“No,” I said. “Don’t.” I still loved Raven. I couldn’t strip the habit of years from me.

In a halting voice, I told her everything. I told her about Aden and Raven, about the heliographs and the crescent-moon pendant, about the Elysium bird and everything that had happened that night. About the smashed lantern and the burn. My words unraveling, I explained how I used to think Helin was right that I couldn’t understand the truth before my eyes, and then I changed my mind, and found strength in a newfound belief in myself. I told her how arrogant that belief was, because in the end I didn’t know anything at all. My mother’s sister had made me her apprentice, and I hadn’t known. I had seen glimpses of the necklace at her throat for years, and although the pendant had been hidden beneath Raven’s dress, it had nonetheless reminded me of my mother’s necklace, and even then I didn’t guess. I told Sid that I was a murderer, a criminal, a fool, a fool, a fool.

“You are not a fool.” She kissed my tear-wet mouth.

I tightened my fingers in her shirt. “You warned me that you are a liar.”

“I am not good with the truth. But I am not lying to you now.”

“Promise you won’t deceive me.”

Softly, she said, “I won’t deceive you.”

But she already had.

47

ON THE DAY OF THE COUNCIL PARADE, perfumed blue vines with heavy blossoms lined the edges of the main thoroughfare through the High quarter. The vines seemed to have sprung up overnight. Muslin canopies covered the walkways as they had in my visions of the long-ago Ward: brilliant patchworks of color glowing with the setting sun, embroidered moons and stars that released a refreshing, cool mist that made my skin shiver.

“I see that,” Sid said. “Don’t make me jealous of mist.”

“You, jealous? Never.”

“Not of mist,” she acknowledged, “though that little shudder of yours looked uncannily like something I did to you this morning, and I confess I am feeling challenged right now, to be so easily usurped.” She purchased a spun-sugar bird’s nest from a Middling vendor and passed it to me. It had a pink egg that hatched, an illusion of an Elysium bird coming wet from the shell. It trilled, hopped to my shoulder, spread its wings, and vanished. Sid put a shell fragment in her mouth. She made a face. “Too sweet. But you will like it.”

I shook my head, remembering all the sweets Raven had given me and how happy they had made me. “Not anymore.”