Of Beast and Beauty, стр. 45

the roses. None of them have. Only her female ancestors have died. Only

Isra will die.

Only Isra.

EIGHTEEN

ISRA

“MY mother died when I was four. Thirteen years ago.” The words

float easily from my mouth. This night feels like a dream—too much has

happened for it to be anything else—and the consequences of this

confession seem distant, unreal. “I could have another seventeen years. I

could have ten. The advisors could come for me tomorrow if they believe

the city to be in danger.”

“How long have you known?” Gem asks, a stricken expression on his

face.

“Forever.” I brush my hair wearily from my forehead. “I can’t

remember a time when I didn’t. It was never a secret. I always knew that if

my father didn’t remarry and give the city another queen—”

“Why didn’t he remarry?” Gem demands, his anger hot and

immediate.

“He was doing what he thought was best for me,” I say, more

exhausted with every word. “As future queen I was protected. I don’t think

my mutation is severe enough to send me to the Banished camp, but—” My

words end in a yip of surprise as Gem snatches my hand and half drags me

across the room toward the mirror on the wall.

Instinctively I dig my heels into the carpet. I’m not ready. Not like

this. “No,” I say, squirming my fingers, panic making my voice high and

tight. “I’m not ready.”

“You need to see yourself,” he says. “You need to see the truth.”

I shake my head and throw my weight backward, fighting harder to

free myself from his grip. “In a minute. Wait! I—” He drops my hand, only

to scoop me up in his arms. “Stop! Please,” I beg, shoving at his chest.

When he stops in front of the mirror, I squeeze my eyes shut and turn

away.

“Look at yourself,” he demands. “Look!”

I press my face against his shoulder, inhaling the smell of the desert

and Gem on his shirt, hating that he can still smell good to me even when

he’s dirty and bullying me like everyone else in my life. “You’re no better

than Bo,” I say through gritted teeth.

“I’m only trying to help!”

“Sh!” I stab his chest with the tip of one finger. “You’ll scare Needle.

She’s mute, not deaf. If she comes in here and finds us like this, she’ll bring

the bed pot down on your head. It’s copper. It will hurt.” I peek at him

through slitted eyes. “Even someone with a skull as thick as yours.”

“You’re one to talk,” he says. “You’re the most stubborn person I’ve

ever met. Stupidly stubborn.”

“Then put me down and go away,” I say, voice breaking. “If I’m so

stupid.”

“I don’t want to go away. I want to help,” he says in a softer voice.

“Please, let me.” His arms gentle around me, no longer holding me

prisoner, just holding. Waiting.

“This doesn’t help,” I say, relaxing in spite of myself. “Not like this.”

He presses a kiss to my forehead. “I should have told you before,” he

whispers, making my skin tingle.

I wish we’d never stopped kissing. I wish Gem would give up on

saving me, and give me something to remember when my life is out of

possibilities.

“I would have,” he continues. “If I’d known. I swear I would have.”

“Told me what?” I let my fingers play along the scales at the back of

his neck, mesmerized by their smoothness.

He looks down, catching my eyes, the emotion in his making my

heart beat faster. “I would have told you that you’re beautiful.”

My stomach flutters and my chest gets warm and tight. I fist my

hands and hold his gaze and my breath, determined to bind this moment

tight inside me and never let it go. He means it. I’m beautiful to him. To

Gem, who is beautiful to me. Does it really matter what anyone else thinks?

“You’re beautiful,” he says again, kissing my eyebrow. It’s a strange

place for a kiss, but nice, an offering meant to comfort me, taking nothing

for itself. “And you know it. You said so yourself.”

My brow furrows. “I never said that.”

“You did,” he says. “That girl in the painting isn’t a goddess. She’s a

queen.”

His meaning hits, and my lungs forget how to draw breath. “That’s

cruel,” I choke out, pushing at his chest. This time he lets me go, dropping

my feet to the ground and spinning me to the mirror so quickly, I don’t

have time to avert my eyes. I catch a glimpse, and a glimpse is enough for

the glass to take me prisoner.

My lips part. The girl in the mirror’s lips part, too, and any lingering

doubt vanishes in a dizzying wave. That’s me. That is what I look like. The

shoulders that burst the seams of every dress are the perfect size in my

mother’s shirt. My slender throat flutters delicately as I breathe. My face is

not a perfect oval or a moon, but its angles aren’t hideous. There is

elegance in my sharp chin and strong jaw, and my nose that isn’t shy about

being a nose. It pokes proudly from the center of my face, ending in a tip

shaped like a square, as if I ran into a wall with it and the skin never popped

back into place.

It’s large, and might be distracting if it weren’t balanced out by my

eyes. Enormous, unflinching eyes as green as summer grass, fringed with

dark lashes, blinking beneath brows a bit too wild. My hair is even wilder,

curling and coiling and running amok above my forehead and down my

back, creeping wiry fingers over my shoulders, gluing stray tendrils to my

damp cheeks. But it’s lovely, too, in its untamed way.

But there’s still the other … the part I keep hidden … I was careful not

to look too closely in the bath, but now …

I lift my hand, and pull up my sleeve, revealing the peeling skin

beneath the green fabric. There, where I thought scales lurked below the

surface, is simply dry red human skin. Peeling and flaking and messy, but

not hideous.

Sickly-looking, but not unnatural. Damaged, but not tainted.

I am …

I am not …

“There may be some way to treat it,” Gem says carefully, as if he

senses how fragile I’ve become. “It might be irritated by something you’re

eating or … washing with. A certain oil, or …”

He trails away. I don’t say a thing. I don’t know what to say.

This is my body—sickly, not tainted. This is my face. This is my face.

The face of the girl in the painting. I remember sitting for a portrait on my

sixteenth birthday, but I was never told what happened to it. Now I know. I

am the girl in the painting, that beautiful girl. I don’t look like the other

women whose faces I’ve felt—the proportions and structure and shape are

completely different—but there is nothing Monstrous or ugly about me. I

know it, Bo knows it, Junjie knows it. My father knew it.

My father knew it.

My heartbeat slows; my lips go numb. My throat cramps, and my ribs

petrify. I feel the air in the room turn against me, pushing into me from all

sides, threatening to turn my bones to dust.

Never, in my wildest dreams, would I have imagined that finding out

I’ve been wrong would feel like this. That I would want to pull my beautiful

face off the wall and hurl the mirror to the floor, stomp on the pieces until

my feet bleed, scream until I lose my voice. That I would wish with every

fiber of my being to go back to the way life was before, when I believed

myself ugly, when the world and my place in it were perfectly clear.

But I do. I wish. But I can’t go back. Not ever.