Of Beast and Beauty (5 page)

Something stirs inside me. Something urges me to tilt my head and move my lips, to dart my own tongue out—quick as a wink—for a taste.

Salty. Sweet. Hint of cabbage. Something familiar in the midst of all the unfamiliar feelings that are making my skin warm and my insides as hot as the Monstrous man’s flesh.

I pull back, heart beating too fast. “We should go to the cells. The monster might have revealed the cure.”

“We should, but if we die tonight, I—”

“No one’s going to die,” I say with more confidence than I feel.

“Come with me.” I start down the path, but stop after only a few steps. I’ve never been to the cells. I’ve never dared go that deep into the city proper.

I hold out a hand. “Guide me. Hurry.”

“Yes, my lady.” A second later, his arm is under mine. It’s strong and densely muscled, but the bare skin at his wrist is as soft as all the skin I’ve felt in my life. Much,
much
softer than mine. This soldier is a whole citizen of Yuan.

So why did he kiss me? A tainted girl, too tall and too wide, with skin peeling from the chest down in a frustrated attempt to reveal the scales

that lurk beneath the surface? I’m obviously not sufficiently tainted to be sent to the Banished camp, but even the slightest sign of mutation is reviled. From what I’ve overheard, a whole citizen would rather die than marry someone with Monstrous features, no matter how mildly they might manifest.

He’s hardly thinking marriage. He’s thinking he’s going to die and
yours might be the final lips he encounters
.

The thought banishes the last of the tingling sensation from my body, expelling it like a fish bone. I lift my chin, holding my head high as we move swiftly toward the city proper. I do my best not to think about dying with the taste of this stranger on my lips.

Dying
. If I’m dying, I’ll never get the chance to tell my father that I have dreams that live outside the tower, to confess how much I need something … more. Tears fill my eyes, but I don’t cry. I sip in a breath and hold the air in my lungs.

The soldier pats my rough hand with his softer one. “My name is Bo.

I’ll stay with you until the healers come. My father would want that.”

“Your father?”

“Junjie,” he says, his voice dipping and sliding on the last part. That’s why he sounds familiar. Junjie’s son. “My father’s spoken of me?”

“No. I didn’t know he had a son.”

“Oh.” The word is a stone plunking sadly into the water.

“But he doesn’t speak to me often,” I say, feeling a
little
sorry, despite my fear and the shame still lingering on my lips. “Most of the time he’s only at the tower to steal my father away on business.”

“Yes. The king … I …” He sighs, a pained sound that sets fretful things stirring in my stomach.

“What about the king?”

“Nothing.” He walks faster. “Your wounds need treatment.”

“No. Tell me. What were you going to say?”

“I can’t,” he whispers. “Your health is the most important thing.”

“I feel fine.” I do. The scratches still sting, but the feverish sensation is gone. I’m no healer, but it doesn’t
feel
as if there’s poison in my blood. It makes me wonder …

Has my slight mutation made me immune to the creature’s venom, or … could the texts about the poison in Monstrous claws be wrong? Was the Monstrous lying when he said I’d die without his help, saying whatever

he had to say in order to escape to the river?

“The river.” My hand tightens on Bo’s arm. “The Monstrous wanted me to take him to the caverns where the underground river flows. That must be how they—”

“We know,” he interrupts, making me sputter. I can’t remember the last time I was interrupted. Have I
ever
been interrupted? “There were three other creatures. Their hair was damp when we captured them. My father guessed where they’d come from. There are guards in place now. No more Monstrous will get into the city tonight.”

“Did you kill the others?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer. The Monstrous are terrifying, but they also have language and pain. They aren’t the complete savages Baba and Junjie have made them out to be. There’s a chance we might be able to make peace with them.

“Not yet.” Even in those two small words, his bloodlust is clear.

“They speak our language,” I say gently. “They might not be as savage as we’ve thought.”

Bo’s muscles flex beneath my hand. “They’re worse. They’re devils.”

“Devils or not, it doesn’t make sense to kill them if we don’t have to.

It will only make things worse for the city.” I think of the Monstrous man, how he endured my fingers roaming his face. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. He showed mercy. How can we do anything but offer the same?

“It will be up to you to decide, of course.” Bo’s voice is stiff. “My queen.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snap, wishing I didn’t need his arm to guide me. I’d prefer
not
to be touching this soldier anymore. “I’m not queen yet.”

“Yes, my lady,” he whispers. “You are.”

I am?

I …
am
.

The ground turns against me, and I trip over the raised edge of a paving stone. Bo catches me and holds me up by the elbow. His hand is larger than I thought. It circles my bone, making me feel like a child, but I’m not a child.

I am queen. I …

That means …

“Baba …” There isn’t enough breath in me to finish the question.

This can’t be true. Baba was with me this morning. We had breakfast together, sat on the balcony and talked about the harvest festival and made

plans for our private celebration after his duties in the city center were finished. He agreed to allow Needle to make him a hat for the party. He laughed one of his rare, light laughs and asked me to play him a song on the harp. He was so alive.

He
has
to be alive.

“It was the Monstrous,” Bo says. “The king was walking the path around the lake. One of the creatures surprised him and his guards. All five of his men were killed, and your father …”

“The Monstrous …” My mouth is too dry. My lips have gone numb.

