Tell the Wind and Fire(81)

The most vivid memory I have of that day, the moment that broke my heart, is how his face changed when he saw me.

“You’re here,” he said, and smiled. My stomach sank, and I was suddenly sick with horror at the thought of what I was going to do. He said eagerly, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

I was about to speak, but then realized I could not. My lips shaped his real name, silently.

“Quick,” Carwyn continued. “Take her.”

That was what truly broke my heart. He saw that there was no choice, and no chance for him, and he still smiled.

If I had not known better, I thought even I might have been convinced that this was Ethan. He looked more like Ethan than he ever had before. He was taking it seriously now. The masquerade meant something to him.

“You heard him,” I snapped at the guard. “Set her free now.”

Marie was secured by only one cuff, not chained like Carwyn. It was easy to release her, and in one movement Carwyn picked her up and leaned out of the car, placing her in my arms.

Marie clung to him. “You said you wouldn’t let go.”

“Not until the end,” he said. “But it’s the end now. It’s all over. You’re safe now.”

He had to pull away from her, and then she was in my arms, a heavy but welcome weight. She was crying.

“I’ve got you,” I told Marie. And I told Carwyn, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I have never done a really good thing before,” he said, and the wry quirk to his mouth was all him for a moment, any trace of Ethan disappearing. “I’m told we should try new experiences.”

I thought, for a brief panicked moment, of telling everyone the truth. But Aunt Leila had almost sent a child to the cages and nobody had protested. The truth would only have condemned Ethan and me as well as Carwyn, would have ruined everything Carwyn was doing and thrown it back in his face.

What Carwyn was doing. It made me feel again the way I had on the balcony, hearing the truth about Ethan, the way I had at the foot of Ethan’s tower. I’d had it all wrong once again, but now I saw.

I’d thought I was marked forever because I’d lied, but Ethan had lied, and Carwyn was lying now. We were all doing the best we could.

We were all heroes if we chose to be. The rich, na?ve boy who had tried. The girl who had lied. The boy made out of darkness making himself into something else. There was no sin that could not be wiped away, nobody who was only what other people thought them. I hadn’t understood until it was almost too late.

“May I?” asked Carwyn, and I nodded.

He had never asked before, but he was going to die, and it would make the pretense seem more real. It could comfort him and convince everyone in the crowd, but it was more than that: in that moment, I wanted to.

He leaned out of the car, and I turned up my face and kissed him. He kissed me. He was not trembling. Neither of us was.

“Don’t cry,” he told me. “It’s worth it, to know I can. To know that I want to.”

“You’re worth crying for,” I said.

He smiled at me, and I saw the traces of tears on his own cheeks. “Well,” he said, “don’t cry long.”

I did not cry long, but I cried then, holding Marie, who was crying too. I cried as they led Carwyn and the other victims to their cages, cried for the wickedness, cried for the waste. I thought that Carwyn was dying for a cupcake, for a kind word, for so very little.

Then I saw him climb the steps to the platform with a sure, firm step, and I changed my mind.

The city is ours now, the sans-merci said when it was done.

I knew better than that. The city is no one’s; the city is everyone’s. The city could fall into ruin, and I would still have everything I need. We could go half the world away and build a city to be ours. The city is the dark and light halves of my heart.

Time seemed to move slowly as the crowd surged toward the platform and the sound of his steady steps echoed through the air. His head was thrown back, his hair in Ethan’s usual wavy disarray, the early-morning sunlight making the almost-lost gold in it shine. His grip on the cage as he climbed in, without the guards to help him, was firm. This was an expression I had never seen on him. He looked bright and sweet and new to the world. He lifted his face up to the sky and his face was soft—soft and young and peaceful. He looked like no one but himself, like a self he had never been before.

Even as the dark cage contracted and he cried out, a ray of light struck one of the tall glass towers and the glass threw back the light even brighter than it had been before. The sunlight became a bright sword that pierced the bars of his cage.

When I saw it, I saw everything that I believed laid out in front of me like a shining map of the future. That the new destroyers would be destroyed as surely as the old ones had been. That a brilliant city, all the brighter for its shadows, would rise out of this abyss. That Ethan and I would spend our lives working toward that in both cities, not hiding anything from each other again, not pretending to be perfect anymore, just trying our best. I knew that one day we would be able to tell this story—Carwyn’s story, Ethan’s story, my story, the story of all we sacrificed and all we saved.

I felt I learned the value of every small, flawed thing we do in the darkness, trying to scramble our way into the light. People will come up with a hundred thousand reasons why other people do not count as human, but that does not mean anyone has to listen.