Текст книги "Of Beast and Beauty "

Автор книги: Stacey Jay

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GEM

I wait for her all day and long into the night, staring out the window

at the royal garden, watching for a shadow slipping from the orchard, but

she doesn’t come.

My prison gets smaller by the hour. The bars more hateful. I prowl

the confined space a hundred times. I do every one of my exercises a

thousand. By the time the three moons rise high in the sky, I should be too

exhausted to stay awake, but I’m not.

I can’t sleep. I can’t rest until I know what’s happened. If someone’s

hurt her … If they’ve locked her away …

I’ll break through these bars with my bare hands. I’ll kill every soldier

who stands in my way. I’m not sure if this is love or madness, but it doesn’t

matter. It’s real. True. And as inescapable as this wretched cage.

I growl and slam my balled fists into the door of my cell. It rattles on

its hinges, but doesn’t break or bend. Outside, there isn’t a sound. The

guard from my early days is asleep in his own bed. The Smooth Skins are so

sure of their doors and locks. But Isra found a way out of her prison. If she

can do it, I can do it. I will do it.

I spin and stalk back to the window, claws slicking out as I move. I

haven’t tried my claws on their bars. I wasn’t ready to escape before, but I

am now. I have to make sure she’s all right.

She’s not all right. She’s marked for death, and refuses to fight for her

life. If she had someone else read the covenant and it offered no hope …

I clench my jaw, grinding the thought to dust between my teeth. It

doesn’t matter. Isra would come if she could. Even if it was only to say

good-bye.

I won’t let her say good-bye.

My claws strike the bars hard enough to send pain shooting up the

backs of my hands into my forearms. I curse and shake my fingers at my

side, moaning as my claws draw painfully back into their chambers. Every

nerve in my arm is on fire, and the skin above my nail beds is ripped and

bleeding, but the bars don’t have a nick on them.

I curse in my language, adding in a few foul Smooth Skin words I’ve

picked up from listening to the soldiers. I kick the wall beneath the window

hard enough to bruise my toes through my thin boots, and curse again, but

manage to keep myself from further self-destruction by wrapping my

fingers around the bars and shaking them with all the strength in my body. I

shake and shake, tensing until the muscles in my neck threaten to snap. By

the time I’m finished, I’m even more exhausted than I was before.

Maybe enough to sleep. Or at least to rest …

I’m turning to my bed when I see it. The shadow near the garden.

A woman’s shadow, winding her way through the orchard. She seems

familiar, but I can’t place her until she steps onto the paving stones and the

moonlight catches her curls. It’s Isra, but she doesn’t walk the way she did

before. She doesn’t reach with her toes before she steps; she doesn’t

hesitate before allowing the rest of her body to catch up with her feet. Her

eyes have changed her. It will take time for me to recognize her in the dark,

time I don’t know if we’ll have.

I want to call out, but I don’t dare. The guards will be through the

garden soon. I have to wait.

I stand at the window, wondering how she plans to reach my

cell—through the main entrance or by climbing through the window down

the hall the way I did when Needle returned me to my cage. I expect her to

hurry down the path toward the barracks, but instead she stops on the far

side of the roses, near where the vines have crept from their bed. She goes

utterly still for a moment before her hand darts out, reaching for one of the

low-hanging vines.

Above her bowed head, the roses rustle awake, rotating their

obscene blooms to peer down at the queen.

I open my mouth to howl her name, but something stops me—a

sudden throbbing in the places where my skin tore above my claws, a pain

that shoots up my arm and into my chest, squeezing my heart, heating my

blood, making the room spin and the blue night pulse before my eyes.

I try to step away from the window, but I can’t move. I can’t breathe.

I can’t scream, even when the night air comes alive, whipping in to beat at

my face, stinging at my skin like sparks from a funeral fire, hot and full of

magic.

I fall to the floor, gasping for breath, and begin to crawl toward the

door.

Something is happening in the garden. I have to get to Isra, before

it’s—

ISRA

–TOO late. It’s too late to pull away, even if I wanted to.

