by a look—he was being watched.
I leaned against the wall of my cell and grasped my own arms, as if that could hold me together. I didn’t know what mental clarity or perseverance were supposed to mean to me now, but one thing was clear.
He hadn’t done it.
And I couldn’t do it. I had already been drugged—rendering my gift useless—and in a few hours, I would be dead.
With a mewl of frustration, I buried my face in my knees.
They had broken me; Nashira and Hildred Vance had succeeded in breaking me. I was a malfunctioning mind radar. I shook with silent, rib-racking sobs, loathing myself for being so stupid as to hand myself to the anchor; so arrogant as to think I could survive for long enough to carry out the mission.
Trembling, I read the note again, trying to control my breathing. Ground laurel. Perseverance. What the hell did that mean? How could he persevere if he was being watched?
Clematis. Mental clarity. Artifice. Which of the two meanings did he intend me to take from it, and why?
I crumpled the note into my hand.
Nashira will not let you go once you are in her clutches. She will chain you in the darkness, and she will drain the life and hope from you.
When music sounded in the corridor, I raised my head. The transmission screen outside my cell was now fixed on the live broadcast of the Jubilee. The walls inside the stadium were covered by black drapes, each bearing an immense white circle with a golden anchor inside it.
Hundreds of tiered seats provided the best views. The groundlings, with cheaper tickets, had gathered at the edges of the vast, ring-shaped orchestra pit, and were craning their necks to see the top of the stage.
“Esteemed denizens of the Scion Citadel of London,” Burnish said, and her voice resounded through the space, “welcome, on this very special night, to the Grand Stadium!”
The roar was deafening. I made myself listen.
That was the sound of Scion’s victory.
“Tonight,” Burnish said, “we welcome a new year for Scion, and a new dawn for the anchor, the symbol of hope in a chaotic modern world.” Applause answered her. “And now, before the stroke of midnight, it is time for us to reflect upon two centuries of our rich history, brought to you by some of Scion’s most talented denizens. Tonight, we celebrate our place in the world, and embrace our bright future. Let us set our bounds ever wider, and grow ever stronger—together. The Minister for Arts is proud to present—the Jubilee!”
The ovation rumbled on for almost a minute before mechanisms began to move in the stadium. A performance, then. Or a message from Vance. Look at our imperial might. Look at what you failed to thwart.
A platform rose, and the light ebbed to a twilight ambience. On the platform, a line of children sang a soulful rendition of “Anchored to Thee, O Scion.” When the audience gave them a standing ovation, they took a bow, and a new stage was drawn up, this one decked with the old symbols of the monarchy. A man, dressed as Edward VII, performed a lively dance to a violinist’s music, accompanied by actors in lavish Victorian gowns. Once the séance table was brought on, the dance became more tormented, and I understood that this was the story of Scion’s origin—heavily edited, of course, to remove the Rephaim from the equation. The lighting enflamed, and more performers swept on to the stage, executing acrobatic dances around the principal actor, clawing away his regalia. He was the king who had dabbled in evil, and they were the unnaturals he released into the world. Just like the play at the Bicentenary, all those months ago.
The scenery began to change. Now it was a shadow theater, and new actors were forming the shapes of skyscrapers and towers, rising ever higher until their figures loomed over the stage, where the dancers had all fallen to their knees. This was the remaking of London, the rising from the ashes of the monarchy. The music swelled. Scion had triumphed.
The stage cleared of actors. The lights went out. When they returned, they were cool and muted.
A woman in an embroidered bodice with a black skirt, her fair hair coiled at the crown of her head, was poised on her toes in the middle of the stage. I recognized her at once: Marilena Brașoveanu, Scion Bucharest’s most beloved dancer. She often performed at official ceremonies.
Brașoveanu was as still as a porcelain doll. When the camera focused on her, close enough for every viewer to see the finest details of her costume, I realized the skirt of her dress was made up of hundreds of tiny silk moths.
