Of Beast and Beauty, стр. 28

my head seemed the right thing to do at the time, and now I’m too

frightened to go looking for my lost shawl. I don’t know how close I am to

the edge of the trail. I don’t remember deciding to leave my safe place.

My thoughts are fuzzy. I can’t remember … I can’t …

My knees buckle. I collapse onto the ground and decide it’s best to

stay there. I don’t know how to find my way back to the rock shelter, and if

I keep walking, I’m sure to find trouble. But oh, it’s even colder here.

Wherever I am. So cold.

I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around my shins,

wishing I hadn’t been such a coward. Now it’s too late. Even if I find my way

back to the camp and the pile of wood, I could never start a fire alone.

But Gem will come back soon. He’ll find me. I can’t have gone far.

Surely …

The wind huffs and puffs, its frigid breath making my bare head ache.

I curl into a ball around my legs, tuck my face to my chest, and bite my lip,

shivering as images from my brief sighted life bloom in the darkness behind

my eyes.

I see the pearl buttons on my mother’s dress, the ones that dug into

my cheek when she let me nap with her on the sofa in her chamber. I see

the cabbage fields and the orchards blossoming far below the tower

balcony, and the scarlet explosion of the sun setting outside the dome. I

see my own pudgy hand—not too tainted then, only dry and a bit

cracked—snatching a sticky roll from my mother’s tray, and I feel a giddy

squeal rising inside me as I sneak with it back to my room. I’d already eaten

my morning treat, but my appetite for burned honey icing was insatiable.

Mother always slept late and so soundly that not even little feet

scampering into her room would wake her.

I’d forgotten that about my mama. I’d forgotten most of those

memories. Their recovery warms me from the inside out, makes me smile

as I give in to the muzzy feeling tugging me closer to sleep.

I curl on my side in the dirt, arm pillowing my cheek—thinking of

those pearl buttons, and wishing I could remember my mother’s

face—while the cold pulls oblivion over my shoulders, tucks it around my

ears, and covers my sightless eyes. Before I consciously decide to go, I am

snapped away into something deeper than sleep, but I’m not afraid.

I’m not cold or lost or lonely anymore. I am not a princess or a queen

or a sacrifice or an abomination or a disappointment. I am nothing at all, a

cup swiftly emptying of all the Isra inside it, leaving nothing behind.

ELEVEN

GEM

I stand at the base of the mountain for a long, long moment, not sure

I’ll be able to climb back up again.

The place where the soldier’s spear pierced my thigh aches so badly,

it feels as though the bone there will split in half. A hollow in the ground

between two nearby Cross cacti looks more inviting than a Smooth Skin bed

of clouds. I think how good it would be to lie down there and stare up at

the million stars in the sky and be done with this day. But after a long drink

of cactus milk and a too-short rest, I start back up the trail.

As much as I’d like to leave the queen to her lies and trembling up on

the mountain, I promised to keep her safe.

Still, I don’t hurry. I can’t hurry with my leg throbbing like a second

angry heart, but I wouldn’t even if I could. The less time I spend with Isra

tonight, the better. I can’t remember being this angry since the day she

came to my cell and laughed at my starving people and cried her sticky

tears onto my chest. I would just as soon wrap my hand around her throat

and squeeze as sit by the fire with the queen of Yuan.

How dare she treat me like a comrade at shovel and hoe every day

we worked together, only to cower and quake the moment her guards are

gone? I’d believed the way she viewed my people had changed. I thought

she was different from the rest of the Smooth Skins. I thought she

considered me a … friend. I certainly worked hard enough to convince her I

was worth befriending. Even if every shared story and teasing word and

gentle bit of advice was deception on my part, she doesn’t know that. I’ve

given her no reason to change her good opinion of me.

If she ever had one.

She must have been lying, too. Lying with every lopsided smile and

flash of her clever eyes and softly whispered reassurance about my healing

legs. She was only pretending to trust me, to feel affection for the beast she

kept in chains. I should have known she was false. In her eyes, I’ll always be

a monster. I suspected as much from the beginning.

So why does the proof of what I’ve known all along feel like a

betrayal? Why does the sight of her shaking hands make me want to hurl

boulders down the mountain? Why do I hurt?

I feel as bruised as I did the day Meer told me she was choosing

another man as her mate. I should have been happy. I didn’t want to stay

with the tribe and watch the baby growing inside Meer be born into a life

of famine and pain. I was a warrior. I had a tunnel to finish digging, roses to

steal, Smooth Skin cities to worm my way inside.

But I wasn’t happy. There were days when watching Meer love

someone else more than she had ever loved me—seeing the casual

intimacies between her and Hant at the campfire, catching him with his

hand upon her swelling belly and a smile on his face—felt like dying. The

same way being captured by Smooth Skins felt like dying, and being

ordered about by my enemy felt like dying.

Isra has brought nothing but misery into my life, but when I arrive at

the remains of the campfire and see the flames out and Isra no longer

sitting where I left her, every hot angry thing inside me runs cold.

“Isra?” I circle the fire, panic sharpening my voice. “Isra!”

The air is too quiet. Even the wind has stopped moaning. It feels like

the night is holding its breath, waiting for me to discover the terrible fate

that has befallen the queen of Yuan. It has to be terrible. I left a blind girl

alone a dozen feet from the edge of a cliff. She could have gone to relieve

herself and fallen to her death. She could have decided to follow me and

taken a wrong turn on the path and wandered into a zion nest. She could

have been discovered by a hunting party and been taken prisoner.

I was certain there would be none of my tribe this close to Yuan, but

what of the other tribes? The Desert People from the north have been

venturing farther south since they burned the domed city of Vanguard two

years ago, only to find that its destruction did nothing to return life to their

own blighted territory.

Naira warned my father that if we failed to return with Yuan’s magic

roses, it might come to war between our tribes one day soon. We must

show the northerners that we have harnessed the Smooth Skin magic, and

share the power of the roses with them, before their chief convinces his

people that the only way to heal the land is to destroy every domed city

still standing. We cannot allow Yuan to fall, not until we have secured the

secret to their abundance.

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