Tell the Wind and Fire(74)

I had thought we would have so much longer together. I had thought that if I behaved a certain way, I could coax a guarantee from the world.

But there were no guarantees, and I might never see Ethan again—his drowning-deep dark eyes, the lines of his face that bore a resemblance to every one of his family and only ended up marking how very different he was from them all, the way his locks curled lightly against his collar as though even his very hair wished to touch the world kindly. That I had seen Carwyn every day for weeks made it hurt more, like seeing a house that reminded me of home and left me feeling more homesick and far away from any comfort.

I put my hand to my face to muffle the sobs, but I let the messy choking sounds come. I let my tears fall until my face felt like a stiff mask, twisted with grief. The patina of dried tears made me feel as if I could not change expression or my face would crack. My eyes were so puffy, I could barely see. And I found a strange glory in my stupid, useless, wildly unrestrained misery. I did not have to be restrained anymore. I cried and cried, cried for my mother, for the loss of her and how I had denied it, for all my love and all my guilt, for my father and the child I used to be, and for Ethan. I even cried for my aunt and for Jim and Charles and Mark Stryker. I cried for everyone I had not been able to save, and cried as I had never allowed myself to cry.

Ethan had only ever wanted to love me. He had never asked me to be strong all the time.

I stared up at the pale glimmer that might be his face, high up in the tower window. I concentrated on directing my thoughts to him, on lifting my whole soul up to him, as if I could pluck it like a bird from a cage and send it flying to his hands.

A group of people had gathered, I realized. Others were still walking by, sliding glances of mingled discomfort and fascination at me, as if I were a traffic accident. But the group watching me was quiet. I had broken down in an ugly mess, no artifice and no dignity left, and people I did not know were still watching me with sympathy. Not everyone had turned away. Not every heart had to be won by trickery.

“Are you all right?” a stranger asked me.

It was such a relief to say, “No.”

I stood there until I realized I would have to return to my father. I stepped up to the blank gray face of the tower, rested my hot cheek for a moment against cool stone, and kissed the wall.

I turned and began to walk down the street, away from the glowing clock and into the deepening evening. As I did, someone fell into step with me, and I saw without much surprise that it was Carwyn. I was too limp and wrung out to feel much of anything. I supposed he had followed me there and watched it all.

He was not collared and hooded yet. His dark head was still bare, and his well-known face was exposed to public view. The evening was storing up shadows, piling up the layers of darkness in the sky. It was hard to make out anyone’s features unless you were really looking, and nobody was looking for Ethan. They knew where he was.

“Did you fake the crying for effect?” Carwyn asked. His voice was neutral, and that, rather than any show of praise or horror, was what made me answer.

“It was real,” I said slowly. “And it was for effect.”

Carwyn only looked accepting. I thought that might have been why I had been drawn to him at the start: that he was from the Dark city, and I’d thought he might be more like me than Ethan or Nadiya or any of the innocent people I knew. More than that, because he was a doppelganger, he surely would not judge me even if he knew all I had done.

In the end, though, I didn’t need him to approve of me or understand me. I was done feeling bad about the choices I had made to survive.

“So here you are back in the Dark city,” I said.

Carwyn inclined his head. “Here we are, back in the Dark city. You going home to your dad?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Do you want to come with me?”

“I doubt they want a doppelganger under their roof.”

“I’m sure they would let you stay. I’m sure I could persuade them, if they had a problem with it.”

He looked down at me sharply, as if I had said something remarkable. Then he lifted a hand and touched it to my face. It was a brief brush of his skin on mine; I did not even have time to startle back before he drew his hand away, his fingertips wet with my tears. I saw then that he was looking at me with both affection and concern, with tenderness I had never dreamed I’d see him show. I remembered, with something like a shock, that he thought he loved me.

“You’ve done enough,” Carwyn said. “Now there’s something I have to do. Good luck with your part, Lucie.”

There was an expression on his face I did not understand. “Good luck with whatever you’re trying to do.”

“Thank you,” said Carwyn, still with that strange look about him. “I hope I succeed.”

I reached out and touched his hand before we parted. All my enemies were transforming into something else, it seemed, passing beyond reach of hate. There were no people left to be fought: there were only people left I had to fight for.

I went back to the clock tower every day and stood there all day. Every day a larger and larger crowd came to look at me weep.

Every day, people took pictures of me. Every day, the same old newspapers under the new regime discussed whether the Golden Thread in the Dark was grateful enough for being liberated, whether I was a weak traitor to the cause, whether Ethan Stryker was different from the other Strykers, whether he had truly worked with the sans-merci and whether that mattered. There was no consensus on me. I didn’t want one. I hadn’t counted on a sympathetic response. I just wanted everyone talking about me. I wanted everyone watching.