She was the Black Moth.
She was me.
The stadium fell silent. Brașoveanu sailed around the stage to the tune of a piano, fluid yet erratic. Then another dancer ran out—the Bloody King—and snatched her hand, spinning her into his arms. I watched, mesmerized, as the Black Moth danced a pas de deux with him. She was the Bloody King’s heir; the herald of unnaturalness, of sin.
The dance became faster. Brașoveanu whirled her leg out in front of her and tucked it behind her other knee, over and over, while the lights raced red around her and the music became ferocious, like a storm. The Bloody King lifted her above his head, then swung her into his arms again. She was seduced by evil. Actors held signs marking them as FREEDOM and JUSTICE and THE NATURAL ORDER. Then an army, who had been waiting in the shadows, stepped forward, and all of the actors fell down with their signs, murdered where they stood, while the Bloody King brought the Black Moth gently to a stop. She walked into the blaze of a spotlight, her arms raised high. This was the moment of my death in Edinburgh.
It was beautiful.
They had made my murder beautiful.
Slowly, Brașoveanu took center stage. A hush had fallen. When she spoke, she raised her head high, and I was sure I saw the dark fire of hatred in her eyes.
“We need everyone,” she said, and her microphone sent it all around the stadium, into the home of every viewer in the country, “or everyone loses.”
I froze. My own words, a call to revolution, spoken on a Scion stage—that couldn’t be right. The camera, which had just panned to the Grand Box, caught the complacent smiles of the ministers stiffening before it cut back to the stage. There was an apprehensive silence.
This had not been part of their plan for tonight.
Brașoveanu took her bow; then she slipped a silver pin from her bun and peeled open her throat.
Screams erupted from the groundlings, the only ones close enough to see the red sheeting down her neck. I stared, thunderstruck, as she dropped the pin. That blood was as real as mine.
Brașoveanu collapsed on the stage, as elegantly as she had moved in life. The orchestra played on. The male dancer, who was wearing an earpiece, lifted her wilted frame into his arms and raised her above his head. He pirouetted with a plastic smile before dancing off the stage. Though the groundlings were in disorder, most of the audience were still cheering.
Something kindled deep within me. Marilena Brașoveanu was Romanian. She had witnessed an incursion, too—and now, tonight of all nights, she had used her own blood to spoil the beauty of the anchor’s lies.
A Vigile rattled the bars of my cell.
“Come here, 40.”
One hand beckoned me. The other held a syringe. A top-up dose of the drug.
The drug.
Goosebumps covered my arms. Seeing that needle, I realized what I hadn’t before, entranced as I was by the Jubilee.
Mental clarity.
My mind was clear as ice. There was no cloud inside it. My vision was sharp, and my gift seethed inside me.
There hadn’t been a first dose.
“Come here, girl,” the Vigile said.
I stared at my hands. Steady.
Artifice.
Alsafi. He must have swapped the syringes. Hock had shot something into my veins, but it must have been water. And now the building was almost empty; there was only a skeleton staff in the Archon while everyone attended the Jubilee. Until the celebrations ended, only a handful of Vigiles stood between me and Senshield.
Perseverance.
The Vigile drew his gun and aimed it at my head. “Come here,” he said. “Now.”
“What are you going to do?” I said softly. “Shoot me? Not without the Suzerain’s permission.”
The gun stayed where it was, but I had stared death in the face once before, looked down the barrel of a gun, and lived. He swore and returned his weapon to its holster. Took his keys from his belt and sifted through them. That was his mistake. Rage was pounding through my body, bubbling in my blood. It had set me on fire, and like the moth I was, I burned.
When the Vigile opened my cell door, I was ready. I sprang at him and slammed my body into his. As we fell to the floor, I clapped a hand over his mouth and nose, squeezed hard, and wrested the gun from his grasp. My arms were shaking, and he was clawing at my neck and hair, breaking skin—but I hit him with the pistol, over and over, bludgeoning his skull with all my strength, until blood glinted and his head rolled to one side. I grabbed his set of keys, hauled his dead weight into the cell, and locked the door with trembling hands.
