Finn, she says, I’m going to make them pay.
Warden framed my face between his hands. The sleep-dealer was deep within the dark vaults of remembrance.
Listen to me, Paige. We have to change our names. His features blurring, distorting. Paige, it’s not enough. At school, you say your name differently. Mar-nee. Like an English name.
A Dhaid, scanraíonn an áit seo mé.
We don’t speak Irish any more. Not any more.
Spinning. I was falling into a whirlpool of memory. Down, down into the depths of decades.
Molly Mahoney! Molly Mahoney! Hands twisting her hair. She smells like death. They killed our soldiers. Jeering faces. Dirty boglander. Go back to your swamp, brogue. Never heard the word before now. Sounds so cruel, like a sentence, like a curse. An older girl shoving her, girl with parents in the army. Girl whose mother was in Dublin that day. Where’s your red hair, Molly Mahoney? Wash my mother’s blood out, did you, did you? Don’t want dirt like you in this school. My dad says you’ll kill us all.
Sounding out those syllables. Mar-nee. Mar-nee. Broken record. Don’t recognise this word. Not her name. Not a name. One day she will show them all this fire that lies inside her, fire that burns the inside of her skull and fills her to the brim with rage. One day she will haunt them to the grave.
One day I will show them what it means to be afraid.
Stop.
Reels of recollections, tapestries of colours. Somewhere in the vortex, I recalled myself. No more of this. With my last drop of conscious thought, I struggled against Warden’s influence, kicking free of the current. The golden cord burst into flame, and—
—darkness—
Water purling over stones, mirror-still and crystal-clear. No reflection; only a steep drop to the deep below, and a bed of stainless pearls.
Nothing lives. Everything is.
Cloud forest. Emerging-place. Instinct guides him here. Above, twilight – blue hour, time of Netherworld. Time without time.
Silhouettes of trees in the mist, taller than any Earth-tree. Amaranth. Before the conflict. Veils between this world and theirs. Nothing living here, and nothing dead.
Stranger. Dancing. Not his kin, but kith to his spirit. Dark hair stream-fast on sarx. Lilt of their bodies. Collision of dreamscapes. Feel of her, scent of her in the water. Her name is a song on his lips, a name not tamed by a fell tongue. Terebell and Arcturus, names they will bear when war has begun.
Beyond the veil, mortals sleep. When their lives end, Rephaim are waiting. Free of pain, free of sickness. Dislocated half-things. Wandering. They pine for a place where a falling sun puts them to sleep, where hunger never ends, where the ground waits to be fed with flesh—
I wrenched free of the memory and lurched to my feet, backing away from him until our auras ripped apart. Sweat and tears bathed my cheeks. Voices echoed through my ears; I tasted fear and smelled the blood and smoke again. The nightmare was over, but all of it was real.
‘How – how did you do that without salvia?’
‘I do not need salvia. It is an aid,’ he said. ‘No more.’
‘It’s not really your numen.’
‘No.’
My throat was a clenched fist. Everything in my body felt contracted with terror.
‘Paige.’
‘I remember everything. I saw—’ A single tear ran to my jaw. ‘A Rephaite. In Dublin.’
‘Gomeisa Sargas was there to bear witness to the Incursion, and was pleased with what he saw. Since then, Hildred Vance’s mind has been his most reliable weapon.’
My young mind must have closed down, locking the memories deep into my hadal zone. The streams of death, so great in number that the gutters had run red. The soldiers marching across the bridge; the vanguard riding stallions; hot breath steaming in the morning air. Babies and children, men and women – all of them dead. From under the statue of Molly Malone, I had watched the soldiers drag the bodies away to be dumped into the river, knowing that if I moved an inch, if I let out one sound, I would be among them. Butchery orchestrated by Hildred Vance, with Gomeisa Sargas pulling every string.
And it would happen again. Any day now, it would happen again.
The tears kept coming. I breathed as evenly as I could, dabbing my eyes with my sleeve.
‘I saw you in the Netherworld.’
The light in his eyes flickered. ‘The golden cord must have allowed you to mirror my gift.’
‘You were dancing with Terebell.’
‘She was my mate,’ he said, ‘long ago.’
I was too numb to absorb it, but part of me had known. There was no other reason for her to be so protective of him, to be so intimate with him. She wasn’t like that with any of the other Ranthen.
‘Why isn’t she your mate any more?’
Warden looked back at the citadel.
‘It is not wholly my tale to tell.’
There was a tender pressure at my temples. ‘I didn’t realise that you thought in Gloss,’ I said. ‘I know I couldn’t have understood your voice, or your thoughts, in my body – but with the golden cord, my spirit could make some sense of the language. Like a mental translation. It was like – like hearing a song I used to know—’
I buckled against him. Warden caught my arms, steadying me, and we knelt again.
‘All of this has already happened.’ My voice splintered in a way I couldn’t stand. ‘We – I can’t let Vance do it again, I can’t—’
‘You are still here. So is the Mime Order.’
I found myself leaning into him heavily, seeking out his heartbeat. His embrace was tight enough to warm me, but not so tight that I couldn’t pull away, as I should. As I must.
‘Why did you show me all of that?’
His hand came to the back of my head.
‘Because you needed to remember. To remember why you must be Underqueen.’ His voice rumbled through both of us. ‘You have known what it is to be a citizen of the free world and a denizen of Scion. A Londoner and a daughter of Ireland. A prisoner of Sheol I. A mollisher of I-4. You understand all that is at stake in the war to come, and why it is necessary. You know what it is like to live beyond Scion as well as within it. You know what the world could become if they are allowed to expand their domain.’
‘Other people have—’
‘No one else in the syndicate has your history with Jaxon Hall, who could now be the Sargas’s right hand. Only you watched Nashira kill a child because you refused to be her weapon.’ His gaze was inescapable. ‘You burn to destroy Scion. To avenge all that has been done to you. To undo the world they fashioned and reshape it. The Ranthen chose you. I chose you. Most importantly, you chose yourself. On the night of the scrimmage, you decided that you, not Jaxon, were the one to lead the syndicate.’
I had no argument to offer. The dive into my darkest memories had taken all my strength.