Tell the Wind and Fire(74)

I had lost anyway.

“Do you have contacts in the Dark city?” I asked. “If Ethan went there, do you know where he might have gone?”

“Ethan in the Dark city?” Nadiya demanded. “Why would he go there? That would be suicide.”

Nadiya did not know anything. There were no rebels who would protect Ethan: his going had not been part of any plan. He had gone in alone, because he wanted to do the right thing. For me.

I had been so stupid, at every turn. I had thought of him as wrongfully accused, as cruelly kidnapped. I had thought of him as stumbling into danger like a helpless child who did not know what he was doing. But he had walked into danger like a knight of old, with his head held high. All this time, he had been fighting for justice and fighting for me. And I had never suspected, even when he tried to tell me: when he said that his father’s death was his fault, when he was so worried I would end up involved in the trouble he had caused. He had offered me all his secrets, and I had never dreamed he had as many secrets as I did. I had turned my face away.

I loved him, but I had failed him. I had thought of him as a victim. I had not seen that he was trying to be a hero.

“Look,” said Nadiya, “I never wanted anyone to get hurt. Not you, and certainly not Ethan. Can you believe that?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “I believe you.”

I gave her a kiss on the cheek as we parted, still friends. The city was still burning, and Ethan was still lost.



When I got home, I found Penelope and Marie playing a game in the living room, both of them moving their pieces with shaking, fumbling fingers, and Carwyn nowhere to be seen. I presumed he was lurking in the bedroom. I banged my way inside, but I found him actually asleep.

Fury failed me, like the door falling shut behind me when I had not meant to close it. He was curled up on his side, perilously close to the sword.

Perhaps Carwyn had not slept well in whatever hideaway in the Light city he had managed to find, or in Ethan’s bed with the Strykers. Perhaps he had not slept well in the Dark city either.

I sat on the edge of the bed and wondered when the last time he had felt safe enough to sleep peacefully had been.

As soon as I had decided not to wake him, he woke. I felt the bed move as he stirred.

“Where’s my collar?” Carwyn asked suddenly.

I looked at him. He lay back on the bed, one arm behind his head, and he looked sullen but defiant. He tilted his chin to stare back at me.

“Why do you ask?” I said.

Carwyn waggled his eyebrows, and his sly expression made him look, briefly and utterly, nothing like Ethan. “I might want it for reasons.”

“I might stop talking to you altogether because I am a hundred percent done with your crap.”

Carwyn’s eyebrows drew together, serious now, as if he was annoyed or as if I had forced sincerity out of him against his will. “I might need it so that I can survive, all right? I think it’s going to be open season on Strykers in the Light city, and I should run away to be an anonymous doppelganger instead. Does that make you happy?”

“You surviving?” I asked. “I don’t care that much either way.”

“Oh, c’mon, baby, you know you don’t mean that,” said Carwyn.

“Try to remember what I just said about your crap.”

“I am remembering, and I’m absolutely serious,” said Carwyn. “You don’t care much about whether I survive or not? You, of all people. Who got me out of the hotel where everyone was dying? Who took me out on the town because she felt sorry for me, and felt even sorrier for me just seeing me treated like any doppelganger would be? Who took off my collar in the first place? Who didn’t turn me in when I came back pretending to be Ethan, even though you knew as soon as you saw me? You could have done it. You didn’t have to go to the guards. You could have gone to Ethan’s Uncle Mark—he knows all about me. He wanted me dead from the first moment he laid eyes on me: he wanted me quietly and cleanly erased out of existence, as if I was a stain on the family silver. If I had done anything to Ethan, he would have tortured the information out of me and made sure I disappeared.”

The litany of what I had done hung in the air like an accusation.

I had not done any of it because I wanted him to be grateful. I did not think I deserved gratitude: I had done the wrong thing, made so many mistakes, and so much of what I had done was because I loved Ethan, because Carwyn had saved Ethan, and because he looked like Ethan. Even though I had not wanted gratitude, I had not deserved Carwyn hurting me while he pretended to be Ethan. He had hurt me anyway.

“I was doing it because it was the right thing to do,” I said slowly. “None of it was for you. I don’t even like you.”