I walked back down the stairs swinging my heels from my hand, and in the lobby I leaned against the wall and slid them onto my feet, one at a time, hopping as I did so. I left my building, walked the streets of the city, and felt as if I had my balance and knew exactly where I was going.
When I reached Stryker Tower, I went willingly through the metal and glass cage that was their vestibule. The security personnel nodded to me as if of course I belonged. My security pass had obviously not been revoked. I walked into the gilded container of the elevator and passed through the rich corridor where Ethan and I had fought so bitterly the day before, into the meeting room.
It looked as it always did: the white walls, with art so minimal, it left the walls seeming blank, the skylight that cast a tiny square of light on the dark rectangle of the table. The councilors nodded to me. Mark Stryker did not seem surprised to see me.
When I looked to Ethan, he was smiling at me with his hand outstretched, as if nothing had changed between us except that perhaps he was being unusually demonstrative because he was especially glad I had come that day. As if he did not want to fight or to be apart any more than I did, as if it would be as great a loss to him as it was to me.
Ethan was sitting on the left side of the table, facing his uncle. He was even leaning back, legs crossed, as if he was at ease here. He was wearing one of my favorite shirts of his, blue and kept for long enough to be soft to the touch. He must have had a shower just before he came here, because his hair looked slightly damp, a little more disordered than usual, a dark curl at his nape. He looked absolutely familiar and indisputably like home.
I went to the summons of his smile and outstretched hand like a wave rushing eagerly to the shore, with a ripple of joy running through my whole body.
I took his hand, lacing my fingers with his, and sat on the arm of his chair. I intended it to be a brief, affectionate instant before I took my own seat.
“Hello,” I said.
He used his hold on my hand to tip me into his lap, and when I was there he bent his head down to mine and pressed a kiss on my lips, brief and hot as a ray of sunlight striking a glass pane. I put up my other hand to touch his, startled, and he captured it. He had hold of both my hands, pressed against his chest, and his raised leg prevented me from sliding away. Ethan had always wanted me to come to him, had always given me a choice, an easy way out of a touch or a kiss. He had never held me in any way that had made me feel trapped before.
He looked familiar, but he did not feel familiar. He smiled at me, a sweet, vicious smile that I recognized, and the whole bright white room seemed to blur as if we had been plunged underwater, as if I was in an entirely different element than I had been in before.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said the doppelganger.
The meeting went by like a long, involved nightmare, the kind that was all whirling impressions of things so bad, they were beyond imagining, the kind where you stumble through the dream begging indifferent strangers for help.
I was not screaming or begging. I remained quiet in Carwyn’s lap. My every limb felt weighed down by chains. I did not know what would happen if we were discovered. I did not know what had already happened. I did not dare move.
I did not struggle free from Carwyn, did not wrench my hands out of his and spit in his face. I held every inch of my body in tight control, and only my wayward heart betrayed me, galloping fast and fierce. I felt as if my whole body had to be shaking with the force of it, as if the roaring in my ears and the thumping beneath my ribs were turning into a storm that everyone would see and cower from, something that would devastate the room and bring down the very walls of the tower.
The room remained bright and tranquil. The meeting continued serenely. Under my pinned hands, I could feel that Carwyn’s heart was beating hard as well. I could feel his breath, rapid and shallow, against the sensitive skin by my ear. I had no doubt that it was from exhilaration, the thrill of getting away with this. A doppelganger could not know how much I loved Ethan, or how terrified I was for him.
They said doppelgangers liked pain. Probably if he knew, he would be delighted.
I was concentrating so much on looking normal that it only dawned on me slowly—more like night falling than a dawn—what Mark was actually discussing. He wanted still more troops in the Light city. He wanted stern, murderous men like the ones who had almost killed Ethan to hunt down the members of the sans-merci who were lurking here, who had killed his brother. He wanted a curfew imposed, houses raided, a guard on every street corner. I could not imagine how the Light city would react to this.
“Don’t you agree, Lucie?” asked Mark Stryker.