AN ~ Spoilers all the way up to the end of Mime Order (plus a little wish fulfilment on my part). Set the night after the events of the scrimmage.
Disclaimer ~ The Bone Season and all of its characters belong to Samantha Shannon. I'm just playing in her sandbox.
'To the Flame'
His elbows propped on the expanse of table between us, his fingers steepled under his chin, my former employer, Jaxon Hall, Mime Lord of I-4, sits in silence directly across the booth from me. His faithful Mollisher no longer, he eyes me with a wary suspicion that still manages to carry with it an edge of haughty superiority.
I scan the room and recognise it as the Minister's Cat, one of Jaxon's gambling-houses in Soho. But I have never see the place this quiet. The Königrufen and tarocchi tables are deserted, so too the bar; not even Babs, the always jolly hostess is anywhere in sight. My pulse stumbles. Jaxon and I are alone.
"Care for a reading, O my lovely?"
His voice turns my skin to goose flesh and I turn my gaze upon him once more. It is as I do so that I notice that this is not quite the Jaxon Hall I know. A spectre of flesh and bone, his complexion is pure alabaster. Atop his head he wears, not his favoured top hat, but a crown of fire and gold.
That the aristocratic Jaxon Hall might choose to imitate the kings and queens of old by painting his face with white lead I could almost buy, but that crown ...? The self-styled White Binder is a great many things, but Gaudy is not one of them. This the man who broke with tradition and refused to wear the colour of his aura – orange – to the scrimmage purely for reasons of personal taste.
These curiosities aside, it is what has appeared in his hands that is most out of place: tarot cards. My eyebrows crash together at the bridge of my nose: Jaxon's no cartomancer.
He registers my interest with a smirk and shuffles the deck with the practised ease of a master croupier. "I trust you approve of my choice of venue," he says, in a low, dangerous voice. "We never did finish our little chat ... ."
Some chat. The last time I saw him, I was lucky to escape with my life. I had gone to the Archon to confront Nashira Sargas, to bargain the life of Frank Weaver – my only leverage – against the lives of of my friends from Sheol I. I had failed. Worse, Jaxon had revealed himself as a traitor to all voyant-kind, a lapdog of the Reph, and likely, though he had yet to admit it in quite so many words, the human prisoner who betrayed the Ranthen-led uprising of Bone Season XVIII in exchange for his freedom.
Go to hell! Though the words form instantly in my mind, aside from my eyes, my body refuses any command to move. Panic threatens to take hold. I try to leap into the æther but I am locked in meatspace. Flux? Or some Scion derivative thereof? It's a logical conclusion. I certainly have no memory of how I came to be in Soho, much less with a man who undoubtably wants me dead – though not, I would wager, before exacting some measure of revenge for my disloyalty. A frost penetrates to the very heart of my sunlit zone; I am paralysed, defenceless and alone.
Something like schadenfreude flashes across Jaxon's features. "Shall we begin?" I am powerless to do anything but watch whatever cruel game he has in mind play out before my eyes.
With none of his usual slender grace – his movements are jerky, uncoordinated, like those of a marionette – he places the first card upon the thickly vanished table top. The Five of Cups. He tuts insincerely. "Hardly the most auspicious of starts, is it my Paige? Although, loss and suffering do seem to follow you like a shadow. How long do you think your fractured and discordant Mime Order – " his disdain is crystal clear even without the accompanying air quotes " – will continue to follow you when they learn what fate awaits anyone who gets close to you?"
I manage to square my jaw – a tiny act of rebellion – but deep down his words sting. The truth always does. Finn, Liss, Sebastian, Cutmouth, Lotte, Charles, Ella ... . How many more were destined to die before this war was over?
A vulpine smile curls his lip as he lays a second card alongside the first. The King of Wands inverted. My eyes widen. Now I understand. These are not cards of random choice, these are Liss' cards ... my cards. But how did he know? Liss and I were alone in her tent when she told me of my future.
It is of no consequence, I decide immediately. If he thinks torturing me with the memory of my dead friend will break me, he knows even less about me than I thought he did.
