afraid I buried every memory of my life before I heard it, in an attempt to
keep myself from remembering what I had been asked to do. But I’m not
afraid anymore.
I am finished with my fearful heart. I am ready. I am brave.
gathering them—one by one, two by two—for the past month. As soon as
Bo left this afternoon—lips pressed into a thin line after all his pleading
won him nothing but a pat on the shoulder and a walk to the door—she
began pulling the bricks from their hiding places.
Tonight is the night. Tonight I will build my own walls.
First, a barrier to cover up the entrance to the tower, then a wall in
front of my bedroom door, and finally another behind. It should be enough
to hold the soldiers until tomorrow morning. And maybe even a bit longer.
It will be enough.
The city is on the brink.
Suddenly, this very morning, Yuan went from ailing to falling to
pieces. The walls began to crumble. Above our heads, the dome groans like
a field animal that’s swallowed something foul. Needle says only the nobles
still believe the city can be saved. The people from the Banished camp, the
farmers and their remaining livestock, and all but a few of the commoners
from the city center are fleeing into the desert, bound for Port South.
I hope they make it there safely. I don’t wish them any pain, but the
cost of saving Yuan is too great. The Dark Heart will not feed from this city
again.
I’ve failed to end the curse and heal our planet—either Gem is dead
or he never loved me the way I love him; I suppose I’ll never know
which—but I won’t fail in this. I’ll take one city away from the darkness.
Yuan will fall, and there will be only two cities left. And maybe someday, in
one of those cities, a girl or a boy will look out into the desert and see
someone who makes him or her want to change the world.
I close my eyes and see Gem’s face as clearly as ever. Nearly three
months, and I can still remember the way his eyes reflected the candlelight,
the warmth of his skin, the feel of his lips.
Bo didn’t mar that memory. He has been a better unwanted king
than I could have imagined—he has never stolen so much as a kiss. He has
refused to take what wasn’t freely offered.
Not a kiss, and certainly not my life.
I knew he’d been sent to kill me today. I knew it before he said a
word, before he fell to his knees, begging me to save the city and spare at
least one woman’s life. He warned me that his father would come tonight
with his own knife. Bo can’t protect me any longer. This evening, Junjie will
arrive at the tower to slit my throat, and Bo will marry another. The woman
has already been chosen, a woman older than Bo with two children she’ll
leave motherless, the oldest a five-year-old girl who will become next in
line for sacrifice if Bo never marries again. The woman’s wedding dress is
sewn and her mind made up. She will say her vows with a blade in her
hand, and willingly give her blood to the roses as soon as she is made the
queen.
Bo was so genuinely troubled by it all. It made me glad the covenant
is hidden in my room and will remain there until the city falls.
When I first learned the truth, I wanted nothing more than to throw
it in Bo’s face, to make it clear his blood would serve the roses as well as
mine. But in the end, I had to keep the ancient king’s secret. If Bo knew he
could feed the roses, he might pick up the knife and do so, and I can’t have
that. I need the Dark Heart to starve. I need the city to fall. Soon. Tonight, if
I’m lucky.
“You have to go.” I turn back to Needle, who has yet to budge. “You
have to tell the people of Port South how to end the curse.”
Her bird hands flit from my shoulder to my cheeks, but her kindness
offers no comfort.
“Camping by the dome, waiting to see if the city will be restored.”
sooner.”
Needle’s fingers move beneath my hand.
get started. Even the fast-setting mortar will need an hour to gain strength.
I must have the first wall built before sunset. You’re wasting my time.”
Needle’s lip trembles and her eyes shine with unshed tears, and I
immediately feel terrible. Poor, tired Needle, my dear friend.
“Please, love,” I say, taking her sweet face in my hands. “You have
been my mother and my sister and my slave and my keeper for too long.
Take your bag and go. Go to Port South and live. Find people you can trust
and tell them the truth. There can still be a future for this planet. All hope is
not lost.”
Except for me.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Gem who’s been lighting those fires by the
stones these past two nights. It’s too late. Even if I let myself believe in
Needle’s excuses for his long absence, there’s no way I can join him in the
desert. If I set foot outside the tower, I’m a dead woman. The soldiers have
been ordered to kill me on sight. Bo warned me of as much this afternoon.
