A key with a flower-shaped bow fitted the lock. I turned it and pushed both doors open.
Once you reach the city, you are to take one action, and one only. You are to assassinate the official in charge of it.
The Hall of Mirrors stretched before me. Ahead, gilded sculptures held salvers of buttery candles, offering them up to a baroque ceiling. To my right, mirror after mirror captured their glow, divided by pilasters, facing a line of arched windows. Chandeliers flickered and sparkled overhead, laden with cut-glass embellishments, not yet illuminated for the night. Ménard must have replaced the ones the perdues had looted.
The music stopped. Each footstep echoed. As I crossed the floor, my reflection walked beside me, stiletto in hand. The woman in the glass was filthy and haunted, copper hair tangled from the journey through the carrières, more urchin than an assassin.
One of the mirrors doubled as a folding door. A man sauntered through it, cigar in hand. He wore a green lounging robe over pressed trousers and polished shoes.
“Hello, Jax,” I said quietly.
Jaxon looked me up and down. And there was that smile. Like that of a father beholding his child.
“Paige.” My name left him in a whisper of smoke. The dragon in his lair. “There you are, wayward daughter. Welcome, O my lovely, to the realm of the forsaken. Welcome to Sheol II.”
19
Hell or High Water
Jaxon Hall had been gaunt when I had last seen him in the Westminster Archon. Now the gray in his hair was black again, and his cheeks had filled out a little. Yet still there was something drained about him, as if he were a garment put through one too many washes. No glimmer in his eye. Neither mischief nor malice on his fine-cut lips. He was just a man.
Just one man.
“You were expecting me.” I broke the silence first. “So soon?”
“Of course,” Jaxon said. “I told you I would be in France. I extended you an invitation.” His gaze flew over my face. “You look well. Better than you did at our last reunion, in any case.”
“I could say the same for you.” I kept the stiletto out of sight. “Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep.”
“Oh, ma chère traîtresse, never mistake a lack of respectable daywear for indolence. I was up all day doing the sort of tedious paperwork that comes hand in hand with immense power.” He rubbed his shadowed eyes with his free hand. “Sleep is quite the extravagance nowadays.”
“Well, I didn’t think it was your conscience keeping you awake.”
“Did the weight of the crown wring your skull of everything I taught you?” Jaxon said, with an air of irritation. “Morals, Paige, are for the lucky ones. Conscience is for those who have the luxury of choice.”
“And what are you if not a lucky one, here in your shining palace?”
“One who climbed to these heights from nothing. One who works in the dark, unacknowledged.” Thunder rolled outside. “I have always fought for the preservation of our kind, thankless though it is.”
It was all too easy to imagine that the two of us were the only people in the palace. In the world. There was no sound here, among the mirrors, save the storm. There were worse places to die. I thought of the silver pill in my pocket, and I wished I could offer it to him. It would be cleaner than what had to come next.
“You have red tears,” Jaxon said, impassive. “Did one of those Rephaite brutes use your aura?”
I wiped my cheek. “As if you care.”
“If I didn’t care about you, Paige, would I have butchered nine people for you?”
“Please don’t try to impress me with that again. You didn’t even bother to butcher them yourself.”
“Why bloody my hands when others are so willing to do it for me, darling?”
“True. We all did your dirty work for so long, I can understand how you got used to it.”
I walked a short way past him. Jaxon observed me, but stayed where he was, cigar aglow.
“I thought I’d find you in the King’s Apartment,” I said. “We all know what happens to kings in Scion . . . but you never can resist a throne, can you?”
“Well, you did steal mine from under me. It was only proper that I reigned elsewhere.” His tone was light, but his stance told a different story. He was ready to counter me with his boundlings. “Congratulations on finding me. I would ask how you did it, out of academic interest, but I now know—as Scion does—that you will never share what you would sooner keep a secret.”
His words woke something deep inside me. A small and flightless something that cried out to be nurtured.
