Page 98 of The Song Rising

We stayed there for a long time, taking in the immensity of our enemy. The tanks, the artillery, and the soldiers moving around it all, like clockwork.

“Wait.” Nick was peering through the binoculars again, at two figures in the distance. When he lowered them, I watched the emotions wrestle on his features. “Helvete. It’s Tjäder.”

Maria snatched the binoculars before I could. A moment later, she lowered them.

“And someone else.” She glanced at me. “Someone you’ll be delighted to see.”

I took the binoculars from her unresisting hands.

They were walking away from one of the warships, flanked by soldiers. I remembered Birgitta Tjäder’s face from the colony; pale and with high cheekbones. Her thick hair was braided and wound at the back of her head, and she was garbed in light armor, carrying a helmet under her arm. Tjäder was best-known as Chief of Vigilance in Stockholm, but she was also the commandant of the Second Inquisitorial Division—the one whose orders had murdered Nick’s sister.

The feeling evaporated from my limbs when the lights threw the second person into sharp relief. The Scion official beside Tjäder was an arrow of a woman, who barely came up to her shoulder. Even from a distance, I knew her. That high, pallid hair; the Rephaite-like lack of expression; those abyssal black eyes, almost devoid of whites, framed by fine-cut brows—eyes that swallowed information, letting nothing escape. The last time I had seen this face, it had been on the screen in the warehouse, and I had been helpless in a net.

Hildred Vance, the woman destined to conquer the world for the Rephaim. Finally, I was seeing her in the flesh.

This time, she wasn’t just going to trap me from afar. This time, I knew, she had come to collect me herself.

She was clad in a tailored suit and a high-collared cape, the sort with crimson lining that all of Scion’s most senior officials wore. As I watched her, her eyes flicked upward, and it seemed for all the world as if she was looking straight at me. Nausea unfurled in the pit of my stomach.

“We have to go,” I murmured.

Nick tensed. “What’s wrong?”

Vance had already looked away, but I was shaken. “She knows we’re up here.” I swallowed, hard. “She was looking right at me.”

Maria chuckled softly. “Everyone thinks that when they look at her.”

“Well, this has made our decision for us,” Nick said. “We’re not going in now.”

“Senshield’s core could be in there,” I said, thinking aloud. “The scanners might be activated in that warehouse. Right under our noses.” Now that Vance had given her attention back to Tjäder, I returned to the fence. “I’ll be damned if all this was for nothing. I have to go in.”

“No. I will go,” Warden said.

The rest of us stared at him incredulously.

“Don’t be insane,” I said. “Even if you could get through the barrier—” He took hold of two of the bars that made up the fence and strained them apart, creating a breach just large enough for him to get through. The rest of that sentence died on my tongue, but my mouth turned dry as stone. He was serious. “Warden, you are not going in there. As Underqueen, I order you not to go in there.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the depot. “Permission to disregard your orders, Underqueen.”

“Permission not granted. Permission categorically denied.”

“Paige, we don’t have a choice,” Maria cut in. “If we leave now, we lose our chance of finding out what powers Senshield. It’s what you’ve wanted to do from the beginning. The only way to help the Mime Order.” She grasped my arm. “We’re all in this with you. We’re all willing to stand.”

Warden stayed where he was, waiting.

It made the most sense for him to go. If he was shot, he would survive. He was strong enough to escape capture by humans. He had the element of surprise if someone saw him, giving him enough time to react, and he could move swiftly and silently through a heavily guarded building. In short, he was a Rephaite, and that made him better for this mission than any of the humans.

“Permission granted.”

He didn’t hesitate. Almost in one movement, he was through the fence and over the edge of the wall. Maria crawled through the gap and looked down, holding her hood in place.

For the time he was gone, I stayed prone on the concrete, keeping close to Maria and Nick. Here on the coast, the wind was callous. I watched Tjäder and Vance disappear into the vast warehouse, watched the soldiers stop to salute the Grand Commander.

I didn’t want Warden in there. The thought of him near Vance was sickening. I cleaned the mist from my watch and saw the seconds click away, imagining the soldiers emptying their bullets into him, dragging him off.

He would come back. He must come back.

I would not consider what would happen if he didn’t.

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