Of Beast and Beauty (41 page)

He won’t give me the release of a funeral fire. He hates me that much.

I don’t hate him, but I would have fought him if he’d tried to hurt Isra. I would have killed him if I’d had to. My own brother. I’m no better than he is, but I’m—

“Not a coward,” I choke out.

“No, you’re not.” A soft voice. A girl’s voice.

My eyes fly open—some desperate part of me hoping I’ll see Isra, though I know her voice is deeper and richer than the one I heard. Instead I find Needle standing at the base of the rocks I climbed last night and haven’t bothered to leave all day. She looks up at me, her golden skin rosy in the fading light, her black eyes glittering with wonder. She looks … complete.

“I can speak.” She blinks, sending twin streams of water racing down her cheeks. “For the first time in my life. I was born without the parts I needed to make words, but a few minutes ago I felt …” Her fingers touch her throat, her awe clear in their trembling. “It’s magic. Isra was right.

Everything in the queen’s diary is true. The curse is breaking.”

Isra.

“Is she …” I falter and start again. “Is she—”

“She’s in the tower.”

My chest explodes with a relief brighter and purer than anything I thought I’d feel again. “She’s alive,” I say, just to hear the words out loud.

Then again, “She’s alive!”

“We must return to the city. Quickly.” Needle drops the pack slung over her shoulder onto the ground and backs away toward the dome. “She thinks you’re dead and she’s determined to die, too,” she says, sending my heart plummeting into my stomach. “She wanted to stay with the city until it falls, to put an end to the covenant, but now that you’re here—”

As if in response to her words, a terrible sound—like thunder, but a hundred times sharper and closer—erupts from the direction of Yuan.

Needle wheels to look. I lift my eyes in time to see a chunk of the dome as big as the stones I’m standing on break away from the rest and fall …

farther … farther … until it finally collides with one of the buildings at the

center of the city, sending the structure tumbling to the ground. A little farther to the left, and the thick shattered glass would have destroyed Isra’s tower.

I jump from the rock, and hit the ground running.

“Wait!” Needle calls as I race by her.

I glance over my shoulder to find her already running after me.

“There are soldiers still in the city,” she says. “They have orders to kill Isra if she leaves her rooms.”

“Why?” I ask, slowing just enough for Needle to keep up.

“Junjie forced her to marry his son,” she says, making my stomach knot. But there’s no time to think about what Isra’s marriage means for us.

I have to save her life. That’s all that matters. I can’t be too late again; I won’t survive it.

“Once she’s dead, Bo can marry again,” Needle continues, moving quickly for someone so small. Though … she seems larger than I remember her. Larger and stronger, with muscled calves peeking out from beneath her simple gray dress. “Isra was walling herself inside her room to try to protect herself, but if you hurry, you can reach her before she finishes. Go,”

she pants. “You can run faster. I’ll wait for you both by the stones.”

I’ve just started to push harder, when Needle cries out—

“Get her out, Gem. Kill the others if you have no choice.”

I stop for one precious moment, and turn back with a nod.

Needle sighs with a mixture of relief and fear I completely understand. “Isra has to live. She has to see this,” she says, arms sweeping out as if she’ll embrace the entire desert. It’s only then that I notice the color. Color in the desert.

Patches of green and gold and black and blue prick at my eyes.

Golden grass pushes up from the crumbling earth; green teases the branches of trees that have been dead for decades. Bruised blue and black storm clouds sweep over the mountains, smelling of sweating metal and new grass and the sweetness that comes just before a rain.

I can’t remember the last time it rained. I can’t remember the last time I saw a storm cloud. It’s been years.

Something’s happening, something miraculous, and Isra has to see it.

She has to know the world can change, no matter how hard the road has been to get to this place or how viciously the old world will fight to keep us from walking out of that dying city.

There is hope. For her, for me, for all of our people.

With one last glance at the clouds rolling across the sky, blanketing the sizzling desert with cool promise, I run for the dome. I run faster than I have ever run. I run to her, for her, my Isra.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I have to get out. I can’t let this be the end. I have to know if Gem was the one lighting the fires at the gathering stones. I have to know if he’s alive, and if he is, I have to tell him the way I feel. I refuse to die without at least
trying
to—

“Father, please,” Bo says. “Let me talk to her alone.”

“You’ve talked enough!” Junjie shouts. “The world will end, and you’ll still be talking! Open the door, Isra. Show that you are more than a blight on your family’s good name.”

I laugh in response, a mad laugh that sends me dashing on tiptoe deeper into the room. I spin in a circle, looking for a way out, though I know there is none. The window is bricked closed, save for a sliver of an opening too small for me to fit more than my fingers through, and there is no other window, no door, no way out.

But one. Maybe. One.

“Isra? Please, listen,” Bo says. “The dome is falling. We’ll all die by tomorrow morning without your help.”

You might die sooner than that
.

I press my fist to my mouth and hum a tune I don’t recognize as I throw open the trunk at the base of Needle’s bed and pull the knife with the jeweled scabbard from beneath a stack of lavender-scented sheets. I found the blade among my mother’s things when Needle and I were searching for places to hide the bricks. I don’t know why Mother had it or if

she ever put it to use, but I swear I can feel her spirit within me as I take it in my hand.

