“Breathe in,” he said. My hands went to his shoulders. “Paige, look at me.” I tried, through a dark haze. “Breathe in. Slowly.”
Easier said than done. I managed to inhale, but it did little to wring out the soaked cloth of my lungs.
“Good,” he said. “This will pass.” I had to blink several times before I believed he was really there. “Breathe out.”
His voice guided me back to myself. My fingers dug into his shoulders. When the surge of terror had receded, Warden drew back, his shirt wet from my touch, and saw the extent of my injuries.
His gaze darted to mine, asking permission. I gave a small nod. He took in every cut and bruise on my upper body, lingering for no longer than necessary, ending on my ravaged wrists.
“Who did this?”
The pitch of his voice was so low, it was little more than a vibration. “Vigiles,” I said. “Sometimes for information. Sometimes for the fun of it. Suhail was the one who … poured.”
Banked heat flickered in his eyes.
“You must be angry with me,” I said. “For giving myself up to Scion. For not telling anyone I had a plan.”
His attention dropped to my hands, which rested on his wrists. Half of my fingernails were black.
“I resented you. For eluding us all,” he said. “For knowing exactly what she does to those who defy her, yet still gambling with your life, all for a strategy with little chance of success.”
“I don’t regret it.” I whispered the confession. “It was the only way to destroy Senshield, and it had to be then.”
“To those of us who care for you, your life would not have been an acceptable exchange for that victory. Every night, I wished you had not thought it was. That you had not done it.” With the barest touch, Warden lifted my chin. “I also expected nothing less of you.”
I managed a short-lived smile.
With him beside me, I was calmer. All I wanted now was to be out of the water and into a bed. Warden moved to sit on the floor, while I reached for a cake of soap.
“Jaxon was in the Archon. He told me things.” The bathwater rusted around me. “He said it was the spirit of the Ripper that scarred you twenty years ago.”
Warden was silent for a long time.
“We were hung in chains to await our punishment, to learn whether we would be sequestered—executed—for our crimes,” he said. “That was not our fate. The Sargas do not destroy their fellow Rephaim lightly.”
“Nashira destroyed Alsafi.”
The skirr of her blade. The thump of his head. I had barely known Alsafi, yet he had sacrificed himself to buy me a chance to escape.
“That, I imagine, was a rare instance of passion. His betrayal must have incensed her,” Warden said. “No, the scars were a far more imaginative solution to our disloyalty, marking us forever as traitors.”
“Did you ever stop seeing the room where it happened?” I dragged a cloth up my arm. “Did you ever stop thinking you were still trapped there?”
Another silence.
“Some rooms,” he said at last, “are hard to leave.”
At least he was honest.
“I’m going to try to wash my hair,” I said. “I think I’m all right now.”
“Very well.”
He left me to it. With what little strength I had left, I dumped shampoo on my head and scrubbed my scalp until it stung, forcing myself to keep scouring and rinsing until all the blood and grime was gone. Only then did I let the water drain and slither out of the bath.
For a long while, I sat on the floor, shattered. It had taken so much to do something that had once been effortless. Fatigue rushed over me. Almost drunk with it, I levered myself up on straw legs, hair dripping. A bead of blood welled between the stitches on my arm.
Only once, in the three weeks I had been detained, had I been allowed to clean my teeth. The bristles on the brush turned pink. When I had used about a pint of mouthwash, I towel-dried my hair and drew on the nightshirt, pulling the buttons through the wrong holes.
I was dead on my feet by the time I emerged. Warden led me into a darkened room with a high ceiling, where a double bed waited by a window, heaped with blankets and pillows.
“You ought to sleep.” He let go of me. “You will feel your injuries soon.”
The space between us was taut with the knowledge of what was to come. Not just the war beyond the window—a war that would not wait for me to heal—but the one my body was about to wage against me.
“I will bring you a heat pad,” Warden said. I pressed my ribs. “Do you need anything else?”
“No.” I looked up at him, so tired I could hardly focus. “Warden … I know Terebell must have only let you come with me because none of the other Ranthen wanted the job. And I know it must be embarrassing to be demoted to minding a human.” Speaking was starting to hurt. “It might take me a while to recover. I don’t know if I ever will.”
“It is no demotion. No dishonor,” he said. “And you will not rush your recovery on my account.”
The gentleness in his voice almost broke me. Too exhausted for restraint, I turned back to him and nestled against his chest. Just for a minute, I wanted to be held. I wanted to convince myself that he was really with me, and not a drug-induced illusion. His arms came around me.
“Forgive me, little dreamer.” His voice resonated through us both. “For letting them take you.”
I closed my eyes. “I gave you no choice.”
His hand was a reassuring weight between my shoulders. I listened to his steady heartbeat, and mine slowed.
At length, I sat on the bed. Droplets seeped past my collar. Before I could swallow my pride and ask, Warden left the room and returned with a comb and a blow-dryer.
“You don’t have to,” I murmured.
“I am aware.” Warden sat at my side. “Lean on me.”
I did. Heat gusted through my hair. I sat between his arms, heavy-eyed and leaden, until he switched off the blow-dryer and guided me to the pillows.
“Sleep this way if you can.” He used them to prop me up. “It will make breathing easier.”
I was too drowsy to so much as nod. My hair feathered warmly against my cheek.
For a long time, I waited for the trap to spring. It was too much to hope, or to believe, that I could be warm and clean and safe. The part of my brain where fear dwelled was telling me, even now, that this room was a figment of a desperate imagination—that I was alone and condemned, and the executioner was on his way.
No one came. Outside, Paris was awake, and birdsong fluttered through the window.
Before the pain could reach me, I was gone.
PART I
To Pay Thee Free
Oh yes, I’ve got some gold for thee,
Some money for to pay thee free;
I’ll save thy body from the cold clay ground,
And thy neck from the gallows-tree.
– Child Ballad 95,
“The Maid Freed from the Gallows”
1
Beyond the Sea
SCION CITADEL OF PARIS
JANUARY 14, 2060
A blade flashed, kindled bright by moonshine. Death lathed thin and sleek. I thrashed against my chains, retching as if I had been washed up by the tide. Someone was stabbing me.