Текст книги "Of Beast and Beauty "

Автор книги: Stacey Jay

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SEVENTEEN

GEM

I eat everything left on the tray. I drink all the water and then the tea.

Tea in the desert is bitter and smoky, the way a drink intended to get

you out of your hut on a winter morning should be. Smooth Skin tea tastes

like crushed flowers, so sweet it made me gag the first time I put a cup of it

to my lips. I detest Smooth Skin tea, but I drink the honeyed liquid anyway.

I’m on edge. Drinking gives me something to do with my hands.

Isra, Isra, Isra. Her name knocks around inside me as I wash up and

return to my seat on the tiny couch. Isra. It hurts and heals and makes me

hope.…

I can’t hope. Not yet. It’s too dangerous.

I don’t know what will happen when she looks at herself, but I know

there’s a good chance she’ll hate me. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell the truth,

either, and my halfhearted attempt last night was worse than no attempt at

all. I don’t want her to hate me. I want her to keep looking at me with eyes

that confess all her secrets.

I thought seeing me would remind her of our differences, but instead

she looks at me like …

Like I look at her.

“Gem?” She’s suddenly standing in front of me, her freshly combed

hair tumbling around her shoulders, her body encased in a black skirt and a

long-sleeved green shirt with silky ruffles at the throat. I smile despite

myself. It’s a playful shirt. It suits her better than her silkworm dresses.

Her fingers tangle nervously in the ruffles. “This was my mother’s,”

she says. “It was one of the few things of hers to survive the fire. I’ve never

tried it on, but I thought … It seemed right to wear it.”

“I like it.”

“I do, too.” She fidgets, frowns. “I can’t believe it fits.”

“Your mother must have been tall like you.”

Isra nods, but her brow remains wrinkled. “I suppose. I don’t

remember her as … Father never said anything about my mother being

tainted, but I suppose I—”

“Where is the mirror?” I rise. It’s time.

“Needle said she has one by her bed.” Isra takes a breath and tucks

her hand into the crook of my arm, despite the fact that she no longer

needs anyone to guide her.

She leads me down a narrow passage to a bedroom where a giant

bed with a scarlet quilt the same color as the royal roses stands proudly in

the center. The bed is too big for a girl alone. It’s a bed built for two, solid

and sturdy and meant to withstand the use of generations of men and

women.

Of Isra, and her soon-to-be husband.

“Wait.” I stop inside the door, unable to pull my eyes from the bed. I

have to reach Isra before she decides I can’t be trusted. “You don’t have to

keep your promise. Once I’m back in my cell, it will be your word against

Bo’s. No one has to know you let me out. You don’t have to marry him if

you don’t want to.”

“Do you think I want to?” she asks, voice shaking.

I look down at her, at her parted lips and her shining eyes, and

immediately I hurt. Because she hurts.

I cradle her face in my hands. “Then don’t do it.”

“I don’t have a choice,” she whispers. “I have to be married by

spring.”

“Why? You said seventeen was young to marry.”

“It is, but it doesn’t matter.” The tears sitting in her eyes roll down

her cheeks. “I’m queen. I’ll be married as soon as my mourning is through.”

I catch a tear with my thumb and rub it gently into her skin. “Why?”

“There are reasons. I’d rather not explain them, but they’re real.

Inescapable.” She drops her gaze to my chest with a sigh. “There isn’t time

to get out from beneath Junjie’s thumb. If I’m going to change anything for

the better, I’ll need his support, and he won’t give it if I refuse to marry his

son.”

“Find someone to take Junjie’s place.”

“There isn’t time,” she repeats, lifting troubled eyes to mine. “He was

at my father’s side for twenty years. He makes the people feel safe. I’d

never find someone fit to take his place in a few months.”

“Then put off the marriage,” I say, fingers tightening, pressing lightly

into her jaw. “Have a … I don’t know what you would call it. In our tribe it’s

a trial.”

“A trial?”

“Two people spend time together, sometimes even live together, but

nothing is official until the woman claims the man in a ceremony before the

tribe.”

“The woman does the claiming?” Her eyebrows lift. “Interesting.”

“The man has to agree, but the decision to end the trial is the

woman’s.”

She hums beneath her breath. “If my father had lived, he would have

chosen my husband. He might have even chosen Bo. Whoever he would

have picked, I wouldn’t have had much say about it. That’s how it is for

most noblewomen. We marry within the descendents of the founding

families, being careful not to marry too closely. I’ve heard some of the

common women marry for love, but …” Her eyes shift to the side, as if she’s

suddenly become very interested in the door frame. “Did you ever … Were

you ever …”

“No,” I say. “Meer and I … it was never a trial. At first I thought we

might, but … She chose someone else.”

