Of Beast and Beauty (36 page)

I watch him, feeling his agony as my own, and then suddenly I am somewhere else, in a time before the fires, standing beside the old man as he places a shriveled black root into the hands of devastatingly thin Monstrous people. Old men, young children with distended bellies, boys Gem’s age with their wide shoulders concave with starvation, girls my age with glassy-eyed babies clinging to their necks. One of the girls is even thinner than the rest. Her baby still has the strength to wail, to squeeze his eyes closed and scream as his mother slips the root between his lips.

He’s dead almost instantly.

“No!” Heat floods my face; tears spill from my eyes.

The scene changes again, going back even further, showing Monstrous men and women gathered around a fire. Their faces flicker with orange and red from the flames, but their backs are kissed by pale blue winter moonlight. It’s a night like tonight—it could even be tonight—and the people are thin, but not dying.

It’s not too late. It’s not too late to help them, to save them. Gem and I can go into the desert. We can bring food and—

A growl—loud and deep and fierce enough to make the hair on my arms stand on end—shatters the scene playing behind my eyes. I land back in my body with a jolt and wrench my neck toward the sound, a relieved breath already bursting from my lips.

Gem!
He’s here. He’ll free me, and together we’ll—

“Ah!” I cry out as the roses jerk me closer to the flower bed, hauling me over the retaining wall and into their midst, surrounding me with thorns, crowding my eyes with blossoms fattened on centuries of blood.

TWENTY-THREE

RED floods my vision. The smell of rot and metal and bitter herbs sweeps into my nose. My skin crawls as sharps mean as needles press at me through my clothes. I squeeze my eyes shut and scream as I cower closer to the ground.

“Let her go!” Gem shouts. I hear a whistling sound and a muffled thud as something soft, but heavy, falls to the ground. Before I can turn and see what’s happened, the roses are moving, their thorns piercing through my clothes, making me howl like a trapped animal.

“No!” I beg. “They’ll kill me! Don’t touch them!”

“I have to get you out,” Gem says, sounding so fearful and desperate that I know he cares for me. Now I have to prove I care for him as much.

“You have to go,” I say, panting against the urge to be sick. The pain is too much, coming from everywhere all at once. “Your tribe. They’re in trouble.”

“How do you—”

“I saw it. In a vision.”

“A vision.” He lets out a shaking breath. “From the roses? Were there—”

“Please, Gem. Half your tribe will die if you don’t go.” I grit my teeth, refusing to whimper, to do anything to make Gem feel compelled to stay with me. “Needle prepared a pack for you this afternoon. It’s waiting by the King’s Gate. Take it and go. Now.”

“I won’t leave you,” Gem says, voice breaking. “I can’t.”

“You have to,” I say, and then add silently,
But you can come back.

Oh, please come back. Oh please, oh please
.

If he comes back … If he cares enough to come back … maybe we can find a way to end this, to escape from the Dark Heart and make a better life for both our peoples.

The thorns press deeper, and I can’t keep a soft cry of pain from escaping my lips.

“Isra … they’re killing you.” His hand finds mine. I can’t turn my head to see him, but I know he has risked his life to reach out for me. I cling to him, selfishly needing to touch him one last time.

“They’re not killing me. They’re keeping me here. They know my thoughts. They know I wanted to go with you.” I close my eyes, memorizing the feel of his fingers threaded through mine. “They’ll release me when you’re gone.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” I lie, knowing that Gem will refuse to leave unless I properly convince him. “They need a willing sacrifice, a suicide. They can’t murder me,” I say, hoping it will be enough to make Gem go before he’s caught.

“How did you get out of your cell?”

“I broke the lock on the door. After I …” His breath shudders out, and his grip on my fingers gets tighter. “I saw you coming into the garden and I tried to call your name, but—I felt something, a terrible magic.”

He has no idea
how
terrible, and I can’t tell him. Not now.

“There’s no time.” I release his hand, pushing him away. “Go. Run.

Hurry.”

I hear a rustle in the leaves, and when he speaks again, he sounds farther away. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he says. “If you’re not alive, I’ll burn this city to the ground. Starting with this garden.” The blossoms closest to my face rotate on their stalks, moving out of my line of sight as they turn to Gem.

I lift my head, meeting Gem’s worried eyes through a jumble of leaves and thorns. I want to tell him how beautiful he is to me; I want to tell him everything I’ve held back. I want to share everything that’s happened since he left the tower last night, because only after sharing it with Gem will it seem real.

I want to tell him that, too, but instead I say, “Please go.” He has to

go. There’s no time. “I’ll watch for you on the wall walk. Every night. Set a fire by the gathering of stones. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

“You’re bleeding,” he says, throat working. I can see it, even in the moody blue light of my least favorite moon.

“Don’t forget me,” I whisper. “Please. Don’t forget.”

“I’ll come back,” he says. “If I have to drag my body across the desert.

I swear it. On my life.”

I nod, squeezing my eyes closed to keep the tears at bay. By the time I open them, he’s gone.

“Let me go,” I whisper to the roses after several long moments have passed. They’ve gone as still as any plant now, but I know they’re listening.

