Of Beast and Beauty

  I stare at it. It’s beautiful. Terrifying.

  I’ve never killed something so large before. So large or so delicate. I didn’t even mean to cut her. I didn’t—

  “Do it,” she whispers, her voice fearful, but angry, too. She trembles beneath me, her long body quaking, her eyes once again without focus. “Do it! Kill me!”

  Her words make my blood burn. “You’re so ready to die?” I demand in her language. “My people would do anything to live. Anything.”

  Her eyes bulge in her narrow face. “You—you—s-speak. How—”

  A spear falls next to my arm, and another glances off my bare shoulder, but my skin isn’t like theirs, so thin that it’s practically pointless to have skin at all. My hide is thick, scaled across my chest, over my neck and shoulders, and down my back. If they want to kill me, they’ll have to hit my belly. I lift my head, roaring at the two guards who’ve dared come close enough to hurl their weapons.

  “Wait!” the girl screams. “Take it alive! Don’t kill it!”

  It.

  I snarl into her face. She screams, and her eyes squeeze shut. Her hands cover her mouth, muffling her sobs. Another spear flies. And another, but I knock them away, rage making my warrior’s reflexes even swifter.

  I am not an it. I am a Desert Man. I have nineteen years. I have a son. I might have had a mate if there were no Yuan, no tunnel to dig, no scouting missions to take me away from my tribe over and over again. But Meer chose a different mate, and my son sleeps in another family’s hut. Now my son will die and be burned without ever knowing my face. Because of them!

  I roar again and hope it rattles the loose pieces of her brain. Stupid girl. Stupid Smooth Skin. Stupid—

  “Stop!” she shouts, hands lashing out. Her tiny fists hit my mouth, bruising my lip as they bounce off my teeth. Before I can react, her fingers return to my face, gentle this time, curious. I freeze, too shocked to pull away.

  “Hold your weapons,” she orders the soldiers. Boots shuffle forward, but she shouts, “I am Isra Yuejihua. My word is the word! Hold!”

  Yuejihua. The name of the ruling family. It can’t … Not this girl. This strange one.

  The guard closest breathes deeply; another gasps like a woman. A third says, “My lady—”

  “My word is the word and will one day be law. Hold your weapons.” Silence falls. In it, her fingers trace the outline of my lips, discover my nose, smooth around my eyes. When she reaches the scaled patches above my brows, she hesitates, but eventually moves on. She finds the place where my braid begins and smoothes a shaking hand down the ridge to the end falling over my shoulder. “It’s soft,” she whispers. “What color is it?”

  “You saw.”

  “I’m blind.” Her lids flutter. Her eyes are not brown or black like every other pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re dark green, and as strange as the flowers in her garden. They are sightless now, but I would have sworn she saw me before. How else could she have known to run?

  “Black,” I snap, keeping one eye on the soldiers.

  “Like my people.” Her breath shudders out. “But you have very large teeth, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “I haven’t felt many teeth.” Her fingers come to her shoulder, covering the place where my claws pierced her skin. “Will the poison take effect soon?” she asks in a small voice.

  “Poison?”

  “In your claws.”

  The guards inch slowly closer, torn between obeying their princess and saving her life. I smile at them, baring my undoubtedly large, bone-white teeth. Now that I know how valuable this girl is, I have hope. Not much, but enough to make my voice smooth when I say, “Take me to the underground river and set me free. Before I go, I will tell you how to rid yourself of the poison.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You die.”

  “Maybe I’m already dead,” she whispers, her words as haunted as her eyes. “The roses are hungry. I felt it tonight.”

  She’s out of her mind. She makes me … afraid. That’s what I feel when I look into her vacant eyes. Fear, as foreign as shame. Why I should fear a girl I have pinned to the ground, I don’t know. She’s helpless, fragile. I should be afraid of her guards, and their weapons.

  The thought has barely formed when I feel it, the sharp jab of metal deep in the back of my thigh where there are no scales to protect me. I cry out and swipe at the guard with my claws. I graze his leg and reach for the spear, but the guards in front don’t give me time. One snatches the girl from beneath me and drags her across the stones while the second—a man with a knife longer than my claws—lunges for my throat.

