The words lingered in the air long after Jace wanted them to.
HEIR RECOVERY ORDER ISSUED
He read it twice, because staring at his own hand was proving rather challenging, considering ten minutes ago it had stopped looking like a hand.
Seraphina. "What does that mean. Recovery."
She didn't immediately respond, which was more worrying than he cared to admit. It was her job to respond, in fact.
"It means," she said finally, her gaze still fixed on the burning sigil in the air between them, chains clasped around a small cold sun, its light the colour of bruising, "that they've ceased trying to kill you."
"That's supposed to be good news," Jace said dryly.
"It isn't." She didn't turn to face him, and that was infinitely more worrying. Seraphina was still watching the sigil burn above their heads, which meant she was still looking at the chains wrapped tightly around the tiny pale sun. "Execution orders come from the Crown. This came from a House. Houses don't unregister assets. They catalogue them."
Jace tried to lever himself upright and promptly fainted halfway through the effort.
"Catalogue," he said, for want of anything better. "As in, library."
"As in," Seraphina said crossly, pushing herself to her knees and for once making no effort to pretend she didn't look ridiculous doing it, "a vault. The Sunchain doesn't kill its heirs, Jace. It indexes them. It keeps them stable, contained and, most importantly, permanently valuable assets."
"Forever," he said grimly. "That's a long time to be somebody's paperwork."
...Corruption Load: 84%...
The words hovered, unwelcome, at the corner of his vision, and he had the distinct impression they weren't going anywhere. It was a strange sensation, this feeling of being trapped with a number. Less frightening, in a way, than the sensation of something coiled in his bones, growing heavier with every heartbeat. His black veins pulsed faintly as he flexed his fingers. He could almost hear the connections in his nerves, straining under the strain, fraying at the edges.
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"You're not stable," Seraphina said softly.
"I noticed."
"If they come and find you like this," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken, "they won't need to fight you. They can simply... wait."
Jace pushed himself up using the throne as leverage and stared at the Spire. The light within was steady, now, since the disconnection, but it still beat faintly and unevenly, like a human heart. His own was thudding just as heavily in his ribs, matching some deep, slow rhythm that had nothing to do with either of them.
"Then I'd best not still be sitting here when they get here." Jace made himself say it, and he almost believed it.
Below the spire, the city had gone deathly quiet. The fleet was no longer pulling past the towers, and the tension in the skyline was coalescing into something like anticipation. The wreckage of Manhattan watched and waited as the light in the spire grew stronger. The Collectors did not come, as Jace had half expected, from above.
They came from below.
It started with a vibration in the marble floor, low enough that it rattled in Jace's molars before he heard the sound at all, and then the thin lines of gold traced delicately up the wall, drawing themselves into intricate shapes. They were slow enough that he could see the process, and if he hadn't known better he would have said they were writing. Where the lines of light met each other, the air between thickened, resolving into shapes, and then figures, humanoid but for the absence of detail. Three men, their robes the colour of old smoke, their faces hidden behind masks of smooth black glass.
None of them raised a hand as they spoke. "Forbidden Heir," the man in the middle said, and the words did not roll over the chamber as Vane's proclamations had, nor did they crack the stone like the King's heralds. His voice was almost gentle, almost sad, which was probably the worst thing about it. "You are unstable, unregistered, and in direct violation of seventeen inheritance statutes. The Sunchain does not wish you harm."
"Marvelous," Jace said bitterly. "Everybody keeps saying that right before I die."
"We wish to correct your condition." The man in the middle tilted his head. Something behind the glass mask almost looked like compassion. "Your Access is unstable, your Corruption climbing uncontrollably. Left unchecked, you will not survive the week. We offer containment, stability, a proper place in the Sunchain's catalogue, where your assets will be preserved and protected."
Jace felt something settle deep in his chest before he even understood he was paying attention. Heftiness, weariness, the dull, steady ache of something that wasn't quite his arm, something that wasn't quite his pain. Containment. Stability. A place. Anything to stop the slow, sure creep of seconds turning into minutes.
Seraphina's hand tightened around his good arm suddenly, her touch grounding him in a way he wasn't sure was entirely friendly.
"Don't," she whispered, only him. "That's the recovery, that's what it sounds like when it's about to happen to you."
Jace looked up at the masked figures who were waiting, patiently as always, for him to do something that didn't involve losing control in spectacular fashion. He let his gaze drift past them, past the throne at the room's centre, past all the neat lined-up names, the tidy records of lives and lineages, the vast and various assets carefully sorted and stored in the registry. Assets.
"Here's the thing about my counter-offer," Jace said smoothly. He pushed himself to his feet with slow, steady motions, the black veins standing out against his skin like ink lines. "I don't do stability. Not ever. Ask anybody who's ever hired me."
The center Collector only inclined his head, mildly surprised. "That is not a negotiation."
"No," Jace said, and that was a word he knew well, too. "It's a warning."
He didn't know what he was going to do about the number hovering, useless and cruel, at his periphery. He didn't know what he was going to do about the slow, steady increase in Corruption percentage, the inevitable climb up the charts until he was swallowed whole. But he was going to do it standing up, and that was going to be enough.