“Did you know what they were doing to me, Jax?” Sleet washed down the windows, reflected by the mirrors. “Did you have any notion of what they were doing in that basement?”
Jaxon, for once, had no answer. I made out his dimly lit profile in the nearest mirror.
“They poured foul water down my throat until I choked on my own vomit. Starved me. Beat me. Left me in my own filth in the freezing dark. For days. All while you were living in luxury.”
“And would you undo it, Paige, if you could?” The question was perverse in its tenderness. “Or has it made you stronger?”
Unexpected heat prickled in my eyes.
“You did,” I whispered. “You did know.” Suddenly the stiletto was out, and I lunged for him, ready to skewer his shriveled heart, all thoughts of mercy gone. “Cléir cháinte. You were like a father to me—”
Before I knew it, he had dropped his cigar to catch my wrist, and I froze as if I were still a young girl, terrified of his wrath.
“Make no mistake, Paige,” he said, “that if anyone is your father, I am. A father protects his progeny. A father sees potential and nurtures it. A father seeks justice for the sorrow of his child. The pointless amaurotic that sired you did none of those things. Who did?” His hand was cold. “All you have suffered, all you have survived—all of it has armored you. Who can break you now, Black Moth, now there is nothing left to break?”
At this, my other hand—my weaker hand—came up. He went very still as my revolver touched the underside of his chin.
“There is one thing left to break,” I said. “Whatever irrational affection I still have for you.”
Jaxon raised his eyebrows.
“I was sent here to kill you, Jax,” I said.
The storm loomed right over the palace. All I could hear, beneath the thunder, was the roar of my own blood.
“To kill me.” Jaxon smiled. “Come, Paige. We both know this is posturing. You had a golden opportunity to end my life during the scrimmage, but mercy stayed your hand.”
“Perhaps I’ve changed.”
“Oh, yes, Underqueen. Anyone could see it. You transform yourself to weather the seasons, just as I do.” Lightning stripped his face to the pallor of bone. “I almost hoped, when I saw you here, that you might have accepted the offer I extended in London. To save yourself.”
“Surely you know me better than that.”
“Of course,” Jaxon said, soft as a lullaby. “I know you better than anyone, my Pale Dreamer.”
“I have one regret,” I said. “That I still don’t understand you. I’ve never bought the idea that you were just another mindless follower of the Rephaim. Authority always chafed on you, Jax.”
“I thought the same of you. Yet you say you were sent to kill me.” Jaxon seemed unruffled by the gun. “Who commands you?”
As he spoke, I checked the æther. The others were all in the north wing. Still no sign of the flare.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All of us are puppets in the Republic of Scion.” I held his gaze. “I’m onto your right-hand man, too. The Rag and Bone Man. Or should I call him Mister Rackham?”
“So you are now a contract killer.” Jaxon looked intrigued by the prospect. “How the plot thickens. Will you really not indulge me, darling, and tell me who it is that wants me off the board?”
“I’ve indulged you more than enough in this lifetime.”
Just one bullet.
In just one man.
“If you want to claim a nice bounty for Rackham, it’s no skin off my nose,” Jaxon said. The cigar smoked on the floor between us. “He had his uses, but he has been more of a liability than an asset for some time now—and the only thing I despise more than incompetence is incompetent audacity. He tried to have you murdered. You ought to claim your vengeance for it.”
“I’ve you to deal with first.” I pressed the revolver a little harder into his chin. “Haven’t I?”
“Honeybee, I taught you better than this. I taught you respect for the finer things in life, and what it takes to win them.”
My grip on the gun tightened. I had once told him that my father called me seileán—honeybee—and he had stolen it.
“If you must be so gauche as to shed blood in such a charming location,” Jaxon continued, “at least have the decency to do it with your spirit.” His smile was strained. “How dull it would be for a man of my reputation to die by something as insufferably amaurotic as a gun.”
“I can’t do that.” I raised a bleak smile of my own. “I would, Jax, if I could.”
