My sword point faltered with my heartbeat as he spoke. When he fell silent, the sword point dropped. We stood facing each other in the moonlight, with no weapons and no lies between us.
Carwyn pushed himself up on the balcony rail, shoulders hunched, and looked at me with his face suddenly open. He was not closed off, and he was not cruelly mimicking Ethan. He looked as weary and wary as I felt.
“None of this was my idea. None of this was what I wanted. And now I’m trapped in this mess,” he said. “Just like you.”
I took a shaky breath.
“Why torture me, then?”
His shadowed, moonlit face changed, amusement overcoming exhaustion, his mouth curling into a sly grin. “I said I wasn’t a criminal mastermind whose devious plans topple cities,” Carwyn told me. “I never said I was nice.”
I didn’t entirely believe him. He might have agreed to Ethan’s plan, but that did not mean he had no plan of his own. Someone had been spreading treason through the Light city: someone had committed the crime Ethan had almost died for.
But I believed him enough for now.
I had given Ethan a mission, and like a knight in a fairy tale he had gone away to accomplish it. He thought he could save Jarvis.
That meant, for a moment, even on this nightmarish night, I could see Carwyn without seeing an impostor who had stolen Ethan’s face and his place in the world, a monster who was made of darkness and evil. I could look at him as I had looked at him on the first night we met, and see a boy who was a jerk but who had done something that made me think there was more to him than that. A boy from the Dark city, who understood that life was cruel and who was not always cruel himself.
A boy I had something in common with.
More in common now.
“So here we are,” I said. “Trapped. You want to get out of here?”
He shrugged. “Well, the party’s pretty dead.”
He smiled at me, a smile that was different from all the smiles of the past terrible weeks, because this was a smile that invited me to share it with him. I thought of the bloodstained ballroom and Jim’s face, how surprised he had been to die, and could not smile back, but I reached out my free hand to him. Carwyn reached back and clasped his hand in mine.
Chapter Seventeen
WE LEFT THE BALCONY HAND IN HAND. I took the lead, running down the corridor and then toward the smaller, plainer door that led to stairs. We ran down one flight of concrete steps, stopped short at the sound of fighting down the stairwell, and went through the doors to another corridor.
This corridor held, in one direction, another gold-carpeted stretch filled with doors that led to hotel rooms, and, in the other direction, a balcony with a flight of stairs that led down into the lobby. And to escape. I went that way, and Carwyn crept with me.
There were more sounds of danger this way, the clash of weapons and the ring of raised voices. I approached with caution.
The balcony we were moving toward had a marble flight of stairs on one side. On the other end of the balcony was a small bar.
Every instinct screamed at me to dive for the stairs. Carwyn’s hand tugged me that way. But the burning in my veins said something different.
I ran for the bar, yanking Carwyn along with me with such force, I must have almost pulled his arm out of its socket. I landed crouched down on the carpet, behind a glass case full of bottles, and he crashed into me, on his hands and knees, with our clasped hands a hair’s-breadth away from the vicious edge of my sword.
“What are—” he began, outraged, and I dropped the sword and covered his mouth with my hand.
His mouth was open against my palm for a moment. I met his eyes and shook my head fiercely once. He lowered his eyes, eyelids pale and lashes dark in the scintillating light of the chandelier, and it seemed like a gesture of submission.
“I’m running out of magic,” I snapped. “If they look, they might be able to see us!”
I removed my hand and grasped the sword hilt again. Carwyn stayed quiet.
The sans-merci seemed to be trying to subdue what was left of the crowd, to capture rather than kill. We watched a little group being herded below—watched Gabrielle Mirren break free and run up the stairs directly toward us. A man with a knotted scarlet and black band around his arm gave chase.
The man drew a sword from his belt.
It was not like the sword in my hand, one of the swords of the Light Guard, the sharp, singing blade containing light within the steel and catching every gleam.
The man’s sword looked made of thorns and darkness. I had to stare at it for a long moment before I realized what it reminded me of: the strange sharp hooks and wavering shadows that seemed fused with the metal. What had been the fading nightmare of memory was brought back to life, like a shadow with real teeth: the sword reminded me of the cages in Green-Wood Cemetery.
That long moment of my memory was the rest of Gabrielle Mirren’s life. The rebel brought the sword down to the sound of a wail and then to utter silence.
Carwyn and I stayed crouched. I prayed that the man would go down the stairs, that he would do anything but look toward us. I prayed to the light of the sun on down to the light of my own rings.
Prayer did me about as much good as it usually did. The rebel lowered his nightmare sword, its shadows seeming to claw the air and murmur to each other, and his eyes fell directly on our huddled forms.
We had been seen, and there was not a minute to lose. I leaped up—trying to leave Carwyn behind, but he held on to my hand—and I raised my sword, meeting the man’s swing with a clash of sparks and splinters of darkness. The man wheeled around us in a slow circle, wary since I had a weapon and seemed prepared to use it. But he wasn’t afraid. He knew he had us.
