Of Beast and Beauty (18 page)

Isra knows that secret. I should have been coaxing it from her, not shouting and brooding like a child. I should have thought about my people and my promises. I should have remembered how much Isra needs protecting. The desert might be my home, but it isn’t hers. I was a fool to forget that, even for a second.

I think of the first moment I saw her, with her head thrown back and her arms open wide, laughing as she ran through the garden. I thought she was crazy then, but what I wouldn’t give to hear her laugh like that right now. I have to find her. I have to. She
has
to be alive. If she’s not …

“Isra!” I roar, my voice echoing off the rocks. I can’t think of her body lying bent and broken halfway down the cliff. I
won’t
.

I search the dirt around the fire once, twice, and finally, on the third careful circle, I find an uneven set of footprints. The moons haven’t risen high enough to touch this side of the mountains, but the stars give enough light for me to see the scuff marks leading up the trail. She was walking.

Not steadily, but alone. That’s something.
Something
.

I start up the mountain at a run, ignoring the agony in my leg every time my left foot connects with the ground. I deserve this pain. I’ll gladly take this pain and more if only—

There! An Isra-sized lump, curled on the ground by the side of the trail.

“Isra!” I kneel beside her, expecting her to wake up and snap at me for frightening her. Expecting her to stir in her sleep, or grumble beneath her breath. But she doesn’t move, even when I push her hair from her face and cup her cheek in my hand.

Instantly, I know something’s wrong. She’s so cold. Colder than anything living.

All this time, I thought I was changing Isra’s mind, but she was the one changing mine, so much so that I forgot that there
are
differences

between us. Serious differences. She has no scales or claws to protect her from the hardships of the desert; she has a body that must be fed and watered more often than mine; she is smaller and more delicate and clearly isn’t able to tolerate variations in the temperature of her blood.

The Desert People grow cold during the winter, but there’s no danger in it. We are more vital in summer, but we don’t lie down and die when the winter nights take hold.

Die. She can’t.

“Isra. Is—” My voice breaks as I gather her into my lap. Her limbs are limp and lifeless; her head rests heavily in my palm. “Isra?” I whisper, throat so tight, I can’t speak any louder. “Can you hear me?”

She doesn’t move or speak, but when my gaze drops, I see it—the flutter of a pulse at her throat, there, but fainter and slower than it should be. She’s alive, but if I don’t find a way to warm her, she might not be for long.

The thought has barely formed before I’m on my feet, running back to the remains of the fire, with Isra in my arms. I no longer feel the pain in my leg. Fear has banished the awareness of everything but Isra’s life, so close to slipping through my fingers. By the time I fall to my knees by the fire, I’m shaking. I have never trembled with fear, not even on the night we swam up the river and crept into the dome.

I settle Isra across my lap, fold her head into my chest, and hold her there with one hand as I rearrange the wood and tuck dried grass beneath it with the other. I could move faster if I laid her down, but I’m afraid to risk it. I’m not as warm as a fire, but I’m warmer than the night, and my blood is certainly hotter than hers.

“Just a minute or two,” I whisper into the hair on top of her head, some part of me certain she can’t die as long as I’m talking to her. “You’ll be warm soon.”

I reach carefully around her limp body, and extend my claws, using them to sharpen the end of one stick and notch a hole in another, before reaching for the wood with my hands. I fit the pointed stick into the notched one and spin it as fast as I can, shaking Isra from my chest in the process and sending her tipping off my lap.

I take only a moment to pull her back to me and shift my position, before starting to spin the wood again. I spin and spin, holding my breath until I smell smoke, and then spinning even faster. My muscles burn and my

breath comes fast, but just when I think I can’t keep up the pace any longer, sparks fly from the notch and the grass beneath the kindling catches. The grass flames, high and fast, and the slender twigs at the bottom of the pile flare to life. After I add more grass and coax the twigs with a stick, the larger limbs begin to smolder and, finally, to burn.

I am famously quick with a fire, even among my people, who all have a gift for flame, but I don’t know if I’ve been quick enough. I shift Isra, and her head falls limply over my arm. Even in the warm light of the fire, her face looks pale, her parted lips bloodless.

We’re sheltered from the worst of the wind by the rocks on either side of our camp, and the fire warms up quickly, but even as her cheeks regain their color, Isra remains terrifyingly still. I whisper her name what feels like a hundred times. I smooth her hair from her forehead, pat her cheeks a bit too hard, rock back and forth and back and forth in the hopes of raising my own body temperature, growing more frantic with every passing minute.

I’ve made a fire. I’m giving her the heat from my body. There’s nothing left to do. I could wrap her in her shawl, but it’s no longer around her shoulders. She must have lost it when she wandered up the trail.

“Why didn’t you feed the fire?” I whisper, lips moving against her cool forehead. “Why?”

I’m suddenly angry, belly-burning angry, but not with Isra. With myself. This is
my
fault. I shouldn’t have left her on the mountainside, even for an hour. I shouldn’t have taken her from the city in the first place. I should have insisted on going alone. That would have proven I was trustworthy; this only proves I’m a fool. I had no idea she’d be so sensitive to the winter chill, but ignorance is no excuse for what I’ve done. If Isra dies, it will be for nothing, a senseless waste.

