the time comes, I will do what queens have always done.”
“Your mother didn’t,” Gem says, the heat in his tone making me look
up to find him pacing the thick carpet in front of Needle’s bed.
“Yes, she did.”
“If she burned in this tower, then how did—”
“She didn’t burn,” I say, stomach lurching. I’ve known the truth for a
long time, but it sits differently now that I know it wasn’t only my mother
who wished me dead but my father, too.
Gem stops pacing, and turns to me. “But you said—”
“She set the fire, but she didn’t burn.”
cause what I’ve said to make sense sooner or later.
“She set the fire.” I lift my hand to my throat and feel it ripple as I
swallow, finding myself comforted by the rush of my blood beneath my
skin. “One night, when Father was reading to me before bed, Mother came
in to light the little lamp I liked to leave burning while I slept.
“Baba had mentioned something about a strange smell in my
bedroom earlier, but neither of us knew what it was until my mother threw
the lamp at the curtains. Apparently she’d soaked them with oil earlier in
the day. They went up with a rush that sucked all the air from the room. I
can’t remember what my mother looked like, but I remember seeing her
silhouetted against the flames, how white her nightgown looked next to all
that red and orange.”
“Why?” Gem asks, his voice breaking.
“She had decided the royal family had to die. Together,” I say, piecing
together what little I remember with what Baba told me of that night. “As
soon as she lit the curtains, she ran from the bedroom. She locked me and
Father inside, and went to set another fire in the sitting room. Father
slammed his fists against the door and begged her to let us out, but she
wouldn’t. She … She said she loved us, but that fire was the only way.”
My brow wrinkles as the unfamiliar piece of the puzzle fits into place.
I don’t know if it’s seeing my bedroom that’s helping my memory, or the
fact that I’m telling the story aloud for the first time, but I can suddenly
hear my mother speak, as plainly as if she were in the room right now. I can
hear the tears in her voice, the genuine grief over what she felt, for some
mad reason, she had to do.
“I didn’t remember that last part before,” I continue, “but I’m sure I
heard her. It was right before my nightgown caught fire.”
I press my fingers to my lips, concentrating until I swear I catch a
whiff of smoke. “I screamed for Baba, and he ran back to the bed and threw
me to the ground before the fire could touch my skin.” I point to the spot
on the floor, only a few feet from where I now sit.
“My head hit the stones beneath the carpet and … everything went
blurry. I don’t remember much after that, but I know soldiers arrived and
broke down the bedroom door. Father gave me to one of them and went to
find my mother. She was in the music room, but she ran out onto the
balcony when she saw Father and the guards. Baba said she refused to
come back inside. When she realized her plan had failed, she leapt over the
parapet, down onto the top of the first roof, and threw herself from the
edge. I heard her scream as she fell.
“My father and Junjie took her body to the rose garden the next
morning.” I glance at Gem, who stands frozen on the other side of the
room, as horrified by the story as the people were in the days after my
mother’s suicide. Suicide was always expected of her, but not like that, not
anywhere but in the garden.
“They slit her throat and spilled her blood on the soil.” I drop my
hand to my lap. “According to the terms of the covenant, the queen should
do that herself—make the first, fatal cut before the royal executioner
finishes the job—so it wasn’t the way things were traditionally done, but it
was a suicide, and the covenant was satisfied. The city had been running
low on water for months, but that very day, the water came surging back
into the underground river at full force. For the next three years, the
harvests were so abundant, Father had to have additional granaries built to
contain the bounty. He named one of them after my mother. Not the
greatest honor for a queen, but it was all he felt proper for a woman who’d
tried to burn her family alive.”
Gem curses. It’s a Desert People word, but there’s no doubt that it’s
a curse.
“She was mad,” I say, defending Mama out of habit. “My father and
mother were married for almost twenty years before she became pregnant.
I was a complete surprise. Mama was forty years old when I was born.
Needle tells me the gossips say she was strange before my birth, but
afterward …”
I sigh. “She started to talk about leaving the city. She even took me
outside the gates once when I was four. It’s one of my earliest memories.
