The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(35)

“But I don’t want to leave. This is my home.”

Sid exhaled impatiently. “If you like the trap you’re in, I guess I can’t make you leave it. What do you want, Nirrim? Why were you looking for me?”

I just wanted to see you, I thought, but that seemed childish to say. “Which one told you I was looking for you? The fruit seller, the boy, or the High-Kith brothers?”

She grinned. “Who is to say all of them didn’t? I have many friends. Many admirers. You are hardly the first.”

I huffed with irritation, though I was relieved that she had returned to the teasing tone she’d used so often in the prison, that empty flirtation that seemed like second nature to her. “Why do you want so badly to find the source of magic?” I thought of the dream vials. “Do you want to bring magic goods back to your country?”

“Not quite. I want leverage. Let’s say this magic or trick can be bottled up. Its source discovered. Then I can bring it home—or bring the secret to it home. I could bargain with my parents. Marriage for a woman means the same thing where I come from as it does here: life with a man. Sleeping in his bed. I won’t do it. I have tried to explain to my parents, but they don’t want to listen. They never even let me finish. They have too much to gain by selling me off. So I can’t ever go home … unless maybe I can offer them something valuable enough to secure my freedom. Something to offset the cost they’ll bear if I don’t marry.”

I heard the muffled click of the front door latch. A gust of wind whooshed into the room.

“Why is the door unlocked?” someone said from the other room.

Sid shoved the small book into her back trouser pocket. She seized my hand. “Quickly.” She tugged me toward glass doors and pushed through them to a balcony that overlooked a sweet-smelling, dark garden. Wind tore through the trees. “We have to jump,” Sid hissed. I looked down into the garden and felt a sick twist in my stomach. “It’s not so far down,” she whispered.

I heard a cry of discovery from inside the room we had just left.

“Come on,” Sid said.

My pulse pounded against Sid’s hot hand. I touched my shirt and thought of the Elysium feather hidden beneath it. We jumped.

I tumbled into bushes, felt twigs scratch my face.

Sid tugged my hand. I heard shouts from the balcony as she pulled me through the garden and to the door in its wall. The knob didn’t budge when she twisted it. She dropped to one knee and, in the darkness, used her little knife, working at the lock while my pulse filled my chest and throat. The lock clicked. She pushed us through, and we ran.

It was only when we reached the night market and dipped into the crowd of people that we slowed, and she turned to me with bright black eyes, mouth parted in exhilaration.

“You like danger too much,” I told her.

She tipped her head slightly in acknowledgment. The lamplight caught the gold in her hair. “I know. It’s a flaw.”

I wondered, just for a moment, whether her short hair would feel like velvet at the nape of her neck.

I imagined it brushing my cheek.

I thought about drinking the dream of new, the way the liquid had fizzed on my tongue. Although the dream had been no more real than any other, and was filled as all dreams are with impossibilities, it had felt so vivid. I remembered the duskwing drinking the god’s blood and transforming into the Elysium bird, and for the first time, as I looked at Sid’s excited mouth, I felt a tickle of uncertain exploration, a wondering … was the bird special? Was it the gods’ bird?

Did the feather hidden beneath my shirt lend me some power that made Sid look at me the way she was looking at me?

Like I was captivating.

“About our bargain,” she said. “Will you help me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. What do you want in exchange?”

“I don’t know.”

She made an amused sound. “When you figure it out, tell me.”

“What if you can’t give it to me?”

She smiled widely. “Do I look like someone who would disappoint?”

“Not if it’s something easy to give.”

“That sounds like a challenge. And a criticism! You think I can’t handle something hard? What do you believe I’d do then?”

“Run away.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“True! Luckily for both of us, I know already what you want.”

“Oh, really,” I said. “Do you.”

“You just want to want something. You want the feeling of wanting.”

I didn’t like that. It made me feel too seen. “Maybe I want money.”

“I can give you that. Though, honestly: boring.”

“Or to live among the High Kith.”

She waved a languid hand. “Done. If that’s what you really choose.”

A tree sighed above us in the dark. Sid caught me glancing up into the rush of its leaves and asked, “What is it? Why do you look so startled?”

“It’s my first tree,” I said. The tree rubbed against the gray sky. “I have never seen one before, not this close. There are no trees in the Ward.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”