Carwyn lunged forward and sank his broken bottle into the meat of the man’s thigh, and the man screamed, stumbling against the low balcony rail and then toppling backwards, arms outstretched and scrabbling for purchase. His arms stayed outstretched as he fell, as if he thought he could fly. He could not. He hit the floor with a thud and a crack.
At the sound, the other members of the sans-merci turned.
The rebels looked up from herding the ball guests, saw us, and stopped in surprise. They were so still that the scene became a tableau.
The ceiling of the lobby was like a wedding dress, white silk-smooth lines and gold in the same patterns as lace. The floor was mosaics of huge flowers and twining vines. Blood was smeared across one flower, lending vivid crimson to a rose. The chandelier was like a wedding cake made of light, tier on bright tier. Everything was bloodstained luxury.
I pulled away from Carwyn for a moment, lifted my hand, and felt the rings on my fingers humming to the magic in those lights. My veins were stinging as if the blood in them were literally burning, but I let what seemed like my last burst of magic glitter and glow and then sent it flying to its target. It hit the chandelier and was amplified by the chandelier’s own magic.
Every line of gold in the ceiling blazed like fire, and the chandelier exploded in a shower of sparks and shards. The people below scattered into other rooms or cringed on the floor with their arms over their heads and their heads pressed to their knees.
I seized Carwyn’s hand again and ran down the stairs, one of my silver heels sliding in blood. Carwyn caught me when I tilted off balance, and we didn’t stop running. I wouldn’t have stopped even if I had broken my ankle: I knew this reckless rush was our only chance.
We were almost out, almost through the gold and glass doors. I could hear the slosh and patter that was the dancing water in the fountain outside.
Then I saw the waiter, the man I had first spotted in the ballroom and almost-not-quite recognized, the first sign I’d had that something was wrong, the sign I had let pass me by. He ran into our path, pointed at us, and shouted for the whole room to hear.
“That’s Ethan Stryker!”
I pushed Carwyn behind me, raising my sword, and shouted, “No, he’s not!”
It was the truth I had been holding back for weeks, and now it was a truth that would save us rather than damn us. It was a truth that nobody would believe.
“And who are you?” demanded the man. His eyes raked over my face and I waited in dread for the instant he would recognize me. I felt again that rush of contempt for these people who would commit murder in my name and did not even know my face.
Instead, behind me, a familiar and beloved voice spoke. I felt cold all over, as if a shadow had called on me and claimed me, as if the very darkness knew my name and could now swallow me up.
“That’s the Golden Thread in the Dark,” said my Aunt Leila. “That’s the face of the revolution. That’s who we fought to free, that’s who we came here to find. That is my niece, Lucie. Don’t you dare lay a hand on her.”
I had not seen her in so long. She looked just the same as she had in the Dark city, always wearing severe clothes and an even more severe expression. Her dark locks flowed in a sleek waterfall, not a hair out of place despite the chaos all around her. She wore the black and scarlet band knotted around her arm, like the others, like all the members of the sans-merci, and carried a knife in her hand. The blade was coated with blood, fresh and red, a few drops falling to the parquet floor as she gestured the man away from me.
After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped back.
“Nobody has suffered more due to the Light than Lucie,” said Aunt Leila. “Good news, my niece. We have taken the city. The rule of the Light Council is broken. You are free.” Her keen eyes surveyed me, from my gleaming dress to the sword and then to my face, pitiless as a searchlight. “Are you not going to thank me?”
Thank her, for bringing death to my door, for using my name for her own ends. I’d been wrong: the rebels were not using a girl they did not know.
Aunt Leila knew me, and she had used me anyway.
But I knew what to say to those who had power over me: whatever they wanted to hear. Aunt Leila had taught me that herself.
I could not help the slight pause before I forced out, “Thank you. Aunt Leila, can we . . . can we go? I want to tell my father the good news.”
Aunt Leila was silent for a long time: she had to consider it. She seemed very reluctant to let me leave. Her sharp gaze moved over to Carwyn, and I saw cool speculation there that made my fingers tighten reflexively on Carwyn’s hand.
I loved her. I had loved her all my life, and she had always been loyal to me, had never lied to me, had taught me how to survive and how to save my father. I loved her, and I did not love Carwyn.
I looked at the blood on my aunt’s knife, and I held on to him as if he was the most precious thing I had, the last thing I had, in all the world.
Aunt Leila looked torn. Her eyes searched mine, and I stared defiantly back. She seemed disturbed, I thought, as if after all this time she had thought I would still be the child who performed on her command, as if she had not been prepared for the flesh-and-blood reality of me at all. She had clearly not expected me to fight her, and perhaps was not prepared to fight with me.
“There is a great deal to be done here, and you will not be needed on this bloody night. You can go, if you must,” Aunt Leila said slowly, and I saw the others fall back at her words.
I should have realized it from the first moment, when she had spoken and the others obeyed. I looked at her, and the strange, painful thing was not that I felt like I didn’t recognize her but that I did. It made perfect sense: my Aunt Leila, brilliant with a blade and better with words, able to kill as she had always been able to do everything. Not only one of the revolutionaries, but one of their leaders.
Tell the wind and fire where to stop, but don’t tell me.
