The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(80)

“Child, you were running along the rooftops under a full moon during a festival. You were seen by several people. Everyone knows you caught the Elysium bird and surrendered it. The gossip is that a soldier tried to drag you to your death, and you kicked him to his.”

I rested a hand against a printing press to steady myself, gazing at the ink-darkened woodblocks of frontispieces, the collections of little letters collected like pulled teeth in the compositor’s tray, and wondered what else I had been blind to, what else should have been so obvious, such as that any secret in the Ward spreads like a giddy fire, so hungry the Half Kith are for anything that is not ordinary.

“No harm will come to you,” said the printer. “Not if the Ward can help it. We will protect you.”

The lowering sun carved through the workshop and illuminated the ink-wet pages hanging to dry.

“You’ve helped so many people escape,” he said, “and never sought anything for yourself.”

“Of course. No one here has anything to give. It helped me to help. It made me feel good to forge passports. Special.”

“You are. Anyone can see it. It’s in your face. Your kindness. I have wanted to say this to you before. The Ward is grateful, and we won’t forget it.”

I shook my head. “You should be grateful to Raven. I would be nothing without her.”

His expression tightened. “I suppose it is true that she raised you to be selfless,” he said carefully. “But you need to demand something for yourself. Everyone in the Ward will miss you if you go, but it’s nice to think of you somewhere else, beyond the wall. Comforting.”

I had had no idea that people in the Ward were watching me, that they knew so much about me and they would miss me if I never returned. That they could even want me never to return.

It was a new thought to me: that you could take heart when someone escapes the trap that trapped you.

And yet it shouldn’t have been a new thought, since I had already felt this whenever I forged a passport. I had simply not realized that this was what I had felt.

I had put love into each stitch in each passport’s binding. I just hadn’t known that was what it was, because the only love I had recognized as given to me was the kind that clutched tight, and never let go.



* * *



“I can’t marry you,” I said.

Aden’s face looked as though I had slapped it. “You don’t mean this.”

“I thought I could marry you,” I said. “I thought I should, that it was enough that I care about you and that we are friends. But it’s not enough.”

The fading light, as it always did around Aden, lingered on his skin, sifting in from the window of his home to touch him lightly, to brighten his wounded eyes, to gild his shocked mouth. “I’m not enough for you?” he said. “Who is?”

“I don’t think you want to marry someone who can’t love you.”

“Answer my question. Or do you think you don’t even owe me the truth? Who are you? What is this?” His fingers twitched the blue silk at my shoulder. “Of course you think you can break the law and never pay. Of course you think you can break my heart. That foreign woman has made you believe it.”

Once, I would have said, She has nothing to do with this.

I would have lied because I was afraid. I would have hidden the truth because I knew it made him angry.

“I don’t want to break your heart,” I said, “but it’s either yours or mine.”

“So selfish,” he hissed. “I should have known. You killed a man, and I bet you don’t feel bad at all about it, just like you have no guilt whatsoever about hurting me.”

“You’re right that I don’t feel guilty about killing him. Not anymore. He would have dragged me to my death to get what he wanted.”

“What are you suggesting? That I am like him, that I intend to drag you to your death when all I want is to make you happy, to build a life with you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s what you mean.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s true. You are a little like him.”

“Listen to yourself! How can you be so cold? How can you say such a cruel thing to me?”

“You said it.” I remembered my earlier thought about how it wasn’t wrong to want, how it was necessary. But of course nothing is as simple as that. Wanting something doesn’t always mean it is owed to you. “I know you love me, but that doesn’t mean I have to give myself to you.”

“Let me guess. You’ve given yourself to her.”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s disgusting.”

“I disagree.”

“It’s against the law.”

“Then I’ll continue to break it.”

“You have been seduced,” he said. “You don’t mean what you say. She has twisted your thoughts. She has tricked you with gold and glamour. She has promised to take you away from here.”

This time, his barb shot home. “Sid has never made me any promises.”

“I will tell,” he said. “I will denounce you as a murderer. A deviant.”

“Do it, and the moment I am in prison the Ward will turn against you.”