day she insisted on working side by side with a monster that could kill her
in an instant. She’s put the entire city at risk. She’s selfish and childish, at
best. At worst, she’s on the path to becoming as mad as her mother.” He
sighs, and his arm drops to his side. “The king should never have married an
outsider.”
“Were all the people of New Persia mad?” I know the story—that
King Yuejihua married a woman from across the planet who arrived in the
last of her people’s flying carriages, fleeing a city on the verge of collapse in
the wake of Monstrous attack—but I never thought to wonder anything
more.
“No, not that I know of. It was a small city, but they kept their
technology functioning throughout the centuries,” he says, motioning to
the servant waiting in the shadows beneath the arbor, indicating we’re in
need of drink. “In the beginning, the king was more interested in the
technology than the wife. He wanted to see what our ancestors had given
up when they’d adopted our more primitive way of life. He agreed to marry
the king of New Persia’s youngest daughter only if the flying machine used
to deliver her was also his to keep.”
“He kept the flying machine?” What would it be like to see
something like that? Something from long ago, built on another world?
“Where is it?”
Father’s brows lift, clearly disapproving of my interest in the
machines our ancestors chose for us to live without. They believed
technology was evil and led to the destruction of our old planet.
“It’s in pieces,” he says. “Its parts put to other uses. The New
Persians failed to send fuel. Without it, the machine was useless. There was
no way to lift it off the ground, or to send Queen Kanya back to where
she’d come from.” He turns, fetching a goblet of peach juice from the tray
the servant has brought. When the tray is shifted before me, I wave it
away. I’m thirsty, but it seems wrong to sip something sweet at a time like
this. “But by then the king didn’t want to send her away,” Father continues.
“Kanya was a beautiful woman. Very tall, bold-featured. Nothing like our
women, but beautiful. As Isra is beautiful. And she was kind and gentle,
before the madness took her.”
I think on that for a moment, of Isra’s mother, and madness, and
beauty, and other things passed down from parents to their children.
“There will be no children for Isra and me,” I say, unable to imagine Isra
tolerating me in her bed.
“It’s for the best,” Father says. “Better to wait and try to be a true
husband with your second wife.”
My second wife. I haven’t even taken my first. It’s … too much. I can’t
think about it. Not now. I’ll think about it tomorrow night, when Isra and I
are married and I am king. Surely all of this will seem more manageable
then.
“If you don’t need me, I’ll go back to the barracks,” I say, with a deep
breath. “I could use some time to myself.”
“Go. I’ll have dinner sent to your room.” He drains the last of the
liquid. “After dinner, we’ll discuss how you’d like to take care of the other
matter.”
“The other matter?”
“The Monstrous.” He holds out his goblet. The servant and tray
magically appear to claim it and whisk it away. “You should kill it tonight.
Now that Isra’s been deemed incompetent, there’s no reason to wait. The
marriage will go forward with or without her consent.”
I swallow. I didn’t think Father would expect me to kill the Monstrous
myself, but I should have. “You’re right,” I say, refusing to show how
unnerved I am by the prospect of slaughtering the beast, the night before
my wedding no less. “I’ll choose my best men. We’ll go to the creature’s
rooms tonight and … kill it in its sleep. If possible.”
Father smiles, that same smile from last night, the one that assures
me he’s proud of who I’m becoming. “A wise plan. And a merciful one.” His
voice is as silky as it was when he praised Isra for her keen perception, and
for a moment I wonder …
I stop the thought before it can find its other half. I don’t wonder
anything. I know what must be done and I will do it, and come tomorrow
night, all the terrible things will be over.
she doesn’t come.
My prison gets smaller by the hour. The bars more hateful. I prowl
the confined space a hundred times. I do every one of my exercises a
thousand. By the time the three moons rise high in the sky, I should be too
exhausted to stay awake, but I’m not.
I can’t sleep. I can’t rest until I know what’s happened. If someone’s
hurt her … If they’ve locked her away …
I’ll break through these bars with my bare hands. I’ll kill every soldier
who stands in my way. I’m not sure if this is love or madness, but it doesn’t
matter. It’s real. True. And as inescapable as this wretched cage.
I growl and slam my balled fists into the door of my cell. It rattles on
its hinges, but doesn’t break or bend. Outside, there isn’t a sound. The
guard from my early days is asleep in his own bed. The Smooth Skins are so
sure of their doors and locks. But Isra found a way out of her prison. If she
can do it, I can do it. I
haven’t tried my claws on their bars. I wasn’t ready to escape before, but I
am now. I have to make sure she’s all right.
I clench my jaw, grinding the thought to dust between my teeth. It
doesn’t matter. Isra would come if she could. Even if it was only to say
good-bye.
I won’t let her say good-bye.
My claws strike the bars hard enough to send pain shooting up the
backs of my hands into my forearms. I curse and shake my fingers at my
side, moaning as my claws draw painfully back into their chambers. Every
nerve in my arm is on fire, and the skin above my nail beds is ripped and
bleeding, but the bars don’t have a nick on them.
I curse in my language, adding in a few foul Smooth Skin words I’ve
picked up from listening to the soldiers. I kick the wall beneath the window
hard enough to bruise my toes through my thin boots, and curse again, but
manage to keep myself from further self-destruction by wrapping my
fingers around the bars and shaking them with all the strength in my body. I
shake and shake, tensing until the muscles in my neck threaten to snap. By
the time I’m finished, I’m even more exhausted than I was before.
Maybe enough to sleep. Or at least to rest …
I’m turning to my bed when I see it. The shadow near the garden.
