“Cypress,” she says again. “Now is not the time to go silent. Please, tell me.”
I sigh, rolling my head from side to side as I try to find the rightwords. Scores and scores of them at my disposal, but none seem accurate to explain why someone might need to give up control to feel like they still have it.
“He’s afraid,” I say simply, not enough to satisfy either of us.
“Because of the wanted posters?”
“Yes. And because he already knows what it is to lose everything and is terrified it’ll happen again.” Her eyes soften, her brow creasing with sadness even before I ask, “Has he told you? About what happened with his family?”
She shakes her head. “Not in so many words. He said once that he hasn’t had much to call his own.”
“That’s true,” I acknowledge before looking around. “You know, this cabin is his. He built it himself once he had the means. Not that he spends much time here anymore. Afraid that’s my doing.”
“Cypress, tell me,” she says again, and I sigh, relenting.
“He lost his parents when he was very young. Nine years old. A robbery that went too far.”
“A robbery? But…”
“You’re wondering how, in that case, he ended up with a thief?” I ask, and when she nods, I admit, “I think he used to ask himself the same. Especially in the beginning. I told you, Cora, I was not always so discerning with the people I sat down to cards with. Aiden was the one to first insist we apply rules. Well, only two really.”
“Rules? About who you can con?”
“Yes. One is that they have to be sinners.”
“You don’t believe in sin.”
“Aiden does. After he lost his parents, he was sent to an orphanage, lived there until he ran away at thirteen. He barely survived for a few years after. Slept in a lot of stables,” I tell her, watching as the new information helps her see things in a new light. “As it happens, the orphanage neglected to teach him verymuch about how to live. Too busy teaching him all the ways he would be damned once he died. Ten, aren’t there? In that set of rules? Always strikes me as odd that the one about killing is so far down on that list.”
“It’s sixth,” she says, her eyes closing briefly. “Does Aiden believe he’s damned? Because he’s killed people?”
“He does.”
“But he always wants to be the one to do it. I’ve seen him. He gets upset when you step in. I don’t understand. If he believes it will damn him, and you don’t, then why—”
“Because he’d rather our ledgers and our sentences read the same when and if the time comes that we stand before God. Just in case,” I say to her, not at all surprised when she seems to struggle with that answer, and I smile softly. “You fall in love with a sinner and there’s two ways it can go, little bird. You either raise them to salvation or you join them in damnation.”
“And he chose the latter?” she asks.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t believe it’s that simple,” she says, her eyes narrowing. “But what about you, Cy? What do you believe?”
I’m quiet now, waiting for him to continue, because any subject that Cypress trips over must be one worth spending time on. He looks away, his hands tucked into his pockets in uncharacteristic nervousness.
“I believe…I believe that sometimes damnation and salvation are the same. You know, he thinks he’s protecting me by being the one to do the killing,” Cypress explains, before tacking on, “As if there’s some invisible weight that a soul can withstand before it breaks.” He pauses. “He doesn’t see that I already made my choice long ago.”
“What choice?”
“Survival for my soul.”
Is that what he believes? That he doesn’t have a soul? “Cypress—”
“I’ve never killed without reason. Even if that reason was simply to give myself a chance,” he adds as a defense, perhaps misinterpreting the reason behind my disagreement. “But, Ican’t ignore the fact that I have killed more than most, and if there really is some kind of tally kept, I’m certain it’s not counted in my favor.”
“Then the count is wrong,” I tell him resolutely, and he smiles, looking a bit more like himself again. “You said Aiden insisted on rules. That there are two. His is that they have to be sinners. What is yours?”
“That they think they’re untouchable.”