Of Beast and Beauty (26 page)

I lift my eyes to find him watching me stare, and look quickly away, pretending to study the fireplace screen, where a dancing peacock spreads blue and green feathers.

“It could be anyone,” I say, clearing my throat. “The poison was coming in my morning tea. It’s brought on a tray from the royal kitchen.

There are dozens of people working there, and anyone who wanted access would only have to walk in and walk out. There are no guards. The royal family has never had to worry about death by poisoning.”

“And why’s that?”

“Our kings and queens are too valuable to our city.”

He grunts his “Isra’s said something stupid” grunt. “So the kings and queens like to think.”

I turn back to him with a scowl. “You don’t know everything.”

“I know that whoever decided to poison you is someone who would benefit from a queen unable to perform her duties. And that that someone has been thinking very far ahead for a very long time.” He links his hands behind his head while his legs stretch forward, scooting the low table in front of the couch across the lush carpet. It’s a smug pose, but a sensual one, and I can’t stop appreciating the sensual long enough to be truly frustrated by the smug. “I would look to Junjie. Make sure his hands are clean before you bind yourself to his son.”

“Easier to get a blind girl to marry who you’d like her to marry,” I say, thinking aloud. “But why didn’t my father ever suspect poisoning? He was a smart man.”

“Did he love your mother?” Gem asks, surprising me with his question.

I stop to think a moment before saying, “He said he did. He never took another wife, so …”

“Maybe he was too miserable to wonder if there was another reason his daughter was blind,” Gem says, his voice heavier than before. “I would think there’s nothing worse than losing a woman you love.”

I stare at him and forget how to breathe. I want to ask him what that fiercely gentle look in his eyes means. I want to ask him if he’s ever been in love. I want to ask if he loved his baby’s mother. I want to ask if he thinks he could ever love … someone else.

I want to ask if he might … if last night was more than … I want to confess that it was for me, to tell him that I’ve never been in love, but I’m certain this is the closest I’ve ever been to it.

The closest you’ll ever be. You’ll be sealed in a loveless marriage
before your eighteenth birthday
.

I close my eyes and dig my fists into my stomach. “Yes, I imagine that would be … awful.” I’m beginning to feel squeezed in half. I can’t think about marriage or love or who’s been poisoning me since I was a girl. Not on an empty stomach.

Luckily, Needle reappears a moment later with a tray filled with tiny bowls of nuts; a plate of red cherries so stunning and lush I want to paint them; apples; water; and cold tea.

Talk of poisoning causes me to shy away from the tea—though Bo warned me only about my morning tea, not anything brewed in the tower—but I can’t get to the water fast enough. I misjudge the distance

between my fingers and the glass and knock it over. Before I can try again, Needle has poured a glass and placed it in my hand.

“Thank you.” I take great gulps of the cool water with the lemon rinds floating at the top. Yellow seen through my own eyes is more glorious than I remember, bright and dense and cheery enough to make my teeth hurt.

Needle nods, and gestures out to the balcony before turning back to me with one eyebrow raised, communicating more with one look than in seven or eight of her hand gestures. I’m suddenly not surprised that my father seemed to understand Needle almost as well as I did, though we never told him of our secret language.

“Yes. Gem and I are fine,” I say, then remember what Needle will be cleaning, and wince. “I’m sorry. Leave it. I can clean it up later.”

Needle dismisses my protest with a wave of her hand and goes to fetch water and soap and towels from the washroom. I still feel terrible, but I suppose I shouldn’t. Queens don’t clean up their own messes. At least, they never have in the past.

I reach for the plate of cherries and one of the bowls of nuts and pull them into my lap, munching as I think. Now that I can see, I’ll be able to walk among my people and form my own opinions much more quickly.

Maybe I can right the wrongs of the past and repair the wreck I’ve made of my first months as ruler of this city.

But first, I have to clean up a different mess.

I start to call for Needle but shut my mouth with a sharp clack of teeth as I realize I don’t have to. I can
see
. I can pick out my own clothes to put on after my bath.

I stand, suddenly eager to get on with it, to tidy myself and confront the demon of my reflection and move on to more important battles. “I’m going to wash up and change,” I tell Gem, setting my plate down on the tray. “I’ll be quick.”

“Do you want Needle to take me back to my cell?” he asks, his voice strangely guarded as he sets a now-empty dish back on the tray and reaches for an apple.

“No, I want you to stay,” I say, suddenly feeling shy. “I’d rather not be alone.”

“You won’t be alone. Needle is here.”

If I couldn’t see him, I’d think he wanted to go. He sounds cold,

disinterested, but his knee jiggles up and down, his fingers twist the stalk on the apple until it snaps. His elbows are on his knees, his shoulders hunched as if protecting himself from an anticipated attack. His long, thick braid hangs down his back like a weary pet in need of a brushing.

I step closer, and touch the top of his head ever so softly. He glances up, surprised, unguarded. “Please stay,” I whisper. “I want
you
to be here.”

He nods, rather unhappily I think, and turns back to his apple.

“There’s a washbasin and towels in the sitting room down the hall.

By the pantry,” I say. Though, aside from his dusty shirt, Gem doesn’t seem to be in nearly as bad a shape as I am. “If you want to freshen up, feel free.”

“All right,” he says, eyes still glued to the fruit in his hand.

