Tell the Wind and Fire (22 page)

The relief almost made me laugh.

“Oh yeah, all the disgusting comments he makes indicate deep affection.”

“He’s teasing you,” said Jim defensively. Even though he had just been complaining about how Carwyn behaved, the way he behaved to me had to be all right. As if any attention paid to a girl was a compliment, and a compliment I should accept.

“I don’t care why he behaves the way he does,” I said. “Why should I care what he feels when he doesn’t care about what I feel? I don’t like it, and he doesn’t stop. That’s all I need to know.”

“Wow,” said Jim. He looked a little lost, and a little hurt. “Are you guys going to break up? I always thought of you two as the couple that was going to make it and stay together while everybody else got super freaky in college.” He stopped talking when he saw the twist of my mouth, smiled to placate me, and with a sweeping gesture to his own white shirtfront said, “I mean, why else would you go for Ethan and turn down all this? Am I right?”

I smiled reluctantly back.

I had started thinking about things like that once I met Ethan: wearing a white dress, inscribing promises of Light with my rings onto Ethan’s skin. Once I had believed that ordinary girlish dreams like fairy-tale weddings had died with my mother, but Ethan let me dream again.

I had never wanted Ethan to save me. But I had always been so grateful to him for saving my dreams, for bringing the hope in me back to life.

Jim missed Ethan too, even though he did not know why. I did not feel quite so alone.

“I’d never break up with Ethan,” I said quietly. “This is just a bad time. We’re going to get through it. It’s true I don’t like this Ethan, but he isn’t going to be this way forever.” I looked at Jim fixedly and made a vow to him as well as myself. “We’re going to get the old Ethan back. I promise you.”

Jim grabbed my hand and pressed it, gratefully, his skin a little sweaty. I hesitated, and by the time I decided to squeeze it back, Jim had let go and someone else had taken his place, this time a man from the council whose name I could not even remember but who thought he had urgent business with me.

Everyone kept trying to talk to me, everyone thought they understood what my situation was, and everyone was wrong. All I wanted to do was talk to Carwyn.

All I wanted was to wrench the truth from his lying mouth, if I had to take his teeth with it.

I clenched my fingers tightly around the stem of my champagne glass, then felt it taken from my hand, pried gently from my stiff fingers as if he wanted it all the more because I did not want to give it. I turned my head and met a kiss Carwyn placed at the corner of my mouth, where it burned as if it had been a blow.

“I hate to tear myself away from you,” said Carwyn to an older woman in a black dress, her ruby rings the same shade as her lipstick. “But as you can see, my girlfriend is pining.”

“I wouldn’t say pining,” I said.

Carwyn nodded approvingly. “I like a strong, independent woman. That’s why you’re my lady, even though I’m rich enough to have a hot tub full of supermodels waiting for me every time I get home. Wait.” He made a show of mulling this over. “I’ve just realized that I’ve been incredibly stupid. Sorry, darling, seventeen is too young for commitment. I’ve got to make some calls.”

“I’m devastated,” I said. “I must go sob quietly to myself in a corner.”

The woman gave us both an uneasy look, clearly trying to decide whether we were fighting or joking. She murmured a polite commonplace I could not even make out, and touched my hand.

“Lovely to meet you,” I said, and looked back to Carwyn. He seemed blithely unaware of my eyes boring into his stolen face. He was gazing around the bright ballroom with a benevolent air. I did not know what he had been doing, but he looked a bit rumpled, his hair ruffled over that primly tight collar. He had my champagne glass in one hand, and in the other was a bottle of champagne, still more than half full. “I’m so sorry to run away,” I added to the woman, “but actually, Ethan promised me this dance.”

“I’d love to, but both my hands are full, petunia,” said Carwyn.

I took back my glass, almost breaking the stem getting it out of his hand, drank the champagne, and set it down on a passing tray.

“Now they’re not. Or do you need me to drink the bottle, too?”

“Well,” said Carwyn, “how can I say no, when you’re so eager?”

I put my hand in his, and the woman with ruby rings retreated quickly.