“What happened to the covenant?” I demand, fighting to keep fear

from my voice. I’ve never felt such a powerful presence in the garden

before. It feels bigger than the roses, older and darker and deeper, a cold,

unblinking eye staring straight through my skin. “Where is it? Show it to—”

My words end in a pained cry as fire courses through my fingertips,

shoots through my arm, trapping the breath in my lungs, making my ears

ring with the sound of a thousand voices screaming at once. Agony

explodes on either side of my head, and my eyes roll back.

The thorn in my finger digs deeper, while another darts out to stab

my arm, jabbing deep. Something primitive inside me snatches control of

my muscles. My legs push away from the flower bed, but when I move, the

thorns move with me, digging into my skin. The roses are hungry, starving,

they—

No, it’s not the roses who hunger. It’s the other thing—the ancient

presence coiled like a snake beneath the flowers—that is hungry. Gem was

right. There is something else. The roses are only the teeth that creature

uses to chew its food, a mouth that will pull me into the belly of the beast.

Come to the Dark Heart, girl. The voice in my head is a tongue made

of ice licking at the frantic pulse at my throat. Come to the Dark Heart and

join your mothers and grandmothers. There is peace in sacrifice.

The Dark Heart. That is its name.

I go utterly still, overwhelmed by the vastness of the being speaking

in my mind. It is bigger than I first assumed. As tall as the mountains

beyond the dome, as deep as the violent ocean the roses showed me on

my thirteenth birthday, as big as the planet itself.

It is a god, and I am only one small person, so briefly alive that my

death is practically not a death at all. I should be content to lie down in the

fertile soil, to join myself with the Dark Heart, to give my blood to the one

who sustains my city.

The roses’ gnarled stalks and their thorns—as big as my hand, bigger,

how could I not have noticed how deadly they could be—reach for me,

ready to pull me into their embrace, to the center of their bed.

To my death.

The haze clouding my thoughts departs in a frantic rush of blood.

“No!” I pull away, but the roses loop a toothy arm around my wrist

and squeeze tight. Smaller thorns slice through my skin, creating a bracelet

made of blood, igniting my body with lightning flashes of pain.

“Help me!” I scream, hoping the guards will hear. I bat at the flowers

with my fists, kick the vines that snake close enough to snatch at the legs of

my overalls. “Help me! I’m in the royal garden!” I scream, but no one

comes. The one time in my life I’d be breathlessly grateful to see a soldier,

and none can be found.

And the thing controlling the roses, the Dark Heart, knows it. Of

course it does. The Dark Heart knows everything that happens under the

dome, and it knows that I’ve learned too much, that it must take me before

I ruin it all, before I steal the lifeblood from the splintered, wicked thing my

ancestors have fed for generations.

But my ancestors weren’t murdered; they were willing sacrifices.

Even my mother took her own life when she jumped from the tower. But

I’m not going to lie down and die. I won’t!

“I don’t give myself to you. I don’t!” I shout as I knock a vine away

with the back of my hand, earning myself another deep scratch. I pause to

survey the damage for less than a second, but a second is all it takes for a

vine to snap around my other wrist, as quick as a whip. I scream and tug on

both arms, but the vines only squeeze more tightly.

“I’m not a willing sacrifice,” I sob, heart racing as the thorns get

closer and closer to my face. “I’m not married. I have no children or

brothers or sisters or anyone.” I feel the vines’ death grip loosen the

slightest bit, and I know I’ve hit upon the only thing that might save my life.

The Dark Heart is starving, but it doesn’t want me to be its last meal. “If you

kill me, you will never feed from this city again. The covenant will be broken

forever. Forever!”

When the vines stop moving, there’s a thorn longer than my finger a

whisper from my eye.

I force myself to face it, ignoring the sweat rolling down the sides of

my face, the frantic racing of my pulse, the pitching of my stomach. “Let me

go,” I say. “Let me go! You have no choice.”

But they do, it does, the Dark Heart. It could decide that one last

meal from our city is better than none at all. It could take comfort in the

fact that there are still two domed cities alive and well and filled with

women willing to die.

Everything in my being screams for me to fight, to get away before

it’s too late, but I can’t. The force controlling the roses will have to choose

to let me go. There’s no way I can free myself without cutting my arms from

my body. I’m already hurt badly. The muscles and nerves in my wrist are

shredded, and my blood spills with a steady smack, smick, smack onto the

dirt. I can feel how much the Dark Heart craves more of it. Its need echoes

inside me.