Footsteps were approaching from somewhere to my left. I ran the other way, keys in one hand, pistol in the other, my bare feet feather-light on the marble.
I would help Marilena Brașoveanu ruin their night of glory. If I had to die tonight, I would release the Mime Order.
My head was throbbing as I rounded a corner, hoping against hope that nobody was paying attention to the cameras. I could feel the æther again, clearly enough to avoid the Vigiles patrolling the Archon and to know that Hildred Vance was nowhere near.
I felt for the room with the glass pyramid and found it instantly. Following the signal, I limped across the marble floor, trying to ignore the drumbeat in my bruises. I could sense two squadrons of Vigiles, spread over a vast building. In one corridor, I had to duck into the Minister for Finance’s office to avoid a lone one, who I hadn’t detected until it was almost too late. I stayed for several minutes behind a curtain, soused in icy sweat. A wrong move could get me hauled back to my cell, and I wouldn’t get out again. I might not be drugged, but I was physically weak—I couldn’t fight my way to the core.
When I was sure the Vigile wasn’t returning, I stumbled out of the office and back into the labyrinth, up the stairs to the next floor. Senshield was somewhere above me.
The central second-floor corridor was empty, dimly lit by sconces. The darkness calmed me, just a little. The signal above me wavered, and I paused briefly to think.
If the core was high up, it was most likely in a tower. The Archon had two, one on each end of the building. Inquisitor Tower was the one that housed the bells. The other one . . .
I sifted through the Vigile’s keys. Not one was labelled Victoria Tower. But then, only Vance and the blood-sovereigns were supposed to know where Senshield was; no one else would have access.
With fresh resolve, I set off again. Most of the doors I had seen in this building were electronic, but if the Vigiles carried keys, they must also have mechanical locks in case of a power failure—and those locks could be picked.
An alarm began to drill, raising my pulse. Either my empty cell had been discovered, or Brașoveanu’s act of defiance had activated some kind of security alert. Metal blinds were scrolling over the windows, and blue-white emergency lighting had sprung up on either side of me. Adrenaline streaked through my muscles, keeping the ache at bay. I avoided a few more Vigiles before I finally staggered into a corridor with a thick ebony carpet, lined by windows on one side. At the end of this corridor was an arched, studded door, and set into this door was a small plaque reading VICTORIA TOWER. My breath came fast as I approached it. The core was now almost directly above me.
I tried the handle, not expecting it to work.
It gave way beneath my hand.
Slowly, I brought my weight against the door, opening it. A trap, surely. Vance wouldn’t have left the tower vulnerable while she was at the Jubilee. And yet—whatever lay beyond, it was my one and only chance. I stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind me.
A draft blew at my hair. There were no lights in the tower.
A balustrade was wrapped around a kind of well in the floor; the draft was coming up from there. When I risked a glance, I saw that the well dropped straight down into an entrance hall. A squadron of Vigiles ran through it, shining their flashlights. As soon as they were gone, I hit the staircase, fighting the weakness in my body, my head spinning from exhaustion and pain. I forced myself to continue, gripping the rails to crane myself up every step. My muscles had wasted during my coma and imprisonment; my knees had almost forgotten how to carry me. When I fell the first time, I thought I wouldn’t get back up. My hands reached for the next step, but it seemed as if I was at the foot of a mountain, staring up at the distant summit.
You have risen from the ashes before.
I grasped the railing again. One step. Two steps.
The only way to survive is to believe you always will.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I fell to my knees and hunched over myself, trembling uncontrollably. There was light nearby. Almost there. I picked myself back up.
My soft footsteps broke the silence. I was at the highest level of the tower, right beneath its rooftop.
