Текст книги "Of Beast and Beauty "

Автор книги: Stacey Jay

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handled me.

What would I have done without her?

“Good-bye,” I whisper, eyes filling as I stand and hug her tightly. After

a moment, she moves out of my arms and down the stairs without a pause

in her step, without looking back.

I tell myself I’m glad. And then I cry the tears I’ve refused to cry all

day, but only for a minute. There isn’t time to waste. When my brief cry is

over, I wipe my nose on my less-than-fresh overalls and get to work. It

doesn’t take long to lay the first row of stones. The quick-drying mortar is

already mixed and ready. By the time my tears have dried on my cheeks, I

have the beginnings of my wall.

Unfortunately, beginnings are not the same as endings.

I’m not even close to an ending when I hear footsteps on the stairs.

Heavy steps, two pairs of boots, two men’s voices arguing in harsh whispers

as they circle around to the top of the tower. When they reach the last

stair, Junjie pauses, clearly surprised to see me and my half wall.

“What is this, Isra?” Junjie’s eyes are sad, but not nearly as sad as his

son’s.

“I tried to stop him,” Bo says from his place behind his father. “I

wanted you to have a few more hours.”

A few more hours. Then he means to do it, to help his father kill me.

“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. I can’t have failed, not when I’m so

close.

“This doesn’t have to be painful,” Junjie says, holding out his hand.

“You can still change your mind and make your death a meaningful gift to

your city.”

“It’s no gift. Not for you or Bo or anyone else.” I back away, my

trowel falling to the floor with a dull thud, smattering mortar across my

bare feet. “This city is built on evil. It has to end with me,” I say, voice rising

until it rings with desperation.

“You will give your blood, or we will take it,” Junjie says, as stern as

he’s been with me since I was a little girl. “This city will stand and prosper

and flourish for another seven hundred years. You know this is the way

things are done in Yuan.”

And the way they will always be done. Nothing I say now will change

that. Nothing I do will accomplish anything but putting off the inevitable.

Escape is impossible, but still, I turn and run. I skid into my room and slam

the door behind me, throwing the lock seconds before Junjie throws his

weight against the door.

I back away from the trembling wood, hands shaking at my sides.

I won’t let him take my death. It’s the only thing I have left, the only

thing that matters. My death will be mine. I will have my revenge against

this city and the monster beneath the ground so eager for my blood, and I

will finally, finally, finally be free of it all. Of life and fear and love and loss.

Free of my responsibilities. Free of my failures. Free of this love that’s been

nothing but another curse, another stone around my neck pulling me to the

depths of an ocean of pain so deep that I will never hit bottom.

I want to be free. Free.

“Isra! Open the door!” Junjie shouts.

“Free,” I say aloud.

I’ve always craved freedom more than anything else. Anything.

If even one citizen of the dome and one Monstrous can love the other

more than they love anything else …

If I’m brutally honest with myself, do I really love Gem more than

freedom? Have I ever loved anything more than that elusive, seductive

unknown? If I had the choice—Gem or freedom, even the freedom that will

come with death, when all my obligations have been honored and I’m free

to exit on my own terms—what would I choose?

Gem is strong and brave and clever and good, and he makes me feel

things I never dreamed I could feel, but he is also difficult and frustrating

and impatient and … overwhelming. His arms feel like home, but he

represents everything strange and uncertain and unknown. Loving him

means gathering up all of those things, and carrying them with me. Forever.

Love means being vulnerable and beholden. Love means embracing the

pain I’ve been holding apart from myself for all the months that I’ve waited

for him. It means taking that pain and claiming it and knowing it might not

be the last of the pain he’ll bring into my life.

Love is pain, and pain is the opposite of freedom, and freedom is all

I’ve ever wanted, but I’ve never really stopped to wonder why. Why do I

want my freedom so desperately? Why do I dream of the wind instead of

something solid or permanent that I can hold in my hands, my arms?

Maybe I … Maybe …

“Isra! Isra!” Junjie is still shouting loud enough to rattle the door, but

his cries seem muted, drowned out by the roar of the revelation taking

place inside me.

“I had nothing better,” I whisper. Back in the time before Gem, back

in the darkness, in my cage, in my narrow world with Death waiting with His

arms outstretched and only my father to help me prepare for the long walk

to greet Him, there was nothing better than the dream of having no ties to

bind me.

But Gem, with all his flaws and complications and high expectations,

is better. His love, his faith in me, his belief that I can be as strong and

brave as he is … The way he makes me feel and think and try harder than

I’ve ever tried …

All of it, all of him, is better than anything else. Anything at all.

I take a breath and let the pain and love and admiration and

everything I feel when I think of Gem fill me up, soak into my soul, break

my heart wide open. It hurts—so, so much—but it’s also a relief. It’s also

warm and peaceful and safe. Beautiful. This kind of love is weightless,

limitless.…

And almost exactly what I imagined freedom would feel like.