“We captured the thing not far from the court cottages. There was blood on its hands. It laughed when it learned some of it was the king’s.”

Blood. Baba’s blood. My baba.

My baba is dead. The monsters have killed him. Now I am alone. And I am
queen
. Queen so much sooner than I ever thought I would be queen, and there is nothing left for me but pain.

“We’ll kill them.” I dig my fingers into Bo’s arm. “All of them. I’ll do it myself.”

I’M not dead, but I’m burning. Thrown on the pyre. Alive.

No!
I try to scream.
Father! Gare!
But no sound comes. My jaw creaks open in a silent wail. My heart shrivels, and all around me the flames burn and burn. The pyre spits sparks at stars crackling in a cold night sky, and fire sizzles through skin, bound for bone, and I am alone with the pain.

More alone than I’ve ever been.

Why has my family done this? Is it because I failed them? Is it—?

A girl’s voice startles me awake. “I know you speak our language,”

she says. “Answer!”

My eyes creep open. The night sky becomes a stone ceiling streaked with green, but the burning feeling stays. It’s coming from my legs. Pain.

Fever. Shredded muscles screaming. Blood sticky on my skin.

Why? What has—?

“Answer!” the girl shouts, making me flinch.

It comes back in a rush: The woman-girl-princess, the soldier. His spear. Failure. The death of the Desert People on my back, to carry for however long I live.

The memories fan the fever flames. I’ve had fevers before, but nothing like this. I grit my teeth and turn my head. The greens and reds pulse and bleed. Black slashes like claw marks slide back and forth before my eyes. It takes a moment for the marks to still, another moment to understand what they are.

Bars. A cage.

“Don’t pretend to be ignorant.” A gray blur behind the black slashes.

My throbbing eyes strain, pulling the blur into focus.

It’s the princess in her baggy gray clothes, trembling in front of another set of bars. Behind them, my brother, Gare, stands as still as the stone walls, tall and strong in the face of her interrogation, though his cheek is split open and his eye swollen shut.

“Tell me!” she shouts, stepping closer to him.

“No, my queen.” A man—shorter than the princess, but with broad shoulders and the hard face of a leader—reaches for the girl’s arm and pulls her back. “You’re too close.”

She turns, and I see her face. It is red and puffy; her cheeks and nose are wet. “Junjie. Please. Help me.” On the last word her features crumple, her eyes squeezing shut and water leaking from behind her lids. More magic. I’ve never seen anything like it. I blink, and her face swims like the air above a fire.

Fire
. I’m so hot. Burning.

My eyes close, and the cell melts away.

When I wake again, the cage is dark and quiet, and I’m cold. Freezing.

My skin crawls. My scales pull so tightly together that it feels they’ll rip away from the flesh. I shiver until my teeth knock with a dull
clack, clack
.

“Gem? Are you awake?” A whisper I can’t place, but in the language of the Desert People, not the Smooth Skins, so it must be—

“Gem? Can you hear me, boy?”

Father
. I try to speak, but my jaw is clenched too tightly; my tongue is fat and slow. I’m dying. I know it. My body feels cut in half—the top made of ice, the bottom still hot, scattered with knots full of poison.

“Gem, if you can hear me …” He draws a ragged breath. “You are our hope. Remember what we came for. Leave a message at the gathering stones if you’re able. We’ll come back for you if we can.”

Come back? Where are they going? Have they found a way to escape?

“If not, you must finish—” A long, hollow scrape interrupts him.

“Silence in the cell,” a voice booms in the Smooth Skin language.

Father ignores the warning. “Bring life to our people. Save them, Gem. You—”

“I said silence.” There’s another scrape, and then footsteps and the

clang of metal on metal. “Bring the darts!” Another man answers, and more footsteps fill the room, and my father is still shouting, but somewhere beneath it all, I swear I hear Gare growl that he should be the one to stay behind, that he doesn’t need Smooth Skin words to claim Smooth Skin lives.

I try to tell him he’s right, to confess my weakness, to tell father I’m dying and it’s too late, but I’m already floating away from my body. Up, up, up, until I look down at the slab of meat that housed my spirit, down from the ceiling where the air is silent and peaceful.

I want to keep going. I want to leave my corpse to cool on the stone, but I worry.…

Will I be able to reach the land of my ancestors if I die here? Without a funeral fire or the songs of the Desert People singing me into the night?

Or will I stay in this hole, a lost spirit, haunting the Smooth Skins for the rest of time?

They deserve a haunting, but I don’t want to be the spirit to do it.

I am weak. How could I have ever thought myself strong?

My heart
thu-dums
, and I’m pulled back to the cold and the hot of my body. To the knocking of my teeth, and the sound of my father crying out in pain as he’s shot. When the blackness comes again, I’m grateful.

In and out. In and out.

Days—maybe weeks—pass in a haze. My feverish body is moved from the stone slab to a pallet so soft, I’m sure I’m dreaming it. It cushions me like a cloud. A blanket made of whispers covers my body. Gentle fingers pry open my lips and pour bitter liquid down my throat. I swallow. I don’t care if it’s poison. I sleep. I don’t care if I wake. I’m ready to die. I don’t want to live or think or dream anymore.