Now I could see that a glass pyramid, illuminated from beneath, made up the center of the ceiling. And there it was, suspended underneath that pyramid: the image I had seen in Warden’s dreamscape, stolen from the mind of Hildred Vance. The core. The entity that powered every scanner, all of Senshield. And now I was this close to it, I could sense what it was.
A spirit.
An immensely powerful spirit, somehow trapped inside a glass sphere. The æther around it was in turmoil, alive with vibrations. Our guesswork had been right.
This was it.
“Paige Mahoney.”
The back of my neck prickled.
I knew that voice.
A woman stepped from the shadows, into the pale light from above. It made her face skeletal.
“Hildred Vance,” I said softly.
She must have devised some way to hide her dreamscape from me. They knew so much more about the æther than we did.
Vance stood with a rod-straight back and no expression. I had convinced myself that I would be able to face the Grand Commander without fear, but sweat chilled my brow as we regarded each other. The iron hand of the anchor, the human embodiment of Rephaite ambition. The woman who was responsible for the murders of my father and my cousin.
A rigor went through me.
She had hunted me across the country. She had used my aura—my intimate and fragile connection to the æther—to enhance her machine. She had shaped my life since I was six years old.
Thirteen years later, she was finally in front of me.
Vance looked from the core to my face. The crow-black eyes regarded me with something I thought at first was contempt, but it wasn’t that. There was no heat in the stare. No passion. If Jaxon was right, and we were devils in the skins of men, then Vance had shed her skin already. I was in the presence of a human being who had spent far too much time among Rephaim. Decades too long.
She didn’t care enough for my life to feel anything toward me. Not even hatred. Her expression, if it could be called that, told me I was nothing to her but an enemy war asset that should have been destroyed.
“Even before I saw you in my dreamscape, I knew what you were searching for; what you planned to do. You wanted Senshield.” She glanced at it. “I confess, you almost had me fooled. You responded as anticipated to the march on Edinburgh: a replication of the events of the Dublin Incursion, calculated to make you surrender in order to avoid the same bloodshed you witnessed as a child. All went to plan. You appeared broken in mind and body. And yet . . . and yet, I suspected an ulterior motive.”
I watched her.
“The Trojan horse,” she said. “An ancient stratagem. You presented yourself like a gift to your enemy, and your enemy took you into their house. You realized that, after all your striving, if you were captured, we would take you right to the core—all you had to do was deliver yourself into our custody.” Her bony hands clasped behind her back. “Unavoidable civic duty called me away tonight. You used the opportunity to escape. I assume you had help from an ally in reaching this part of the building.”
“None,” I said. As I spoke, her gaze darted to the core again. “It’s brave of you to step out from behind the screen, Vance. And I have something to ask you, if you’ll indulge me. Do you remember the names of all the people whose lives you’ve stolen?”
Vance didn’t answer. She must have calculated that there was no strategic advantage to saying anything.
“You didn’t just kill my father, Cóilín Ó Mathúna. Thirteen years ago, you killed my cousin, Finn Mac Cárthaigh, and an unarmed woman named Kayley Ní Dhornáin.” Saying their names to her face made my voice quake. “You have killed thousands of innocent people—yet when I was in your dreamscape, it was my dream-form with blood on its hands. Do you really think I’ve taken more life than you have?”
Her silence continued.
She was waiting. I was trying to work out why, when I saw her gaze move, ever so slightly, back to the core. That was the fourth time.
She was nervous.
There really was a weakness. It could be destroyed.
Time seemed to slow as I looked at the core. I searched it with my eyes, then with my gift.
It took me a few moments to find the ectoplasm. A vial of it, locked inside the sphere, holding the spirit firmly in place and emanating a greenish light. One of Nashira’s boundlings—her fallen angels. I could feel the thousands of delicate connections that branched out around it, reaching toward every Senshield scanner in the citadel, in the country.
