Tell the Wind and Fire(65)

“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.”

Carwyn blinked, then winked. Every small moment where he betrayed any uncertainty or seemed a little human, he covered over by acting worse than ever. “You sure about that?”

There was another silence. This one hung in the air like a question, rather than an accusation. I only had one answer.

“Yeah,” I said at last. “I’m really sure.”

Carwyn sat up now. He shoved himself lightly to the end of the bed, where I was sitting, and sat a careful distance away from me. I glanced over at him and wondered if I should tell him that Ethan had been the one working with the sans-merci. I figured that it wasn’t necessary. Carwyn must have always known Ethan had done it, because he knew he himself was innocent of the charges.

He had known Ethan had done it, and still he had spoken up for him and saved him. It had been too easy for me to forget, all this time, that the first thing I had ever seen Carwyn do was commit an act of mercy.

“What was it you said to me, the first day you met me?” Carwyn asked suddenly, as if he could read the beginning of my thoughts on my face but not the end. “‘I’ll collar you . . . And then I’ll hurt you’? Maybe I’ll let you. Maybe, for once, just for a change, it’s safer to be me than it is to be Ethan Stryker.”



When I opened the bedroom door, Marie and Penelope were gone, I presumed on an errand. We still needed to eat, even if the city was in chaos. I walked out of Penelope’s room and into the main room, then through the doorway into mine and Dad’s room. I heard Carwyn softly following me, but I did not look back at him.

I had thought I would have to be very quiet, that Dad would still be asleep, but the beds were all empty. Penelope must have taken him out with her. I hoped she knew what she was doing. I hoped nothing out there was disturbing or frightening him.

I knelt down on the worn wood floor. I found that the knowledge of which precise brick I had hidden the collar under had slipped my mind, something I’d thought would be branded forever in my memory as a guilty secret, lost with the rush of everything else that had happened, like the sea chasing away words written in the sand.

If even I couldn’t remember where it was, it had to be a pretty good hiding place. I put my hands flat against the wall and felt along the bricks, feeling the sharp indents on the ones that I had scraped at with a fork, and finally the real loose brick. I slid it out of the wall and put my hand into the hollow.

The first thing I touched was the chain of my mother’s necklace. I did not draw that out. I did not want Carwyn to see it.

My fingers came away gray with ash, with the bag in my palm. I unwrapped the collar from its material. I had forgotten exactly what it looked like: the shining metal divots where my rings would fit in, to bind him and hurt him if he disobeyed.

Carwyn’s breath drew in sharply at the sight of it.

I held the collar out to him.

“Here it is,” I said. “It’s yours. I’ll put it on for you if you want, if you think people might check whether it’s sealed. Or you can take the chance, and be able to take it off. Put it on right now, put it on later, don’t ever wear it again. Do what you want with it.”

Carwyn stared at the collar but made no move to touch it. “What do you think I should do?”

“Like I said,” I answered, “it’s yours. I don’t think anyone should ever have put it on you against your will. But if you can use it to protect yourself, to make sure people won’t think you’re Ethan, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. This collar’s brought you enough trouble. If it buys you safety, I think that’s fair.”