We were spotted by the guards and brought back inside almost
immediately, but … My father couldn’t trust her after that. He moved us
both to the tower. Father said Mother didn’t mind. Court life had always
been a misery for her, and going out into the city center gave her fits. She’d
get so upset, she’d forget to breathe, and faint dead away on the street.”
“Was she sick?” Gem asks.
“Not in body,” I say. “Father said the illness was in her mind but that
she seemed happy in the tower. He never thought she’d … do what she did.
I didn’t, either.” I lean back, resting against the mattress. “I don’t
remember much about her, almost nothing, really, but I remember feeling
loved. I’m sure, in some part of her mind, she did what she did out of love.”
Gem crosses the room, his steps soundless on the thick carpet. He’s
learned to be as silent in his boots as he is in bare feet. He has adapted well
to my world. If only I could have the chance to see if I would adapt as well
to his. I already miss the desert, the wind, the moaning of the dead trees.
I’d never be alone in my sorrow out there. There would always be the wind
to commiserate with.
“I’m sure she did,” he says as he stops in front of me. “It’s not hard to
believe.”
I look up, up,
at him in surprise. “It’s hard for most people. It was
hard for me when I was little.”
“She was trying to spare you a life spent preparing to die.”
“We’re all preparing to die.”
“Not like this.” He squats down, resting his hands on my knees. “You
know it’s not the same.”
“I know,” I whisper, running my fingers over the ridges on the backs
of his hands, down the top of each finger, tracing the places where his
claws go to hide. They’re solid, sturdy chambers, like a second set of bones
on top of the first, barely contained by his thick skin. I’ve felt them before,
but I never expected them to look like this, so … natural. Not scary at all,
really.
I lift his hand, studying the tiny puckers above his fingernails that
must open in order to let his claws out. “I would like to see your claws.”
“No.”
“Please. Show them to me,” I say. “I want to see what gave me the
scar on my shoulder.”
Gem fists his hand before pulling it from my grasp. “I wish I’d never
touched you,” he says, dropping his eyes to the floor. “I wish I’d never
come here.”
“I’m glad you came, and I’m glad you touched me. I wish you
would …” My words trail off. I’m still too shy to state it plainly, but
surely … I reach out, my hand trembling only slightly as I slip my fingers into
his open shirt, resting them over his heart. “Can’t we stop talking?”
Gem’s eyes flick to mine. There’s no doubt he understands my
meaning—it’s clear in the way his lips part, in the way he braces his hands
on either side of my hips, fingers digging into the rose upholstery—but
instead of kissing me, he says, “There has to be another way.”
“There is no other way.” My lips prickle with disappointment as I
withdraw my hand from his warmth. “The covenant is a binding contract,
signed in blood by the founding families of Yuan. Its terms are
nonnegotiable.”
“It’s the covenant that’s the source of the magic, not the roses?”
I nod. “The roses grew after the first sacrifice. They’re a symbol. Part
of the magic, but not the source of it.”
“A symbol of what?” Gem’s expression is so intense, it makes my
head start to hurt again just looking at him. “From what?”
I close my eyes, and rub the space above them with my knuckles.
“What do you mean?”
“What has entered into this contract with your people?” Gem asks.
“The magic of the planet has been quiet for hundreds of years. So, what
magic is this?”
“I don’t know.” I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly colder. And
tired. “It’s just … magic.”
“But whose magic?” he asks. “Who or what accepts the offering of a
queen’s blood and grants Yuan vitality in return?”
I start to argue, but the words I need won’t come. What he’s saying
makes sense. Magic has to come from someone. Or something. I know the
roses grew after the first sacrifice—it’s the most written about and sung
about event in our city’s history—but as far as who or what made them
grow … what inspires the flowers’ hunger for blood …
“I don’t know,” I say in a small voice.
“You don’t know,” he repeats, as if I’ve confessed that I don’t know
how to feed myself or put on my own shoes.
“No, I don’t know,” I say, defensive and anxious at the same time. “I
know the legend, but I— The stories say the noble families arrived in one of
the fifteen great ships. They were in charge of supervising the building of
Yuan, making sure the dome would protect the colonists until they knew if
it was safe for humans to live outside. Everything went well until the
eleventh year of building. That’s when the workers constructing the
dome—the ones who spent the most time outside the ship—began to
change.”
