The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(41)

“Tell me about this dream,” she said, so I did. I wanted to pull us away from the fact that she would leave here and go back to her old life. I didn’t want to hear her insist again that somehow, in the midst of a life that I couldn’t imagine, one far away from here, she would remember me. I told her everything about the dream, except that I had had a conversation with my younger self in it. That felt too personal—and too strange—to share.

She stood and reached for a gorgeously pink damask purse. Its lining was a shocking blue. When she reached inside the purse it looked like her hand was disappearing into a midday summer sky. She withdrew the prayer book of the gods and gave it to me. “Can you find the murdered creature from your dream?”

I sat at the edge of her bed and paged through the book. I’d had no idea that people had once believed in so many gods. The god of echoes. Of tunnels. Of unspoken words. Of lies. Of games. The wind. The lost.

There were illustrations, and when I found what I was looking for I paused, then continued through the book, glancing at each page only long enough to record the image of it in my mind.

“You read quickly.” Sid came to join me at the edge of the bed. The bell of her sleeve brushed my bare arm. A shiver traveled up the back of my neck.

I edged away. “I’m not really reading.” I returned the book to her. “It was the god of discovery.”

If she was bothered by my shifting away from her, she didn’t show it. She said, “I wonder what it takes to kill a god.”

“There are no gods.”

“What if there were, and they were all killed? Or what if there were, and they all fled?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in them, either.”

“I was raised to consider all possibilities.”

“Because your parents believe in gods?”

Now she looked uncomfortable. “It has more to do with strategy.”

“What do you mean?”

“People can refuse to see a possibility. Maybe they don’t want it. Maybe it never occurs to them, or is even awful to them. But people make bad choices when they don’t know the full range of choices. People come to wrong conclusions if they don’t understand all the possible questions.”

“Are your parents scholars?” I asked. Sid’s eyes widened in amusement, so I tried again. “Merchants?”

“Well, they certainly wanted to sell me.” Sid rubbed the back of her neck and tugged absently at the fastening at the back of her dress. “Don’t take what I said about strategy too close to heart. Being open to all possibilities has a flaw, too.”

“What flaw?”

“It can make you doubt what you know.” Then she imitated someone else’s voice, someone who spoke in a too-elegant way. “But how can you be sure, Sidarine, if you’ve never so much as looked at a man? How can you know, when you’ve never even kissed one?”

She said it steadily. Her face was unchanging, her expression perfectly even. Her long hands lay folded across her knee, the lines of her arms so poised, so ladylike, that I could see a different version of Sid than the one who had rummaged through the piano and made me jump off a balcony.

I said, “Sidarine is a pretty name.”

She pinched her silk sleeve. “It’s like this dress.” Then she cut a mock-menacing look in my direction. “Don’t ever use that name, or our friendship is over.”

Friendship? Was that what this was? I felt a sudden, hard determination to be unfazed by Sid, who so clearly enjoyed fazing everyone. I want to see your face, she had said in the prison, the next time that I shock you.

“Turn around,” I said.

Her black eyes widened. I saw her start to ask a question. Then, to my surprise, she did exactly what I had told her to do. She shifted her weight on the edge of the bed and turned so that I saw the back of her head, her neck and the perfect posture of her straight shoulders, the three hook-and-eye fastenings on the back of her dress. Steadily, I opened each one. “Since you have trouble doing it yourself,” I said. “Since I’m supposed to be your maid.”

She was quiet. The red silk of her dress lay open on her shoulders, exposing the skin of her back down to her waist. I had decided, resolutely, not to look at her bare skin. But a drop of water fell between her shoulder blades. For a moment I didn’t understand where the water had come from. I thought it might be an illusion.

But it was from my hair. The water droplet had slipped from the ends of my hair, wet from the bath. I saw her skin twitch. The water slid down her spine. It disappeared into the silk at her waist.

I stood. I said good night. I closed the door behind me.

I don’t think she knew my heart was twisting inside me like a blind animal.

I don’t think she knew I had held my breath as I undid each fastening.

She couldn’t have known how I went to my room and crawled into bed, worried about how bold I had been.

What I had done could easily have looked like nothing—no more than me performing my new job as her maid, for which she had paid handsomely.

But I knew what it really was.

I liked Sid too much. I liked the sight of her bare back. I had wanted to follow the water droplet with my fingertip.

In my bed in the dark I touched the Elysium feather where it burned against my breast. I wondered if the feather had made me want Sid. I wondered if it could make her want me.