I had become a symbol, and so the Light city decided to make me a symbol of the Light’s kindness, of their mercy. I made the image and they used it, used me as proof that the right kind of people would not be victimized.
They let my father go. They gave us two passes to the Light city. I didn’t stay to help anyone. I stood in front of all those cameras and never said a word about injustice, about torture, about my mother. I said thank you instead. I turned my back on the Dark and left.
I saved my father, but Ethan saved me.
When we came out of the Dark city, I found myself a celebrity in Light New York. In the early days, I had photographers dogging my steps and disturbing my father. I had a hundred interview requests a day. I also had a scholarship to the Nightingale-Evremonde School, the most exclusive place of education in the city.
I didn’t want to go, but we didn’t have a lot of options. So I took the scholarship, the uniform, the charity . . . and, of course, the note in every newspaper article about me that the city had granted me this great benefit.
My father’s friend Penelope Pross and her husband, Jarvis Lorry, and even their little girl, Marie, had welcomed us into their home when we came from the Dark city. I was so grateful. I hadn’t known what we were going to do. My father’s body and mind were so broken, I did not know if I would ever succeed in putting the pieces of him back together into anybody I recognized.
They were so kind, but I missed my aunt and uncle so much, I could barely stand it. Light New York was not my home then, and I was sickened by the endless scintillating wash of illumination from people’s rings, since the shine of rings used to only ever mean me or my father lighting our way home in the dark. I felt blinded by the brightness of people’s clothes, the expensive array of colors worn—neon pink and virulent green and searing yellow, more vivid than any back in the Dark—and jewels, and the great stones set in the metal fa?ade of Stryker Tower, which seemed as bright and as hard to look upon as the sun.
I felt every moment as if these strange lights were scalding me, as if I were always burning.
Every time I forgot, let myself breathe a little easier, I was caught unaware by a camera blazing at me going home, on the streets, on the steps of my new school.
A lot of people tried to be my friends at first, insistently asking about the Dark city, about how horrible my home had been, about the experiences of the last few weeks that I never wanted to relive.
Ethan never did. I noticed him, of course, because he was one of the Stryker boys: James Stryker and Ethan Stryker, each an only son of the Stryker brothers Mark and Charles, the leaders of the Light Council. Jim Stryker made a pass at me in the way many of the arrogant boys at Nightingale-Evremonde did, and he seemed enormously offended and not even slightly hurt when I turned him down cold.
I was offended that they were asking. They didn’t know me, didn’t want to know me. They only wanted to have the briefly famous and strange girl on their arm, to borrow some shine from the gold hair that had come out of the dark.
The gold hair seemed to be the one thing about me that was not changing, back then. I felt as if I was having an allergic reaction to this glittering city, when the truth is I was just growing up so fast, it felt like suffering: my face changing, chest swelling, my body as unfamiliar as the city, my nightmare-torn sleep disturbed by the shooting pains in my legs. Even if it had not been for my desperately hurt father and the savagely strange land, I would not have been looking for love.
At the end of one school day, I opened the door and went from a dim hallway to the scorching-bright flash of a camera: it made me stagger, but I didn’t fall. Someone caught my arm and helped me stand up.
I blinked hard against the cruel light and looked into Ethan’s kind, dark eyes.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
I shook off his hand. “I’ve got me,” I said, and hurried away through the city of blazing lights.
I didn’t look back.
But I did notice him, then, as more than just one-half of the most richly shining duo of them all. He sometimes sat with Jim while Jim was holding court, but he was also involved in the Junior Council’s charity work, and involved in the drama club for what seemed to be fun. I remembered the way he had caught me. His hands were bare of rings—he had no Light magic of his own—but they were steady and capable. He tutored a couple of the younger kids, but he didn’t offer to tutor me, even though I was pathetically far behind the Light kids. Many other people had offered. Many, many other people.
Ethan gave me what no one else gave me: he gave me my space.
And that was why, one day at lunchtime, I walked over to his table and cleared my throat. But I wasn’t the first one to speak.
“I’m sorry,” said Ethan.