“Oh.” She plucks at her shirt. “Women in Yuan aren’t supposed to … I

mean, I know some do,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ve

heard there are herbs they take to make it possible to”—she waves a hand

nervously in the air—“without any babies. For Yuan women, a baby is only

supposed to come after marriage. It’s scandalous otherwise.” She tilts her

head back and blows air through her pursed lips. Even in the dim light of

the lamp burning by her bedside, I can see how pink her cheeks have

gotten.

“Different from our ways,” I say, trying not to smile.

It’s strange to me that she’s embarrassed by something my people

consider natural. But then, for my people, there is no shame in it. No man

or woman is forced to be with someone not of their choosing. No baby is

left unloved because it came from one man and not another.

“Yes,” she says, casting another glance toward the corner of the

room, where a narrow bed sits next to a chest of drawers with a blue and

white washbasin on top. Above the basin, a mirror hangs on the wall. “We

don’t have trials. A couple will be betrothed for a time before they’re

married, but I can’t have a long betrothal. I must be married. It’s the rule.”

She turns back to me as I’m opening my mouth. “And don’t tell me to

change the rule. This isn’t a rule I can change. It’s not a rule anyone can

change. Some things just are the way they are.”

I grunt—because I was going to tell her to change the rule—and she

smiles a sad smile.

“But thank you,” she says, with another peek at the corner. “It was

good of you to try.”

I catch one of her curls and twine it around my finger. I know why

she’s looking at the corner. She’s ready, but suddenly I’m not. “I’m a good

prisoner, then?”

“You’ve become a good friend,” she says, lifting a hand to my face.

Her fingers are cool, but that’s not why I shiver. “And you won’t be my

prisoner for a second longer than necessary. I’ll let you go, Gem. I promise I

will. And I’ll send food with you, and put more outside the gate for as long

as I live.”

“Isra …” This wasn’t what … I never thought she’d … “What about

Junjie? And your people? You said they would never—”

“I’ll give Junjie what he wants. In return, he’ll give me some things

that I want.” She steps closer, engulfing me in the smell of roses. Roses on

her skin from her bath, roses on her breath, roses lingering in her hair. The

perfume mingles with her Isra scent and becomes something darker, more

dangerous than any flower.

I thought I couldn’t want her more than I did last night, but now, with

that soft look in her eyes, and brave words on her lips, I want her so badly,

it hurts. I more than want her, and that hurts even more.

“Junjie will free you,” she continues. “Or I will refuse to marry Bo.”

I wrap my arm around her waist. “I won’t let you pay for my freedom

with yours.”

“I’m not free. I’ve never been free.”

“But you could be.” I move my hand to her back, skimming my

fingers up the length of her spine. Her bones are like beads on a necklace,

delicate but strong. “With the right clothing, the desert might hold no

danger for Smooth Skins. You could come home with me. At least for the

rest of the winter.”

“And then who would send food to your people?”

My eyes squeeze closed as I drop my forehead to hers. She’s right. If

she came with me, she would starve right along with the rest of my tribe.

Maybe before winter is through. She’s already thin.

“My fate was decided a long time ago,” she whispers, fingertips

tracing a path up my chest. “But you can still have a future. With your

people. I want that for you. When I’m married, I want to imagine you

happy. I need to imagine you happy.”

When she wraps her arms around my neck, a wretched heat fills my

head, pushing behind my nose and eyes, as if my soul is trying to find a way

out of my body.

“I hated you,” I say, voice breaking. “Until a few days ago, I hated

you. At least, I thought I did.”

“I know.” She does know. I can hear it in her voice, feel it in the way

she touches me. She knows that I … that I’m so close … and I only want

closer.

“I’ll take the food to my people and come back,” I say, threading my

fingers through her hair.

“You can’t.” The salty, hopeless smell of her tears fills my head,

making the pressure behind my eyes even worse. “I can’t know that you’re

here … when I … I don’t want to be with him,” she says, words coming

faster as her tears fall harder. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

My head feels as if it will collapse from the heaviness building inside

it. I can’t talk anymore. I can’t listen. I can’t imagine Isra with that soldier. I

won’t.

I draw her to me, tasting her tears before she opens her mouth and I

taste honey and roses and Isra. All the dark and light of her, all the fear and

selflessness, all the innocence and daring of a girl so determined not to be

caged that she leapt from a balcony to find her freedom.

But now she’ll be worse than caged. Her love for her people—and

whatever it is she feels for me—will steal the last of her freedom away. Bo

and his father will get what they want, and Isra will lose control of the city

before she has a chance to rule. If she does this, she’ll destroy not only

herself but any chance for change—for my people or hers.

I pull away, breath coming fast enough to stir the hairs falling into

her face. “I lied to you,” I say, cupping her cheeks, forcing her to look at me

and see what I really am. “The garden is a lie. It was always a lie. There are

no plants or herbs that will stop mutation, and even if there were, I

wouldn’t know a thing about them.”