If only I’d known sooner. If only I could thank Gem for helping me

find the only thing I’ve ever wanted as much as I want him.

TWENTY-SIX

GEM

I’M too late. Yuan is falling before my eyes.

Cracks as wide across as my body snake up the surface of the dome.

Stones tumble from the wall walks, making skittering sounds beneath the

moaning of the buckling metal that once fused the glass to the rock.

Bizarrely shaped Smooth Skins unlike any I encountered during my

captivity, partial mutants that I assume are the Banished that Isra spoke of,

and a few starving animals stream away from the once-healthy city in a

seemingly endless ribbon across the desert. The last of them emerged from

the Desert Gate less than an hour ago.

Isra was not among them. But I didn’t expect her to be. There’s a

reason the city is crumbling to pieces. Isra is gone.

Not gone. Murdered, and the city along with her, while you walked

away. And stayed away, wallowing in your weakness. You might as well

have slit her throat that first night. You’re the reason she’s dead.

Add another name to—

I begin to hum beneath my breath one of the songs Isra taught me, a

complicated tune with as many ups and downs as the path over the

mountains that brought me back to Yuan from the wilds where I had lost

myself for months.

Singing drowns out the terrible thoughts. Sometimes I imagine I’m

singing to Herem, the son I held for the first time the day I lifted him onto

his funeral pyre. Sometimes I imagine Father singing along in the deep,

steady voice of my childhood, banishing from my memory the confused

whimpers of his last days.

By the time I returned, Father no longer knew me. He called me by

his brother’s name. He asked where our sisters were. He smiled and told

stories about his new mate, as if he were a young man and he and Mother

just married. He cried like a child, begging me to bring a light into the hut

because he was afraid of the dark.

He died in his sleep a week after I returned. I never got to say

good-bye to the man I remembered.

Gare blamed me for that, too. He blamed me for Father’s broken

mind. He blamed me for the twenty dead before I brought the food. He

blamed me for the hopeless future when the carefully rationed provisions

inevitably ran out. He said I should have taken the roses and Isra and made

Yuan’s dark curse our own. He called for a war party to be formed to return

to Yuan and capture the roses and the queen at any cost, to kill every

Smooth Skin we could kill and avenge our tribe. Our usually peace-minded

chief agreed, but the final decision for war is always taken to our people.

It failed by one vote. Meer’s mother said no. She said Meer wouldn’t

have wanted to live if it meant binding our tribe to dark magic. She said

Meer wouldn’t have wanted her son to be raised under the shadow of evil

or for me to lose the woman I love.

I told my people what I felt for Isra. Most of them assumed my head

had been damaged by my time spent under the dome.

I close my eyes now, and let my head fall back against the warm rock

behind me. Isra. Thinking her name is enough to rip me apart. I was sure I

was done with these feelings. I thought I’d known the worst pain any man

could imagine, but I was wrong. There is still more pain. New pain. The

worst pain. I am a broken man. Without Isra, I will never be whole again.

There is nothing left to hope for, no reason to keep living.

I imagined that the worst thing awaiting me in Yuan would be

explaining to Isra why it took me so long to return, asking her forgiveness,

hoping she could understand how lost I was. But this …

By the ancestors …

I should have known it was possible. I should have prepared myself.

You knew. You refused to prepare. Coward.

“I’m not a coward,” I whisper. I never betrayed her. I never lied, I

never took the easy way, even when Gare, the last living member of my

family, disowned me before the tribe, when he said a lover of Smooth Skins

would receive no death wails from his throat, and vowed to let my body rot

on the ground if I were foolish enough to die before he does.

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

ISRA

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.”

My monster. I wish Gem were mine; I wish it with everything in me.

“Your monster might be dead, but my father didn’t kill him,” Bo says,

sending a shiver of relief through my body. My breath rushes out and my

forehead falls against the door with a thud. “He did something worse. At

least I believe it’s worse. Who knows what you’ll think, since you obviously

don’t care for your own people anymore, but I—”

“I care for them more than you ever will. I’ve told you the truth,” I

snap, sick to death of this same argument. I told Bo about the queen’s

diary. I even tore out a few pages for him to look at—those I knew wouldn’t

give the secret of the covenant away—but he refuses to believe in the Dark

Heart. “The power sustaining the domed cities is evil. The people are better

off.”

“You’re mad. At least half our people will die of exposure or

Monstrous attack before they reach Port South. You’ve sentenced

hundreds of innocents to death.”

“Better death than life paid for by the suffering of others.”

“The suffering of the Monstrous, you mean,” he says, bitterness

straining the words. “I almost hate to tell you what Father did. If you love

them this much while you believe a monster killed the king, how much

more will you love them when you know the truth?”

