Tell the Wind and Fire(44)

CHAPTER TWELVE



I do not remember much about the next few days except for the tension of how busy I was. It was as if time were a suitcase filled too full, about to burst and break. Jarvis had to be sent off. The council meetings had to be attended. My secret had to be kept.

The times of desperate rush whittled down my priorities, made them terribly simple and clear: food, drink, rest, and this, his hand in mine. Ethan held my hand loosely, gently, as if he was not afraid of losing me and he would let me pull away anytime I liked.

“You don’t need to worry about Jarvis. He’s already doing a great job. He’s making sure the people in his district of the Dark city are being looked after. He’s helping more than I can say.”

“That’s good,” I said.

Ethan’s hand closed around mine a little tighter. It had not been true, I realized, the thought I’d had: that he was not afraid of losing me. That was just something I told myself because I never wanted him to be afraid. It had seemed beautiful to me, the easy confidence he had not just in me but in his belief that the world he trusted would leave him intact. But the world had hurt him now, and there was no way for him to regain innocence. Even for him, in his warm golden life, there had entered the cold shade of fear.

“I understand. Your dad needs you. And I understand that you have been trying really hard to help me, with these meetings, with everything,” Ethan said. “I need you too.”

What I had been doing at the meetings was not so difficult—be silent, smile. It was sickening to do and sickening to be complimented for. There would be another meeting early tomorrow morning, and I would give them all the smiles and silence they wanted.

“I’ve made so many mistakes. I feel so guilty. I don’t believe I could have survived these last weeks without you,” Ethan continued. “That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“You could have survived alone,” I said at last. “But I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Ethan let go of my hand so he could put an arm around me and draw me in close. The sun was sinking in the sky, but it was just low enough for light to catch the windows of the buildings it was sinking behind. It was as if the sun wanted to be close to the earth, as if the sun was in love too.

The whole city seemed so beautiful suddenly, like a glass filled not with liquid but with light, a crystal glass on the very edge of a table, tipped just a hair too far. Sunbeams quivered over glass, tossed ribbons of light over and around buildings. It was like seeing the trembling instant before the glass fell.

All the more beautiful because it was fragile. Never more beautiful than at the instant before it was destroyed.

The next morning, Ethan found me outside the meeting room in Stryker Tower, in the long hall with its glinting tapestry that had light woven into the fabric to look like electric gold. He was pale, and he reached for my hands as if I was in danger of falling off a cliff and he had to save me, and I knew that Jarvis was dead.



“He’s not dead” was the first thing out of Ethan’s mouth, but I did not feel relieved.

My father had not been killed either. And my mother had vanished and we had never seen her body. Worse could happen to you than a clean death, down in the Dark.

“What’s happened to him, then?”

My voice sounded tight and closed off. I stepped back, away from his offered hands and comfort. What I wanted was to be so strong that nobody would be able to touch me. All I would take from him in that moment was information.

“He was reported missing from his home in the Dark city,” said Ethan. “There was no sign of a struggle or forced entry. He has been gone for less than twenty-four hours. He may have gone somewhere of his own accord. He might be back at any moment.”

I laughed, and he jolted at the sound. “Come on, Ethan. You don’t believe that.”

He stopped trying to reach for me.

“No,” he said. “I don’t believe it. But I don’t know what else I can say to comfort you.”

“You could start by not lying to me, or yourself. I don’t want comfort.”

“You comforted me,” said Ethan. “You supported me at every turn, and you made it look easy. Let me try and do the same for you. Let me just try.”

My father thought I was able to care for him, carry both his and my weight in Penelope’s home, be a daughter, a student, a famous victim, girlfriend to a celebrity, and as good as a mother. He thought because I smiled and pretended like it was no trouble—because smiling was one of the things I was expected to do—that the weight of expectations was not absolutely crushing.

So many expectations weighed down on me. I felt as if I was in a story I had heard once, of a man who had stone after stone pressed to a board over his chest. As long as he had had breath, he had asked for more, and I understood why he had asked. After a certain point the idea of a world where you were not under pressure seemed like a dream, and all you could imagine was more weight being added until you broke, and sometimes you wanted the relief of breaking sooner.

I broke then.

“You can’t comfort me,” I said. “Especially not when you say stupid things like this. You think it’s easy? To be everything to him, to you, to the council, to be so much and never be anything objectionable? You think it’s effortless because it’s supposed to be effortless—”