  I knock him away with a growl that transforms to a howl of pain as the man behind wrenches his spear free of my leg. Blood rushes from the wound, and I scream.

  “No!” the girl cries. “Don’t kill him!”

  The guard drives his weapon into my other leg, just above the knee, hobbling me. I wail like the grieving at the funeral fires. It’s over. Even if I fight off the guards and get to my feet, I’ll never be able to run.

  “No! No!” The princess is suddenly by my side, tripping over my arm and falling to the ground beside me. “Take him alive!” she pants, turning to address the air around her, blind eyes wide. “Take him alive. We need him to tell us how to remove the poison. If not, I will die.”

  My claws dig into the stone so hard, my knuckles ache. There is no poison—these Smooth Skins believe such strange things about my people—but I can arrange for her to die. She’s close. I could slit her throat before her guards could make a move to protect her.

  My pulse beats faster. The agony in my legs fades to a high-pitched hum of pain that urges me to act. To kill. This is my last chance to take vengeance. This is their princess, the woman who will be queen and continue the devastation of the land until not a single living creature remains outside the domed cities.

  I should do it. I will do it.

  My heart races. Faster, faster, until I hear it rushing in my ears. Faster, until sweat beads on my lip and my scales move farther apart to accommodate the heat building inside me. Faster, until my teeth ache and my brain pulses and colors swim through the night air.

  Red for the blood that’s been spilled.

  Blue for the sky I’ll never see again.

  Green for her eyes.

  Her eyes …

  They are the last thing I see before black sweeps in, stealing all the colors, all my hope, away.

  THREE

  ISRA

  THERE’S a muffled kapluph, and the Monstrous man’s arm goes limp. It lolls against my leg, heavy and so hot that it burns through my overalls. He’s as hot as fire, as hot as I’ve imagined the desert sand would be against bare feet.

  No human could live through such heat. Not for long. I don’t know about a Monstrous, but he certainly wasn’t this warm before.

  “Take him to the cells,” I say, my breath coming fast. “Bring the healers to see him. Find the king and tell him I’ll meet him there.”

  Baba. By the moons, he’ll be terrified. And livid. He’s already locked me away. What will he do now? When he learns I’ve been out of the tower and met such trouble? Put bars on the windows? Brick up the stairs? The thought of being any more trapped than I am is almost enough to make me hope the poison in my blood kills me.

  I shiver. I asked the Monstrous to kill me. Why? What was I thinking? I don’t want to die. I want to live, I want—

  “But, Princess—”

  “Do as she says,” comes a worried voice from my left. “We need the monster awake. He might be the only one who knows the cure. I’ll escort Princess Isra. Hurry!” The air fills with the scuff, scuff of soldiers’ boots, then grunts and groans as the heavy Monstrous is hauled from the ground and with more scuff, scuffs is carried away.

  “Let me help you, Princess,” the remaining soldier says. His voice is familiar, though I don’t know why. I’ve never spoken to a soldier. I’ve never spoken t
o any men at all except for my father, Junjie, and now the Monstrous.

  The Monstrous was definitely a man, a man the size of a small mountain, the only being I’ve ever seen longer than I am. My people are almost invariably small of stature and petite of bone, with nut-brown skin and straight black hair. The Monstrous had similar hair, but he stood a head taller than me, with shoulders the size of boulders, covered in orange and golden scales, like a fish, but dry and smooth.

  No, not like a fish, like … a snake.

  The thought makes me shudder as I take the soldier’s hand and let him help me to my feet.

  “Are you able to walk, my lady?” His voice pricks at me like one of the needles in my maid’s apron pocket.

  It’s how Needle got her name. The day she came to give me a bath, I had just turned five and was still feral with grief. She started unbuttoning my dress, and I shoved her away, pricking my fingers on the sharps in her apron in the process.