Carwyn watched her go. “Some people just can’t deal with being in the presence of unbridled sexual tension.”

“Can’t they?” I asked. “It’s been a long time since I encountered any.”

“I bet it has,” Carwyn said, with deep conviction. “I’m the worst boyfriend ever, right? Both physically unappealing and pathetically inept in bed.”

“You’d know best,” I remarked. “And why would I call you a liar?”

He smiled, acknowledging a hit, and I began to dance in the full expectation that he would hit back. He always did, never able to resist a retort, and the fact that he was never able to stop talking was what would win me answers.

There were other people watching us right now, though. Whatever answers I got, he would have to tell me quietly, and neither of us could react visibly. I looked around. People were swaying, laughing, eating, and drinking. The slight reserve they had been showing around the military had gone: after all, everybody here knew that the Light guards existed to protect them. The ballroom was a vision of golden and perfect security.

Then it occurred to me that Carwyn had not responded.

I looked away from the crowd and back at him. That was when I became aware of how stiff his arms were around me, of the way we were not moving in the same rhythm as the other dancers. It was as if one current in a sea had forgotten its place.

Ethan knew how to dance. But there had been no dancing lessons in the Dark. Ethan had taught me to dance, and it had taken months and months of us practicing, of me falling down and laughing as I did it, Ethan catching me or throwing himself down to the floor to join me. I could not have forgotten those dance lessons, the feel of Ethan’s sure hands on me and the effortless way he moved, how he could not be anything but smooth and graceful when he danced, because being graceful had become habit through long practice. Ethan knew how to dance. Carwyn did not.

Carwyn was not stupid: he had not made a fatal error that would betray him. Nobody was going to guess what he was from this. He still had a champagne bottle in one hand—they were just going to think he was drunk.

But he did look aware of how he had messed up, and that people were startled by it. He looked uncomfortable. It was small and petty, but it was the only revenge I’d had for all the misery and uncertainty he had put me through.

He turned his face away from a startled man looking at him, as if a monster could feel self-conscious, and caught me looking at him too. Whatever cruel hunger he saw in my face, it made his mouth curl.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

I smiled, and knew the smile was as vicious as any of his. “Actually, I am.”

Chandelier lights shining on gilt-framed oriel windows made the air seem the same color as the champagne I had drunk. Mirrors were all over this room, inlaid in pillars, mirrors spelled with Light magic so that the reflections would be lent a flattering glow. I caught a glimpse of myself and him in one.

My long silver dress fit close as skin until the skirt widened into a pool of silver fabric, ending in a train like a mermaid’s tail. It stood out in the golden room in a way that I hadn’t intended, like seeing the cool glint of the moon in a sky drenched with stars.

Carwyn was a tall, dark figure holding me in his arms, his hair ruffled and his scarf still hanging over his shoulder. The only thing about him that was not elaborately louche, a perfect performance of casual unconcern, was the tight line of his shirt collar.

“I’m enjoying myself too,” he claimed, and at my skeptical glance he laughed, and people around him smiled, as if his laughter was sparks setting everyone else alight. “Of course I am. What’s not to like? You know, someone told me that we were a perfect couple. Isn’t that lovely? I knew you’d agree.”

“Of course I do,” I told him.

I smiled at him, and his smile went sharp. He did not quite like my serene agreement, I thought.

“You do?”

“With one small alteration. It’s a pretty easy mistake for them to make,” I said. “Right face. Wrong boy.”

He didn’t like that, either, so he pretended to ignore it.

“Of course, so many people think that about us,” he continued. “The golden boy and the Golden Thread in the Dark. Could any couple ever be more perfect? Could any couple ever be more boring and clichéd?”

“I agree with that, too,” I told him. “You are really boring. I just think of the most evil thing anyone could possibly do, and I expect you to do it.”

Carwyn nodded, his face suddenly grave, as if he was paying serious attention to me. I did not have the feeling of being listened to: I saw the way he was bending toward me in the mirror, his shadow falling across my face, and he seemed like a vampire intent on his prey.

“All right,” he murmured. “Guess what I’m going to do next.”

