The basement with its blind gray walls. The light, so bright it scored circles on my vision. And the water—I was choking on it. Suhail Chertan loomed from the shadows and stretched a gloved hand toward the lever.
Instinct led me to the lamp. My bedroom in Paris snapped into relief. As quickly as the fear had hit, I remembered that the shackles were only sheets, that the blade and the white-knuckled hand that grasped it were both mine, and that I was fighting my own memory.
Cold sweat dripped from my hair. Each breath strained through leagues of bruising. The alarm clock glowed—12:23 a.m.—and I was gripping the knife I kept under my pillow.
Some nights it was the waterboard, or the bleach-white room where the Vigiles had beaten me. Some nights it was the Dublin Incursion. I would have taken insomnia over this: sleeping too deeply and for too long, only to wake with no tether to reality, half-trapped in the past.
The door to my room opened. “Paige.”
I wiped my brow with my cuff.
“I’m all right,” I said. “I just thought—” Wisps of my hair clung to my temples. “Was I screaming?”
“No. You were speaking.”
In the Archon, I had not asked for mercy. In my sleep, I often did.
“Since you are awake, I wonder if you would care to join me in the parlor,” Warden said. “Unless you wish to rest.”
“No, it’s fine. I won’t be sleeping again.” I coughed. “Give me a minute.”
“I will need ten. Wear a coat.”
This was mysterious even for him. Curiosity kindled, I untangled myself from the sheets.
The safe house was on Rue Gît-le-Cœur, in the ancient heart of Paris, a skip and a jump from the River Seine. Two weeks had passed since our arrival. In that time, I had seen no evidence of neighbors. Past whatever legal shadows were in place, I suspected all the nearest buildings belonged to Scarlett Burnish, or the organization that secretly employed her.
The Domino Program. The network of spies that supported Burnish and had ordered her to get me out of the Westminster Archon. As yet, I had no idea what they wanted from me—only that they had risked a valuable agent to save me from the executioner.
Once I was warmly dressed, I went to the parlor. A sweet scent hung in the air, the record player crooned, and a note waited on the table.
The locked door.
I raised an eyebrow.
One door in the parlor had been locked when we arrived. Now it was ajar. I padded up the wooden stairs beyond, to a deserted attic, and climbed a ladder into the night.
Warden gave me a hand through the hatch. We stood side by side on the roof of the safe house, beneath the stars.
“Well, look at that,” I breathed. “Who knew we had a view like this?”
The snow-covered quay trimmed the river with lace. Beyond it were the louring rooftops of the Île de la Citadelle, home of the Inquisitorial Courts and the Guild of Vigilance.
“I suppose Domino did not mean for us to access the roof,” Warden said, “but when I found the key, I thought we might use it to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
He nodded to something behind me. I turned.
On a flat section of the roof, overlooking the Seine, a rug had been rolled out. Candles flickered in jars around dishes of food, which surrounded a small and ornately decorated cake.
It was past midnight. My twentieth birthday. After everything, it had slipped my mind.
“I know this is a modest celebration.” Warden spoke to the chimney. “After all you have endured, you deserve—”
“Warden.” I gave his wrist a brief squeeze. “It’s perfect.”
That made him look back at me. No smile. Unlike humans, Rephaim rarely signaled their thoughts or emotions through facial expressions, but his features softened a little—at least, I liked to think they did. I liked to think I was learning to read him.
“Many happy returns of the day, then, Paige,” he said.
“Thank you.”
We sat on the rug, Warden with his back against the chimney. I swung my legs over the edge of the roof and basked in sweet, unbottled air. He knew I had been restless indoors. Here, I could lie under the stars without risk.
He had somehow assembled a picnic for me. A cheese board accompanied by sliced bread and butter. A bowl of crisp salad, tiny potatoes and hard-boiled eggs nestled among its leaves. Pears and red apples and oranges. Pastries so delicate they looked as if they would vanish if I picked them up. There was even a dish of sugar-roasted chestnuts—my favorite.
“Where did you get all this?” I went straight for a chestnut. “Don’t tell me you made it from scratch.”
“I am not so impressive. Albéric delivered it at my request.”
Albéric was the contact who provided our supplies. Even though all our requests had been fulfilled—Warden had illegal wine, I had coffee—I had never seen our mysterious benefactor come or go.
“Cake was, apparently, not available,” Warden continued. “I acquired this one elsewhere.”
A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. “Are you saying you stole me a birthday cake?”
“A tribute to your vocation, Underqueen.”
My smile widened.
We listened to Paris. Citadels were never silent. Blue tone, Nadine called it—that low and ceaseless roar, like one long exhalation, the rush of lifeblood through vein-like streets. Sirens and traffic and an undersong of voices from the transmission screens, which spoke all the way through the night. I took a bite from a wheel-shaped pastry filled with praline cream.
“A drink?”
Warden was holding a silver jug. “What is it?” I asked.
“Le chocolat chaud.” His voice deepened when he spoke French. “Do you care for chocolate?”
“I do,” I confirmed.
He poured some into a gold-rimmed demitasse and passed it to me. It was thick and sweet as molasses. I sipped it between bites of food.
For our first week here, I had barely eaten. Now I was ravenous. Once I had sampled everything, I made a start on the cake, which was swathed in coffee-flavored icing. It had been a long time since I tasted something so good, something meant to give pleasure.
“What would happen if you had a bit of this?” I asked Warden as I cut a second wedge.
“I would rather not say while you are eating.”
“Now I’m really curious.”
He waited until I had finished my next mouthful before he said, “I would vomit.”
A surprised laugh burst out of me. “You’re joking.”
“I think we can agree that humor is not my forte.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You have a firm handle on unintentional humor.” A gust of wind blew my hair into my eyes. “So you’d throw up if you tried to eat. But you can drink.”
“Nothing thicker than broth. I cannot digest solid food.”
“Do you not have a stomach?”
“I do not know which organs I possess in your terms. Rephaim have never consented to physical examination by humans. Nashira prefers to keep our anatomy a well-guarded secret.”
“Right. Otherwise we might be able to design weapons that can harm you.”
“Precisely.”
I had so much to learn about the Rephaim. Now I had Warden to myself, I meant to caulk the gaps in my knowledge.