Despite the still, humid air in my walled-up room, I’m suddenly cold.

He can’t mean … He can’t …

“It was my father who killed yours,” Bo whispers. “He made it look

like the Monstrous, but … it was him.”

No. No. I pull away from the door and step back, staring hard at the

wood, half expecting it to catch fire and burn, showing me Bo’s face on the

other side. I have to see his face. I have to know if he’s telling the truth.

I reach out and twist the lock, fling open the door. He steps back

quickly, shooting the dagger in my hand a wary glance, but when he lifts his

eyes, there is more shame than surprise in his expression.

“It was the only way for me to be king.” Even Bo’s soft voice seems

too loud with the door no longer between us. Or maybe it’s the terrible

truth in his words that makes my ears ache. “Your father wanted you to be

spared. He was planning to marry again, the same widow I was going to

marry tomorrow morning. She already has children. The line of succession

would have been insured for another generation. So my father decided to

dispose of the king before he took another wife. If the Monstrous hadn’t

invaded the city, he would have found another way. I didn’t know about

any of it until afterward, but … it’s the truth.”

I shake my head. Father was going to remarry. He wanted me to be

spared the burden of being queen of Yuan. He loved me after all.

And Junjie killed him. He killed his king, his friend, a man who trusted

him with every secret in his heart, with his life. With my life. Junjie would

have taken them both if he’d had his way, all so that his family could have

more power, more prestige.

I suppose I should be shocked, and in a way, I am, but deep down

inside …

Isn’t this what Yuan is about? Killing for what we want, what we’ve

convinced ourselves we deserve? The nobles living in obscene luxury at the

expense of the common people, the common people clinging to their small

comforts at the expense of the Banished, and all of us stealing life away

from the land and the people outside the dome so that we can have feast

days and harvest festivals and surplus and more and more and more when

even half of what we have would be more than enough?

Junjie was only doing what the people of Yuan have always done. He

was paying for what he wanted with someone else’s blood.

But not anymore. Not ever again.

“Thank you,” I say, feeling closer to Bo than I ever have. “For keeping

your promise to the city.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? My father—”

“I understand.” I glance down at the dagger in my hand, grateful I

didn’t get the chance to use it. I don’t want to know what it feels like to pay

a blood price. “It’s all the more reason for this to end with us. I know you

don’t believe what I’ve told you, but—”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” Bo says. “It was so clear

before, but now …” He braces his hands on either side of the door frame,

his head sagging wearily between them.

I glance at his bowed head, at the pale hairs weaving their way in

among the black. His short time as king has taken its toll. Bo’s not a boy

anymore. He’s a man, maybe even man enough to be trusted with the

truth.

I’m parting my lips, debating whether or not to tell him the entire

truth, when a great screech and a shattering fills the air, as if every plate in

the royal kitchen were dropped at once. The tower walls vibrate, and Bo

and I cover our ears with twin cries of pain. A moment later, a dull boom

rocks the stones beneath our feet.

The floor tilts, sending me staggering back into my bedroom. My

dagger falls from my hand and scuttles across the stones, only coming to a

stop when it hits the far wall with a clank. My arms wheel and my feet

spread wide to steady me, even as my heart screams that it’s pointless to

fight, useless to resist. The tower will fall and I will fall with it. This is the

moment I thought I was ready for.

But I’m not. I’m not! How could I be? How can anyone ever be ready?

Mercifully, after several endless seconds, the floor steadies and the

stomach-flipping tilting stops. My breath rushes out and my heart pounds

fast enough to make me dizzy as I turn in a careful circle, taking in the

crooked new world left behind in the wake of the quake. My bed curtains

list to the left, and my dressing table has fallen on its face, while the

pictures on the walls hang at disturbing odds with the room, now that

gravity has taken the room one way and pulled the pictures the other.

“Are you all right?” Bo asks, drowning out another faint but troubling

sound.

“Sh,” I hiss, ears straining. Outside, the air is still once more, but from

somewhere deep within the tower comes a crumbling, crunching … loose

sound. A faltering sound; a falling sound.

“Go! Run!” I shout, dashing on bare feet to the door, where Bo

stands braced against the frame, wide-eyed and as panicked-looking as I

feel. I duck under his arm, snatching at his shirt as I dash for the stairs,

dragging him after me, praying the way out is still passable.

It’s one thing to say I’ll die with the city; it’s quite another to climb

into bed and let the tower collapse beneath me. That’s too close to giving

up, and giving up is too close to drawing a knife across my throat. I’ll fall

with Yuan, but I won’t go down peacefully. I’ll go fighting for my life every

second of the way. I am a warrior now. Gem made me this way, and I won’t

betray him or myself by giving up without a struggle worthy of the last

queen of Yuan.

TWENTY-EIGHT