I didn’t know its name, so I couldn’t banish it. But surely if I destroyed the casing that imprisoned the spirit, it would disperse its energy into the æther and sever those connections.
Surely.
I raised my gun. At the same time, Vance pointed a pistol at my exposed torso.
“It will kill you,” she said, “and achieve nothing. The spirit will continue to obey the Suzerain. It will continue to power Senshield.”
I stayed very still.
She could be telling the truth. She could be bluffing.
“You will die in vain,” Vance said.
Perhaps I would.
But there had to be a reason she was suddenly talking, telling me how Senshield worked. There could be no gain in that. She would only be this free with her information if she was . . .
If she was lying.
And Hildred Vance only lied when it was necessary.
“You know a lot about human nature, Vance,” I said, taking my time over each word, “but you made one, fatal error in your calculations.”
She looked at the core, then back to me.
“You assumed,” I said, “that I had any interest in leaving here alive.”
Vance stared into my eyes. And somewhere in their depths, deep in those pits of darkness, was a flicker, just the softest flicker, of something I hadn’t truly believed she was capable of feeling.
Doubt.
It was doubt.
I pulled the trigger.
When the bullet struck it, the sphere broke apart, releasing years of bridled energy, and gave up the vial of ectoplasm. It shattered at my feet. I hurled myself to the floor and scrambled away from Vance’s gunfire, my fingers slipping through Rephaite blood. Before I could get up, the spirit, freed from its prison, came flying toward me—and seized me by the throat.
A poltergeist. It was enraged, murderous. The Suzerain had commanded it to stay, to power the machine, and I had disturbed it. It slammed me between the wall and the floor. I choked on blood. The gun flew out of my hand.
Vance was a strategist. She knew when to retreat. As she backed toward the door, the spirit cast me aside and raced across the room to slam it shut. Vance stopped dead. She was blind to the æther, unaware of where the threat would go next. Pulling myself on to my hands and knees, I looked up at what was left of the sphere.
She had been right; Senshield was still active. Its light remained as bright as ever.
“You belong to the Suzerain.” Vance addressed the spirit, her voice full of authority. “I am also her servant.”
I crawled across the floor, toward the gun.
If I was going to die tonight, I would take the Grand Commander with me.
My movements distracted the fallen angel. It whipped away from Vance, pitched me on to my back, and brought its weight to bear against my body. A wall of unseen pressure descended on me like a shroud. Sparks erupted from the wreckage of the sphere and threw wild shadows on the walls as the spirit smothered me inside and out, flinging my aura into a frenzy. Sweat froze on my skin. I couldn’t breathe. All I could see was the light from the core.
I didn’t know how to fight back. I didn’t know how to stop fighting, either. Desperately, I tried to dreamwalk, but I was so weak. All around us, the corporeal world was straining at the seams.
Veins of color glistened behind my eyelids. My dreamscape was on the verge of collapse. As the air was drained from my lungs, I saw Nick smiling at me in the courtyard, surrounded by blossoms, sunlight in his hair. My father, the last day I saw him alive. Eliza laughing at the market. I saw Warden, felt his hands framing my face and his lips seeking mine behind the red drapes. The amaranth in bloom. And I heard Jaxon’s voice:
Perhaps our game is only just beginning.
As my vision darkened, some small instinct made me hold out my left hand, as if I could push the spirit away. My arm was forced back, but I kept my palm turned outward. The scars there felt white-hot, scars I had received in a poppy field when I was a child.
And I felt something change. I was pushing it away.
The pain began as a tiny point, a needle pushing through the middle of my palm. As it grew, a wordless scream racked my body—and just for a moment, some of the pressure released. Just enough for me to gasp in one more breath. And with that breath, I whispered, “Go.”
What happened next was unclear. I remember watching the glass pyramid shatter. It must have exploded in a split second, but in my mind, it lasted for eternity. I was flung in one direction, Vance in the other.
Then came an arc of blinding white, and the world turned to oblivion.