Of Beast and Beauty (4 page)

He’s only six weeks old. He’ll be the first on the pyre.

I roar again, a sound so terrible the girl screams and stumbles, falling to the ground. I leap and land on top of her before the guards can throw their spears. They’ll kill me sooner or later, but I’ll kill this girl first. I’ll take her life as payment for the destruction of my people.

I grab her shoulder and flip her onto her back, the better to get at her throat. Her skin gives like water beneath my claws. Her blood is the exact color of the roses, red that swallowed brown and black and holds them prisoner in its belly.

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.

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 to 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.