Tell the Wind and Fire(64)

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.

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.”