Do not forget, said the sparrow. The grass caught fire.
“Forget what?” I asked.
It leapt into the air and hovered, its wings whirring into a blur.
Your bargain is death to their power. If you hold on, you may find your way back again.
The air turned into liquid light. The ground rippled beneath us, then melted away, and we fell down into infinite depths, the fire falling with us in great coruscating streams that swirled and screamed through darkness.
In that darkness waited the Children of Typhon, who laughed and sang as they swirled around us. Just as before, their song left me shuddering in helpless horror. And they devoured us: they crawled under our skin and wept out our eyes, they bubbled into our lungs until we choked on the infinite, icy shadow. They hollowed me out until I was only a senseless parchment husk. But no matter how they shredded away all meaning from me, I was still circled in Lux’s arms and I was his.
The fire roared down upon us. It curled through our hair, then wrapped around our wrists and faces, trying to drag us apart. It seared across my skin, hotter than the Heart of Fire, and yet more painful was how it seared through my mind. The fire burned away my memories, taking back his name and mine, both of my pasts and all of my hopes, the sky and the sparrow and the world itself. I clung to somebody I did not know, could not imagine knowing, but I still knew beyond all doubt that he was mine.
We fell until we had been falling forever and always, and always would continue falling, because nothing existed outside this chaos of fire and shadow.
But I held on to him.
And he held on to me.
I woke with the dazzle of morning sunlight in my eyes, birdsong chattering in my ears. I lay on the hard ground, stiff and cold and sore, but there was somebody beside me.
Lux.
I bolted up and then didn’t dare move. It didn’t seem possible that he was here: the prince I had dreamt about, actually real. The husband I had betrayed, actually rescued. The ghostly prisoner, actually whole. Yet here he lay, half curled on his side, his chest moving softly with each breath. I felt like he would vanish if I moved.
So I sat still and stared at him. He had the same slender, lovely face that I remembered seeing on both men. His skin was shockingly pale, but it was a human pallor, not the ghostly milk-white of Shade. His hair was black, but lanky and tangled as I had never seen Ignifex’s.
The line of his jaw was exactly the same as I remembered kissing. But I had never kissed him, not in this life. And he was not exactly the same man.
Since I had remembered him last night, I hadn’t had time to think of anything except what I had done and the terrible need to set it right. I hadn’t even wondered what he would be like, reunited. Now I could think of nothing else. I had loved Ignifex, and after a fashion, I had loved Shade. They had both more or less loved me in return. But Marcus Valerius Lux? What were we to each other?
His eyes flickered open and focused on me. They were bright blue eyes, the pupils round and completely human, but they were not exactly Shade’s eyes; the way he squinted against the light, his whole face wrinkling into the expression, was exactly like Ignifex.
Then his lips curved in a faint smile and he reached up to touch my face. I caught his hand against my cheek and held it; his fingers were warm and gloriously real, but they felt rougher than I remembered. I held his hand to examine it and saw that his palms and fingertips were covered in a network of thin, pale scars.
“This is real,” he whispered, sitting up.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re real. I thought—I started to think—” He was shaking now. Shame burned through my body, but I pulled him into my arms, and still holding on we rolled back down to lie on the grass.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
For an answer, he only buried his face in the crook of my neck, and we lay still together for a long time, until at last he whispered in my ear, “At least you’re not as shy as when we met.”
I was about to say, Do I need to remind you how much I am used to you?—and then I bolted upright, skin burning. Because I remembered everything we had done together, remembered being this woman at ease in his embrace, yet I knew bone-deep that I had never even held hands with a man, let alone kissed one. Memories tangled in my throat and I couldn’t breathe.
Then I realized I had thrown him to the ground. “I’m sorry,” I blurted, hoping I had not hurt him.
But he was sitting up now too, leaned back with his hands behind him, his head tilted to one side. It was exactly the sort of posture that Ignifex might have sat in.
“You saved me,” he said quietly. The cadences of his voice were uncanny: entirely familiar, but not exactly like either Ignifex or Shade. “You saved me, and I think that covers almost half your sins.”
I snorted. “I was more than a little late.”
“Better than never,” he said. “Besides, I did deserve it. I wronged you. Both of me.” His mouth tightened, and then he said, whisper-soft, “I’m sorry too. Please forgive me.”
Neither one of them would ever have apologized so desperately. It was a new person staring back at me with blue eyes—but I was a new person too. And if he, so long divided, could gather himself together and remember how to love me, then I could do the same for him.
“Well, you were at least both handsome, too.” I took his hand again; our thumbs rubbed together, and then suddenly we were kissing.