Wooden fingers thumb the deck again. I do not give him the satisfaction of following his hand as he places the third card. I know What it will be. "The Devil." He taunts me again but I do not hear the words. Instead my attention is drawn to movement in my peripheral vision. There is someone else here. Elusive as smoke shrouded in shadow, impossible to glimpse directly, but there is definitely someone – something? – in here with us. I wonder for a split second if this is what it is like to live an amaurotic. Catching fleeting glimpses of the æther all around without ever truly connecting with it.
"The Lovers." Jaxon pulls me back to the cards. Liss had told me that the fourth card would tell me what to do when the time came, but, even for her third eye, the æther had been clouded. I know Jaxon will have no answers either. I am right. "I confess myself disappointed, Paige. You know full well my rules regarding commitment. It is a pity you chose to terminate our agreement. I can assure you that the Ranthen will be considerably less forgiving than I when they learn of your ... transgression. How is dear Arcturus?"
"Fuck you!" The curse costs me every ounce of strength I have. For his part, Jaxon actually seems impressed that I have been able to overcome whatever drug he has pumped me full of – if only for a second.
"Still fighting, I see," he says. He strokes his chin thoughtfully. "I have always admired that about you, Paige. I counsel caution, however. That big mouth of yours might get you into some serious trouble one day. But I digress ... " He returns his attention to the deck. "Death inverted," he intones as he places the one card common to all voyants on the table, but I am done playing along; his threats wash over me as I scan the darkened parlour for another glimpse of the stranger in the shadows. I soon realise it is hopeless. Like water through an open fist, every time I think I have them, their likeness slips away leaving me only with the uneasy impression of being watched but with no tangible evidence to back that up.
"The last card." Jaxon's words, all but identical to Liss' own, reach me once more. "The final outcome. The conclusion of all the others ... ."
In spite of myself, I manage to lean forward a few inches in my chair. Could Jaxon know the identity of final card I never saw? Did he somehow have the ear of one of the bone-grubers who'd burst into Liss' tent that night? Had they seen what no one else had and reported it to him? I'd always be hesitant to learn my future in the past, but if Jaxon knew something, something that could help me end this war quickly and in our favour, I had to know.
I was never to find out. As he flipped the seventh card over, a second hand, far larger than even Jaxon's, slammed down atop it. I look up and straight into the terrible beauty that is Nashira Sargas' face.
I awake with a start but the dream is already fading like a retreating tide. Just a dream, just a dream, I tell myself over and over again, my thundering heartbeat loud in my ears. A cruel wind pushes through Devil's Acre – my 'palace' – sending gooseflesh racing down my sweat-slicked arms. I pull the bed sheets a little closer around me. Just a dream, just a dream.
"Paige?"
Visible only because it is slightly less dense than the surrounding darkness, the voice snaps my chin towards the rectangular outline of the door and sends my hand groping for the knife I have taken to sleeping with. Two lambent eyes gaze back at me.
I release the hilt of the knife and push up on one elbow. Warden? But even as his name forms on my lips I know it cannot be him; the figure in the doorway is too small, more … vulnerable somehow. "Nick?"
"You were talking in your sleep." He steps into the room and the luminescence, a reflection from some unseen light source, immediately leaves his eyes. "Screaming actually."
"Bad dream." I know he will hear the shrug in my voice.
"Need to talk about it?" Ever my crutch, Nick covers the length of the room in a few long strides and drops down onto the edge of my bed. The springs creak in protest. I am suddenly very aware that I am naked beneath the sheets and I hitch them up a little higher to preserve my modesty before swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress.
"Honestly," I begin, "I can't remember very much – "
" – and that's the way you'd like it to stay," he finishes for me. Nick has always understood me in a way that no one else could.
As my eyes slowly acclimatise to the low ambient light, I note he is still wearing the same clothes he wore to the scrimmage. He's not been to bed yet. I flash a wan smile in his direction. "Something like that."
"Well if you ever change you mind ... " He takes my hand and sweeps his thumb across my knuckles. I fail to swallow the resultant hiss of pain and his hand jumps away from mine as if it is a live wire. I note that I am strangely disappointed. "The scrimmage?" he asks.
"Bully-Rock's elbow, I think," I say with a wicked smirk that I hope he can't see – I had enjoyed the thrill of the fight a little more than perhaps I should. "I've been waiting for my doctor to patch me up but he's been kind of slacking off lately. I should probably sack him." Silence. The witty retort I expect is not forthcoming. Instead he stares at his interlaced fingers that bridge the gap between his knees. "You know I'm joking, right?"
