“Idiot.” Jax grabbed the front of my dress. “You’ve just shown them exactly where we are, you wretched child.”

“I’m showing everyone where we are. I’m not leaving all these people here to die, Jaxon,” I said. “They’re voyants.”

The muscles in his face twitched. His face was contorted with rage. This was the Jaxon I feared—the man that owned my life.

“I agreed to come here to salvage my dreamwalker,” he breathed. “Not to save a rabble of soothsayers and augurs.”

“Not my problem.”

“It is very much your problem. If you do anything more to compromise this endeavor—the endeavor to rescue you, I might add, ungrateful little urchin—I will make sure you work the shallow for the rest of your days. I shall send you to Jacob’s Island, and you can busk with the extispicists and the splanchomancers and all the other sacks of scum that wash up on the edge of the world. See what they do to you.” His cold hand rested on my throat. “These people are expendable. We are not. You may have claimed a little independence, O my lovely, but you will do as you are told. And we will go back to how things were before.”

His words stripped layers from my dreamscape. I was back to my sixteen-year-old self, afraid of the world, afraid of everything inside me. Then armor built around me, and I was someone else.

“No,” I said. “I quit.”

His expression changed.

“You do not quit the Seven Seals,” he said.

“I just did.”

“Your life is my property. We made a deal. You signed a contract.”

“I don’t give a toss what the other mime-lords say. If I’m your property, Jaxon, then my employment is nothing more than slavery.” I forced him away from me. “I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.”

The words came out, but they didn’t seem to come from my head. I was turning numb. “If I can’t have you, no one does.” His fingers tightened. “I will not surrender a dreamwalker.”

He was serious. After what had happened at Trafalgar Square, I understood his bloodlust. His aura betrayed it. He would kill me if I left his service.

Nick had spotted us. “Jaxon, what are you doing?”

“I quit,” I said. And again: “I quit.” I had to hear myself say it. “When we get back to London, I won’t be going to I-4.”

His eyes moved to Jaxon. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said. “There’s no time now. Fifteen minutes.”

The reminder sent a cold dart through my gut. “We need to get everyone on the train. Now.”

Nadine was back. “Where’s the entrance?” She was sweating. “We came up from a passage to this meadow. Where is it?”

“We’ll find it.” I looked behind her. Only Zeke was there. “Where’s Dani?”