The train was a light metro, not designed to carry many passengers. The words SCION AUTOMATED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM were printed across the back of the train. The carriages were white, with Scion’s insignia on the doors. As I looked at them, they opened, and the lights turned on inside. “Welcome aboard,” Scarlett Burnish said. “This train will depart in three minutes. Destination: the Scion Citadel of London.”

With gasps of relief, the survivors went through into the carriages, leaving their makeshift weapons on the platform. Warden stood still.

“They’ll realize.” I sounded tired. “They’ll realize the wrong people are on the train. They’ll be waiting for us.”

“And you will face them. As you face all things.”

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.