“I won’t be long,” I say, hoping both of our moods will improve once this is done. I’ve felt my own face and my peeling flesh. I have a fairly good idea what I must look like. Strange, different, big-featured and rough-skinned, but not altogether hideous. The truth can’t be much worse than what I’ve imagined.

Or so I tell myself as I turn toward the washroom, half hoping Needle neglected to haul up the usual supply of water in my absence, and I’ll have a good excuse to fall into bed filthy and deal with facing my face in the morning.

I eat everything left on the tray. I drink all the water and then the tea.

Tea in the desert is bitter and smoky, the way a drink intended to get you out of your hut on a winter morning should be. Smooth Skin tea tastes like crushed flowers, so sweet it made me gag the first time I put a cup of it to my lips. I detest Smooth Skin tea, but I drink the honeyed liquid anyway.

I’m on edge. Drinking gives me something to do with my hands.

Isra, Isra, Isra
. Her name knocks around inside me as I wash up and return to my seat on the tiny couch.
Isra
. It hurts and heals and makes me hope.…

I can’t hope. Not yet. It’s too dangerous.

I don’t know what will happen when she looks at herself, but I know there’s a good chance she’ll hate me. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell the truth, either, and my halfhearted attempt last night was worse than no attempt at all. I don’t want her to hate me. I want her to keep looking at me with eyes that confess all her secrets.

I thought seeing me would remind her of our differences, but instead she looks at me like …

Like I look at her.

“Gem?” She’s suddenly standing in front of me, her freshly combed hair tumbling around her shoulders, her body encased in a black skirt and a long-sleeved green shirt with silky ruffles at the throat. I smile despite myself. It’s a playful shirt. It suits her better than her silkworm dresses.

Her fingers tangle nervously in the ruffles. “This was my mother’s,”

she says. “It was one of the few things of hers to survive the fire. I’ve never tried it on, but I thought … It seemed right to wear it.”

“I like it.”

“I do, too.” She fidgets, frowns. “I can’t believe it fits.”

“Your mother must have been tall like you.”

Isra nods, but her brow remains wrinkled. “I suppose. I don’t remember her as … Father never said anything about my mother being tainted, but I suppose I—”

“Where is the mirror?” I rise. It’s time.

“Needle said she has one by her bed.” Isra takes a breath and tucks her hand into the crook of my arm, despite the fact that she no longer needs anyone to guide her.

She leads me down a narrow passage to a bedroom where a giant bed with a scarlet quilt the same color as the royal roses stands proudly in the center. The bed is too big for a girl alone. It’s a bed built for two, solid and sturdy and meant to withstand the use of generations of men and women.

Of Isra, and her soon-to-be husband.

“Wait.” I stop inside the door, unable to pull my eyes from the bed. I have to reach Isra before she decides I can’t be trusted. “You don’t have to keep your promise. Once I’m back in my cell, it will be your word against Bo’s. No one has to know you let me out. You don’t have to marry him if you don’t want to.”

“Do you think I want to?” she asks, voice shaking.

I look down at her, at her parted lips and her shining eyes, and immediately I hurt. Because she hurts.

I cradle her face in my hands. “Then don’t do it.”

“I don’t have a choice,” she whispers. “I have to be married by spring.”

“Why? You said seventeen was young to marry.”

“It is, but it doesn’t matter.” The tears sitting in her eyes roll down her cheeks. “I’m queen. I’ll be married as soon as my mourning is through.”

I catch a tear with my thumb and rub it gently into her skin. “Why?”

“There are reasons. I’d rather not explain them, but they’re real.

Inescapable.” She drops her gaze to my chest with a sigh. “There isn’t time to get out from beneath Junjie’s thumb. If I’m going to change anything for

the better, I’ll need his support, and he won’t give it if I refuse to marry his son.”

“Find someone to take Junjie’s place.”

“There isn’t time,” she repeats, lifting troubled eyes to mine. “He was at my father’s side for twenty years. He makes the people feel safe. I’d never find someone fit to take his place in a few months.”

“Then put off the marriage,” I say, fingers tightening, pressing lightly into her jaw. “Have a … I don’t know what you would call it. In our tribe it’s a trial.”

“A trial?”

“Two people spend time together, sometimes even live together, but nothing is official until the woman claims the man in a ceremony before the tribe.”

“The woman does the claiming?” Her eyebrows lift. “Interesting.”

“The man has to agree, but the decision to end the trial is the woman’s.”

She hums beneath her breath. “If my father had lived, he would have chosen my husband. He might have even chosen Bo. Whoever he would have picked, I wouldn’t have had much say about it. That’s how it is for most noblewomen. We marry within the descendents of the founding families, being careful not to marry too closely. I’ve heard some of the common women marry for love, but …” Her eyes shift to the side, as if she’s suddenly become very interested in the door frame. “Did you ever …
Were
you ever …”

“No,” I say. “Meer and I … it was never a trial. At first I thought we might, but … She chose someone else.”

“Oh.” She plucks at her shirt. “Women in Yuan aren’t supposed to … I mean, I know some do,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ve heard there are herbs they take to make it possible to”—she waves a hand nervously in the air—“without any babies. For Yuan women, a baby is only supposed to come after marriage. It’s scandalous otherwise.” She tilts her head back and blows air through her pursed lips. Even in the dim light of the lamp burning by her bedside, I can see how pink her cheeks have gotten.