Of Beast and Beauty (20 page)

the garden will—”

“Stop,” he says. “I can’t listen to it again. I can’t.”

“I won’t talk at all, then!” I turn back to the fire and lean away from him, wishing with every bone in my body it were safe to go for a walk. The last thing I want to do is stay within spitting distance of this stubborn, infuriating creature.

“There’s one thing I want to know first.” The gravel crunches, and I sense that Gem’s moving closer, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of scooting away. “If I’m hideous, inside and out—”

“I never said—” His arms close around me, and my words end in a sharp intake of breath as he hauls me onto his lap. “Put me down!” I push at his chest, but he ignores me and pulls me close, whispering his next words against my skin.

“If I’m so ugly in every way,” he continues, the feel of his mouth moving against my cheek making my blood rush in spite of myself, “then why do you want me, Isra?”

“I—I need your help. And your father promised you would—”

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean.” His hands skim over my body, one teasing the skin at the back of my neck, the other tracing the column of my spine from top to bottom before smoothing around to my hip and squeezing tight, fingers digging in until my belly flutters.

I shiver, and I know he knows the reason why. My lips part and my breath rushes out, but I don’t scramble away. I close my eyes and count slowly to ten and try to remember how hurt I was when he compared me to all the other knots he has untangled.

But it’s so hard. Because he’s right. I
do
want him. I wanted him before, and I want him even more now. I want to banish the ugliness between us with my lips on his. I want to kiss him until his blood runs fast and he whispers my name in his thick, needy voice instead of his tight, angry one.

Words only bring pain; we should use hands instead. I lift my hand to his face, smoothing my thumb across the hint of whiskers on his cheek.

“Answer me,” he whispers, fingers slipping into my hair.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.” His jaw muscle leaps beneath my fingers.

“
Why?
Because I’m here, and we’re alone? You’d have done the same with any boy?”

“No, it’s not …” I lick my lips, torn between the painful truth and a painful lie. I decide on the truth. At least there’s nobility in that. “I’ve never felt like this,” I confess. “I’ve never kissed anyone the way I kissed you. No one has ever … touched me like that.”

“Why not?” he asks, his voice only the tiniest bit kinder. “I can’t believe there aren’t Smooth Skin boys who would tolerate your
ugliness
in order to have the queen in their bed. Your king will have power. That’s the Smooth Skin way, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I say, blushing in spite of myself at his casual mention of my bed. “And there has been some … interest. Bo kissed me once, more than once, I guess.” I twine my arms around Gem’s neck, unable to resist the temptation of his skin. “But he didn’t make me feel anything like this.” I try to move my lips to Gem’s, but he turns away, and my mouth bounces off his jaw.

“Why is that? Why do
you
believe you desire me more than you desire one of your own kind?”

I swallow. “I …” I’m suddenly sure what he’s after, and just as sure I don’t want to give him his answer. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” he demands. “I want to hear you say it.”

I shake my head.

“Is it because you’re
tainted
?” he asks, his tone so sharp, I wince.

“Because you’re ugly on the outside and wicked on the inside? That’s why you’re drawn to a monster?”

I don’t say a word. I don’t have to.

He makes a disgusted sound. “I feel sorry for you, Isra. I really do.”

I draw my arms back to my chest and slide from his lap, feeling dirty and small and more wrong than ever before.

“You make yourself miserable,” Gem says, “and refuse to let anyone keep you from it. I’m a fool, but you are … I don’t have a Smooth Skin word for what
you
are.”

I cross my arms and fight the urge to cry. “What about you, Gem?

Why do you want
me
? I thought Smooth Skins sickened you.”

He’s quiet for so long that I don’t think he’s going to answer, but finally—“I told you, I’m a fool.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He grunts and falls silent again. After listening to the wood pop in the fire and the wind howl beyond our shelter for what seems like hours, I

decide to consider his unwillingness to answer a small victory. Ignoring the tears still pressing against the backs of my eyes and the filthy feeling I know no bath could wash away, I lie down and close my eyes. My body needs the rest, even if sleep seems impossible.

Seems
impossible, but obviously it isn’t. I’m halfway there by the time Gem lies down behind me and tucks one heavy arm around my waist, fitting his front to my back with such gentleness that I don’t startle from my near sleep as much as drift to the surface of myself like a bubble.

“When I thought you were dying …” His arm tightens, pulling me closer. “I would have done anything to keep you with me,” he whispers into my hair. “Anything.”

I put my hand over his and leave it there in silent acceptance of his not quite apology. No matter how much his words hurt tonight, I don’t want to fight. I need him too much. And he needs me. There will be no garden for my people, or food for his, if we’re at each other’s throats.

And what he just said leaves little doubt that he cares for me. No matter how misguided he thinks I am, he
cares
. He really does.

The thought is thrilling.

And petrifying.

I will be married
very
soon, and Bo will come to my bed, and he will give me royal babies and they will become kings or, if they’re unlucky, queens, and I won’t live to see them fully grown.
That
is my future. It is inescapable.

It makes me want to push Gem away and curl up in a tight, lonely ball.