“My murder is intended to send a message, then.” His gaze sliced to the doors. “No need to explain yourself any further. I believe I know who is pulling your strings.”
I turned.
Arcturus had arrived, still holding his swords. Rephaite blood streaked his face like war paint.
“Arcturus Mesarthim.” Jaxon let out a soft laugh, drawing me back. “My, my. It is you.”
I used the distraction to break his grip and step away from him. Jaxon seemed too diverted by the reunion to notice.
It was jarring to see them both in the same place, these people who had left such deep and disparate impressions on my life. After more than twenty years, Arcturus was face-to-face with the traitor who had crushed his faith in humans, whose selfishness had caused him untold suffering.
“Jaxon Hall.” His tone was curt. “You looked different when I saw you last. I did not know your name then.”
“You look just the same. How delightful to meet in person,” Jaxon said congenially, as if we were all sharing a drink in a coffeehouse. “I did glimpse you in the colony, but always from a distance.” He had the impudence to smile. “Still in chronic agony from the scars, I trust.”
“As it pleases the blood-sovereign.”
“You have some fucking nerve, Jaxon.” The words raked up my throat. “To stand there with a smirk on your face after the endless betrayals, the gray market, the laundering of voyants—”
“I have shed my skin many times. Underneath, I remain a serpent. My nature, darling. Inescapable.” Jaxon gave me the look I had once craved from him, that look of approval and pride. “So you uncovered the laundering. Clever of you. She is clever, beneath all that exhausting valor,” he added conspiratorially to Arcturus, “but then, I did teach her. It seems you have failed to learn any lessons, Arcturus, when it comes to placing your trust in human beings.”
I raised the revolver again. “You—”
“Peace, Paige,” Arcturus said. “He can do no more harm than he has already inflicted on me.”
“Austere as ever, I see.” Jaxon let out a dark chuckle. “And ever in need of human faces for your revolutions. You are a peddler of masks. A ventriloquist. A bodyguard without a cause, purposeless—pointless, really—since the fall of the Mothallath.”
Arcturus was very still, an iron cast to his features. Eyes bright as fire, yet devoid of warmth.
“Oh, yes,” Jaxon said, clearly savoring this. “I know all about your family. Loyal to the very end. Blindly devoted to old ways and indifferent gods, and all but extinguished because of it. Still, you seem to have won the eternal loyalty of my mollisher, the new recipient of your so-called protection.” Another crooked smile. “Do you know what he can become, Paige?”
“Yeah, I got that memo, thanks.” My hand was clammy. “How long have you known?”
“Since my first day in Sheol I. Clear as starlight.”
“Of course. Clever you.”
“You would have guessed, too, prodigal daughter, had your wits not been dulled by misplaced affection.” He stared back at Arcturus, his gaze cold. “Would that I could go back and butcher Hector Grinslathe with my own hands this time. Not just because he stole Paige, but because he delivered her to Sheol I, to you. And look at what she has become under your . . . tutelage. So righteous. So much more liable to die in some pointlessly heroic manner.”
“I see what Paige has become,” Arcturus said, “and it has nothing to do with either of us, Jaxon.”
“Does it not trouble you that she was my puppet long before she was yours?” Jaxon asked him, silken. “Do you never catch a glimpse of me in her? Do you never feel even a stirring of disgust toward her for not being able to hate me—to kill me—for what I did to you?”
“We’ll see about that,” I said.
Jaxon looked back at me, right into my eyes. “What could possibly make you think you have it in you, Underqueen?” he sneered. “You, who are so wedded to your newfound ideals?”
“Because Arcturus is wrong,” I said, very softly. “Because you made me, Jaxon Hall. Because I am your monster.”
His pupils were bullet holes.
“I should be wounded by your threats,” he reflected, “but no. No, not wounded. I am proud of you, my Pale Dreamer.” And he was. Pride glittered in his eyes and hooked the corners of his mouth. “Come. Ignore the order to murder me. Elect not to waste any more time on a lifelong failure like Arcturus Mesarthim.” He held out a hand. “Let me show you my true intentions at last, O my lovely. The plans I have been formulating.”