Junjie is determined that I will die before sunset and has enlisted every
remaining citizen of Yuan to his cause.
Save one.
“You’ve been so good to me,” I say. “I want you to live and be
happy.”
the pack we’ve filled with food and clothes and all of my jewels. No need
for them to be buried along with me, not when they could help Needle get
settled in her new home. I’m not sure how the people of Port South treat
their damaged people, but I know a rich mute woman has a better chance
than a penniless one.
handled me.
What would I have done without her?
“Good-bye,” I whisper, eyes filling as I stand and hug her tightly. After
a moment, she moves out of my arms and down the stairs without a pause
in her step, without looking back.
I tell myself I’m glad. And then I cry the tears I’ve refused to cry all
day, but only for a minute. There isn’t time to waste. When my brief cry is
over, I wipe my nose on my less-than-fresh overalls and get to work. It
doesn’t take long to lay the first row of stones. The quick-drying mortar is
already mixed and ready. By the time my tears have dried on my cheeks, I
have the beginnings of my wall.
Unfortunately, beginnings are not the same as endings.
I’m not even close to an ending when I hear footsteps on the stairs.
Heavy steps, two pairs of boots, two men’s voices arguing in harsh whispers
as they circle around to the top of the tower. When they reach the last
stair, Junjie pauses, clearly surprised to see me and my half wall.
“What is this, Isra?” Junjie’s eyes are sad, but not nearly as sad as his
son’s.
“I tried to stop him,” Bo says from his place behind his father. “I
wanted you to have a few more hours.”
A few more hours. Then he means to do it, to help his father kill me.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. I can’t have failed, not when I’m so
close.
“This doesn’t have to be painful,” Junjie says, holding out his hand.
“You can still change your mind and make your death a meaningful gift to
your city.”
“It’s no gift. Not for you or Bo or anyone else.” I back away, my
trowel falling to the floor with a dull thud, smattering mortar across my
bare feet. “This city is built on evil. It has to end with me,” I say, voice rising
until it rings with desperation.
“You will give your blood, or we will take it,” Junjie says, as stern as
he’s been with me since I was a little girl. “This city will stand and prosper
and flourish for another seven hundred years. You know this is the way
things are done in Yuan.”
And the way they will always be done. Nothing I say now will change
that. Nothing I do will accomplish anything but putting off the inevitable.
Escape is impossible, but still, I turn and run. I skid into my room and slam
the door behind me, throwing the lock seconds before Junjie throws his
weight against the door.
I back away from the trembling wood, hands shaking at my sides.
I won’t let him take my death. It’s the only thing I have left, the only
thing that matters. My death will be mine. I will have my revenge against
this city and the monster beneath the ground so eager for my blood, and I
will finally, finally,
Stones tumble from the wall walks, making skittering sounds beneath the
moaning of the buckling metal that once fused the glass to the rock.
Bizarrely shaped Smooth Skins unlike any I encountered during my
captivity, partial mutants that I assume are the Banished that Isra spoke of,
and a few starving animals stream away from the once-healthy city in a
seemingly endless ribbon across the desert. The last of them emerged from
the Desert Gate less than an hour ago.
Isra was not among them. But I didn’t expect her to be. There’s a
reason the city is crumbling to pieces. Isra is gone.
mountains that brought me back to Yuan from the wilds where I had lost
myself for months.
Singing drowns out the terrible thoughts. Sometimes I imagine I’m
singing to Herem, the son I held for the first time the day I lifted him onto
his funeral pyre. Sometimes I imagine Father singing along in the deep,
steady voice of my childhood, banishing from my memory the confused
whimpers of his last days.
By the time I returned, Father no longer knew me. He called me by
his brother’s name. He asked where our sisters were. He smiled and told
stories about his new mate, as if he were a young man and he and Mother
just married. He cried like a child, begging me to bring a light into the hut
because he was afraid of the dark.
He died in his sleep a week after I returned. I never got to say
good-bye to the man I remembered.
Gare blamed me for that, too. He blamed me for Father’s broken
mind. He blamed me for the twenty dead before I brought the food. He