“Wh-what?” Isra’s lips part, but she doesn’t pull away.

“I’m a warrior,” I say, determined to make her hate me. “I was raised

as a warrior from the time I was ten years old. I was raised to hate you. I

stood outside your dome when I was fourteen and swore I’d tear the city

down with my bare hands if that’s what it took to save my tribe.”

She pushes my hands away and takes a step back. But only a step. It’s

not far enough.

“Those bulbs we brought back won’t do anything to help your

people. Every day we spent digging in the dirt, preparing the field, was a

waste. You gave Junjie control of your people in exchange for nothing. You

almost died last night for nothing.”

She blinks, but no new tears fill her eyes, and when she speaks, she

sounds calmer than she has since we entered the room. “You lied to get out

of your cell.”

“I lied to get out of my cell and kept lying every day we worked

together,” I say, as cruelly as I can with the taste of her still sweet in my

mouth. “I pretended to be your friend while I dreamed of opening your

throat.”

She doesn’t flinch. She just … stares at me, gaze flicking from my eyes

to my mouth, down to the fists balled at my sides, and back again. “You

wanted to win my trust so it would be easier to escape.” She nods slowly.

“So … why didn’t you escape while we were in the desert? I can tell your

legs are stronger than you led me to believe.”

My mouth opens, and the truth gets dangerously close to coming

out. If I tell her about the roses, that I’ve been planning to steal them all

along, she will hate me for certain. She’ll give up the idea of sacrificing

herself for me, and turn her attention to work that will truly help her city.

But she’ll also make sure I never get my hands on what my people

desperately need. I can’t risk that, not even for her. I can’t.

You’ve already risked it.

My hands ball into fists. I have already risked it. There will be no

reason for her to let me out of my cell now. I should fall on my knees and

beg her forgiveness. I should tell her I stayed with her because I care—it

wouldn’t even be a lie—but I can’t.

I can’t lie. I can’t tell the truth. I don’t know who I am or what I’m

supposed to do next. I only know that “You can’t marry him,” I say,

sounding as desperate and angry as I feel. “You can’t. It will kill you.”

“I’ll be dead sooner than later, anyway,” she says with a strange

smile. “I’ve lied to you, too.”

“What?” My eyes wander down her long, lean body, the one that

seemed strong until last night in the desert. “Are you sick? Is there—”

“My family are the keepers of the covenant that protects the city. We

sustain the roses. We make an offering of ourselves for the good of our

people. The … queens make an offering. Only the queens.”

The larger offering. Only the queens.

She wasn’t lying when she said none of her people have died to feed

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.

I watch the girl’s face– my face—crumple in the reflection, see the

way her upper lip pulls up, the way the cords on her slender throat stand

out garishly from her skin, and her large nose turns red as she begins to cry,

and I am momentarily comforted.

I can be ugly, after all. I can be as wretched-looking as I feel.

Gem turns me gently and pulls me into his arms. I fist my hands

against his chest, bury my face between them, and sob as if the world has

come to an end. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles into my hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t

tell you.”

I shake my head, my forehead rubbing against the stiff cotton of his

shirt, but I can’t talk. I don’t blame Gem. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d

told me. I wouldn’t have believed him. I was certain I knew the truth, that I

knew it all. At least when it came to the who and why and what of Isra.

But I knew nothing. Nothing. I am worse than the emperor without

clothes. I am the biggest fool in the world.

“You were right,” I say, forcing out the words. “I am stupid.”

“You’re not. You were ignorant, and you didn’t stay that way on your

own.”

He’s right. I didn’t become this fool alone. Baba made me this way.

My father hid me away in this tower, and provided me with a mute maid

incapable of telling me about myself. By the time Needle and I learned to

communicate, I was older and unwavering in my beliefs, the reality of my

world set so firmly in my mind that Needle’s compliments trickled in

through my fingers and out through both ears. She was a servant, she was

obligated to flatter me. I never imagined …

I couldn’t have imagined. If I had, if I for one second had thought I

was nearly as whole as any other citizen of Yuan, then I would have known

there was no excuse for any of it. No excuse for keeping me prisoner. Or for

not, at the very least, allowing me visitors aside from the rare music tutor,

sworn to silence about her time in the tower. If my father had been worried

only about my safety, he still could have brought friends. Girls my age to

play with when I was younger, to gossip and make music with when I was

older. I didn’t have to be alone. I didn’t have to grow up feeling like a

disgraceful secret.

But I did. No matter how much time Father spent with me, no matter

how many times we laughed together or sang together or how many times

he said he loved me, I always believed he was ashamed of the tainted girl

who was all that remained of his family.

