The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(23)

But I would never betray you. I would never tell anyone what we do. How you find people who want help, and I forge their freedom.

You can always trust me.

She lifted the oil lamp to my face. “Not a mark,” she said.

“No. I—”

“That coat.” She gestured with the lamp at Sid’s jacket, which I had not removed despite the heat. “You stole a Middling coat? You broke the sumptuary law? You fool.”

“I didn’t, I—”

She swung the oil lamp. It smashed against my cheek. I felt a lick of hot pain. I heard cries. I clapped a hand to my blazing cheek.

“How dare you,” Raven said. “After all these years, after all the care I put into you.”

I shrank back from her, glass cracking under my sandals. “The coat has nothing to do with it. Please, listen to me.” I babbled the story of what had happened.

“You caught the bird?” Annin’s voice was filled with wonder.

Raven turned to look at her and Morah. “Go to your rooms.”

“But Nirrim,” Annin said. “You have burned her!”

“Now,” Raven said.

Annin protested, wide-eyed, but Morah took her by the hand and tugged her up the stairs.

“Oh, my girl,” Raven said once we were alone. Her shoulders sagged. Her gentle face was lined with misery. “I am so sorry.” She reached to touch my burned cheek. I flinched, I couldn’t help it, and when I saw her eyes shine with sudden tears I felt guilty. I stooped to gather the shards of the lamp. She stopped my shaking hands. “Leave it,” she said, and sounded so heartbroken that I began to cry, I said I was the one who was sorry, could she forgive me.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Come, sit. I will help you, and you will tell me everything.” She fetched salve and a clean rag and a bowl of cool water. “Ah, no glass in the skin. That’s good.” She stroked the dripping cloth over my hot cheek. Water dribbled into my hair. “There. With any luck, you won’t even scar.” She smoothed the tingling salve over the burn. I gasped with relief. “You said nothing about the documents?”

“Never,” I said. “I swear.”

“Do you swear upon the gods?”

“Yes.”

“Who was this person? That girl.”

It felt strange to hear Sid referred to as a girl. I hadn’t mentioned to Raven and the others that I ever thought her anything else.

It had been a mistake. I make them all the time.

Usually I see things that are not there. This time, I had not seen something that was.

But she had known what I was. She had been flirting with me.

And I had liked it. A flush in my cheek burned beneath the lamp-oil burn. A confused, private feeling bundled itself up inside me. It curled around the idea of her.

“She is no one,” I said. “A stranger.”

Raven smoothed my damp hair behind my ears so gently that I felt tired, ready to lay my head in her lap, if I dared, and sleep.

“You said the bird came to you,” she said slowly.

“Yes,” I said, and she was silent. Then she said, “Let’s keep the matter of the Elysium to ourselves.”

Of course. It would only bring unwanted attention.

“Sweet child,” she said. “I was so frightened. Do you understand why I reacted the way I did? I had thought I’d lost you.”

“It’s all right.”

“I love you,” she said.

She had never said this to me before. Her words made me yearn for her love even though she had just offered it, as if my feelings were late, too slow to believe what she had said, or as if it was only now that I had her love that I could let myself actually feel the need for it. I have someone like a mother, I had told Sid. I hadn’t been sure of my claim’s truth. But it was true. I was so grateful.

I told her I loved her, too. She guided me upstairs as though I were half my age. She tucked me into my bed, just like a real mother, and tsked when she lightly touched my throbbing cheek. “You must see to that in the morning,” she said. When she lost her temper, and hurt me, she was always so tender afterward, as though I were her treasure. It felt so good that it was almost worth being punished. And didn’t parents correct their children, so that they would learn?

She stood in the moonlight, ready to leave, Sid’s coat tucked in the crook of her arm.

“Wait,” I said. “The coat. May I keep the coat?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face.

“Please,” I said.

“What’s the use? You can never wear it.”

“I like it. Maybe,” I stammered, “maybe Annin could help me alter it. Dye it.”

“Well, you know, you did lose my coat. This one is just my kith.” She must have seen the distress in my face. “Oh, very well.” She returned to lay the coat across the foot of my bed. “You’ll have quite a job making it look fit for a Half-Kith woman. But if it’s what you want.”

“Yes,” I said gratefully.

She kissed my brow. “I would do anything for you.”

After she left, I shifted into a sitting position in my bed, though moving at all made my cheek pound. I slipped my fingers into the inner pocket of Sid’s coat and withdrew the crimson-and-pink Elysium feather that had fallen three days ago when I was on the roof, and that I had plucked from the gutter after leaving the prison. I had climbed back to the roof in the moonlight. I had collected the wet heliographs from the cistern, slipping the tin squares into my pocket.