Page 237 of The Bone Season

‘I came here for my dreamwalker, not to adopt the great unwashed.’

Even knowing Jaxon as I did, his tone hit me like a punch to the chest. I looked at him as if for the first time. A man on the edge, all his focus on himself and his own. He expected me to abandon the others.

‘Jaxon,’ I said hotly, ‘they’re voyants—’

‘A rabble of the lowest sort, along with some amaurotics, of all things. What do you expect they’ll do to earn their keep in London, Paige?’

Liss on the floor, bleeding from her cracked skull.The first card in the tarot, and somehow I still wound up at the bottom of the pile.

‘I appreciate the rescue,’ I whispered, ‘but I already had an exit plan in place.’ I forced myself to sound calm and reasonable, even as my voice shook. ‘You stick to yours, Jaxon. I’ll meet you on the train.’

Jaxon grasped my nape, hard enough to hurt.

‘Paige,’ he said, ‘are you disobeying me?’

Suddenly I was almost eighteen, and his temper had fallen on me for the first time. I went limp, like a rabbit faced with a fox – playing dead, curling small.

‘If we take the entire train,’ Jaxon said, ‘and you fill it with however many scores of imbeciles you want to drag back to London, Scion will notice us.’

‘We killed the power. London doesn’t know.’

‘More idiocy.’ His grip on my neck tightened. ‘Has captivity made you stupid, Paige?’

Warden had moved as soon as Jaxon laid a hand on me. Now he strode towards us from the bridge. I willed him to stop, and he did, eyes ablaze.

‘Let me use small words for you.’ Jaxon spoke to me slowly, as my teachers often had at school. ‘Six stowaways is one thing. We can slip out of the train, just as we slipped in. But do you really think that you can drag a horde back to a guarded station and pass unseen in Westminster?’

‘Let go of her, Jax,’ Nick said.

‘Okay, I’m leaving.’ Danica entered the shaft. ‘Nick, take my gun, if you want.’

Jaxon was ignoring them all. Our gazes locked fast. My cheeks burned, the humiliation worse for knowing that Warden was hearing all this.

‘If you do anything more to compromise this endeavour – the endeavour to rescueyou, I might add,’ Jaxon said, ‘there will be consequences. You may have claimed a little independence here, but it is time to remember your place. If not, you will find yourself quite alone.’

The same threat he had made to Nadine. This was the Jaxon Hall I feared, the man who all but owned my life. My only chance at belonging.

What he was saying made sense – six of us were more likely to escape on the other side. I could go down this hatch and be done with it. The emissaries would eventually get back on the train, taking us with them.

Not so long ago, I would have done it, because there had been no one in my life outside the syndicate. Now there were people counting on me. Warden was still waiting. I saw myself as if from a distance, caught by the scruff of my neck like a kitten. Once, a clear threat to banish me from the underworld would have had me whimpering for mercy.

I would not beg for anything now.

‘I’ll take my chances,’ I said. ‘I quit.’

Jaxon tilted his head, dangerously. Zeke looked as if he might pass out on my behalf.

‘What,’ Jaxon said, ‘did you just say, Paige?’

The words had come out of my head, then. I was turning numb, down to my fingertips.

‘You heard me,’ I said, trying to make my voice stronger. ‘If you won’t let me go to Port Meadow and still work for you, I quit. See you down there, Jax.’

With that, I started towards Warden.

‘No one walks away from me, Pale Dreamer,’ Jaxon said, stopping me. ‘If I can’t have you, no one does. I will ensure you never work in the syndicate again. You will be discarded goods, exiled from the underworld. Who else but me would dare succour an Irish fugitive?’

‘Oh, get fucked, you stretched weasel.’ I spun to face him again, unleashing all my bottled anger. ‘I’m meant to be your mollisher, your second. If you won’t let me speak my mind, I may as well stay here. I joined you so I could be myself, Jaxon. I refuse to be less, even for you.’

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