“You know how I’ll respond to that offer, Jax. You’ve made it once before.”
Jaxon grabbed hold of my arm. Arcturus moved forward. I thrust out a hand to stop him.
“There is more to this,” Jaxon said under his breath. “This conflict is about to change, Paige. Every numen sings of it—the dream of the end, the war of the veils.” My skin broke out in gooseflesh. “Face it by my side. What is a mollisher, after all, without a mime-lord?”
Behind him, a red light burned to life above the gardens, turning the rain on the windows to blood.
“Free,” I said, “to rule herself.”
I stepped back, breaking his grip with one wrench, and pointed the revolver straight at his heart.
Jaxon made no further attempts to dissuade me. For once, his face was blank. He was the White Binder, and he was above fear. I held the revolver with both hands and pulled the hammer back.
“I know things, Paige. About you. About your family,” Jaxon said. “Shoot me, and the secret goes to the æther.”
“Don’t you dare,” I forced out, “mention family. You don’t understand the concept.”
“Did I not make you a new one?”
My hands trembled. The world narrowed down the end of the gun and the blur of the face before me. There was no strength in my arms, my hands. Jaxon was still alive, and his smile was returning, and time was running out.
He had left all the humans of the first colony to die, and the Ranthen to suffer for twenty years. He had divided and preyed on the syndicate for coin. Time and time again, he had proven what he was.
And yet suddenly I knew I couldn’t shoot him in cold blood. If this was another scrimmage, or if we had met on a battlefield, I might have been able to justify taking his life. Not like this.
Defeat crashed over me in waves. Disgusted by my own weakness, I held out the gun to Arcturus.
“I can’t,” I said stiffly. “He’s yours. If you want your revenge, take it now.”
After a silence, Arcturus took the revolver from my hand and studied Jaxon, who lifted his chin.
“You wouldn’t do it. Not to her,” Jaxon purred. “Perhaps if it was just the two of us. No doubt yo
ur hatred of me has deepened over twenty years, each twinge in your scars refining it, honing it.”
Arcturus turned the revolver over, so it caught the light. He did not aim it. Neither did he let go of it.
“Your rage is a dark thing, Rephaite,” Jaxon said, toneless now. His face was devoid of emotion. “It has matured like wine in a deep cellar, locked away for decades. Perhaps you would tear me to pieces, like the mindless beast you can become.” He stepped toward Arcturus, palms turned out, and nodded to me. “But will you indulge your grudge in front of Paige? Will you reveal your inhumanity by murdering the only father she has left?”
“Don’t listen,” I said to Arcturus. “He’s trying to get into your head. If you want to kill him, do it.”
The silence seemed to go on for eons. Jaxon was still now. I waited, taut as wire, for the gunshot. For the burnt and bitter smell of death.
When Arcturus folded the gun back into my numb hand, my knees almost gave way.
“I told you,” he said quietly. “There are always other ways to fight.” He took a step back. “I will not kill an unarmed human. Not even this one. I am no Sargas. If that makes me a fool, so be it.”
Jaxon attempted to look unmoved, but his chest sank as he released a long-held breath.
“A lovely sentiment. I can see why you two are so fond of each other,” he remarked, his voice tinged with a darkness I remembered. “But once again, Arcturus . . . ghastly decision-making.”
He pressed two fingers to the crease of his arm. As the warmth drained from the air, frost clouded every mirror and crystallized the condensation on the windows. He had summoned a boundling.
“Stop,” I barked. “Jaxon, you snake—”
Too late. It had already come.
I knew it by the shape in the æther. The same poltergeist I had encountered at the scrimmage. The essence of a man who had torn five women apart and congealed into an all-consuming black hole.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“Defend me, my friend,” Jaxon called to it, “and drive out the intruders.” His fingertips were still pressed to his forearm. “I brought you an old playfellow, but if you could remove the lady from my presence first . . .”
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