“You’ve gotten what you wanted.” The Dark Heart clearly wanted Gem to leave the city. There’s no other explanation for why it showed me the suffering of the Monstrous out in the desert. It wanted Gem—and the risk he poses to the continuation of the covenant—removed from Yuan.

But he’ll come back to me. I know it. I haven’t lost yet, not if I gain my freedom tonight.

“Let me go.” I try to straighten my legs, but the ancient vines lie heavy and motionless across my thighs. “Let me go! I won’t be held like—”

“What have you done to yourself?” The voice is soft, shocked, and so unlike Bo’s that I don’t guess who it belongs to until I look up to see him standing where Gem stood a few moments ago.

“Who were you talking to?” Bo asks again, in that same numb way that makes me more nervous than his angry voice ever has.

“No one. Myself.” I lick my lips, taste my tears, and shiver despite the fact that the night is the warmest we’ve had since autumn. Why is Bo here?

How much has he seen?

“The Monstrous is out of his cell, Isra,” Bo says. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Y-yes,” I stutter, my heart beating faster. “I needed him to take care of a few things in our garden. He’s going there now,” I say, hoping to buy Gem more time to reach the King’s Gate by sending Bo in the opposite direction. “He’s trustworthy. He’ll be back in his rooms within the hour.

There’s no need to—”

“There’s every need,” Bo snaps, anger creeping into his tone.

“There’s every need to do … something.” He shakes his head, his expression bleeding from anger to confusion to utter bafflement. “What are you doing

here? Why have you hurt yourself?”

“I didn’t do it deliberately. I tripped and fell,” I say, lifting my chin.

“And it seems to me you should be more interested in helping your queen than interrogating her.” I can’t tell Bo that the roses attacked me, or he’ll think I’m more rattled than he does already, but I don’t have to endure being treated like a fool. “Now. Help me out. Use your sword. Cut the vines if you have to.”

Bo’s lips part, and a horrified look creeps into his eyes. “You want me to desecrate the royal garden? Are you mad?” He laughs, a single
baw
so loud that it makes me wince. “Of course you’re mad.
Of course
you are. And to think I … I felt for you,” he says, gravel in his voice. “Even today. I thought my father and the other advisors were being unfair, but he’s right.

You’ve lost your mind.”

“No, I haven’t.” My forehead wrinkles, but it doesn’t hurt. At least the roses didn’t attack my face. “Your father supported every measure we discussed today. He sent the amendment concerning the Banished to my rooms a few hours ago. It was exactly—”

“He’s lying to you, humoring you until tomorrow morning,” Bo spits.

“He and the other advisors are going to force you to marry me and give Yuan a ruler who’s not out of his head. They say the law allows them to compel your marriage, whether you consent to the union or not.”

My stomach clenches. “But I … I’m still in mourning. It’s against our—”

“Sometimes big changes are necessary to protect the city,” he says, mocking his father’s kind words from this afternoon perfectly, setting fire to the last tattered shreds of my hope. “I tried to convince him to wait,” Bo continues, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “I wanted you to choose to marry me, but clearly you aren’t capable of making wise choices.”

“You don’t decide what I’m capable of! I’m the queen. My word is law!” I sound like a child having a tantrum, but how can I help it? What other option has Bo or anyone else in this city given me, when they treat me like a small girl or an invalid or a madwoman?

“I’m
not
mad,” I say, fighting tears. “This
city
is mad. All of you! You and your father and the advisors and all the rest. Gem is three times the person any of you will ever be!”

Bo sighs, but when his gaze meets mine, he doesn’t seem angry. He’s

gone numb again. Numb with a hint of …

Pity. He pities me. He’s so sure of the legitimacy of his hate that he can’t consider for a moment that the Desert People might be human like us. Or that
I
might be the only one in Yuan
not
out of my mind.

But maybe that isn’t possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it’s the definition of madness to believe I’m right and everyone else is wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed.

The thought makes me want to cry all over again. Cry, and beg Bo to listen to me, to try to understand. Despite his cruelty last night, Bo isn’t as terrible as his father. He cares for me—or cared, at least a little. He has a gentle side, too.

“Bo, please,” I whisper. “I’m not crazy. I swear I’m not. I—”

“Did you mean to hurt yourself tonight?” he asks, ignoring my protests.

“Of course not!”

“You’re bleeding,” he says, as if breaking a scary bit of news to a child. “Those wounds are deep. You’ll have scars. Why did you do this?”

“
I
didn’t do anything! They pulled me in. They were trying to kill me,”

I say, regretting the words the moment they pass my lips.

“Who was trying to kill you?”

“The … roses,” I mumble, digging my nails into the dirt, wishing I had fingers big enough to uproot the roses with my bare hands. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s the truth. They aren’t what they seem. Nothing is what it seems.”

Bo glances down at the vines, now lying, limp and lifeless, across my legs. No one but Gem knows what the roses can do, and now no one else ever will. The roses won’t help me prove that I’m not insane. My allegedly weak mind stands to gain them a king and a captive queen and continuation of life as the Dark Heart that caused them to grow prefers it.

For a split second I consider telling Bo about the Dark Heart and the wicked magic supporting life under the domes, but before I can think of a way to break the news to him that won’t sound mad, two breathless soldiers appear behind him.