“You’re going to tell me what you did with Ethan,” I said. “You’re going to tell me tonight.”

Carwyn laughed, warm and amused. Anyone watching would have seen how close he was and thought that I wanted him there, that I was as delighted as he was.

All he told me was “You’re wrong.”

Then he leaned down and kissed me.

It was as if his shadow had not only fallen on me but swallowed me, his arm tight around me, my mouth open on his, with no way for me to fight him or do anything but give in to the drowning dark.

When he was done kissing me, my hands were against his chest. I would have put some force behind the gesture, I would have pushed him away, if I could have.

“Forget you. What do you think
I’m
going to do next?” I whispered.

He was smiling again, a small, private smile. I wondered if he thought he had won this round, if this was gloating. He murmured, “You’re going to kiss me back.”

I spoke low, but as clearly as I was able, my voice all I could use to fight against the glitter of the ballroom and a boy who thought he knew better than me, cold and harsh to contrast with the soft, thrillingly romantic music.

I said, “You’re wrong.”

Then a cry broke through the bright air and silenced all the laughter and the whispers.

As if I had caused it to happen by sheer force of will, the music stopped.

We all turned to the sound of the scream and saw the waiter whose face I had thought I knew. At his feet was one of the Light guards, lying in a pool of his own blood. It spread as we watched, a dark blot on the shining floor in the bright room, and I thought for a moment that shadows had come to swallow us all.

All the waiters drew weapons. Some of the members of the media put down their cameras and produced arms. New people poured in from the side doors. And the guests and guards who had not worn their swords, to show the city they had nothing to fear, found that this showcase of their power had become a trap. They drew together in a shining knot at the center of the room. Their exclusive, expensive group seemed suddenly so small.

A call rose up, with the sound of knives behind it. “Free the Golden One!”

“It’s the
sans-merci
!” a woman shouted. Another woman, the woman in the black dress with the red rings we had been talking to—a woman wearing the colors of the rebels, and how had I been so blind that I had not noticed?—turned and cut her down.

The second scream of the night pierced the air. After that, the screaming did not stop.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The party had transformed in an instant into two packs: the hunters and the hunted.

I could not think about escape, not immediately. Too many people, a seething mass of people, were already fighting to make their way out. They were so desperate, they were throwing themselves on swords in an attempt to live.

I tried to move from Carwyn’s side and found I could not—he was holding me so tightly, I might as well have been chained. It did not matter what I did now. Nobody would notice.

I kicked him viciously hard. I punched him in the chest and I set my nails into his face, raking the skin open. He let go of my waist and grabbed at one of my hands.

I tried to twist away from that, too, but his grip was ferociously strong, as if he would rather break my hand or his own or both than allow the grip to be broken.

“Let go!” I ordered. “Right now!”

“No,” Carwyn said grimly.

“Why not? What do you want with me?”

“I want us to live, you idiot,” Carwyn snapped. “Together we can. I remember what you showed me at the club, even if you don’t.” He leaned in, his whisper as fierce as his grip on my hand. “You think anyone else has a Dark magician here in the heart of the Light? I’m your ticket out. Hold on to me.”

“I don’t have to, do I?” I asked. “You won’t let go. You’re too keen to save your own skin.”

Carwyn gave me a dark look, all doppelganger with nothing of Ethan in his face, and it was like seeing a white curtain lifted so a horror could grin out at you through the glass. He did not let go of my hand, and I did not let go either.

“You can’t see us,” Carwyn murmured, and my rings blazed bright, reflected in his black eyes. I sent dazzling thoughts streaming through the room, around the rebels and the rich alike.

I moved forward, and we almost walked into a woman holding a knife.

“Has anyone seen the Golden One?” she called out, then squinted in my direction.

They kept calling for the Golden One, but they didn’t want me. They didn’t even recognize me when they saw me. My name was nothing more than a rallying cry.

Carwyn came nose to nose with her and whispered, “You can’t see us,” in her face. “You can’t see us,” he continued, voice soft but insistent. It seemed to wind, sinuous as a snake, around the senses. I reached out and touched her arm with my glowing hand.