Of Beast and Beauty, стр. 8

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.”

FOUR

GEM

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.

The dreams are the worst. Even when the sick heat in my legs fades, I

still dream of flame, of a pyre where I burn forever to pay for failing my

people.

I am more than shamed. I loathe myself.

“Father …” The sound of my own voice startles me awake. I open my

eyes wide, but immediately slide them half-closed again. It’s bright in this

room. Sun-filled. I never thought I’d see the sun again. I never thought I’d

see her again, either.

The princess sits by my pallet, her oval face calm, emotionless, her

blind eyes staring through me. “Are you awake?” Her voice is different than

I remember. Emptier. She looks different, too.