If only I’d gone to Gem before coming to the garden. He could slice

through the vines with his claws in an instant. But I was afraid he’d try to

stop me, that he’d say it was too dangerous, now that he knows the truth

about the roses.

Now I may never see him again. I may not live to tell him how much I

care, how much I—

I gasp as the vines suddenly clutch more tightly, as if the Dark Heart

can read my thoughts and disapproves of the way I feel for Gem, as much

as any citizen of Yuan would.

Death, the Dark Heart whispers inside me, making me shiver and my

arms go numb. My eyes roll toward the sky, but instead of the dome and

the moons hovering above it, I find myself seeing through the roses’ eyes.

But this time they show me something new. They show me … fires.

Fires in the desert, scaffolds made of long-dead tree limbs holding

the corpses of Monstrous men and women and children. There are a dozen

of them, more than a dozen. Twenty. Thirty. Fires all around, and at the

center of them, an ancient-looking Monstrous man shaking with grief. His

shoulders convulse, his chest heaves, but no tears spill from his eyes. The

Monstrous can’t cry, but they can obviously feel tremendous pain, pain that

takes over and has its way with a body.

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

ISRA

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.

“The Monstrous has been spotted from the wall, sir,” the short guard

with the crooked teeth huffs. “Running toward the King’s Gate.”

“Go. Take the ten men waiting by the—”

“No!” I shout. “Please, let him go. If you let him go, I won’t fight any

of it. I’ll marry you tomorrow morning.” I begin tugging the thorns from my

flesh, refusing to wince as the stickers pull free. “Just let Gem go.”

“Take the ten men waiting by the tower,” Bo continues as if I haven’t

spoken. “Tell them to kill the beast on sight.”

“No!” I stagger to the edge of the rose bed. “You can’t! I forbid it! As

your queen!” But the soldiers refuse to look at me, let alone listen.

“Bring his body to the dungeon!” Bo shouts as the men rush away

through the orchard, the scuff, scuff of their boots transforming to a shush,

shush as they hit the grass beneath the trees.

“Run, Gem! They’re coming!” I scream, even as I hope he’s too far

away to hear me. “Run!” I scramble off the edge of the bed wall, moaning

as I hit the ground, and every place where the thorns tore my muscles cries

out at once.

Bo takes my arm with a tenderness that startles me. I glance up to

see sympathy in his rich brown eyes.

“It’s for the best,” he says. “When he’s dead, the unnatural feelings

will fade. I’m sure of it.”

“They aren’t unnatural.” I’m too exhausted to scream the words. It

wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. Bo doesn’t think he’s ordered a

murder. He thinks he’s asked for an animal to be put down. Raging at him

for the wicked thing he’s done is pointless until he understands how wrong

he is.

“Gem is like us, Bo,” I say, pleading with him to understand. “He feels

and thinks and hopes and dreams. He loves his family and is devoted to his

tribe. He’s no different, not in the ways that count.”

“Let’s get you back to the tower,” Bo says, ignoring me. Again. He

starts back toward the tower, cradling my elbow as if I’m made of glass. “I’ll

have the healers sent to attend you.”

I dig my heels in. “I’m not going,” I say, jaw tightening as I stare

through the trees in the direction where Gem disappeared. I can’t see him

or the soldiers any longer, but I swear I can feel him. He’s still in the city.

“Not until I know Gem’s safe.”

Bo heaves a tragic sigh, but he doesn’t try to force me to keep

walking. He stands beside me, as silent as I am, though I’m certain he’s not

straining as hard for a sign that the soldiers’ mission has failed.

“It could have been good,” he finally whispers. “You and I.”

I don’t say a word, though I agree with him. In a way.

We could have had a very different relationship if Gem hadn’t come

into my life. If not for Gem, I might have mistaken faint stirrings and

budding friendship for something more. I might have thought love could

grow between Bo and me. I would have agreed to marry him and would be

looking forward to however many years we’d have together before I made

the ultimate sacrifice for my city.

Sacrifice.

“I don’t have to do it,” I whisper, my reprieve finally seeming real

now that I’m free of the roses. I will never lie down in that wretched bed

and slit my own throat. The realization makes my breath come faster,

makes my ribs shake with something too hysterical to be laughter. “I don’t

have to do it.”

