Tell the Wind and Fire (25 page)

“Tea is essential medicine for a shock,” she assured us. “Trust me—I’m a doctor.”

I clung to the warmth of the mug in my hands, a welcome change from Carwyn’s touch or steel. I assumed that she would want Carwyn to sleep on the couch, though I did not think about it much, did not think about anything now that I was safe and allowed to be exhausted.

Danger meant being resourceful. There was peace in not needing to keep pushing forward, in being able to admit that you were utterly drained.

“You both need comfort,” said Penelope. “I’m going to sleep in Lucie’s bed, and I already moved Marie’s bed to the other room. You two can take mine.” She patted me on the shoulder. “I don’t mind,” she added quietly in my ear. “This isn’t the normal world anymore, and we aren’t working by the normal rules. You two love each other. Love is what counts, no matter what world we’re in.”

I didn’t know how to protest. Even in a new world, I did not know how to tell her what I had done.

Carwyn listened to what was happening and did not offer up a protest either. Of course, he had been very quiet since we had entered Penelope’s apartment and she had welcomed us both with open arms, touched his hair and his face, and said, “Ethan, I’m so glad you’re safe.”

I could not even tell if he was mocking me with his silence, still finding my pain the best joke he knew, or if he might be as tired as I was.

I went into the bedroom with Carwyn and determined that if he said or tried anything, I would hit him. I wanted to hit someone.

I looked at him, coldly, and for a wonder he decided that this was one trespass he would not commit.

I walked over to the bed we were meant to share, stripped off the blanket, and laid the sword down upon the mattress. Carwyn and I lay on either side of the sword. I folded my hands under my chin and faced him.

I had used far too much Light power all through this long night. Now the night was over and I had burned out. I could feel the scorching poison in my blood, scraping like a hot knife along my bones. I did not even think about going for help. I knew I had to bear it. I was not the only hollowed-out and burning thing in New York.

Light filtered through the window in Penelope’s room, the sun rising on our broken city, sunbeams traveling slowly across our bed. A sunbeam struck the sword blade and turned it into a silver beam of light, burning between us as the city burned outside the window. No hope came with the rising sun, and despite what Penelope had intended, I had no comfort that night.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I woke with the flame-pale light of early morning turned into the dull fire of day. The first thing I saw was the sword hilt as it rested on the pillow. Close by on the pillow, on the other side of the sword, was Carwyn’s sleeping face. His dark brows were drawn together as if he was worrying, his lashes resting on his cheeks. His fingers were curled a fraction away from the blade, as if in his sleep he was stupid enough to reach out.

Right face. Wrong boy.

I looked at Carwyn, and I thought about Ethan.

He had gone into the Dark city, and now the Dark had risen up against the Light. He was in the center of what must have been chaos, buried for less than two weeks but not born to be buried, not raised to deal with the Dark. Anyone in the Dark city might have recognized his face and killed him because he was a Stryker, and even though he must have known the risks, he had walked into the heart of the Dark city for me.

I’d thought that Ethan might be in danger from Carwyn. Now, even worse, he was in danger from a whole city.

I remembered Aunt Leila’s face, and the utter lack of pity in her eyes. I could not stop her. Neither light nor dark, wind nor fire, love nor mercy, would ever stop her.

It felt like everyone I loved either was threatened or was a threat themselves.

Penelope and Marie were safe, though. They, my father, and Carwyn were the only ones in this bright city that I knew were safe.

I had to know who else was.

I was sure the schools were all shut, but that meant my school friends should be at home and able to answer me. I climbed off the bed and started sending messages, letting friends from school know that I was alive, and asking if they were safe. Those who did not respond I called.

Nadiya did not respond to the messages I sent, and she did not pick up her phone.

“Who are you trying to reach?” Carwyn asked.

I jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to face him. Propped up slightly by one arm behind his head, he was lying comfortably alongside the sword, as if it was his ideal bed partner.

“Nadiya,” I said. “You remember my friend from the club?”

Suddenly I remembered him asking me how well Ethan knew Nadiya. Asking me if I was sure that they did not know each other well.

From the look on his face, I saw Carwyn remembered it too.

“Vividly,” Carwyn drawled. “She was so very friendly. Remember when she pretended she wanted to buy dust, when really she wanted to drag me—sorry, Ethan—off, away from you? Do you know that she whispered in my ear that she wanted to speak to me alone? Do you want to know what I think?”

“I’m glad you asked,” I said. “Because I really don’t.”

“Too bad. I’m going to tell you anyway. I think your friend knew Ethan a lot better than you realized. I think that your perfect boyfriend was cheating on you.”

“I know that he wasn’t,” I snapped.

That didn’t mean that I thought Carwyn was lying. He didn’t have any reason to lie. I didn’t think he wanted to hurt me anymore, and if Nadiya had spoken to someone she thought was Ethan that way, his interpretation was fair based on what he knew. He just didn’t know Ethan like I did.

If Ethan knew Nadiya better than he had let on, if they had a secret between them, the secret was not what Carwyn thought.

“I’m going to see her,” I said abruptly. “You can wait here. Or you can leave, for all I care, but you’re not coming with me.”