A woman’s shadow, winding her way through the orchard. She seems
familiar, but I can’t place her until she steps onto the paving stones and the
moonlight catches her curls. It’s Isra, but she doesn’t walk the way she did
before. She doesn’t reach with her toes before she steps; she doesn’t
hesitate before allowing the rest of her body to catch up with her feet. Her
eyes have changed her. It will take time for me to recognize her in the dark,
time I don’t know if we’ll have.
I want to call out, but I don’t dare. The guards will be through the
garden soon. I have to wait.
I stand at the window, wondering how she plans to reach my
cell—through the main entrance or by climbing through the window down
the hall the way I did when Needle returned me to my cage. I expect her to
hurry down the path toward the barracks, but instead she stops on the far
side of the roses, near where the vines have crept from their bed. She goes
utterly still for a moment before her hand darts out, reaching for one of the
low-hanging vines.
Above her bowed head, the roses rustle awake, rotating their
obscene blooms to peer down at the queen.
I open my mouth to howl her name, but something stops me—a
sudden throbbing in the places where my skin tore above my claws, a pain
that shoots up my arm and into my chest, squeezing my heart, heating my
blood, making the room spin and the blue night pulse before my eyes.
I try to step away from the window, but I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
I can’t scream, even when the night air comes alive, whipping in to beat at
my face, stinging at my skin like sparks from a funeral fire, hot and full of
magic.
I fall to the floor, gasping for breath, and begin to crawl toward the
door.
Something is happening in the garden. I have to get to Isra, before
it’s—
“What happened to the covenant?” I demand, fighting to keep fear
from my voice. I’ve never felt such a powerful presence in the garden
before. It feels bigger than the roses, older and darker and deeper, a cold,
unblinking eye staring straight through my skin. “Where is it? Show it to—”
My words end in a pained cry as fire courses through my fingertips,
shoots through my arm, trapping the breath in my lungs, making my ears
ring with the sound of a thousand voices screaming at once. Agony
explodes on either side of my head, and my eyes roll back.
The thorn in my finger digs deeper, while another darts out to stab
my arm, jabbing deep. Something primitive inside me snatches control of
my muscles. My legs push away from the flower bed, but when I move, the
thorns move with me, digging into my skin. The roses are hungry, starving,
they—
right. There is something else. The roses are only the teeth that creature
uses to chew its food, a mouth that will pull me into the belly of the beast.
Come to the Dark Heart and
.
The Dark Heart. That is its name.
I go utterly still, overwhelmed by the vastness of the being speaking
in my mind. It is bigger than I first assumed. As tall as the mountains
beyond the dome, as deep as the violent ocean the roses showed me on
my thirteenth birthday, as big as the planet itself.
It is a god, and I am only one small person, so briefly alive that my
death is practically not a death at all. I should be content to lie down in the
fertile soil, to join myself with the Dark Heart, to give my blood to the one
who sustains my city.
The roses’ gnarled stalks and their thorns—as big as my hand, bigger,
how could I not have noticed how deadly they could be—reach for me,
ready to pull me into their embrace, to the center of their bed.
To my death.
The haze clouding my thoughts departs in a frantic rush of blood.
“No!” I pull away, but the roses loop a toothy arm around my wrist
and squeeze tight. Smaller thorns slice through my skin, creating a bracelet
made of blood, igniting my body with lightning flashes of pain.
“Help me!” I scream, hoping the guards will hear. I bat at the flowers
with my fists, kick the vines that snake close enough to snatch at the legs of
my overalls. “Help me! I’m in the royal garden!” I scream, but no one
comes. The one time in my life I’d be breathlessly grateful to see a soldier,
and none can be found.
And the thing controlling the roses, the Dark Heart, knows it. Of
course it does. The Dark Heart knows everything that happens under the
dome, and it knows that I’ve learned too much, that it must take me before
I ruin it all, before I steal the lifeblood from the splintered, wicked thing my
ancestors have fed for generations.
But my ancestors weren’t murdered; they were
I’m not going to lie down and die. I won’t!
“I don’t give myself to you. I don’t!” I shout as I knock a vine away
with the back of my hand, earning myself another deep scratch. I pause to
survey the damage for less than a second, but a second is all it takes for a
vine to snap around my other wrist, as quick as a whip. I scream and tug on
both arms, but the vines only squeeze more tightly.
“I’m not a willing sacrifice,” I sob, heart racing as the thorns get
closer and closer to my face. “I’m not married. I have no children or
brothers or sisters or anyone.” I feel the vines’ death grip loosen the
slightest bit, and I know I’ve hit upon the only thing that might save my life.
The Dark Heart is starving, but it doesn’t want me to be its last meal. “If you
kill me, you will never feed from this city again. The covenant will be broken
forever. Forever!”
When the vines stop moving, there’s a thorn longer than my finger a
whisper from my eye.
I force myself to face it, ignoring the sweat rolling down the sides of
my face, the frantic racing of my pulse, the pitching of my stomach. “Let me
go,” I say. “Let me go! You have no choice.”
But they do,
smack, smick, smack
about the roses.
Now I may never see him again. I may not live to tell him how much I
care, how much I—
I gasp as the vines suddenly clutch more tightly, as if the Dark Heart
can read my thoughts and disapproves of the way I feel for Gem, as much
as any citizen of Yuan would.
arms go numb. My eyes roll toward the sky, but instead of the dome and
the moons hovering above it, I find myself seeing through the roses’ eyes.
But this time they show me something new. They show me … fires.
Fires in the desert, scaffolds made of long-dead tree limbs holding
the corpses of Monstrous men and women and children. There are a dozen