The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(21)

“I don’t despise anybody. I am simply not made for marrying.”

I almost asked that he describe the woman his parents wanted for him, but a small, ugly feeling stopped me. I became aware again of the perfume on his coat. “You would seduce women anyway, even if you were married.”

He sighed. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Does your family know where you are?”

“Not yet. I hope to keep it that way.”

“Maybe you should just marry,” I said. “Make them happy.”

“But I can’t.” He sounded perplexed. “You must understand why I can’t.”

“I would make my parents happy, if I had parents.”

“You would marry a man your parents had chosen? Someone you didn’t love, and never could?”

I shrugged. “Yes.”

“I thought—”

“What?”

“I thought you and I had more in common than we do.”

“We have nothing in common.”

“All right,” he said. “If you say so.”

“Honestly, your dislike of marriage is an excuse.”

“Really.” For the first time he sounded prickly. “In what way, pray tell?”

“Everything to you is an adventure. Being in prison is one. You wanted an excuse to run away.”

He started to speak, but the gated door at the end of the hall clanked and creaked. Sid said something swift and angry under his breath in his language, but kept silent when the guard came to collect my blood. Swiftly, I took off Sid’s coat so that the guard wouldn’t notice I was wearing something beyond my kith. I offered my arm through the bars. The needle went right into the bruise that had already formed on my inner right elbow.

“Leeches,” Sid muttered after the guard left with a vial of my blood. “And now you’ll sleep, and I won’t be able to argue with you.”

It was true; I was instantly drowsy. Shivering, I tucked myself back into Sid’s coat. “My sentence is for a month. Maybe yours is, too, and we can argue until we are released.”

“A month? They are going to drain your blood every day for a month?”

“I hope so. Sometimes they keep prisoners longer than they say they will. Some people never come out of prison.”

His silence seemed stunned. I closed my eyes. I curled into his coat and drifted toward sleep.

“I want you to think that what my parents would force me to do is wrong,” I heard him say.

We are all forced to do things, I almost told him, but I felt too tired.

It occurred to me, belatedly, that Sid had sensed that sturdy bowl of grief inside me when I told him about Helin. Maybe everything that came after—the flirtation, the silly bargain, the secret—had been to distract me when he saw that he couldn’t take away my sadness.

I thought I heard him call to the guard.

“It is wrong,” I murmured to Sid. I didn’t mean it. I would do anything for a mother, a father. But I said it again, deciding that I would believe it was wrong, for his sake.





16


“NIRRIM, WAKE UP.”

There was urgency in Sid’s voice. I heard footfalls coming down the hall. I got to my feet. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“We’re leaving,” he said.

I was confused. “To go where? A different part of the prison?” Fear rose within me. “Why? What will they do?”

“Nothing. Don’t be afraid. They are letting us go.”

The footfalls came closer.

“That’s not right.” I began to doubt whether I was awake or had somehow slept for nearly a month. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days.”

“Then my sentence isn’t over.”

“Now it is. I promised you a favor.”

A pair of guards unlocked our cells and we were led through the prison’s maze to a dimly lit office that seemed out of place: the size of a large cell, but with a thick rug on the floor, its pattern like interlaced fingers of many colors, and a tiny man behind a desk with a sputtering oil lamp. I wasn’t sure where to rest my eyes. I could feel Sid beside me, taut with energy. Behind the tiny man at the desk, a window glowed silver. It was the moonlight. It was like mercury. It was so strong that I finally believed Sid: it had truly been only three days since the full moon and the festival celebrating its god, one of the few gods this city remembered.

The man at the desk looked through my passport and stamped one of the booklet’s pages with a T for Tybir, the name of the prison. Sid had no documents, which was strange to see. I had never met anyone with no documents. There was, however, a letter that the man behind the desk read several times, looking up occasionally at Sid. Finally, the man scrawled something at the bottom of the page but did not stamp it. He folded the single page along its already creased lines and rose from his seat to hand it carefully to Sid. The man said, “Your—”

“None of that,” Sid said. “My stay here was delightful, I assure you.”

The man seemed flustered. Belatedly, I realized I was wearing Sid’s coat. Worried I would be punished, my gaze darted between the man behind the desk and the guards, but they paid no attention to me. They stared at Sid. The air prickled with their fascination.