Tell the Wind and Fire(66)

It only occurred to me then that it might have kept Ethan safe in the Dark city, having Carwyn here in his place. But I could not snatch back the collar and hide it away again.

I didn’t really want to. Ethan would not have wanted his safety bought at the price of a lie. I had already lied and lied, and nobody was safe. I was so tired of lying.

Carwyn did touch the collar at last, running his fingers lightly over the leather and metal. His fingers brushed my hand, and he looked away from the collar and at me.

“What would you do?”

“How should I know?” I asked. “It’s not my collar. It was never my life. It’s not my call. I guess think about who you want to be, and how you want people to see you.”

Carwyn touched my rings, and then his collar. It was odd that his fingers on the metal encircling mine felt more intimate than when he touched my skin. My rings were as much a part of me as his collar had been part of him: identifying me, grounding me, branding me, anchoring me. They had kept me safe, and perhaps now they would put me in danger. And yet I knew I would never take them off.

“I think you’d use the collar to keep someone else safe,” he said. “If you could.”

I swallowed down a noise—even I did not know if it was going to be a laugh or a sob, and I was too scared of letting it be born to find out.

“I don’t think either of us knows how to keep someone else safe.”

Carwyn nodded, and took the collar from my hand. We turned and left the bedroom.

He was holding the collar awkwardly, as if he still was not sure what to do with it and would have put it in his pocket if he could. I went toward the old red sofa, meaning to sit down, but instead I stopped at the window through which I had once found Carwyn looking up at me.

Sunlight was streaming in through my little window. The street outside was quieter than it should have been. I could see blinds drawn in the windows of the buildings opposite, suggesting that people were hiding instead of going to work.

Down the street and over the faraway stretch of gray buildings was the horizon, and for a confused instant I thought I was seeing the sunset. But it was much too early for the sun to go down. The red fire lapping between the sky and earth was something else.

The wall between the Dark and Light cities was down, torn down, and on either side of the rubble I saw fire. Both of my cities were burning.

I was not feeling very steady, so I grabbed hold of the windowsill and let out the sound I had suppressed before: everything was coming out now, and there was no way to hide how scared I was. The sound was a laugh after all. I laughed at myself for ever thinking I could hide.

“Before I go . . .” said Carwyn. “You’re not well. You’ve used too much magic, and that means you cannot protect yourself or anybody else.”

I stopped leaning against the sill—it had been a mistake to let myself look weak in front of Carwyn—and turned to face him. Unbelievably, he was serious.

“And you think I’d let you do something about it?” I snapped. “Not likely.”

“I owe you,” said Carwyn. “You know I do. I know it as well. I’d appreciate the chance to settle some of my debt. And do you know any Dark magicians you can trust to take out the poison at a time like this?” He mimicked my cool tone. “Not likely.”

“You think I’d trust you to drain my power?” The further retort was on my lips: my Aunt Leila was a Dark magician. She could do it. She wouldn’t hurt me. She would help me, like she always had.

I did not say it. I did not, I realized, want her help.

I looked at Carwyn. He did owe me, but I did not trust him. I had always had this done by Aunt Leila, or my grandfather when I was very young, or in a clinic where I could be certain the Dark magician would be entirely professional and I would be entirely safe.

I was weak and shaking with the effects of magic in my blood, though, and I could not afford to be sick or lacking in Light power. I did need help.

“All right,” I said, speaking low. “But don’t . . . don’t touch me.”

I didn’t know why I’d said it. He’d touched me plenty before, and this was a normal procedure. It wasn’t a big deal.

Carwyn nodded, head bowed as he searched in his pockets. Eventually he produced a small metal object, like an elaborately carved thimble that came to a point as sharp as a claw. I saw the shine of a tiny glass vial set behind the claw, bright as a teardrop in sunlight. The carvings on the metal were shadowy in contrast, with the strange shadows of the new cages. He fitted it on his thumb and took a step forward.

I took a step back and hit the window. “Do you normally use that?” I demanded.

“For private drainings, yeah,” said Carwyn.

I frowned. “So—you do this for your Light magician friends?”

Carwyn laughed. “I’ve never had a Light magician friend. But there are Light magicians who take quick, nasty trips to the Dark city. They will pay extra for a Dark magician to come and drain them in private.”

I remembered how the woman at the restaurant and some of the people on the train had looked at him when he was wearing the doppelganger’s collar, the mixture of contempt and desire.

“You don’t . . . have to drain me.”

Carwyn glanced up at me, puzzled, and then something he saw in my face made him look less casual and more serious. “I want to help you,” he said. “I know you don’t have much reason to believe me, but I mean it. I want to.”