“I’m afraid you won’t have a choice,” Bo says, watching me from the

corner of his eye, clearly seeing my relief as another sign of madness.

“Father says the law allows the advisors to compel you to marry.”

My ribs grow still, even as my heart beats faster behind them.

Junjie will kill me if I refuse to go to the roses. I know he will. As soon

as Bo and I are married and the city begins to fail, he’ll slip poison into my

food or slit my throat while I sleep. Then, once I’m dead, Bo will remarry

and that poor girl will pay the price for my refusal to honor the covenant.

She will be a bride in the morning and a dead woman by nightfall, and the

wicked thing at the city’s core will never be stopped.

I can’t let that happen. I have to find some proof of what I felt in the

garden tonight. I have to convince my advisors and my people that the

power sustaining our city is evil.

“But how?” I mumble, biting my lip.

“I don’t know,” Bo says, continuing to labor under the delusion that

I’m speaking to him. “I suppose one of the advisors will say your vows and

the sacred words for you if you refuse to say them yourself.”

So refusing to speak won’t be enough.… What if … What if I …

“Take me back to the tower,” I say, gripping Bo’s arm. “I want to see

Needle.”

“But I—”

“My arms and legs hurt. Needle will tend to them,” I say, not

bothering to explain myself any further. A woman has a right to change her

mind, and a madwoman even more so. There’s nothing I can do for Gem

here and now, but if I can rid myself of Bo and move quickly, while the

guards are distracted …

“I’ll send for the healers as soon as you’re safe in your rooms,” Bo

says as he leads me through the orchard.

I start to tell him no, that Needle is the only attendant I need, but I

think better of it. I don’t want to make him suspicious, and his mission to

fetch the healers will keep him busy while I throw together what I’ll need

for my journey. Our journey. I’ll go with Gem. Tonight. I’ll leave the city and

not come back until—

Never. I’ll never come back. If I’m not here, no one can force me to

marry. And if I never marry, then the curse ends with me.

But where does that leave your people? Needle? All the innocent and

the damaged who have already suffered so much?

Dead. It leaves them dead. Sooner or later.

I swallow, blinking back tears as Bo and I make our way through the

withered stalks that are all that’s left of the sunflowers. Soon, the remains

will be plowed under, and bone meal and sheep dung added to the soil, and

next autumn’s flowers planted in the enriched dirt. Sunflowers are feeders,

Father said. They’ll suck the life from the land if you’re not careful.

I’ll suck the life from this city if I leave it. Innocent children will die.

Needle will die. But if I stay, it never ends. It never ends and all our lives are

paid for with blood and hate and fear, and the Desert People will die and I

will die and I will never see Gem again.

I can’t leave. I can’t stay. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know

what’s right; I’ve never felt so ripped apart inside.

“Don’t cry,” Bo mumbles beneath his breath. “Please.”

I swipe the back of my hand across my eyes, hissing as salty tears

sting into the cuts at my wrist. I didn’t even realize I was crying, but I am.

Weeping as if my heart is broken. Which it is. Broken in two. One half here

in Yuan, with the city I was raised to serve. One half with Gem as he—I

hope—runs into the desert to save his people.

Everything is happening so fast. I need more time!

“It won’t be a miserable life for you when we’re married. I won’t be

cruel,” Bo says, motioning aside the soldiers guarding the door of the

tower. The two men stand gaping for a long moment without moving,

before first one and then the other scrambles out of the way.

Bo and I are climbing the stairs by the time I realize why the guards

were so surprised. They have no idea how I got out, let alone came to be

covered in my own blood.

Get out. I can still get out. There’s time between now and when I’ll be

forced to marry Bo tomorrow. I’ll let Needle bandage me up and do some

serious thinking. I’ll tell her everything that’s happened and see what she

believes I should do. Needle is more practical and selfless than I’ll ever be.

She’ll have advice. Good advice.

“Needle, bring the medicine kit,” I call at the top of the stairs. “And

water, please, with two cups.”

Poor Needle. She’s going to be beside herself when she sees what’s

happened to the skin she’s fussed over all these years. I wipe at my face