them high enough to hide a scouting party of two or three. I don’t tell her
that I came here on my first scouting mission when I was fourteen and
stood behind the rocks, seething hatred for the dome that festers like a boil
on the horizon.
It’s strange, to stand now in this place where my younger self vowed
to destroy my enemy at all costs, with a Smooth Skin queen clinging to my
arm. I once thought I knew everything I ever wanted to know about the
Smooth Skins. Now … I know nothing. With every passing day, I grow more
and more ignorant. If I keep it up, by the time I return to my people, I’ll be
as rattled in the head as the queen of Yuan.
“Gem?” She tugs lightly at my sleeve. “Gem?”
“Yes?”
She leans closer, hugging my arm to her chest, making me aware of
her, no matter how much I wish I weren’t. I want to push her away. I want
to pull her closer. I want to punch the pile of rocks until my knuckles bleed.
The pain would be a welcome distraction.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I snap, then force myself to ask in a gentler voice, “How’s
your head?”
She tilts her head to one side and then the other, stretching the long
column of her neck. “It still hurts,” she says. “I’ve never had a headache like
this before. I don’t know. Maybe I just need something to eat.”
“Soon.” I stare hard at the horizon, willing the sun to sink faster.
“You’ll be back in your rooms not long after dark.”
She sighs, a mournful, defeated rush of breath, as if
especially, even though it’s cold. But …” Her fingers curl into my arm. “I
didn’t mean the desert. I meant … I’ll miss being familiar. Being able
to … touch.”
It’s the first either of us has said about
that I could forget that for even a moment proves how dangerously close I
am to losing my mind. My purpose. My self. If only my father had left Gare
instead. Gare would have already found a way to bring the roses home to
our people. He would never have let his heart soften toward a Smooth Skin.
He would never have loosened his grip on hate.
“Gem?” Isra tips her face up to mine. The dying light catches her eyes
and shrinks her pupils to specks of black, leaving nothing but green so
bright, I can’t stop staring. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” she whispers, pinching my arm through my shirt. “It’s
impossible to think nothing. Even when you’re asleep, you’re thinking
“That they’re messages from the ancestors.”
“Hm.” Her eyes slit and her brow wrinkles. “I hope they’re wrong.”
“Why? Are your ancestors unhappy with you? Sending you bad
dreams?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I have this same dream …” A strong breeze
ruffles her hair, and she huddles closer to my side. When she speaks again, I
have to strain to hear her over the howling of the wind. “I dream about the
night the tower burned. Over and over again. My mother died that night.
My father and I would have died, too, if the guards hadn’t reached us in
time.”
For the first time since I awoke this morning, the tight, angry knot in
my belly loosens. Fire is a terrible way to lose a life. And four years old is
too young to lose a mother.
I place my hand on hers, warming her fingers. “That doesn’t sound
like a dream from your ancestors.”
“No?” The muscles tighten in her jaw. “Maybe it is. Maybe the dream
is my punishment.”
“For what? Did you set the fire?”
“No,” she says, voice breaking.
“Then stop blaming yourself. You were a child,” I say roughly. She
seems determined to take on unnecessary pain. It’s incredible. Wasteful. It
makes me angry at Isra on Isra’s behalf, which is just … confusing. “Your
ancestors wouldn’t send a dream to torture you while you sleep,” I explain,
trying to be patient. “Not without a reason.”
“That’s good to know.” She squints and rubs her fingers in a circle at
her temple. Her head has been aching on and off all day. At one point, we
had to sit down and rest until the pain passed. It’s best we’re nearing the
dome. Isra isn’t made for the desert, no matter how much she enjoys the
wind. “I had a strange dream last night. At least I think it was a dream,” she
continues. “Before you found me on the trail, I dreamed of the fire again,
but this time there was a face in one of the burning beams.”
“Whose face?”
“I don’t know. A woman. I don’t think I’ve met her, but her face was
made out of flames, so … hard to tell.” She lifts her hand, tracing an image
in the empty air in front of her again and again. Her fingers are graceful,
and I suddenly wish I could see her dance the way my women dance
around the fire on the night of the full moons.
“Did the woman say anything to you?” I push images of Isra—dressed
in the clothes of my people, her long legs free to kick and leap—from my
mind.
“She opened and closed her mouth, like she was trying to speak,”
Isra says. “But I couldn’t hear her over the fire.”
I make a considering sound. “That
“Do you have a habit of playing with fire?”
Her lips lift on one side. “I suppose,” she says, voice husky. “In a
manner of speaking.”
A memory from last night—Isra’s bare throat golden in the firelight,
my mouth on her skin, feeling her pulse race beneath my lips—flickers
through my mind, making it hard to swallow.
“Maybe that’s it,” I say. “You should listen closer if you dream that
dream again.”
“I will,” she says. “Thank you.”
I grunt. I did nothing worth thanking me for, and I resent her casual
gratitude. If she’s really thankful, then she should send food to my people
the instant we return to the city. She should set me free and tell her advisor
and her people to eat their protests. Set me free and … come with me. Let
me show her that my people aren’t animals, let my people see that the
queen of Yuan has a heart and a soul and a wish to make things better.
And then we can make love in my hut and fly into the sky to slay the
Summer Star together on the back of a golden dragon.