  Strangely, the pain calmed me. Needle’s gentle touch, her hands like birds alighting on my head, my shoulder, my cheek, communicating concern with every cool brush across my skin, calmed me more. She was only fifteen, but her touch reminded me of my mama’s. I let her stay, when I’d sent every other companion away.

  I’m surprised to find I want her now. I would very much like to have Needle’s slim fingers under mine, making the signs for “Calm down” and “We’ll sort this out.” I didn’t think I was afraid of anything, but now I am. I’m afraid.

  My fingers tremble as I touch the torn flesh at my shoulder. I don’t feel the poison yet, but I could. At any moment. I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight. I don’t want to die. Not like this. It’s not fair! I’ve lived with Death hovering on my shoulder my entire life, but I never—

  “Should I carry you, Princess?” The soldier’s hand warms the small of my back. My spine ripples as I twist away. His touch is foreign, unexpected, too strange after the night I’ve had.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t …” The soldier clears his throat. “I was wounded as well.”

  “You were?”

  “The Monstrous tore the skin at my leg.” He sounds younger than he did before. Scared.

  I reach out, brushing his shoulder with my hand, surprised to find that my arm is parallel to the ground. The soldier is nearly my size, shorter only by a bit. “Thank you. For helping me.”

  “Please, don’t thank me.” His hand finds the small of my back again, settling over the knobby bones of my spine. The warmth of him—cooler than the Monstrous but warmer than me, in my sweat-damp clothes—heats my hips. My stomach. My chest. “It was a privilege to defend the life of our queen.”

  “I’m not—” Before I realize what’s happening, soft, hot skin presses against my half-open mouth. I flinch, but the soldier’s hand at my back holds me still as his lips move against mine, as his tongue flicks out, bidding a cautious hello.

  A kiss. This is a kiss. It is … slipperier than I’d imagined. His tongue is …

  A tongue? Who would have thought?

  A part of me wants to laugh at this soldier and the jabs of the slick muscle invading my mouth, but another part of me is … fluttering. Something stirs inside me. Something urges me to tilt my head and move my lips, to dart my own tongue out—quick as a wink—for a taste.

  Salty. Sweet. Hint of cabbage. Something familiar in the midst of all the unfamiliar feelings that are making my skin warm and my insides as hot as the Monstrous man’s flesh.

  I pull back, heart beating too fast. “We should go to the cells. The monster might have revealed the cure.”

  “We should, but if we die tonight, I—”

  “No one’s going to die,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “Come with me.” I start down the path, but stop after only a few steps. I’ve never been to the cells. I’ve never dared go that deep into the city proper.

  I hold out a hand. “Guide me. Hurry.”

  “Yes, my lady.” A second later, his arm is under mine. It’s strong and densely muscled, but the bare skin at his wrist is as soft as all the skin I’ve felt in my life. Much, much softer than mine. This soldier is a whole citizen of Yuan.

  So why did he kiss me? A tainted girl, too tall and too wide, with skin peeling from the chest down in a frustrated attempt to reveal the scales that lurk beneath the surface? I’m obviously not sufficiently tainted to be sent to the Banished camp, but even the slightest sign of mutation is reviled. From what I’ve overheard, a whole citizen would rather die than marry someone with Monstrous features, no matter how mildly they might manifest.

  He’s hardly thinking marriage. He’s thinking he’s going to die and yours might be the final lips he encounters.

  The thought banishes the last of the tingling sensation from my body, expelling it like a fish bone. I lift my chin, holding my head high as we move swiftly toward the city proper. I do my best not to think about dying with the taste of this stranger on my lips.

  Dying. If I’m dying, I’ll never get the chance to tell my father that I have dreams that live outside the tower, to confess how much I need something … more. Tears fill my eyes, but I don’t cry. I sip in a breath and hold the air in my lungs.

  The soldier pats my rough hand with his softer one. “My name is Bo. I’ll stay with you until the healers come. My father would want that.”

  “Your father?”

  “Junjie,” he says, his voice dipping and sliding on the last part. That’s why he sounds familiar. Junjie’s son. “My father’s spoken of me?”

