I turned my face in closer to his, nuzzling, until we were kissing. My arm around his shoulders held him in, close against me. I did not want to let him go.
“And I’m late for class,” Ethan said regretfully. He kissed me again, lightly this time, mouth and then my cheek, and stepped away. “Can you come back to my place after school? I have a special reason for asking.”
“Sure,” I murmured. “And you don’t need a special reason.”
I was late for class too, but I didn’t go immediately. I sat on the sill of the window opposite my locker and fought back the thought of how much I had just lied to Ethan and how massively I had misjudged Carwyn.
I’d believed the fact that he’d waited outside the nightclub’s window meant I could trust him, but that hadn’t been true. He hadn’t wanted me to get caught because if I’d been taken by the guards, I would have been found with the doppelganger’s collar on me. He’d waited for me because he wanted a clean getaway, and once he’d accomplished that, he’d thrown me off a bridge.
He looked like Ethan. I hadn’t confused the two of them, but seeing the familiar, beloved lines of his face, even on someone else, had confused me. I’d been able to be familiar with him, to take chances on him without feeling as if they were the deadly, life-altering risks they were.
Because of that, I’d trusted him, much more than I should have, when I shouldn’t have trusted him at all. He was my best beloved’s shadow self, an image made out of darkness, but worse than that he was a stranger, and I did not know what he was capable of.
I didn’t think that Carwyn was going to run off somewhere, live a blameless life, and stay safe. I thought he was coming back. I knew he held our lives in the palm of his hand.
I knew I should tell somebody. But, like always, I was afraid to tell the truth. I knew it would condemn me.
I didn’t tell Penelope, and I didn’t tell Ethan. I didn’t tell anybody at all.
Above the Strykers’ apartment was a private gym, where all four of the Strykers had sessions with a personal trainer several times a week. I had only been there before to sit on the weight bench and read while Ethan finished up.
I had not expected this to be Ethan’s special reason for asking me over. I had not expected my boyfriend to stand before me, in socked feet on the polished wood floor, with a sword glowing with Light magic in either hand.
“You scared me to death when you jumped onto the platform and leaped at those guys with swords,” Ethan said simply. “I don’t know what might happen in the future. I want to protect you—and I figure the best way to protect you is to teach you to protect yourself.”
It was a sweet idea, but I hated to think of Ethan being scared and doubtful about the future.
“You’re going to teach me?” I asked, keeping my voice light. I reached over and took one of the swords from him. I felt its magic crackling satisfactorily up my arm. “Since when do you know about sword fighting?”
“I don’t have any Light magic, so Uncle Mark wanted to be sure I could always protect myself,” Ethan went on. “He also thought it might be good PR if I joined the Light Guard for a year or so after college. I don’t know. I’m pretty good.”
He sounded shy, and a little proud.
“Are you?” I said, and I forced myself to smile at him.
“Yeah, and I’m willing to teach you everything I know.”
“Lucky me.”
We crossed swords, the blades flickering as they rang together, my blade glowing with a faint flare of Light each time I parried Ethan’s thrust. It was like lightning and thunder, the gleam and then the peal, and it felt good. It felt familiar.
I had made so many mistakes. I had been so stupid. I lay awake nights thinking of all I feared and how I had failed. I could do nothing to fix any of it, but I could do this.
I parried again and sent power from my free hand to make Light burn too strongly in Ethan’s sword. He almost dropped it. I pressed home my advantage and came at him with a flurry of ringing strokes, making him stumble back. He stared at me, awe and Light magic shining on his face, as if I had lit a huge match between us.
“You can fight!” Ethan exclaimed.
“I can win,” I said, and forced Ethan’s sword down.
Ethan did not even look at the sword points touching the floor, did not care that he had been beaten. He looked at me, frowning, and as my frantic heartbeat slowed, I began to realize I had made another mistake. “Why did you never tell me you knew the sword?” he asked.
What could I say? That my aunt the Dark magician had taught me in the little garden outside her house? That I had learned how to stand and move and fight for years, learned how to practice magic against a Dark magician as few Light magicians had the chance to—how to fight anyone, how to cheat, how to win? Was I supposed to tell him that my aunt used to say I could use these skills against a Light guard, and I had never dreamed I would, but years later, on a train platform, Aunt Leila had been proved right? That when I used too much Light magic and it poisoned my blood, my aunt would drain the poison away and drink my blood at her kitchen table, and then we would make cookies?