“Your father would be ashamed,” Junjie says. “He didn’t raise you to be a coward.”

I’m not a coward. But can I really …

I can’t even think the thought. I’ve never wanted to take a life. Never.

Not even Junjie’s, and certainly not Bo’s. He’s wrong and more blind than I ever was, and jealous and trapped in the deep dark of his father’s shadow, but he’s not wicked. He doesn’t deserve to be murdered.

Neither do you. They’ve given you no other choice
.

“Get the key from behind the stone. It opens every door in this tower,” Junjie orders beyond the door, before adding in a gentler voice, “This is your last chance, Isra. It’s not too late to die with honor.”

My last chance. He’s right. This is my last, and only, chance.

My fingers tighten around the knife. I ease the blade from its sheath, toss the heavy gold scabbard onto the bed, and walk on cat feet toward the door, my breath heavy in my lungs, my fist clenching the hilt of the knife until its jewels dig into my flesh.

With an unexpectedly steady hand, I reach for the lock. I’ll wait until I hear Bo start down the stairs. Then I’ll throw open the door. Surprise will be my only ally. Junjie is shorter than I am, but stronger and trained to fight. I’ll have one chance, one moment to—

“No,” Bo says. I pause, hand hovering over the lock. “I won’t.”

“Then I’ll get the key myself,” Junjie says.

“No, Father.” There are shuffling sounds outside, and then Bo continues in as strong a voice as I’ve ever heard from him. “She’s my wife, and I’ll decide what to do with her.”

I’m about to tell him he has as much right to decide my fate as the ants I found in my fruit tray this morning, but Junjie beats me to it.

“You have no rights. You lost the right to decide anything when you—”

“I won’t see her murdered,” Bo says. “That’s not the way of our city.

It never has been. The queens gave their blood as a gift to Yuan. Even Isra’s mother chose to jump from that balcony. I wish Isra would give us that gift, but that’s
her
choice.”

My hand drops to my side; my fingers loosen on the hilt of the knife.

Bo truly does have a heart. Not enough for me to love him, but enough for

me to respect him more than I thought I could.

“Her choice will be the ruin of the city,” Junjie says, pain thickening his voice. “Yuan will fall, Son. Forever. There is no going back.”

“I know.” Bo’s whisper is so soft that I must lean in and press my ear to the door to catch the rest of his words. “But there’s nothing we can do, not if we choose to be the kind of men who deserve to be kings and leaders of kings. We can’t make the same mistake twice. Murder isn’t the way.”

Can’t make the same mistake twice … Murder isn’t the way …

“What does that mean?” My voice is loud enough to hurt my ears, so I know that it penetrates the wood, but there is no answer. Not from Bo, and not from his father, whom, until now, I’ve never known to be at a loss for words. “Who else did you murder?” I slam my hand into the door hard enough to make my palm sting. “Who?”

Bo told me Gem escaped the night Bo sent the soldiers after him, but what if he was lying? What if the soldiers killed Gem? What if that’s the reason he hasn’t come for me the way he promised?

“Tell me who you killed!” I shout, trying not to panic. “Tell—”

“You should go, Father. Take the soldiers with you for protection and head south with the others,” Bo says, ignoring me as he’s always done when what I have to say is inconvenient. “I’ll stay here with Isra.”

What?
All the angry words ready at my lips fall away. What does he mean he’ll “stay with Isra”?

“No,” Junjie says. “That’s ridiculous. You’ll come with me.”

“I’m king. I will stay with the city through all trials. It’s what I swore to do when Isra and I were married.”

“No, Son, please.” Junjie’s words end in a barking sound and then another. It takes a moment for me to realize the sounds are sobs, that Junjie—the most intimidating, respected, terrifying man in Yuan—is crying.

“I never wanted this.”

“It’s all right,” Bo says, then whispers something too soft for me to hear, something that makes Junjie’s barking become a pitiful moan.

I would feel for him, but it’s impossible to feel for a man who lied to me, betrayed me, held me captive, and—if not for his son’s intervention—would have killed me without a second thought.

“I’ll tell the story to the people in Port South,” Junjie says, pulling himself together enough to speak. “They’ll know my son died a hero. A true king.”

“Tell Mother I love her,” Bo says, his voice muffled. I imagine him embracing his wretched father, and I have half a mind to throw open the door and stab them both.

But I don’t. I wait until Junjie’s footsteps fade away down the hall, before I say, “I want you to leave, too.”

“I can’t.” Bo sounds wearier, more fearful now that his father is gone.

“I made a promise.”

“You can keep your promise as well outside as you can here by my door,” I snap. “I don’t want to die this close to someone I despise.”

Bo sighs. “I could have loved you, Isra. If you’d let me.”

“Who did you kill?” I ask, refusing to confess that I appreciate his decency, or that—vow or no vow—I see no reason for him to die with me, until I know what he’s done.

“I didn’t kill anyone. It was … someone else.”

“Your father.”

“Yes.” Bo sighs again.

“Who did … Is it …” I bite my lip until my flesh feels bruised, but that isn’t the reason tears gather in my eyes. “Is Gem dead?”

“Gem?” After a moment of silence, Bo laughs. “Even now, your monster is all you can think about.”