Of Beast and Beauty (23 page)

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I mumble beneath my breath.

“What?” she asks.

“Your ways are strange to me.” I sigh, feeling every mile we’ve walked in the past two days. “Some stranger than others.”

“They’re strange to me, too.” She leans her cheek into my hand, and for a moment she looks so young, so lost.

“It’s all right.” I wrap my arms around her and pull her close, dropping my lips to the top of her head, kissing her wild hair.

“Is it terrible that I don’t want to go back?” she asks.

“No,” I say, wishing she’d look up.

“Yes, it is. If you knew …”

“If I knew what?”

She shakes her head and pulls away, until only her fingers touch my arm. “Nothing. Let’s go. At least there’s food there. I’m starving. I’m sure you’re hungry, too. We can put off the roses until another night if you’d like. Needle set you free once. I’m sure she could manage it again.”

“We could eat first and then go,” I say, more curious about the roses than ever before. “Could your maid—”

“She could,” Isra says. “Or I could crawl up and get us something from the tower. We keep apples and nuts and other things in the pantry in

the sitting room for something light between meals. It wouldn’t take long for me to fetch some, especially if you tell me when it’s safe to climb. I usually have to listen for the guard, but—”

“Why can’t you go in the door?”

“I’m sure Bo has put guards outside,” she says, her tone souring. “He promised he’d assure my privacy, but I know the way he and his father work. They watch me. They’ll want to know if I leave my rooms. That’s why I didn’t take the door on the way out.”

“Then how did you—”

“I jumped,” she says. “From the balcony.”

“Jumped?” The thought makes my stomach flip. I’m a warrior. I’m not afraid of much. But I’ve seen the height of that tower. “All the way from the top?”

“Tiered roofs are good for more than decoration. It’s only a ten-foot drop each time.” She shrugs, but I can hear the pride in her voice. “I’ve been getting out that way since I was eleven. Getting up takes longer, but there are lots of stones sticking out from the outer wall. It’s easy to climb in bare feet.”

“You climb the outside of the tower?”

She nods.

“That’s …” Mad. Outrageous. Courageous. “Impressive,” I finally say.

“Thank you,” Isra says, grinning.

“Crazy. But impressive.” She giggles, and I smile in spite of myself.

“You really do play with fire.”

“I do.” She clears her throat, and her fingers pluck nervously at my shirt. “So … food and then roses?”

“Yes. I’d like for you to see me. Give you something to dream about tonight.”

I meant it to be a joke, but there’s nothing funny about the way she says, “Oh, I’ve already dreamed about you. This morning, in fact.”

My mouth goes dry. “Really?”

“Yes. It was a nice dream,” she says. “A very nice dream.”

“Isra …,” I warn, not sure which one of us I’m warning, or what will happen if the warning is ignored.

“Gem …” She mimics my tone so perfectly, I can’t help but smile. And grunt.

She laughs as she steps closer, wrapping her arm around my waist.

After the slightest hesitation, I put my arm around her shoulders and we walk—hips bumping, her cheek pressed to my chest—and for now we are just a boy and a girl, walking the desert under a sky full of stars.

CLIMBING is harder than it’s ever been before.

My arms tremble and my fingers cramp. My breath comes fast and my toes slip more times than I’d like—especially knowing Gem’s watching from below, close to where we’ve hidden the bulbs beneath a shallow layer of dirt in the fallow cabbage field.

I wanted to impress him, but by the time I pull myself up and over the edge of the third roof, I’m wishing I’d found some way to distract the guards and gone through the wretched door.

I’m starving and exhausted, and not certain I’m going to make it to the top. It makes me think about my mother, about what it must have been like to jump from the balcony and keep falling and falling. It would be just my luck to tumble off the tower and break my neck right when I feel ready to take on the world.

My world, anyway. Yuan seems smaller after my days in the desert.

More manageable, somehow. Even thoughts of the power struggles and hard talks and difficult decisions in my future don’t daunt me. I feel strong.

In mind. In spirit.

The flesh, however …

By the time I drag myself over the balcony ledge, I’m covered in a cold sweat and shaking from head to toe. I collapse on the stone floor in a grateful heap, breathing hard, my heart beating in my stomach, my head throbbing so fiercely, colors bloom in my darkness. My bones vibrate like

bells after they’re rung too hard, but I’m alive. I made it.

“Thank the ancestors,” I sigh, then giggle softly to myself.

I don’t know why I find it funny to say things Gem says, but I do. I love the way he talks, his myriad grunts, the rumble in his chest when he laughs. I even love the way he gets grumpy with me and isn’t afraid to show it.

But most of all, I love the way he touches me, the way
I
touch
him
.

I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I just don’t see how something that feels so right can be wrong.

“It
does
feel right,” I whisper, rolling onto my back, breath finally coming easier. “It feels … wonderful.” I smile despite the pain still pulsing behind my eyelids. Not even this nasty headache can dampen my spirits.

I stretch my arms above my head and point my toes and arch like a cat, more aware of my physical being than I’ve ever been. My entire body tingles at the thought of being back with Gem. Unfortunately, my body is also dirty and, a quick sniff confirms, none too fresh-smelling. There isn’t time for a bath—though Gem is well hidden behind the bushes on the unguarded side of the tower, I don’t want to leave him waiting—but I can at least have Needle bring a bowl of water and a sponge and beg her to do something with my hair before I head back out into the night.