But I’m not tainted. I’m not. And as Gem said, there might be some

way to treat my skin if I ask the healers for help. But Father never called the

healers, even when it became obvious that Needle’s honey baths and

creams weren’t making me better. I didn’t imagine it was possible to get

better, not until Gem came to the city.

“I don’t understand,” I say, fists tightening until my nails sting my

palms. “Why did my father do this? Why did he keep me here? Away from

almost everyone? Why did he let me think …”

“I don’t know.”

I shake my head again, struggling to breathe past the rage burning

white-hot inside me. I’m devastated and hurt and betrayed, but most of all,

I’m furious. I want to hit something. Someone. I want to bloody them. Him.

A sense memory rises from somewhere deep inside me. My hands

clawed, my nails torn, and blood—some mine, some not—hot and sticky on

my stinging fingertips. The memory has the cold, silent terror of all my

earliest memories, of those days when I was newly blind, but somehow I

know it’s older. It’s something I’ve forgotten. Until now. Until suddenly it’s

all right to remember flying at my father in a rage and raking my fingers

down his face.

But why was I so angry? Did I know that what he was doing—holding

my mother and me captive—was wrong? Did I try to fight back, only to give

up and give in and forget? To trick myself into believing a story that made it

okay to love the only person I had left?

“If he’d remarried, then that woman would have been the offering?”

Gem asks.

I sniff, and lift my head, slowly. It feels heavier than ever. It weighs

more than all the rocks in the desert. “And if they’d had children, one of

them would have been the next king or queen. I would have been safe. The

crown would have reverted back to me only if they’d had no heirs. I would

have had, at the very least, more time. More … life.”

Gem curses beneath his breath as he tucks the hairs stuck to my

cheeks back into the mess from which they came. The lovely mess. I am a

lovely mess now. That should matter, I think, but it doesn’t.

“I know I shouldn’t wish for someone else’s death,” I say, sounding

broken. “And I don’t. Not really. I just wish …”

“That your father had wished for it,” Gem finishes, proving once

again that he is clever and human and privy to at least some of the secrets

of my heart.

I smooth the wrinkles from his shirt, trace the damp circles with my

fingers where my tears wet the fabric. “I wish he’d told me it wasn’t easy to

decide I would die for my city.”

“He never said anything?”

I shake my head. “And he knew what I assumed. About myself. I told

him. He’s the only one I talked to … until you.” I look up, wishing Gem were

the only one I had ever told.

Gem’s eyes narrow, and for a moment I see the terrifying creature I

encountered that first night in the garden. I know he would rip my father

open right now if the other Monstrous hadn’t done the job for him already.

“He’s the monster you should have been protected from,” Gem says.

Tears fill my eyes again, but I refuse to let them fall. “He was my

father,” I say, voice lurching as I try to regain control. “He was all I had. He

taught me everything I know. I don’t …” I take a deep breath that comes

out a terrifying little laugh. I don’t know that laugh. I don’t know myself.

“Who am I now?” I ask. “I don’t know that girl in the mirror. I don’t

know how to be her. I don’t know how to think her thoughts or—”

Gem lays his hand on my cheek, so gently, I can barely feel his touch.

“You are Isra. And now you’ll be the person you would have been without

the lies. His lies, or mine.” His eyes swim with regret. If Gem hadn’t told me

it was impossible for Desert People to produce tears, I’d think he was about

to cry.

“I don’t blame you.” I put my hand over his, pressing his warm palm

closer to my cheek. “I think only good things about you. Except when you’re

making me angry. Or being bossy. You’re very bossy.”

“You have to stop this,” he says, his expression grimmer than ever,

refusing to let me tease us out of this terrible moment. “You shouldn’t have

to give your life. No one should.”

My hand falls to my side. “This is the way things are, the way they’ve

always been,” I say, acutely aware of how exhausted I am. I’m a rag that’s

been wrung out, leaving only a few drops of me left behind.

“This is dark magic,” Gem says. “Blood is bad enough, but death …”

“One death, to preserve thousands of lives. Without that one death,

the crops would fail, the dome would fall, and the city would crumble,” I

say, crossing to the bench at the foot of my bed and collapsing gratefully

onto its cushioned seat. “Every man, woman, and child living here would

die.” I run my fingers over the needlepoint flowers embroidered on the

fabric beneath me. Roses. Fitting.

“I can’t let that happen,” I whisper. “I will remain queen, and when

the time comes, I will do what queens have always done.”

“Your mother didn’t,” Gem says, the heat in his tone making me look

up to find him pacing the thick carpet in front of Needle’s bed.

“Yes, she did.”

“If she burned in this tower, then how did—”

“She didn’t burn,” I say, stomach lurching. I’ve known the truth for a

long time, but it sits differently now that I know it wasn’t only my mother

who wished me dead but my father, too.

Gem stops pacing, and turns to me. “But you said—”

“She set the fire, but she didn’t burn.”