When we finally stopped, Lux said, “What happens now?” He looked around at the ruins as if seeing them for the first time.
I pushed hair out of my face and tried to think past the warmth of his arm around my waist. “Well, we should tell somebody I’m alive, since I ran out into the night. And we’d better prepare to get shouted at, since I jilted Tom-a-Lone.” I remembered that the world he’d known hadn’t had that tradition. “At the festival, they—”
“I’ve seen the festivals.” His soft voice stopped the breath in my throat. But then he went on, “So, you were running after another man? I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”
“Then don’t,” I said. “Never leave me again.”
I had just created the kind of scandal I’d spent all week scheming to avoid. But with the sky an impossible blue overhead and my impossible, blue-eyed husband sitting beside me, I couldn’t much care.
“Come on.” I took his hand and stood, pulling him up with me. “Let’s go home. Aren’t you tired of being in this house?”
I meant the words lightly, but he looked around the sunlit ruins with solemn eyes. “It’s strange,” he said softly. “I think I’ll miss it.”
And I realized that in every life he had lived, this was his only home and he had never left.
“I miss hating my sister,” I said, pulling him toward the gateway. “She’s a little bit more wicked now, so I can’t even hate her for being too kind.”
But when we were almost at the threshold, he paused again, and this time there was naked fear on his face.
“You do realize,” he said. “I don’t remember how to be anything but a demon lord and his shadow.”
“I’m still not very good at being anything but a wicked sister.” I took his other hand.
A handful of kindness, the sparrow had said, and now we each had two.
“We’ll both be foolish,” I said, “and vicious and cruel. We will never be safe with each other.”
“Don’t try too hard to be cheerful.” His fingers threaded through mine.
“But we’ll pretend we know how to love.” I smiled at him. “And someday we’ll learn.”
And we walked out through the gateway together.
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Acknowledgments
The difficulty in writing acknowledgments for a first novel is that you aren’t thanking everyone who helped you write the
novel, you’re thanking everyone who ever helped you become a writer. This is a project doomed to failure, but since I love heroic tragedies, I’ll make the attempt anyway.
So first of all: thank you, Mom and Dad, for teaching me to love stories and never getting tired of listening to mine. I could fill a hundred books with thanks and it wouldn’t be enough.
Secondly, I owe a huge debt to Sherwood Smith for years of mentoring, encouragement, and advice. (And for being brave enough to read my juvenilia.)
Thanks also to my brothers: Tim, who played at storytelling with me when I was little, and Brendan, who first put the idea of writing into my head.
My agent, Hannah Bowman, not only found this book an excellent home but has been a source of unfailing enthusiasm and support. It was totally worth getting rejected by the other sixty-two agents to find her.
My editor, Sara Sargent, has also been amazing and helped make this book far better than I ever imagined it could be when I finished that first draft.
The entire Balzer + Bray team has been great, but I especially would like to thank Erin Fitzsimmons for the gorgeous cover design.
The early manuscript of Cruel Beauty was beta-read by Marta Bliese, Bethany Powell, Jennifer Danke, and Leah Cypess, all of whom helped shape it in important ways.
I try to steal from all the best authors, but Cruel Beauty owes a special debt of inspiration to C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot. It was Lewis’s Till We Have Faces that helped me realize what I wanted out of heroines and stories retold. Eliot’s poetry has inspired me in a host of ways over the years, but he particularly influenced the imagery in this book; those who have read his Four Quartets will notice several allusions. (If you haven’t read Four Quartets, please do; it’s one of the most beautiful poems in the English language.)
I also need to thank the staff and my fellow students at the 2007 Viable Paradise Workshop, who helped kick me from wishing to actually writing; and the Second Breakfasts critique group, who were important support for several years after.
Other people deserving of thanks: Tim Powers, who has been very generous with his encouragement; Sasha Decker, who checked my Latin; Laura Haag, who helped research snuggling; Linnar Teng, who has given me years of prayers and support; and Tia Corrales, who never fails in enthusiasm.
Finally, I need to thank Megan Lorance, Kristen Fadok, and Amanda Collyer, because after I spent an entire dinner babbling to them about the totally melodramatic story idea that I should never write, they told me that I totally should.
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About the Author
ROSAMUND HODGE received a BA in English from the University of Dallas and an MSt in medieval English from Oxford. She now lives in Seattle, Washington. You can visit her online at www.rosamundhodge.net.
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Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Cruel Beauty
Copyright © 2014 by Rosamund Hodge
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-06-222473-6 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition June 2013 ISBN 9780062224736
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Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty
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