After
I ask her to bring me something to eat. I’m faint with hunger.

“Needle!” I call from my place on the ground, too exhausted to bother getting up. “I’m back. I’m on the balcony. Can you bring some fruit and nuts? Enough for two?”

“Who else are you feeding?” The deep, angry
male
voice is completely unexpected, making me bolt into a seated position.

I knock my head on the parapet but ignore the agony blossoming in my skull as my headache becomes something
much
more painful. I spin and spring onto the balls of my bare feet, staying in a crouch, ready to hurl myself at this man’s voice and knock him flat the second he proves he’s here to hurt me.

Bo’s hint that someone in Yuan has been poisoning me comes back in a rush, making me shake as I demand, “Who’s there? Who are you?”

“It’s Bo,” he says, making my jaw drop. He sounds nothing like himself. His voice is so deep and angry and … cutting. “You’re filthy. Get up off the floor. You look like an animal,” he continues, barking at me like one of his misbehaving underlings.

“Bo, I …” I want to tell him to leave me be, but I can’t until I learn how much he knows. “What are you doing here?”

“Better question, where have you been? I discovered you were missing early this evening.” I hear his footsteps moving closer, and the hair at the back of my neck prickles. My mind tells me Bo wouldn’t hurt me, but something instinctive urges me to run, to fight him if he tries to stop me.

“Who have you been with, Isra? What kind of man leaves you looking like that? Like he had you in the dirt?”

“What?” I laugh, even as my cheeks heat. Surely he can’t mean—

“You think this is funny?” Bo snatches my arm, and pulls me to my feet. My laughter ends in a gasp of surprise. And pain. His fingers don’t feel soft anymore. They bite through my flesh, not shying away when they find bone. “You think it’s funny to make a fool of me?”

“Let me go,” I order in my iciest tone, doing my best to ignore the fear making my blood race and my splitting head spin.

If Bo decides to abuse me—here in my private chambers, where no one but he and his father have ever dared set foot—there will be no one to stop him. Needle’s life will be over if she lays hands on a soldier. The punishment for assaulting a member of the guard is death.

The thought makes my heart beat even faster. Penalty of death or no, she would still defend me. I have to tell her to stay out of this, no matter what. “Where’s Needle?” I ask, trying not to wince when Bo’s grip grows tighter. “I require my maid.”

“Your maid is in your bedroom,” he says, his tone openly mocking.

“With orders not to set foot outside it until I find out who the queen has been rutting with tonight.”

Fury banishes my fear and pain. How
dare
he?
“Get out,”
I snap.

“
Now
. Before I punish you the way I would anyone else who spoke to me that way.”

Now it’s his turn to laugh, an ugly laugh that makes my throat tight.

“Are you threatening me?”

“It’s not a threat; it’s a warning.” With a sharp jerk, I wrench my arm from his grasp. Pain knifes through my head in response, but I blink it away, ignoring the throbbing behind my eyes and the pitching of my stomach. I can’t show weakness, not if I want to take the upper hand. “I am the queen of Yuan. If I wanted you wrapped in chains and tossed into the river, I could have it done. Within the hour. You forget yourself.”

“No,
you
forget yourself,” he snaps. “You aren’t a queen; you’re a disgrace. Everyone knows it. That’s why your father locked you away in the first place.”

“You have
one minute
to leave before I call the guards.”

“I can’t believe I felt sorry for you.” His anger is a live thing, hovering in the air between us, threatening to dig its claws into me all over again. “I can’t believe I defended your life while you deceived me!”

“You’re out of your mind.” I try to stand tall, but the torture in my skull makes me sway. I brush my hair from my clammy forehead and swallow the bile rising in my throat. “I’ve never deceived you,” I say, voice breathier than I would like.

“But you would have,” he says. “When we were married, and you bore me a bastard.”

For a moment all I can do is lean against the parapet, gaping in his direction, reeling from shock and trying not to be sick. “We aren’t even
betrothed
.”

“But we would have been. It was understood. By everyone, and I don’t—”

I cut him off with a hand held in the air between us. “It doesn’t matter what was
understood
. There are no papers signed. You never even asked permission to court me. You certainly haven’t earned the right to act like a jealous husband.”

“I planned to ask you to marry me tonight,” he says. “But instead of finding you waiting for news about the welfare of your city, I found the tower deserted and you out spreading your legs—”

“Stop this,” I hiss, shaking with anger. “I’ve done nothing to deserve this, and even if I had, it isn’t your place to speak to your queen like a woman you bought for the night!” I shout, regretting it immediately as the pain grows so fierce that tears fill my eyes.

I take a breath and try to blink them away, hating that Bo might think that I care enough to cry over anything he has to say, but the agony only grows worse. The bursts of color return, coming faster, a dizzying barrage of red and green and orange that makes it difficult to focus on his words.

“I wouldn’t … None of this would have happened if …” He clears his throat. “I came here to tell you the dome hasn’t been compromised. I did the inspection myself. It was a snake skin on the glass. I was … so happy,”