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The Buzzers were howling, held off by the last of my willpower. Soon I would be ripped apart. Arcturus might even be the one to devour me, once he turned. Perhaps we could hold out just long enough for the explosion. It would be clean and quick that way. I hoped that it would take him; that he wouldn’t be left with pieces of me.

‘I’m still glad we met.’ I shut my eyes. ‘And I would do it all again.’

Arcturus gathered me to his chest, shielding as much of me as he could. I pressed the last of my knives into his grasp.

‘You have to do it,’ I whispered. He gripped the back of my head. ‘Don’t let them eat me alive.’

He said nothing, but kept hold of the blade.

The Buzzers pushed closer, fighting the invisible resistance from my dreamscape. The small circle of space I had carved out for us was closing.

I remembered this feeling of hope being lost, the night I thought Arcturus had betrayed me. A fear that I was abandoned. As I risked a glance at the Buzzers, I felt it once more, stronger than ever.

And then an echo of it. As if something had seen and understood my pain.

Help us.

Arcturus looked down at me. The golden cord was moving like it never had before. It encircled the two of us, binding us even closer together, before it suddenly went taut. His eyes burst into flame. My spirit ignited with them, lighting up my entire dreamscape.

An exquisite agony gripped my skull. My hair crackled. I drew a deep breath. The walls of my dreamscape seemed to break down, and as I screamed through my teeth, power erupted – power beyond my control, a pressure so impossibly strong it seemed to swallow my whole being before it burst its banks. It slammed into the Buzzers with the torrenting force of the whole Tiber. Arcturus was still holding me, but if he said a word, I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t even hear the Buzzers any longer. I was thousands of years away from myself.

I could not say exactly what happened next. I know I tasted blood again, and then the world just disappeared.

30

NO HARD FEELINGS

CASTELPORZIANO

26October 2060

I woke to the sound of a heart monitor. My body felt so heavy, I doubted I would ever move again, but I managed to crack my eyes open.

‘Paige.’

I blinked, my lashes thick with sleep. Nick was at my side.

‘Arcturus,’ I rasped. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s okay, sötnos.’

A sound of relief escaped me, turning into a groan when a deep cold seared across my back.

‘Cade attacked you,’ I said.

‘I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt, but he only glanced off my dreamscape.’ He kept his voice slow and clear. ‘Paige, you’re at the presidential estate of Castelporziano. You’ve been out for three days. A Buzzer clawed your back, one of your heel bones is bruised, and I’ve put your left arm in a sling, to help prevent any further damage to your wrist.’

That explained about half the pain. I tried to recall what had happened, through the migraine that clotted my temples, the sludge of sedatives.

‘Terebell,’ I said, after a pause.

‘She’s gone.’ There were dark circles under his eyes. ‘The Buzzers took her to the Netherworld.’

I let it sink in, a bitter taste in my mouth.

Terebell had been a fixture of my journey. From the night she had first protected me in Oxford, she had always been there, even if we had never been friends. And now she was gone, senselessly murdered, just as I had thought we might be reaching a place of mutual respect.

‘The Ranthen have no leader.’ I closed my eyes. ‘That’s it. The Mime Order is finished.’