He let me down, but he didn’t release me. His hands cradled my hips. I looked up at him. “Thank you,” I said.

“You do not need to thank me for your freedom. It is your right.”

“And yours.”

“You have given me my freedom, Paige. It has taken me twenty years to regain the strength to try and claim it back. I have you, and you alone, to thank for that.”

My reply caught in my throat. A few more people boarded the train, Nell and Charles among them. “We should get on,” I said.

Warden didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure what had happened over the last six months—whether any of this was real—but my heart was full and my skin was warm, and I wasn’t afraid. Not now. Not of him.

There was a distant sound, like thunder. Another mine. Another pointless death. Zeke, Nadine, and Jax staggered into the tunnel, supporting a semiconscious Dani. “Paige, are you coming?” Zeke said.

“You get on. I’ll be there.”

They went into a carriage near the back. Jaxon looked out of the door at me.

“We’ll talk, my dreamer,” he said. “When we return, we will talk.”

He hit the button inside the carriage, and the doors slid shut. An amaurotic and a soothsayer stumbled into the next carriage, one with a bloody shirt. “One minute to departure. Please make yourselves comfortable.” Warden tightened his arms around me.

“How strange,” he said, “that this should be so difficult.”

I studied his face. His eyes were dim.

“You’re not coming,” I said. “Are you?”

“No.”

The realization came slowly, like dusk encroaching on a star. I realized I’d never expected him to come—only hoped for it, in the last few hours. When it was too late. And now he was leaving. Or staying. From this point on, I was alone. And in that solitude, I was free.

He touched his nose to mine. A slow, sweet ache rose inside me, and I didn’t know what to do. Warden didn’t take his eyes off my face, but I looked down. I looked down at our hands, his larger hands on mine: shielded by gloves, hiding the rough skin beneath—and my pale hands, with rivers of blue vein. My nails, still tinged with lilac.

“Come with us,” I said. My throat felt sore, my lips hot. “Come with—with me. To London.”

He had kissed me. He had wanted me. Maybe he still did.

But anything between us was impossible. And from the look in his eyes, I knew that wanting me wasn’t enough.

“I cannot go to the citadel.” He rolled his thumb over my lips. “But you can. You can go back to your life, Paige. That chance is all I want for you.”

“It’s not all I want.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. I just want you with me.”

I had never said those words aloud. Now that I could taste my freedom, I wanted him to share it with me.