Of Beast and Beauty (21 page)

I can feel the spirits of the former queens of Yuan here. One day I hope I will feel Isra’s spirit even more intimately.

Possessed by the notion, I drop to one knee in front of the giant blooms. “I will take good care of her,” I swear, imagining that the dead queens can hear my promise. “And when she’s gone, I will visit her here every day for the rest of my life.”

I smile. Father’s right; I do sound like a king.

Drunk on promises, I rise shakily to my feet, dizzied by how close I am to being the most powerful man in Yuan. By the time I reach the door to Isra’s tower, I’m certain tonight is the night. I’ll assure her that death is nowhere in her near future and then make my offer for her hand. Father

said he wanted to discuss the betrothal without the potential husband present—as is the custom when negotiating a royal marriage—but I want Isra to remember the moment we decided to marry as something between the two of us.

So I wait until her maid leaves the tower to collect the dinner tray she has fetched for the queen since Isra requested her privacy. Then I dismiss the guards at the door, retrieve the key from its hiding place behind the loose stone, and let myself in.

“Isra?” I climb the stairs swiftly, not bothering to keep my steps soft. I don’t want to surprise her. I’m sure she’s been worried. A shock is the last thing she needs. “Isra, it’s Bo!” I call again, louder than before, but still no answer comes from the rooms above.

She must be out on the balcony. She seems to favor it there, though she can’t see the impressive view of the city spread out before her … yet.

But by next week, or the following, for certain …

Returning her sight. Just another thing my queen will love me for.

With a smile, I push through the door to her apartments, pass her empty sitting room, leaving the door to her private chamber closed—I doubt she’s asleep at this hour—and make my way to her music room.

From the door, I can see that the balcony on the far side of the room is empty.

The bedroom it is, then
, I think, secretly pleased to have an excuse to be alone with Isra in a room with a bed. I turn back down the hall and knock softly on her door. “Isra? Are you awake?”

Silence, but for the soft tick of a clock in the music room.

“Isra? It’s Bo. I have wonderful news.”

More silence, silence so complete that it’s hard to believe she’s breathing in the room beyond. But she has to be in there. She isn’t in any of the other rooms, and she hasn’t left the tower since I walked her here two days ago. The guards outside would have alerted me immediately. I gave strict orders.

“Isra? Are you well?” I ask, growing concerned. “Isra?”

More silence. My stomach shrivels. What if she’s ill? What if she’s suffering in the absence of the poison the way the wine lovers suffer when our stores run dry? What if I’ve put her health in danger?

“Isra!” I pound on the door with my fist. “Answer me, or I’m coming in!” I wait a long moment, giving her one last chance to call out, before I

turn the handle.

The heavy wood hits the wall behind with a thud that echoes in the empty room. In the center, Isra’s bed is neatly made, the quilt tucked tightly at the edges. In the corner, the maid’s narrow cot is also made, but the mattress shows signs that it held a body not too long ago—dips and depressions, a sagging place on one side where she sat as she put on her shoes. Isra’s mattress, however …

I cross the room to stare down at it. Perfectly smooth. Not a dent or a shadow. Either Needle shakes the mattress out and reshapes it every morning, or Isra hasn’t slept here recently.

And if she didn’t sleep in her bed last night … where did she sleep?

And with whom?

“That lying … little …,” I murmur through clenched teeth.

My hands ball into fists, and it’s all I can do to keep from punching the wall near her headboard. Isra’s been using me to cover her indiscretions. She could be with another man right
now
, conceiving a bastard to bear after we marry.

I will not raise another man’s bastard. I will
not
.

She’d better pray there’s another explanation
, I think as I slam the door to her bedroom behind me. If Isra loses my affection, she will have very few friends in this city.

And a queen without friends will find herself a dead queen sooner than later.

I woke before the sun, driven by the need to put an end to our adventure as soon as possible. After adding fuel to the fire and waking Isra long enough to assure her that I’d be back before the flames went out, I hurried up the mountain to fetch the bulbs we’d come for. I couldn’t risk telling her the truth about the garden.

No matter what happened between us last night, I still need an excuse to leave my cell. Come spring, I must steal the royal roses and return to my people.

Still, I didn’t like leaving her alone, even for a short time. I walked as quickly as my sore legs would carry me and was back by her side by the time the first pink light kissed the desert.

This time, she was where I had left her, curled in a ball on the ground, her sweater-covered hands pressed against her lips. I watched her sleep as I tied the gnarled roots of the bulbs together with strips of dried grass, dreading the moment she’d open her eyes.

The only thing worse than hating Isra is … whatever
this
is.

Wanting her, wanting her to realize what a fool she is. Wanting all this to be over.

I want to go home. I want to be back with people I know, in a world I understand. I’m sick to death of this upside-down place, where I crave the touch of a girl who holds me prisoner, and every other word I speak is a lie.

Half the time I can’t even tell who I’m lying to. Her or myself.

I spend the day angry. At myself. At Isra. At the bulbs she insisted on fondling and sniffing before we headed down the mountain, at the rocks on the trail, at the sun and the wind and the dirt in my Smooth Skin shoes and the needles on every cactus where we stop to drink.

