Tell the Wind and Fire(89)

As Dad spoke, I could feel him shaking at my back, feel the scrape of his rings against my skin. I had to take him home and make sure he rested. I could not let him break down in front of all these people.

I held my breath, and held my sword locked with Aunt Leila’s blade, and I waited.

“We will delay our procession of revenge until tomorrow!” Aunt Leila called out to the crowd.

“And Ethan won’t be in it,” I said in a low voice.

“Very well,” Aunt Leila said at last, in a voice as low as mine. “You’ll have your pardon.”

“By tomorrow morning, before the executions,” I said. “I’ll have his pardon by tomorrow morning. I have your word?”

“By tomorrow morning,” Aunt Leila spat, spinning on her heel and turning her back on me. “You have my word, and my curse.”

I could trust her word. Aunt Leila and the committee would never make anything less than a public spectacle of Ethan’s death. They wouldn’t kill him in the dead of night, in any secret hole or hidden corner. My wrists ached: I had been holding my sword for too long. But my mother’s diamond was shining.

I let myself look up and search for Ethan’s face in the distant window.

I could go home and rest for a moment after a day of standing and fighting. I could put the sword down. I had saved him.



Nobody was home. I hoped blurrily, barely able to think through my exhaustion, that they had not been called back to the hotel for even more questioning.

“Do I need to heal anyone?” Dad asked as I helped him into his room and got him lying down.

Even the confused query made me feel better. He had never implied before that there was a possibility nobody needed healing, that there was a chance we could be all right.

“Nobody needs healing tonight,” I whispered, and I smoothed his pillow like a nurse, but he caught my hand and pressed it as if I was his child.

I staggered out once I was sure he was sleeping. I did not look out the window to see if the city was burning or if Carwyn was outside, watching. I sat down on the sofa and thought that I would stay there for a little while, just until the others came home, so that I knew they were safe.

Sleep hit me like a grandmother’s purse that turned out to have a brick in it. I was out almost as soon as I sat down, and I slept heavily, determinedly, until the door opening pulled me up like a puppet and yanked me back into awareness. There had been too many disasters in too short a time: no sooner were my eyes open than I found myself shaking and sick with tension, as if I was held together with a wire pulled so taut that I could do nothing but shake and hope the wire would not snap.

It was not Penelope, Jarvis, or little Marie. I stared at the hooded figure in the shadows of the doorway. The hood and the shadows did their work—I could not see anything below the hood but a blank to be filled in by fear or hope. He did not move for a moment, and then he did. He took one step forward. I saw the line of his nose and the gleam of his eyes.

I flew into his arms and covered his face with kisses.

“Ethan, Ethan,” I said, pushing back the hood and pushing my fingers through his hair.

I had not doubted for a moment that it was him. I knew the diffident way he moved, never presuming he was welcome. The only thing I did not know was how this had happened.

“Ethan,” I said. “I’m so happy. I’m so sorry.”

His face, uncovered now, was flushed, his eyes slightly dilated. He put a hand on my rib cage as if he had to steady himself, but then his hand moved down, slowly and with more confidence, until he had a sure hold on my waist.

“I’m sorry. I lied to you, I got my father killed, I did everything wrong. I’m the one who’s sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered, and his voice sounded as rusty as a prison door that had not been opened in a long, long time.

I clung to his shirt and kissed him again, pressing our foreheads together as much as our mouths. I wanted to be pressed up against him, anchored by him, sure of him.

“There is,” I said, and tasted tears on my lips, on his lips as I kissed him, and realized we were both crying. “I know everything now, Nadiya told me about the resistance. Carwyn told me about you going to find Jarvis. You meant it all for the best. You meant to save people. You’re a hero.”

“Well,” said Ethan, “that makes two of us.”

I smiled so hard that I thought my face would crack.

“I saw you down there, with your sword barring the way,” Ethan told me. “You looked like . . .” An angel, I thought. “Like a knight.”

I kissed him for that.

“I’m not a hero,” said Ethan. “I couldn’t let everything stay the way it was, I couldn’t let my family keep doing what they were doing. But this is no better. I ruined everything. My father and Jim and so many other people are dead, and it was all for nothing.”