“All right,” Dad said finally. “I’ll lie down. You’re right, Lucie. I am tired.”
I guided him through the door. I sent what magic I could through my rings—small, soothing pieces of magic, like sprinkling a few cool drops of water on a brow hot with fever, all I could do to comfort him. I smoothed his pillow with a hand heavy with rings, smoothed his thinning hair as gently as I could, as if he was a sick child.
“Jarvis has to go,” I whispered. “If he can help the people in the Dark city, he has to.”
“Josephine always said that. No matter what the danger is, no matter what you might find, she said, you have to go, you have to heal. She had to heal him, Lucie. She told me she had to.”
I didn’t know who “him” was: probably just another one of my mother’s patients. I didn’t know why my father was suddenly talking about her.
“Shhh,” I said, my throat aching. “We are all perfectly safe. Nobody has any reason to hurt us. Everything is all right.”
His eyes opened and he looked at me with disbelief, as if I was the mad one, as if I always had been.
“Nothing is all right. They killed your mother.”
I felt pierced through with guilt. I wondered what my father really thought of me, about my lies, about my consorting with the Light Council, whose guards had killed Mother. I had nothing I could say in my defense. I just kept stroking his hair.
“Hush,” I said. “I know. I know.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I do not remember much about the next few days except for the tension of how busy I was. It was as if time were a suitcase filled too full, about to burst and break. Jarvis had to be sent off. The council meetings had to be attended. My secret had to be kept.
The times of desperate rush whittled down my priorities, made them terribly simple and clear: food, drink, rest, and this, his hand in mine. Ethan held my hand loosely, gently, as if he was not afraid of losing me and he would let me pull away anytime I liked.
“You don’t need to worry about Jarvis. He’s already doing a great job. He’s making sure the people in his district of the Dark city are being looked after. He’s helping more than I can say.”
“That’s good,” I said.
Ethan’s hand closed around mine a little tighter. It had not been true, I realized, the thought I’d had: that he was not afraid of losing me. That was just something I told myself because I never wanted him to be afraid. It had seemed beautiful to me, the easy confidence he had not just in me but in his belief that the world he trusted would leave him intact. But the world had hurt him now, and there was no way for him to regain innocence. Even for him, in his warm golden life, there had entered the cold shade of fear.
“I understand. Your dad needs you. And I understand that you have been trying really hard to help me, with these meetings, with everything,” Ethan said. “I need you too.”
What I had been doing at the meetings was not so difficult—be silent, smile. It was sickening to do and sickening to be complimented for. There would be another meeting early tomorrow morning, and I would give them all the smiles and silence they wanted.
“I’ve made so many mistakes. I feel so guilty. I don’t believe I could have survived these last weeks without you,” Ethan continued. “That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“You could have survived alone,” I said at last. “But I didn’t want you to be alone.”
Ethan let go of my hand so he could put an arm around me and draw me in close. The sun was sinking in the sky, but it was just low enough for light to catch the windows of the buildings it was sinking behind. It was as if the sun wanted to be close to the earth, as if the sun was in love too.
The whole city seemed so beautiful suddenly, like a glass filled not with liquid but with light, a crystal glass on the very edge of a table, tipped just a hair too far. Sunbeams quivered over glass, tossed ribbons of light over and around buildings. It was like seeing the trembling instant before the glass fell.
All the more beautiful because it was fragile. Never more beautiful than at the instant before it was destroyed.
The next morning, Ethan found me outside the meeting room in Stryker Tower, in the long hall with its glinting tapestry that had light woven into the fabric to look like electric gold. He was pale, and he reached for my hands as if I was in danger of falling off a cliff and he had to save me, and I knew that Jarvis was dead.
“He’s not dead” was the first thing out of Ethan’s mouth, but I did not feel relieved.
My father had not been killed either. And my mother had vanished and we had never seen her body. Worse could happen to you than a clean death, down in the Dark.
“What’s happened to him, then?”