I grunt again. Fantasy creatures will fly through the air before the
peace I’m imagining comes to pass.
“What does that one mean?” she asks, tapping my chest with one
long finger. “I haven’t placed that grunt. It’s not the disgusted-with-me
grunt,
or
the
preparing-to-say-something-mean
grunt,
or
the
trying-not-to-smile grunt.”
A smile splits my face before I can stop it. I grunt, and she laughs a
laugh like stones skittering down a mountainside, wild and reckless.
“That’s the one,” she says, still laughing. “I like that one. It’s my
favorite.”
“I like your laugh. You don’t laugh in there.”
“You’ll miss the laugh, but not the touching?” Her smile fades.
“That’s what we were talking about. I remember, you know. I never forget.”
Her lips part, begging for a kiss for the tenth or hundredth or thousandth
time today.
By the ancestors, I should just give up fighting myself and kiss her. I
promise to my people
me to kiss her.
Assuming she keeps her promise to send food, playing at being Isra’s
friend has gotten me closer to helping my people than I could have
imagined possible. Who knows what I could accomplish as her lover? If I
keep her happy, she might even give me the roses of her own free will.
Seduction wouldn’t be difficult. Despite the voices in her head that assure
her I’m a monster, and assure her that she is something worse for wanting
my hands on her, I know Isra wants me. I should manipulate her desire, and
forget about the rest. Who cares what she thinks or feels beyond the lust
that makes her press her body close to mine? Who cares what
woman for the first time in too many months?
But the thought of that kind of deception turns my stomach. I won’t
use or be used in that way, not unless I have no other choice.
“Forget I said anything,” Isra says. A nervous shake of her head sends
her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She tips her chin down, casting her
face in shadow. “You’re right.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Exactly,” she says in a pained whisper, and her pain pains me, too.
More evidence of my weakness.
“The sun is down.” I take her hand and tuck it efficiently into the
crook of my arm, hoping to spare us both any more of this … whatever it is.
“We should go.”
“Wait.” She stops, holding tightly to my arm. “I have to—I
forward.
“So I
not going to take for granted that Junjie’s opinions or anyone else’s
opinions are fact until I find proof for myself. I don’t care if there is … They
can’t …” She takes a shaky breath, and her fingers tighten around my arm.
“They can’t force me to make decisions before I’m ready. I’ll find a way to
convince them that I’m good for the city, and that the changes I want to
make are in the best interests of all our people.”
“All right.” I fight the urge to reach out to her again, to try to make
her understand the truth about Yuan and the desperate situation of my
people. But I can’t. I don’t trust her. Not yet. But maybe … if she means
what she says … “I’m interested to see this new Isra.”
She smiles. “Me too. And I …” Her smile grows bigger as she turns to
me. “Would you come to the rose garden? With me? Tonight?”
“Tonight?” I ask as I move around the stones.
“Yes.” She nods and falls into step beside me. “I don’t want to wait.
Will you?”
long moments before offering a careful, “Why do you want to go there?”
I can’t let Isra know how interested I am in her magic roses. There are
already guards stomping through the gardens all hours of the day and
night. If she adds additional patrols, my odds of escaping with a plant will
go from not likely to impossible.
“I want to see you again,” she says shyly. “If … that’s all right.”
I ignore the way my chest tightens. “Will there be time?” I ask, not
certain how long the magic takes. “The guards come through the royal
garden every ten to fifteen minutes.”
She hums beneath her breath. “That could be enough time. Or not. It
depends on whether or not they’re being cooperative.”
“The roses?”
“Sometimes they show what I ask to see,” she explains. “Sometimes
they show me something else. The night we left, I saw Bo knocking at the
tower door.” Her fingers tap a nervous rhythm on my arm. “Hopefully my
absence wasn’t discovered. I doubt it was. I think the roses were just trying
to scare me into staying in Yuan. They’ve been … different lately. I don’t like
being alone with them anymore.”
I walk a little more slowly. The way she talks about the flowers, it
sounds like the roses are alive. Aggressively alive. It makes me remember
her words that first night, about their hunger.
“What are the roses hungry for?” I ask.
“What?” She stumbles, but I hold her up, carrying her until she
regains her feet.
“That first night, you said they were hungry.” I watch her face, barely
able to see her features in the increasing darkness. The first moon won’t
rise for another hour or more. Soon, we’ll both be walking in the dark. “You
said the roses were hungry.”
She licks her lips. “How far are we from the dome? The smell is
strong now.”
“Is it blood?”
She turns sharply in my direction. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. It was a guess. I saw the thorn under your fingernail,” I say,
more disturbed by the confirmation of my suspicion than I thought I would
be. Magic fed by blood is dark magic. My people have never practiced dark
magic.
my people won’t care, as long as it puts food in their babies’ bellies.
“I don’t feed them,” she says. “I mean, I
“Depends on what?”
She sighs. “Oh, I don’t know. Lots of things. If the dome is damaged
by a storm and the roses have to repair it, that takes a lot of strength. If
blight touches the harvest, or children are born sick, or … any number of
things.” She shrugs and lifts a hand in the air. “Any weakness in our city or
our people. Correcting those things can make the roses grow hungry again
faster.”
“But the roses’ magic doesn’t stop some children from being born
tainted.” I hate the word, but it’s what she understands.
She shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t. Which is as good an argument