The first thing he said, to everyone’s surprise, was my name.
“Lucie, you know quite a few of this family’s secrets already. Naturally we trust you with them, and naturally we would be deeply wounded if you betrayed them. Now, however, your silence is not going to be enough. If you wish to leave, we will let you. If you stay, I will consider that a promise that you mean to support us in our plans.”
Ethan turned his face toward me for the first time in hours and whispered in my ear so softly that his breath barely stirred my hair. “You should go. I don’t want this for you. All I want to do is protect you from things like this.”
I had told Ethan, Let someone try to part us, and I had meant it. I did not answer him with words. I simply tightened my grip on his hand.
“Excellent. Now, Ethan: the doorman has been dealt with. Nobody knows you were the one who found Charles’s body, so nobody can suspect that you let in the rebels or wielded the knife yourself.”
A shudder of horror passed through Ethan. I held his hand as if I could hold him together, as if no matter how he shook I would not let him shake apart.
“In the eyes of the public, you have become a tragic orphan. Here’s how we’re going to use that.”
I wondered if the doorman had been killed or simply bribed.
“We are going to redeem our family’s name and build something from this disaster,” said Mark. “You, Ethan, are going to go to work for the council as a page. I want you in the public eye, serving the Light in small, useful ways, until all doubt of you is slowly removed as sympathy for you rises.”
“I can’t even do magic,” Ethan said.
“Half the council can’t do magic,” Mark told him. “That does not matter. What matters is that you uphold the Light.”
Once, everyone on the council had worn rings of Light, but they had passed power down to sons and daughters who did not. Now some of them wore rings and some did not. Magic was like beauty: you were pleased to be born with it and happy to marry those who had it, and you hoped your children would be blessed with it if you were not. But you could be powerful without it, as long as you were rich and committed to keeping the structure of society exactly as it was.
It made no difference to me. A man was not any better simply because he wore the rings and wielded magic. Mark Stryker was proof enough of that, and Charles Stryker had been too. Was life any fairer back when all the council had magic? Or before the magic came, when power depended on wealth and cruelty alone? Had anything ever been fair, in the history of the world? I didn’t think so.
I knew what Mark intended for Ethan. People would look at him, the orphaned boy in the public eye, and pity him. It was not a glamorous job he was being given, and that was smart, but it was a job that made Ethan’s allegiance clear. The shadow of suspicion that had fallen on him would vanish. Ethan was young and handsome, ten times as charming as Jim, and dating me, Lucie Manette, the Golden Thread in the Dark. He could make the whole Stryker corporation look good. Mark’s plan was for him to be a figurehead, and at the same time to make accusations against Ethan look absurd.
“Uphold the Light,” Ethan said. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you will follow my lead. The filth of the darkest streets are rising up, and they need to be put down and shown their place. Do you want the same thing that happened to Charles to happen to me, and your cousin? Do you think that the people who came for your father’s blood will show any mercy to you? There’s no mercy in them. We stamp them down or they stamp us out.”
Mark took a deep breath and gave us the smile he usually saved for the cameras.
“Stop being a child, Ethan. Start being your father’s son.”
He stood at the glass window overlooking the city, framed against a new day and a brightening morning. He looked supremely confident. I knew Ethan would join the council: I knew none of us had any choice but to do what Mark wanted. What else could we do? Ethan’s father had been murdered, Ethan was under a cloud of suspicion, his doppelganger was wandering the streets of the city, and ultimate power lay in Mark Stryker’s hands.
I took a deep breath. “What can I do to help?”
“I’m glad you asked me that question,” Mark Stryker said. “I do think you owe us, Lucie. All this nastiness is being done in your name, and it reflects very badly on us. You must want to make up for that. Don’t you?”
“She doesn’t have to make up for anything,” Ethan said loudly.
“I’ll do whatever I can,” I said, even more loudly.
“I thought about you making a public statement,” Mark said. “But considering how the interview went, that might not be the wisest course of action at this time. We do not want anything to seem coerced. What we want is to see you by Ethan’s side, serving willingly as his partner. What do you think might accomplish that, Lucie?”