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One of the mirrors doubled as a folding door. A man sauntered through it, cigar in hand. He wore a green lounging robe over pressed trousers and polished shoes.

“Hello, Jax,” I said quietly.

Jaxon looked me up and down. And there was that smile. Like that of a father beholding his child.

“Paige.” My name left him in a whisper of smoke. The dragon in his lair. “There you are, wayward daughter. Welcome, O my lovely, to the realm of the forsaken. Welcome to Sheol II.”

19

Hell or High Water

Jaxon Hall had been gaunt when I had last seen him in the Westminster Archon. Now the gray in his hair was black again, and his cheeks had filled out a little. Yet still there was something drained about him, as if he were a garment put through one too many washes. No glimmer in his eye. Neither mischief nor malice on his fine-cut lips. He was just a man.

Just one man.

“You were expecting me.” I broke the silence first. “So soon?”

“Of course,” Jaxon said. “I told you I would be in France. I extended you an invitation.” His gaze flew over my face. “You look well. Better than you did at our last reunion, in any case.”

“I could say the same for you.” I kept the stiletto out of sight. “Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep.”

“Oh, ma chère traîtresse, never mistake a lack of respectable daywear for indolence. I was up all day doing the sort of tedious paperwork that comes hand in hand with immense power.” He rubbed his shadowed eyes with his free hand. “Sleep is quite the extravagance nowadays.”

“Well, I didn’t think it was your conscience keeping you awake.”

“Did the weight of the crown wring your skull of everything I taught you?” Jaxon said, with an air of irritation. “Morals, Paige, are for the lucky ones. Conscience is for those who have the luxury of choice.”

“And what are you if not a lucky one, here in your shining palace?”

“One who climbed to these heights from nothing. One who works in the dark, unacknowledged.” Thunder rolled outside. “I have always fought for the preservation of our kind, thankless though it is.”

It was all too easy to imagine that the two of us were the only people in the palace. In the world. There was no sound here, among the mirrors, save the storm. There were worse places to die. I thought of the silver pill in my pocket, and I wished I could offer it to him. It would be cleaner than what had to come next.

“You have red tears,” Jaxon said, impassive. “Did one of those Rephaite brutes use your aura?”

I wiped my cheek. “As if you care.”

“If I didn’t care about you, Paige, would I have butchered nine people for you?”

“Please don’t try to impress me with that again. You didn’t even bother to butcher them yourself.”

“Why bloody my hands when others are so willing to do it for me, darling?”

“True. We all did your dirty work for so long, I can understand how you got used to it.”

I walked a short way past him. Jaxon observed me, but stayed where he was, cigar aglow.

“I thought I’d find you in the King’s Apartment,” I said. “We all know what happens to kings in Scion . . . but you never can resist a throne, can you?”

“Well, you did steal mine from under me. It was only proper that I reigned elsewhere.” His tone was light, but his stance told a different story. He was ready to counter me with his boundlings. “Congratulations on finding me. I would ask how you did it, out of academic interest, but I now know—as Scion does—that you will never share what you would sooner keep a secret.”

His words woke something deep inside me. A small and flightless something that cried out to be nurtured.

“Did you know what they were doing to me, Jax?” Sleet washed down the windows, reflected by the mirrors. “Did you have any notion of what they were doing in that basement?”

Jaxon, for once, had no answer. I made out his dimly lit profile in the nearest mirror.

“They poured foul water down my throat until I choked on my own vomit. Starved me. Beat me. Left me in my own filth in the freezing dark. For days. All while you were living in luxury.”