The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(54)

“Here.” Held aloft in my fingers, the feather looked like a billowing flame.

“I can’t. It’s too beautiful. How can you even bear to touch it?”

I tucked it in her hair behind her ear. Annin reached up gingerly to touch it with her fingertips.

I said, “I don’t want you to think that a stranger, just because she’s High, can give you better gifts than a sister.”

“A sister?” Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I will miss you,” she said.

This made me feel guilty—not because I wouldn’t miss her, but because she didn’t know that I had given her the feather not so much as a gift, but to be rid of it. I did half believe that it had some power to pull Sid toward me. Why else had she agreed to my demand?

At the time, I believed I was giving Annin the feather so that, if it had any power, it would no longer affect me. It would no longer affect Sid. She would be my mistress and I would be her servant, and we would be partners in a strange quest. I would never long for anything more, without that burning feather above my heart.

Now I know that it was more complicated than that. I gave away the feather because I wanted to see if Sid would like me without it. I wanted her to want me for myself alone.





32


“READY?” SID SAID. HER ENORMOUS trunk sat inside the tavern, waiting for a pair of hired men to collect it and convey it through the wall. We stood outside the door on the unevenly paved street. The rain had washed away some of the heat, or at least the way heat sticks to the skin like a layer of grime. The sky was marbled with shining clouds. A cool breeze played with my hair. I tucked it behind my ears.

“Not quite,” I said. “I have someone to see first.”

Her mouth curled. “Someone special?”

“I can’t leave without saying good-bye.”

“I do it all the time.”

“I’m not like you.”

“Go then, and collect your kiss.” Her tone was amused yet bored.

Disappointment puddled inside me. I knew enough of what I felt for Sid to understand that her indifference to Aden was a rejection of me.

“Explain to me,” she said, “what is so appealing about a boy’s kiss? Is it the rasp of stubble?”

I could have said: Sometimes it is comforting. I could have said: It used to be, at first, that kissing him felt like an important skill to learn. I liked to learn things. And part of having a good memory was remembering exactly how Aden liked to be kissed. What was so wrong in enjoying that I could do that? It used to be nice to kiss him. Warm and safe. I could have said: Kissing him is better than dealing with his hurt if I don’t.

I could have said: I am afraid of his hurt.

I could have confessed that I had killed a man and explained that Aden knew, and maybe he would no longer protect me if he couldn’t claim me as his.

He must believe that I am his, I could have said.

Instead I said, “I’ll meet you at the wall.”

“Don’t keep me waiting long,” Sid said, and walked away, whistling a tune I didn’t recognize.



* * *



“I don’t understand,” Aden said when I pushed his hands away. His eyes had brightened when he saw me at his door. He had pulled me out of the sunny street and into the darkness of his home. “Why are you always so cold? All I want to do is show you how much I love you. I miss you when I don’t see you.”

“I came here to tell you something.”

He started to draw me in the direction of his bedroom. “You can tell me later.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to.”

He abruptly let me go. He held up his hands dramatically, large fingers spread wide and empty, as though to show he had no weapon. “Gods, Nirrim. You’re acting like I’m forcing you. It would be nice, you know,” he added bitterly, “if for once it was you who wanted me.”

I imagined lifting my mouth to Sid’s. Heat rushed into my cheeks.

Aden touched my warm face. His anger relented into affection. “You’re so pretty when you blush,” he said. “I understand if you feel shy sometimes. I know that girls do. There are men who take advantage, but I never will.”

But you are, I wanted to say. You are using what you know to keep me in place, right by your side. You don’t even know you’re doing it, and I am too afraid to say what you’re doing, because of what you might do to me.

“I can’t help wanting you,” he said, “and I get carried away, yes, but it’s only because I love you. Do you hear me? Nirrim, I want to marry you.”

My body went very still. “You do?”

He smiled. “You don’t believe me?”

Dread unspooled in my belly like black thread. “We’re too young.”

“You’re nineteen! Half the Ward is engaged or married by then.”

“I…” I searched for a reason that would make him not want me. “I don’t want children.”

“We don’t have to have them right away. You already take the anys,” he said, referring to the herb Raven gave me monthly to prevent pregnancy. It was illegal in the Ward, where the prevention or termination of pregnancy resulted in prison, but I couldn’t imagine having a child, especially not when children could be snatched in the night.