Page 1 of The Song Rising

Prelude

November 2, 2059

The lights scalded my borrowed eyes. I was still inside a different body, standing on the same floor, but everything had changed.

There was a smile on his lips. That old gleam in his eye, like I’d just brought him good news from the auction house. He wore a black waistcoat embroidered with interlinked gold anchors, and a scarlet cravat was tied at his throat. One silk-clad hand grasped an ebony cane.

“I see you have mastered possession at a distance,” he said. “Youarefull of surprises.”

The cane’s handle was porcelain, shaped like the head of a white horse.

“I believe,” Nashira said, her voice soft, “that you are already acquainted with my new Grand Overseer.”

I let out my first breath since laying eyes on him.

He had tried to stop me. The scheming worm had silenced me for weeks, kept me from telling the world about the existence of the Rephaim. Yet here he was, looking as easy with them as he was with his own shadow.

“Oh, dear. Have you swallowed that pilfered tongue?” Jaxon let out a deep laugh. “Yes, Paige, I am here, with the Rephaim! In the Archon, wearing the anchor! Are you aghast? Are you oh-so-scandalized? Is this all a terribleshockto your fragile sensibilities?”

“Why?” I whispered. “Why the hell are you here, Jaxon?”

“Oh, as if I had a choice. With you as Underqueen, my beloved syndicate is doomed to self-destruction. Consequently, I have decided to return to my roots.”

“Your roots?”

His smile widened.

“You have chosen the wrong side. Join this one, darling,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “I can’t tell you how it hurts me to see you in the pocket of those despicable Rephaim who call themselvesRanthen. Unlike the Rag and Bone Man, I have always believed you could be saved from their indoctrination. From Arcturus’s . . . seduction. I thought you had more sense than to blindly obey the man who was once your master.”

I stared at him coolly. “You’re asking me to do that now.”

“Touché.” A fresh bruise stained his cheekbone. “To Terebellum Sheratan, you are a convenient pawn in an age-old game. Arcturus Mesarthim is nothing but her lure. Her bait. He took you under his wing in the penal colony on her orders, to entice you into the Ranthen’s net. And you, my darling—you fell for it . . . and everyone but you can see it.”

A chill warned me that something was wrong. Elsewhere in the citadel, someone had touched my body.

“This is a fight you cannot win. Don’t mutilate the syndicate, O my lovely,” Jaxon purred. “It was never meant as a weapon of war, and you were never meant to rule. Step back from the brink. All any of us in the Archon wants is to protect you—you, and the wonder of your gift. If we must pull off your wings to stop you casting yourself into the fire, so be it.” His hand reached out. “Come to us, Paige. Come to me. All this can be avoided.”

He had shocked me. We both knew it. If he thought he could scare me, he would have to try harder.

Another shiver. I felt myself falling out of the stranger’s dreamscape, back into the æther’s embrace.

“I’d rather burn,” I said.

My brain was liquid, slithering out through my nose and down my front. I had to get out, get air into my lungs . . .

A hand took hold of my arm. Someone was talking to me, saying my name. I clawed off the oxygen mask, got the door open, and spilled out of the car in a jumble of limbs, gasping. The jolt peeled open the stitches in my side, wetting my shirt.

Jaxon Hall was many things, but I couldn’t believe he had gone to Scion. He had made his career out of living in their shadow, not their arms.

My wounds from the scrimmage flared, white-hot in my torso, deep and throbbing in my back. I pitched into the night, down the moss-slick steps to the Thames, and fell to my knees at the water’s edge, where I gripped my head between my hands and cursed my own stupidity. How,howcould I have not foreseen this? There must have been some clue. Now he would be our most formidable enemy, a vital asset to the anchor.

I will find other allies, he had told me after the scrimmage.Be warned: you have not seen the last of me.

I should have killed him in the Rose Ring. The blade had been against his throat, but I’d been too weak to cut.

A very old ally, Nashira had said.One who returned to me . . . after twenty long years of estrangement . . .

A shout in the distance stopped time, or started it again. I hunched over the water, holding myself.

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