Yes, there are bulbs at the top of these mountains, and they’ll take root in her garden and put out a pretty flower that sweetens cactus milk into a treat that makes a man dizzy, but drinking it won’t give Isra what she wants. This garden she’s desperate to plant will accomplish
nothing
. The hope I’ve given her is a lie, like every other word out of my mouth since she let me out of my cage, like every smile and laugh I’ve forced while we’ve worked the ground together, like everything I’ve pretended to feel.

And everything I’ve pretended
not
to feel.

It took this—her nearly lost, and me wanting her back more than I’ve

wanted anything in so long—to make me understand.

If she weren’t lying so still, it would be laughable.

It’s pointless. Hopeless. Even if she weren’t afraid of me, at the core we’ll always be enemies. She rules a wicked, selfish city, and my tribe suffers for her people’s comfort. She’s a queen; I’m her prisoner. I resent her and she fears me, and there are times when I fear her, too. I am her monster, and she is mine. But right now none of it matters.

“Isra, please. Open your eyes,” I beg, but I don’t think she will. When her lashes flutter, I’m so surprised that my elbow jerks beneath her head, sending her chin jabbing into her chest. Her teeth knock together and she moans, low and grumpy.

It is the most wonderful sound I’ve ever heard.

“Can you hear me?” I support the back of her head and smooth the hair away from her face in time to see her eyes slit open.

“Gem?” Her voice is sleep-rough and cranky and even better-sounding than her grumpy moan. “What are … Where …” She blinks, and for a second it looks as if her eyes are trying to focus before they go empty once more.

“Do your eyes hurt?” I ask, hoping her cold sleep hasn’t left lasting damage.

“No, but my head does. A little.” She winces. “More than a little.” Her lids droop, and for a second I worry she’s falling back asleep, but then she asks, “What happened?”

“I was about to ask you.” She shifts in my lap, and I’m suddenly very conscious of the places where we touch and everything I was thinking before she opened her eyes. Everything I was feeling. When I speak again, my voice is rougher than hers. “I found you on the trail. You were cold and I couldn’t wake you. I brought you back here and rebuilt the fire, but for a while I wasn’t sure … I thought …” My arms tighten around her, but Isra doesn’t seem to mind.

She turns her head, resting her cheek on my chest with a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“I shouldn’t have let the fire go out,” she says. “But I couldn’t find the wood and I got scared, and then I was so cold and confused and … I … I started remembering things. About my mother … her buttons …” Her hand drifts to her chest, but hesitates there only a moment before coming to rest

on mine.

“I never meant for this to happen,” I say. “I didn’t understand. I—I never meant to cut you that first night; I had no idea how fragile your skin was. And tonight, when I left—I thought—I didn’t know it was so dangerous for you to get cold.”

“I didn’t, either,” she says. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right.”

“It is.” Her fingers slip between the buttons on my shirt, brushing bare skin. It becomes even harder to breathe. “I forgive you. Can you forgive me?”

I start to assure her there’s nothing to forgive, but I can’t tell any more lies. “I don’t know.”

She bites her lip. “Is that why you sound angry?”

“I’m not angry. Not at you. I’m just …”

“Just what?”

“Happy that you’re alive.”

“Me too. And grateful. To you. I …” She swallows, and her next words seem to come harder. “I meant what I said. I’m not afraid of you. I’m … I know it’s crazy … but I …” She lets out a tired sigh, and when she speaks again, her voice isn’t much more than a whisper. “I’d like to see your face again. May I?”

At first I think she means see me the way she did the first night, in the garden, but then she lifts a hand into the air and I understand. She wants to touch me.

“Yes,” I say, doing my best not to shiver as her fingers feather around my eyes and down my nose, before her thumb smoothes across my bottom lip. “Thank you for asking,” I whisper, lips moving beneath her lingering touch.

She sits up, bringing her face even with mine. Her mouth is close; her breath warms my chin. For the first time, she doesn’t smell like roses. She smells like cactus milk—clean and salty and of the desert, like my people—and I suddenly wonder if she would taste like all the girls I’ve kissed in my life. There were other girls before Meer. After she found Hant, I always assumed there would be more, but I never thought …

Even a moment ago when I …

I didn’t think … imagine … that
she
might …

A part of me still refuses to believe it, but another part knows what a

girl wants when her fingers linger too long on a boy’s mouth, and it knows better than to hesitate. So I don’t. I pull her hand away, and risk a kiss.

Our lips brush, soft on softer, timid and testing, the barest friction of skin against skin, but that’s all it takes to know that it’s right. Isra sighs and twines her arm around my neck. My blood rushes and my body comes alive and everything in me lights up like a sunrise. Like a night sky spitting stars.

Like her eyes when she smiles.

She kisses me again. And then again, harder and longer, and I forget every reason this shouldn’t happen. I pull her closer and warm her mouth with mine, moaning when her tongue slips between my lips and I taste cactus and salt, but also a hint of sweet and a dark, velvety spice that isn’t Smooth Skin or Desert Woman, that is only Isra.

And for a moment she is
my
Isra, and nothing is impossible.

THIS is a kiss.
This
. This, this,
this
…