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His hold on me had been so powerful. Even now, I shrank from the idea that he could favour someone else; that he no longer thought I was special.

‘Fitzours sounds like precisely the sort of person we need. The person you have always lacked the spine and stomach to become,’ he went on. ‘He has embraced the whole of his gift, while you remain fearful of yours. You still have the stain of your amaurotic father on you.’

‘What, because I don’t want to use my gift to torture people?’

‘Because you are squeamish, Paige. Fitzours is using every advantage the æther granted him, and because of that commitment, he will always be the victor. And you wonder how I can believe Nashira will triumph.’ He drew on the cigar, and the end flared. ‘You two may be the keys to this conflict, but you refuse, as ever, to unlock the door.’

‘That’s my choice,’ I said coldly. ‘Tell me about Eliza.’

‘Eliza cut me off after the scrimmage,’ Jaxon said, ‘but she never changed the phone she had been using. After Versailles, I escaped to London, using a dissimulator from Scarlett Burnish. I was in London during the airstrikes, after which I asked Eliza if she was alive.’

That must have tested her resolve. She had always been most vulnerable to his manipulation.

‘She didn’t reply until a fortnight later,’ he said. ‘No one had seen or heard from you since the airstrikes, which troubled her enough to agree to a meeting. As a Scion denizen, she had no way of knowing about the red notice. I told her I would always help if she had need of me. I told her I was leaving Scion – Nashira hadconveniently placed a kill order on my head – and how I might be contacted in an emergency.’

I clenched my jaw.

‘Eliza held out as interim Underqueen. My sweet Martyred Muse, wanting to prove that she could be strong,’ he said. ‘And then, on the third of October, some of your subjects tried to kill her, wanting to return to the old ways. They did not fear her gift, as they feared yours.’

‘Who did it?’ I asked. ‘Your loyalists?’

‘No idea,’ Jaxon said. (I didn’t believe it.) ‘Eliza had slowly come to accept that you were never coming back. When Cordier informed me that Nick might be dead, his sub-network exposed by a spy, I made sure to pass on the bad news. The attack was the last straw, proving that even the Ranthen could not protect Eliza. To renounce her position, she had to choose either me or another scrimmage.’

‘You or—’ I stopped. ‘The reservation clause.’

‘Very good,’ he said. ‘During the scrimmage, you won the Spiritus Club over by knowing your syndicate law. I readA Concise History of Clairvoyanceagain myself, searching for any obscure way to snare the Rose Crown. Lo and behold, I found that clause.’

‘If the leader of the syndicate dies or disappears, their mollisher supreme takes the Rose Crown,’ I said quietly. ‘But if they can’t bear the burden of leadership, they can pass it to the last fighter standing in the Rose Ring, other than the victor. That fighter was you.’

‘Yes.’

That clause was the only way to avoid a scrimmage, and a scrimmage would have been too dangerous for Eliza to contemplate. The Mime Order might have collapsed in one fell swoop.

‘I had informed Eliza of the reservation clause,’ Jaxon said. ‘I had also told her how to reach and cross the Fluke, and left her with an Italian phone. The Glym Lord assisted her in leaving Scion, taking the route I had prepared.’

Glym had never liked Jaxon, but he wouldn’t have wanted to risk another scrimmage, and he would have been worried about Eliza. She couldn’t have visited a hospital in Scion.

That had to be why Terebell had suddenly been recalled to London. The other Ranthen could have dealt with the attack itself, but Eliza vanishing into thin air would have left the Mime Order without any of its leaders.

And Eliza would never have told them she was going to the man who had betrayed them.

‘Two days ago, Eliza called me from the Alps, hurt and terrified,’ he said. ‘I persuaded Sala to bring her here, so she could offer me the Rose Crown.’

My heart pounded. With Eliza gone, no one in London had a right to the Rose Crown.

The entire underworld now hung in the balance.

‘Your escape was annoying,’ Jaxon admitted, ‘but I had already set the stage for your return. During your absence, I was chipping away at the Council of Kassandra, trying to convince them to support my bid to take London back. I had seeded an idea of you as an inexperienced and unstable leader, a reckless little puppet of the Rephaim, whose disappearance was a blessing in disguise. And by attacking me just now … you have made them wonder if I was right.’

My eyes closed. I should never have punched him, but I hadn’t been able to see past my rage.

‘So you’ve been dripping poison into their ears for months, all so I could be reshaped once you got me to Rome.’ I huffed. ‘It really would have been much easier to kill me.’

‘But not half as much fun.’ Jaxon blew out smoke. ‘Don’t judge Eliza too harshly. She truly believed there was no other way. In any case, she owes me far more than you understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘When you were in Oxford, you heard the rumours about me. The wicked traitor who betrayed the Ranthen to save his own skin … but there was another survivor of that Bone Season.’