It makes me want to turn in his arms and shed my two pairs of overalls and peel off my long underwear and reveal everything to him,
do
everything a man and a woman can do—no matter how the thought terrifies me—because I’m more terrified I’ll never have this chance again.

But in the end, I’m a coward.

Leaping blindly from a balcony ledge or walking out into the desert is nothing compared to this. I can’t afford to be any more haunted than I am already, and a night with Gem would haunt me, I have no doubt.

A dead snake. It’s only a dead snake—mangled skin and a bit of dried entrails dropped by a bird as it flew over the city—now stuck to the glass.

That’s all. No crack in the dome, no danger, no sign that the covenant is weakening. Just a festering dead thing that will be washed away if the rains ever come again.

I give the signal that I’ve finished my examination, and Father personally reels me back in from my great height above the city. But even when my feet touch down on the stones atop the tallest building in Yuan, I’m still floating inside.

Isra is safe. For now. And now is all I want to think about.

“It’s nothing. Just a snake skin,” I pant as the other men unhitch me from the wire. “Some guts on the dome. Nothing to worry about.”

Relieved laughter erupts as the tension that has followed everyone attending to the inspection evaporates. Lok slaps me on the back, Nan clasps my hand for a hard shake, and Ru has the nerve to ruffle my hair like I’m still a boy, but I don’t care, because Isra’s blood is staying in her body, and I’m even more thankful than I imagined I’d be.

I can’t wait to tell her, to feel her arms around me when she thanks me for handling the investigation personally—and so quickly, too. I am the one who ordered that the crews setting up the rope-and-pulley system work day and night, allowing my inspection to take place a full day and a half early. She will be elated. She’ll certainly want more than a kiss on the

cheek tonight, and I will most gladly oblige her. I will kiss her until she trembles in my arms and begs me to stay and warm her lonely tower bed.

“Are you certain there was no sign of weakness?” Father asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

He’s the only man on the roof not smiling. Beneath his oiled mustache, his cheeks droop solemnly on either side of his mouth; his eyes are as troubled as they were hours ago when he reminded me of my duty to report whatever I found, regardless of how frightening it might be for our people.

“There was nothing.” I hold his gaze as I work the buckles on my harness. “It was a dead snake. There wasn’t a nick in the glass. I swear it.

The covenant is still strong.”

“That’s wonderful news,” he says, before adding beneath his breath in a voice too soft for the men beginning to dismantle the pulley system on the other side of the roof to hear, “But even if the dome were weakening, it wouldn’t change your destiny. You will be king. She has to live only long enough to speak her vows.”

My fingers grow clumsy. I drop my eyes to the buckles. “I don’t wish the death of my queen.”

“Of course not,” he says. “None of us do. She’s a dear girl.”

He says “dear girl” the same way he’d say “unfortunate accident,”

and for the first time I wonder if my father hasn’t grown too powerful. I don’t like seeing him eager to spill royal blood. It feels wrong for him to speak casually about the sacrifice Isra will make.

“She is,” I say, choosing my next words carefully. I need Father to understand that I have no desire to hasten the moment of Isra’s death.

“I’ve come to care for her. I look forward to our marriage and wish her as much life as possible. I know the day I lose her to the garden will be one of the darkest of my life.”

Father smiles and clasps my shoulder in a rare display of affection.

“You sound like a king already.”

“Thank you.” I duck my head as I step out of the harness, grateful for the excuse to cross the roof and tuck the gear back into the box Nan holds open. I can’t look my father in the eye right now. If I do, I’ll see proof that he thinks I’m lying.

Worse, he’ll see proof that I’m not.

Baba has known Isra longer and more intimately than anyone else

except the late king, but there is clearly no love in his heart for her. Maybe he knows something I do not, and Isra is a burden I’ll have to bear until the day of her death. I admit there have been times when I’ve worried about the state of her mind, like when I discovered her slippers in the mud outside the beast’s window two nights past. Her maid explained the slippers easily enough—Needle dropped them on her way to get them resoled—but there’s no explanation for Isra’s other odd behavior except … eccentricity. Maybe it’s harmless eccentricity, or maybe, as my father clearly fears, it’s the precursor to her mother’s madness.

I’m not sure which of us is right. I only know I can’t wait to give Isra the good news.

With a bow to my father, I step into the gondola and lower myself down the side of the building, the seventy-meter drop not nearly as intimidating after dangling three hundred meters in the air to inspect the dome. I reach the street to find a crowd gathered by the baker’s shop.

Worried eyes meet mine, and I smile, but I don’t stop to assure the people that all is well. Isra’s subjects will hear the good news from their queen, who deserves to know before anyone else that the danger has passed.

I hurry through the cobblestone streets—past the towering buildings where the poorest citizens live with their children crowded five and six to a room, past the squatter, more decorative buildings where the skilled workers and their families live and run their shops, past the soldiers’

barracks, and onto the path leading through the royal garden. I’ve been avoiding this route through the city the past two days, but this evening the roses hold no terror for me. They’re beautiful in the fading pink light, and I find myself lingering near the oldest blooms.