"I know," he replies. "I was just thinking how close we – how close I came to losing you today." His fingertips graze my forearm eliciting another wince. "Helvete, Paige!" I do not know the word, but I can hear the frustration that laces his tone. "Is there anywhere that doesn't hurt?"
I consider his question for a moment making a brief mental inventory of my many and varied injuries. "Here," I say after a moment and indicate my cheek with the balled fist that still clutches my blanket.
Seemingly torn between two minds, for the briefest of moments he hesitates. Then, and quite unexpectedly he leans across and presses his lips to my cheek where they linger for several long seconds. This is not like any of the brief pecks we've shared before. This is not a kiss of friendship. This is something more. I can sense his hunger.
He retreats a few millimetres and breathes into my ear: "Sötnos." The word rumbles in his chest. A shiver that has nothing to do with the cold races down my spine. His hot breath has awakened something deep inside that I believed long dead.
What the hell ... ? I had loved Nick since the day we met – wanted this for almost as long, but he had never shown any interest in me before, not in this way anyway. He loved another, and, painful though it had been, I'd let him go, I'd moved on. Or so I thought.
He pulls back and stares into my eyes. I know he is seeking permission. My lips part but I do not hear my own answer. Suddenly our hands are everywhere and it matters not.
His lips claim mine. The kiss is wanton, hard. Blind fingers tear at the buttons of his shirt and rove across his chest, his back and back up into his hair as his weight eases me backwards and onto the bed. I am dimly aware that my sheets have pooled at my waist. I do not care.
I can't breathe, I can't think. In a distant corner of my mind a tiny voice whispers Warden's name but I am deaf to it. The golden cord is a limp rope in my hands. I want this. Far more than even I ever realised.
Our lips break apart and he trails ravenous kisses along the line of my jaw and down to the nape of my neck. A pressure begins to build inside me and I push my hips up to meet his. Encouraged, his fingertips skim across my flesh and I shudder with anticipation as his thumb creeps ever closer to my breast.
Salt touches my tongue as I move my lips to his neck. He all but growls my name against my collar bone.
His mouth is on mine again as his thumb finally claims its prize. It traces in circles, skims over, around; I am undone. I deepen the kiss and guide his other hand lower, the pressure within now so intense I feel as if I might simply fly apart if I don't have him now. More. Don't stop. Please.
His hand rakes the curve of my hip but I am impatient, I want more, and I push frantically at the sheets ensnaring the place I really want to be touched. I break the kiss and meet his gaze. I'm yours. It is what I want to tell him, but something in his limpid eyes makes me grasp his wrist and still his wandering hand.
"Nick?" My voice is a ghost. "Do you really want this?" The question I really want to ask – Me? – goes unasked.
A beat. Barely a second long, if that. It is all I need to learn the terrible truth: No.
The pressure of his hips on mine lessens and he pushes up onto his elbows. "I – I don't know," he admits. "I thought I did." I am helpless as I watch something break inside him. His face collapses. "Oh God, Paige. I'm so sorry." He scrambles to his feet and thrusts my meagre coverings back at me. He can't even look at me. "I shouldn't have come tonight. What with everything that's happened – the scrimmage, Jaxon ... Zeke – my head's all over the place."
I'm such a fool! Of course he's not over Zeke. He may have chosen Jaxon over Nick, but, as I learned the hard way, there is simply no way turn off your feelings. Despite his betrayal, Nick still loved Zeke. For me it had been a faceless university student at the oxygen bar, for Nick I was to be the the cure to that pain.
A pause. "I – should go."
"Nick ... please." Am I begging him to stay or to come back to bed? Either way I reach for him, but like a startled deer he bolts for the door.
He pauses in the open doorway. "I really am so, so sorry, Paige," he says and then he is gone leaving me alone, the ache of my body for his touch nothing in comparison to the ache in my heart.
AN ~ Having never attempted to write anything for a fandom that is still so young, I decided to write something that could easily fit within established canon without trying to second guess what Miss Shannon has planned in book three. I have tried to be sensitive toward Nick's established sexuality while still allowing sufficient wiggle room for *something* to happen between them (I can't be the only one who shipped Paige/Nick in the first half of TBS, right? RIGHT?).