Carwyn stretched indolently, as if he was perfectly comfortable and might settle back down to sleep. I hated him for the stupid pretense, as if anyone could rest while the city burned. I hated him for being able to pretend so well when I found that I suddenly could not pretend for a moment longer.

The subway was not working. I stopped and stared at the entrance, baffled. The subway had been the one constant in the two very different worlds I had lived in, running through both the Dark city and the Light, though not connecting the two. It was a chain that had been broken but still remained, thrumming with the same energy in both cities.

Now the reassuring rattle and rumble, the heartbeat of the city, was quiet.

I had to walk a long way to get to Nadiya’s place, exhaustion and the hungry magic sickness burning through me. I stumbled as I walked, and as I walked I saw things I would rather not have seen.

The city was not much changed. There were only small details, here and there. They were like the subtle signs, the pallor and trembling, of someone who was dying from internal injuries—the smell of smoke in the air, the far-off sound of a child screaming, store windows that were broken but not shattered. The cracks in the glass caught the sun, so the windows looked as if they were wrapped in vast spider webs made of light.

They
had set up cages in Times Square. That was the one thing that stopped me. The cages hung on thick black chains, in front of the blaring bright colors of advertisements proclaiming new fashion brands and new movie stars, the unforgiving dazzle of Light power and commerce. I did not have to wonder what they were for. I remembered how the cages in Green-Wood Cemetery had looked, the black edge of magic to the metal, the sound as the spikes went into flesh and drank both blood and Light. I remembered my father’s screams.

They had not torn down the cages to spare lives. They had torn them down so they could build them somewhere new, somewhere there would be a flood of fresh victims for those black jaws. And these cages looked different somehow, looked even worse than the cages at Green-Wood had. I remembered the sword one of the rebels had cut down Gabrielle Mirren with, how its dark edges had distorted the world. The outlines of these cages were writhing black strokes cut into the sky.

They were empty, I told myself. They were empty, they were empty.

For now.

Nadiya lived in a big apartment block, red-brick with the windows full of white blinds, sternly anonymous. The only thing that differentiated her building from the line of identical buildings was a stoop that somebody had painted mint green in what must have been a fit of optimism. That had been a long time ago. The mint-green paint was peeling to reveal scraps of ghost-gray wood beneath.

Nadiya did not buzz me in, but she came downstairs when I pressed the bell. Long before she reached the door, I saw her bright hijab through the wire-mesh window. Her step was slow as she opened the door, and her eyes were huge as they met mine. She looked afraid.

I wondered how I looked.

“You knew Ethan better than I thought you did,” I said slowly. “Didn’t you?”

Nadiya bit her lip. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not what you think.”

“You don’t know what I think.”

Nadiya was no fool. She looked at me, her gaze level and tranquil, and she waited to hear what I thought.

I thought of the accusation of treason against Ethan, what they had actually said: that he was passing secrets to a member of the
sans-merci.

Ethan had said, when his father was killed, that it was all his fault.

Ethan believed that the cruelty to the Dark city had to stop. Ethan always acted to stop other people’s suffering. If people had approached him and asked him for his help to change the world, he might have helped.

I was an idiot. Carwyn had not committed treason. It had been Ethan all along.

I had thought of the treason as a crime and thought it could not have been Ethan, that it must have been committed by a doppelganger, because doppelgangers were capable of anything.

I had committed a crime myself when I undid Carwyn’s collar. People committed crimes every day. Ethan was not the sole exception to every rule, was not innocent of everything.

Acting to help people in the Dark city was like him, and not like Carwyn at all.

“Ethan gave the plans of his apartment building to the resistance,” I said. “Along with other information about the cages in Green-Wood Cemetery. You two were engaged in helping the resistance against the Light Council. You thought . . . Someone was meant to use the secret passage to talk to Charles Stryker, weren’t they? But they killed him instead.”

Nadiya began to nod, slowly and continuously. Her hijab blazed in the shadow of her hall like a flame.

“You were helping the
sans-merci,
” I went on.

Nadiya said, “No! Not those lunatics who have taken the city. Of course not. Ethan and I and . . . some of our friends, we wanted life to get better, for everyone, in both cities. We wanted a change in policies, to have the cages and walls taken down so there could be peace between us. We didn’t want any of this. We found people who agreed with us, who were printing pamphlets that spread the truth about how the Light Council’s policies affect the Dark city. We’ve been doing it for two years, and it never caused any harm. Ethan spoke on television, and we all celebrated his rallying call to change. That was all we wanted: change, not death. We only wanted to make a difference. We only . . . We only wanted to help.”

It wasn’t as simple as that. My Aunt Leila had started by attending speeches and passing out pamphlets. Some of the same people who were killing now had likely been passing out pamphlets with Ethan and Nadiya. I suspected Nadiya knew that as well as I did.

Trying to make a difference meant that you risked doing harm.

She and Ethan had at least tried to do something good. She and Ethan had meant it for the best, had wanted change and thought it could be change for the better. I didn’t feel I had a right to judge either of them when I had been so scared of losing what I had that I never tried to change anything. I had frozen myself and forced myself to be blind and deaf as well as still, and it had all been for nothing.

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.