Nothing stopped my Aunt Leila. I had always known that.
“You can go, but you must return when you are summoned,” she said. “Our new city will have need of you.”
I wanted to ask why, ask what I could possibly do, but I did not want to risk displeasing her. I did not think she would hurt me, but I was sure she would not want to spare Carwyn. I knew she was letting me go home because she had other plans for what she had called “this bloody night”: she did not need the spectacle of the Golden Thread in the Dark when she would have the spectacle of death.
Aunt Leila glanced at Carwyn, and her glance was not the look that anyone gave a person. She looked at him as if he was a mysterious object and she was wondering about his provenance.
Even staying long enough for her to pay attention to him, rather than me, was dangerous.
“I promise, Aunt Leila,” I said loudly, to force her gaze back to me. “I will return.”
Aunt Leila made a grand gesture, as if a single night and too many deaths had made her a queen. “Then you may go.”
We walked outside, under the golden ovals that were the stained-glass windows, through the golden doors.
Down the avenues, I could see the lights of burning fires, the outlines of walls and buildings changed into ruin and rubble. The sans-merci had moved in a devastating tide from their city to ours, and now the city was theirs. Now the city was burning.
The very streetlamps were swathed in red and black, some lights extinguished and others turned red. Red light reflected off the sheen of rainwater on the black surface of the road, so it looked as though the streets of the city were running blood.
We walked home. It was a cold, weary walk in the rain, which was falling in a thin, continuous drizzle, settling over us in a chilly mist. Carwyn’s hand felt as icy in mine as the sword hilt in my grasp, but nobody bothered us. The few people walking the nighttime streets let the boy in evening dress with the bloody bottle and the girl in the glittering gown with the sword pass. We were too obviously survivors of something they did not want to know about.
They would all know soon.
When Penelope looked through the eyehole in her door and saw us, with our weapons and the bloodstains, she opened the door with shaking hands as fast as she could, made tea, and made us drink it while she ran between rooms, pushing a blanket and a bed on wheels.
“Tea is essential medicine for a shock,” she assured us. “Trust me—I’m a doctor.”
I clung to the warmth of the mug in my hands, a welcome change from Carwyn’s touch or steel. I assumed that she would want Carwyn to sleep on the couch, though I did not think about it much, did not think about anything now that I was safe and allowed to be exhausted.
Danger meant being resourceful. There was peace in not needing to keep pushing forward, in being able to admit that you were utterly drained.
“You both need comfort,” said Penelope. “I’m going to sleep in Lucie’s bed, and I already moved Marie’s bed to the other room. You two can take mine.” She patted me on the shoulder. “I don’t mind,” she added quietly in my ear. “This isn’t the normal world anymore, and we aren’t working by the normal rules. You two love each other. Love is what counts, no matter what world we’re in.”
I didn’t know how to protest. Even in a new world, I did not know how to tell her what I had done.
Carwyn listened to what was happening and did not offer up a protest either. Of course, he had been very quiet since we had entered Penelope’s apartment and she had welcomed us both with open arms, touched his hair and his face, and said, “Ethan, I’m so glad you’re safe.”
I could not even tell if he was mocking me with his silence, still finding my pain the best joke he knew, or if he might be as tired as I was.
I went into the bedroom with Carwyn and determined that if he said or tried anything, I would hit him. I wanted to hit someone.
I looked at him, coldly, and for a wonder he decided that this was one trespass he would not commit.
I walked over to the bed we were meant to share, stripped off the blanket, and laid the sword down upon the mattress. Carwyn and I lay on either side of the sword. I folded my hands under my chin and faced him.
I had used far too much Light power all through this long night. N
ow the night was over and I had burned out. I could feel the scorching poison in my blood, scraping like a hot knife along my bones. I did not even think about going for help. I knew I had to bear it. I was not the only hollowed-out and burning thing in New York.
Light filtered through the window in Penelope’s room, the sun rising on our broken city, sunbeams traveling slowly across our bed. A sunbeam struck the sword blade and turned it into a silver beam of light, burning between us as the city burned outside the window. No hope came with the rising sun, and despite what Penelope had intended, I had no comfort that night.
Chapter Eighteen
I WOKE WITH THE FLAME-PALE LIGHT OF EARLY morning turned into the dull fire of day. The first thing I saw was the sword hilt as it rested on the pillow. Close by on the pillow, on the other side of the sword, was Carwyn’s sleeping face. His dark brows were drawn together as if he was worrying, his lashes resting on his cheeks. His fingers were curled a fraction away from the blade, as if in his sleep he was stupid enough to reach out.
Right face. Wrong boy.
I looked at Carwyn, and I thought about Ethan.
He had gone into the Dark city, and now the Dark had risen up against the Light. He was in the center of what must have been chaos, buried for less than two weeks but not born to be buried, not raised to deal with the Dark. Anyone in the Dark city might have recognized his face and killed him because he was a Stryker, and even though he must have known the risks, he had walked into the heart of the Dark city for me.
I’d thought that Ethan might be in danger from Carwyn. Now, even worse, he was in danger from a whole city.