“To mutate,” Gem says, as if he’s heard the story before, making me
wonder how much history we share.
“Yes.” I worry my earlobe between two fingers. “But they mutated
more quickly than people ever had on our home planet. Massive changes
within a month or two, instead of gradually over thousands and thousands
of years. Even the scientists had no explanation for it except magic.”
For the first time, it strikes me how strange that must have been for
my ancestors, for people from a planet with no magic to suddenly be
trapped on a world ruled by it.
“The mutated people turned violent,” I say, keeping my eyes on
Gem’s chest. “They attacked the ship where the colonists had been living,
and tore it apart, killing the people who hadn’t been transformed,
destroying all the books and the machines that stored the ancient
knowledge, and scattering them across the desert.”
I glance at Gem’s eyes. His expression is neutral, patient, waiting for
the rest. “The noble families escaped with a few dozen others whose
mutations were still minor,” I continue. “Together, they ran into the city,
and locked the gates behind them. They were safe inside—the dome was
finished and the central buildings constructed—but the city wasn’t ready to
support life. The animals they’d brought from their home planet were still
very young, the seeds hadn’t sprouted, and most of their medicines and
supplies had been left aboard the ship. They had water, but not much food,
and they were too terrified to venture outside the walls. The people were
starving to death when, one night, the woman who would become our first
queen had a vision.”
“A vision of what?” Gem asks, the intensity returning to his voice.
“I don’t know.” I lift my shoulders and let them fall, before tucking
my feet beneath my skirt. “Just … a vision. Of how to save her people. Of
the covenant,” I say, ignoring the prickle at the back of my neck I’ve always
associated with telling a lie. I’m not lying—not as far as I know, anyway.
So why does it feel like I’m telling Gem a fairy tale?
“All right,” he says, clearly unsatisfied. “What happened after the
vision?”
“The queen woke her husband and representatives from the other
noble families. They walked to the center of the city, where the king
transcribed the sacred words of the covenant from the queen’s dream onto
parchment. They all signed the covenant in blood and spoke the words
aloud. Then, as the sun rose beyond the dome, the queen …
“As soon as her blood hit the soil, the first bed of roses sprang up
from the ground. By the end of the day, crops that should have taken
months to grow were ready to be harvested. Yuan was saved,” I say,
though with less enthusiasm than my father used when telling this story.
“The king remarried that evening, and since then the city has never been
without a queen, or a daughter in line to be queen, for more than a single
night. There are similar stories about the other domed cities. Each one felt
the call and formed covenants of their own.”
Gem grunts his dubious grunt.
“That’s the story as I know it.” I turn my palms over to stare at the
lines creasing the skin, embarrassed without really knowing why. “The
covenant came to the queen in a vision, and the king wrote it down. No
mention of who or what made the roses grow. I suppose I’ve always
thought …”
“Thought what?”
“I don’t know. It seemed to me …” I peek at him through my lashes.
“Maybe it was the power of her sacrifice that created the magic.”
“I’ve seen sacrifice,” Gem says. “I’ve seen old men wander into the
desert to die to give their hut one less mouth to feed. I’ve seen mothers
choose between two babies when there isn’t enough milk for them both.
No magic roses sprang up when their blood was shed. There’s something
darker here.”
“What do you mean?”
He studies me a moment before saying, “My people have legends,
too.”
“I know that,” I say with a tired smile.
“I don’t mean legends like the girl who loved the star. I mean history.
Stories from when our tribe was young and some still remembered—”
A knock at the door makes us both turn our heads. Needle stands in
the doorway with the rope she took to Gem the night we left for the desert,
and an expression that clearly communicates she thinks it’s time for him to
go.
“Just a few more minutes,” I say, profoundly relieved Gem preferred
to talk instead of kiss. I can’t believe I didn’t think about the open door. If
Needle had come to fetch Gem and had found us kissing, or worse, she
would have been scandalized. She would be scandalized if it were any boy,
but a Monstrous boy …
I pause, studying Needle as she studies Gem. What does she think of
him? She set him free, and sent me out into the desert with him. She must
trust him, or at least trust me enough to have faith in my judgment. And
she didn’t seem afraid when he crawled onto the balcony. She seemed