Tell the Wind and Fire(76)

She glanced at me, her eyes glinting in the afternoon sun, and she grinned. I saw brown-brick buildings in the distance, saw the glitter of sunshine on the tin warehouse roofs, but mostly what I saw was a sea of people, and the tide turning our way.

Nadiya knew how to work the crowd as well as I ever had. She made it sound as if we had been a pair, me and Ethan, comrades in arms as well as lovers, fighting for fraternity, liberty, and equality.

It made for a beautiful love story, the idea of us working together smoothly, instead of all the jagged misunderstandings that made up the truth of our lives.

Approving murmurs rippled through the crowd, like we were being surrounded by a sea turning calm.

A voice burst out. “Is that how it was?”

I could not finesse them the way Nadiya did or command them the way Aunt Leila did. I had tried that. I was trying something else now.

I took a deep breath and decided to be brave and stupid. I said, “No.”

And around me the sounds of a storm rose.

“She’s lying to spare Stryker.”

“They’re all liars, and worse.”

They wanted it to have been as clear-cut as heroism, or as straightforward as villainy. Anyone who said that it was not simple branded themselves a villain, guilty of not telling people what they wanted to hear.

“No, but it isn’t what you think,” I shouted. “He’s not what you think. Listen.”

“Why don’t you shut up instead?” a man’s voice asked.

“Don’t tell the Golden Thread in the Dark to shut up!”

A woman snapped, her voice as sweetly sympathetic as a blade, “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“Make way,” called a voice in the teeming, jostling crowd, over the shouts of reprimand and support, “for the hero of Green-Wood, for the man escaped from the cages!”

I caught my breath as I saw the stooped shoulders and silver head I loved. I had forgotten that when my Aunt Leila made me a hero and a symbol of revolution the day Mark Stryker had died, I had not been the only one up there on that stage.

“There, girl,” said the nervous-looking guard, “maybe you’ll listen to your father.”

I’d had enough staying quiet at the Light Council and quiet on the platform with Aunt Leila’s hand on my wrist. The only thing I had ever truly regretted was submitting.

“Why should I?” I said.

“There’s no reason in the world for you to listen to me,” said Dad in his soft voice. “It’s my turn to listen to you.”

The guard looked at Dad the same way he had looked at me, shocked and angry, as if Dad was a child the guard had expected obedience from. “You ungrateful creature of the Light,” he said under his breath.

“I’m very grateful,” Dad told him. “I’m grateful to Lucie.”

He stepped toward me and then behind me, his hands on my waist, anchoring me, making himself another target but not making himself so vulnerable that I would have to worry about him. His whisper stirred my hair.

“Take courage.”

“Already got it,” I said, and heard my father laugh behind me.

“Yes, you do. I’m so sorry, Lucie.”

“What for?”

“I’m so sorry for all my bad days,” he said. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be stronger for you, that I didn’t see when you were hurting. I didn’t see a way to do it, I couldn’t think of how to make it work—to make our family work without her.” His eyes dropped to the diamond shining around my neck, and I felt his fingers tremble. “I knew how much I owed you,” he said. “I tried to tell you that, and I’m sorry if I made it another burden for you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, even softer, “that I am a burden to you.”

I bit my tongue before I could tell him that he was not a burden, and said instead, blood in my mouth and truth on my lips, “It doesn’t matter. I was always so glad you were there. I was so glad I saved you.”

I had always been glad, and always thought he was worth everything I had done for him.

I had tried not to blame him when his pain had kept him from being there for me. All the resentment I had hidden and could not help did not seem to matter now, when I could feel his warmth at my back and I knew that he loved me. My pain must have stopped me being there for him sometimes too.

It did not mean that pain did not matter. But there was something besides pain between us.

I would not have done anything differently, so perhaps it was time to stop regretting what I had done.

“I can stand with you now,” said my father. “I can do that.”

The pain of it all had seemed such a waste, once. Now it seemed like the sharp fire that had forged me into a weapon, into a sword, into a battering ram that could break through the prison door.

“We can stand together,” I said.

I had spent so long trying to be something I was not. I knew I was something quite different from what I had been: innocent, unformed, terrified, the girl who was lovingly overprotected by both her parents and who wanted to be just like her aunt.

I was not like those polar opposites who had somehow circled around to the same savage place, Aunt Leila and Mark Stryker. I was not like Ethan, always trying to be good, or Carwyn, who believed he was bad. I did not feel as though I would ever have any of their conviction in the rightness or wrongness of their actions. All I knew was who I loved and what I wanted. I did not feel good or bad, and I did not feel guilty anymore. I felt strong enough to do what needed to be done.