I am in a
foul
mood, made fouler by trying to hide it from Isra. The walk back to the dome has been torture. A part of me is eager to be back in my cell. At least there Isra can’t cling to my arm, or brush her body against mine, or sigh through her parted lips, or tilt her face up with
that
look in her eyes. The one that makes me want to strangle her. And kiss her. And strangle her some more. And maybe leap off a cliff after the strangling is done, just to put myself out of my misery.

“It won’t be long now,” Isra says, shielding her face from the setting sun with one narrow hand. “I can smell it.”

“Smell what?”

“The dome. I never realized it had a smell,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Like metal when it’s cold. And sour nutshells. Mixed together.”

I grunt in response.

“What do you think it smells like?” she asks.

“We’ll be close enough for the guards to catch sight of us soon,” I say, ignoring her question. I’m not in the mood to play her blind-girl games.

Not everything has a smell, and if the dome had a smell, it would smell like death. Slow, creeping, unmerciful death. “We should stop here. Wait for it to get dark. There’s a mound of rocks just ahead. It should conceal us from anyone using a spyglass.”

I don’t tell her that my people gathered those rocks, that we piled them high enough to hide a scouting party of two or three. I don’t tell her that I came here on my first scouting mission when I was fourteen and stood behind the rocks, seething hatred for the dome that festers like a boil on the horizon.

It’s strange, to stand now in this place where my younger self vowed to destroy my enemy at all costs, with a Smooth Skin queen clinging to my arm. I once thought I knew everything I ever wanted to know about the Smooth Skins. Now … I know nothing. With every passing day, I grow more and more ignorant. If I keep it up, by the time I return to my people, I’ll be as rattled in the head as the queen of Yuan.

“Gem?” She tugs lightly at my sleeve. “Gem?”

“Yes?”

She leans closer, hugging my arm to her chest, making me aware of her, no matter how much I wish I weren’t. I want to push her away. I want to pull her closer. I want to punch the pile of rocks until my knuckles bleed.

The pain would be a welcome distraction.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I snap, then force myself to ask in a gentler voice, “How’s your head?”

She tilts her head to one side and then the other, stretching the long column of her neck. “It still hurts,” she says. “I’ve never had a headache like this before. I don’t know. Maybe I just need something to eat.”

“Soon.” I stare hard at the horizon, willing the sun to sink faster.

“You’ll be back in your rooms not long after dark.”

She sighs, a mournful, defeated rush of breath, as if
she
is the one on her way to a cell. “I’ll miss this.”

“The desert?”

“Well … yes,” she says, sounding surprised. “I will. The wind especially, even though it’s cold. But …” Her fingers curl into my arm. “I didn’t mean the desert. I meant … I’ll miss being familiar. Being able to … touch.”

It’s the first either of us has said about
that
sort of thing all day. The closer we get to the dome, the more those moments by the fire seem like a fever dream. I can’t believe I tasted her, touched her; that I thought I could reach her with my words. That the real Isra and the real Gem might find a way to be allies. Maybe more than allies.

But Isra isn’t real. She’s a Smooth Skin. She was raised in an artificial world built on lies, bought and paid for with the lives of my people. The fact that I could forget that for even a moment proves how dangerously close I am to losing my mind. My purpose. My self. If only my father had left Gare instead. Gare would have already found a way to bring the roses home to our people. He would never have let his heart soften toward a Smooth Skin.

He would never have loosened his grip on hate.

“Gem?” Isra tips her face up to mine. The dying light catches her eyes and shrinks her pupils to specks of black, leaving nothing but green so bright, I can’t stop staring. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” she whispers, pinching my arm through my shirt. “It’s impossible to think nothing. Even when you’re asleep, you’re thinking

something
.”

I grunt.

“It’s true.” She closes her eyes, soaking in the last of the sun’s fading warmth. “How else would we dream?”

“My people believe some dreams come from the spirit world,” I say.

“That they’re messages from the ancestors.”

“Hm.” Her eyes slit and her brow wrinkles. “I hope they’re wrong.”

“Why? Are your ancestors unhappy with you? Sending you bad dreams?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I have this same dream …” A strong breeze ruffles her hair, and she huddles closer to my side. When she speaks again, I have to strain to hear her over the howling of the wind. “I dream about the night the tower burned. Over and over again. My mother died that night.

My father and I would have died, too, if the guards hadn’t reached us in time.”

For the first time since I awoke this morning, the tight, angry knot in my belly loosens. Fire is a terrible way to lose a life. And four years old is too young to lose a mother.

I place my hand on hers, warming her fingers. “That doesn’t sound like a dream from your ancestors.”

“No?” The muscles tighten in her jaw. “Maybe it is. Maybe the dream is my punishment.”

“For what? Did you set the fire?”

“No,” she says, voice breaking.

“Then stop blaming yourself. You were a child,” I say roughly. She seems determined to take on unnecessary pain. It’s incredible. Wasteful. It makes me angry at Isra on Isra’s behalf, which is just … confusing. “Your ancestors wouldn’t send a dream to torture you while you sleep,” I explain, trying to be patient. “Not without a reason.”