  “No. I didn’t know he had a son.”

  “Oh.” The word is a stone plunking sadly into the water.

  “But he doesn’t speak to me often,” I say, feeling a little sorry, despite my fear and the shame still lingering on my lips. “Most of the time he’s only at the tower to steal my father away on business.”

  “Yes. The king … I …” He sighs, a pained sound that sets fretful things stirring in my stomach.

  “What about the king?”

  “Nothing.” He walks faster. “Your wounds need treatment.”

  “No. Tell me. What were you going to say?”

  “I can’t,” he whispers. “Your health is the most important thing.”

  “I feel fine.” I do. The scratches still sting, but the feverish sensation is gone. I’m no healer, but it doesn’t feel as if there’s poison in my blood. It makes me wonder …

  Has my slight mutation made me immune to the creature’s venom, or … could the texts about the poison in Monstrous claws be wrong? Was the Monstrous lying when he said I’d die without his help, saying whatever he had to say in order to escape to the river?

  “The river.” My hand tightens on Bo’s arm. “The Monstrous wanted me to take him to the caverns where the underground river flows. That must be how they—”

  “We know,” he interrupts, making me sputter. I can’t remember the last time I was interrupted. Have I ever been interrupted? “There were three other creatures. Their hair was damp when we captured them. My father guessed where they’d come from. There are guards in place now. No more Monstrous will get into the city tonight.”

  “Did you kill the others?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer. The Monstrous are terrifying, but they also have language and pain. They aren’t the complete savages Baba and Junjie have made them out to be. There’s a chance we might be able to make peace with them.

  “Not yet.” Even in those two small words, his bloodlust is clear.

  “They speak our language,” I say gently. “They might not be as savage as we’ve thought.”

  Bo’s muscles flex beneath my hand. “They’re worse. They’re devils.”

  “Devils or not, it doesn’t make sense to kill them if we don’t have to. It will only make things worse for the city.” I think of the Monstrous man, how he endured my fingers roaming his face. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. He showed mercy. How can we do anything but offer the same?

  “It will be up to you
to decide, of course.” Bo’s voice is stiff. “My queen.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I snap, wishing I didn’t need his arm to guide me. I’d prefer not to be touching this soldier anymore. “I’m not queen yet.”

  “Yes, my lady,” he whispers. “You are.”

  I am?

  I … am.

  The ground turns against me, and I trip over the raised edge of a paving stone. Bo catches me and holds me up by the elbow. His hand is larger than I thought. It circles my bone, making me feel like a child, but I’m not a child.

  I am queen. I …

  That means …

  “Baba …” There isn’t enough breath in me to finish the question.

  This can’t be true. Baba was with me this morning. We had breakfast together, sat on the balcony and talked about the harvest festival and made plans for our private celebration after his duties in the city center were finished. He agreed to allow Needle to make him a hat for the party. He laughed one of his rare, light laughs and asked me to play him a song on the harp. He was so alive.

  He has to be alive.

  “It was the Monstrous,” Bo says. “The king was walking the path around the lake. One of the creatures surprised him and his guards. All five of his men were killed, and your father …”

  “The Monstrous …” My mouth is too dry. My lips have gone numb.

  “We captured the thing not far from the court cottages. There was blood on its hands. It laughed when it learned some of it was the king’s.”

  Blood. Baba’s blood. My baba.

  My baba is dead. The monsters have killed him. Now I am alone. And I am queen. Queen so much sooner than I ever thought I would be queen, and there is nothing left for me but pain.

  “We’ll kill them.” I dig my fingers into Bo’s arm. “All of them. I’ll do it myself.”

  FOUR

  GEM

  I’M not dead, but I’m burning. Thrown on the pyre. Alive.

  No! I try to scream. Father! Gare! But no sound comes. My jaw creaks open in a silent wail. My heart shrivels, and all around me the flames burn and burn. The pyre spits sparks at stars crackling in a cold night sky, and fire sizzles through skin, bound for bone, and I am alone with the pain.