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.
tongue
muscle invading my mouth, but another part of me is … fluttering.
Something stirs inside me. Something urges me to tilt my head and move
my lips, to dart my own tongue out—quick as a wink—for a taste.
Salty. Sweet. Hint of cabbage. Something familiar in the midst of all
the unfamiliar feelings that are making my skin warm and my insides as hot
as the Monstrous man’s flesh.
I pull back, heart beating too fast. “We should go to the cells. The
monster might have revealed the cure.”
“We should, but if we die tonight, I—”
“No one’s going to die,” I say with more confidence than I feel.
“Come with me.” I start down the path, but stop after only a few steps. I’ve
never been to the cells. I’ve never dared go that deep into the city proper.
I hold out a hand. “Guide me. Hurry.”
“Yes, my lady.” A second later, his arm is under mine. It’s strong and
densely muscled, but the bare skin at his wrist is as soft as all the skin I’ve
felt in my life. Much,
that lurk beneath the surface? I’m obviously not sufficiently tainted to be
sent to the Banished camp, but even the slightest sign of mutation is
reviled. From what I’ve overheard, a whole citizen would rather die than
marry someone with Monstrous features, no matter how mildly they might
manifest.
.
The thought banishes the last of the tingling sensation from my body,
expelling it like a fish bone. I lift my chin, holding my head high as we move
swiftly toward the city proper. I do my best not to think about dying with
the taste of this stranger on my lips.
hold the air in my lungs.
The soldier pats my rough hand with his softer one. “My name is Bo.
I’ll stay with you until the healers come. My father would want that.”
“Your father?”
“Junjie,” he says, his voice dipping and sliding on the last part. That’s
why he sounds familiar. Junjie’s son. “My father’s spoken of me?”
“No. I didn’t know he had a son.”
“Oh.” The word is a stone plunking sadly into the water.
“But he doesn’t speak to me often,” I say, feeling a
he’s only at the tower to steal my father away on business.”
“Yes. The king … I …” He sighs, a pained sound that sets fretful things
stirring in my stomach.
“What about the king?”
“Nothing.” He walks faster. “Your wounds need treatment.”
“No. Tell me. What were you going to say?”
“I can’t,” he whispers. “Your health is the most important thing.”
“I feel fine.” I do. The scratches still sting, but the feverish sensation
is gone. I’m no healer, but it doesn’t
makes me wonder …
Has my slight mutation made me immune to the creature’s venom,
or … could the texts about the poison in Monstrous claws be wrong? Was
the Monstrous lying when he said I’d die without his help, saying whatever
he had to say in order to escape to the river?
“The river.” My hand tightens on Bo’s arm. “The Monstrous wanted
me to take him to the caverns where the underground river flows. That
must be how they—”
“We know,” he interrupts, making me sputter. I can’t remember the
last time I was interrupted. Have I
three other creatures. Their hair was damp when we captured them. My
father guessed where they’d come from. There are guards in place now. No
more Monstrous will get into the city tonight.”
“Did you kill the others?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer. The
Monstrous are terrifying, but they also have language and pain. They aren’t
the complete savages Baba and Junjie have made them out to be. There’s a
chance we might be able to make peace with them.
“Not yet.” Even in those two small words, his bloodlust is clear.
“They speak our language,” I say gently. “They might not be as
savage as we’ve thought.”
Bo’s muscles flex beneath my hand. “They’re worse. They’re devils.”
“Devils or not, it doesn’t make sense to kill them if we don’t have to.
It will only make things worse for the city.” I think of the Monstrous man,
how he endured my fingers roaming his face. He could have killed me, but
he didn’t. He showed mercy. How can we do anything but offer the same?
“It will be up to you to decide, of course.” Bo’s voice is stiff. “My
queen.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap, wishing I didn’t need his arm to guide
me. I’d prefer
I am?
I … am.
The ground turns against me, and I trip over the raised edge of a
paving stone. Bo catches me and holds me up by the elbow. His hand is
larger than I thought. It circles my bone, making me feel like a child, but I’m
not a child.
I am queen. I …
That means …
“Baba …” There isn’t enough breath in me to finish the question.
This can’t be true. Baba was with me this morning. We had breakfast
together, sat on the balcony and talked about the harvest festival and made
plans for our private celebration after his duties in the city center were
finished. He agreed to allow Needle to make him a hat for the party. He
laughed one of his rare, light laughs and asked me to play him a song on the
harp. He was so alive.
He
burn and burn. The pyre spits sparks at stars crackling in a cold night sky,
and fire sizzles through skin, bound for bone, and I am alone with the pain.
More alone than I’ve ever been.
Why has my family done this? Is it because I failed them? Is it—?
A girl’s voice startles me awake. “I know you speak our language,”
she says. “Answer!”
My eyes creep open. The night sky becomes a stone ceiling streaked
with green, but the burning feeling stays. It’s coming from my legs. Pain.
Fever. Shredded muscles screaming. Blood sticky on my skin.
Why? What has—?
“Answer!” the girl shouts, making me flinch.
It comes back in a rush: The woman-girl-princess, the soldier. His
spear. Failure. The death of the Desert People on my back, to carry for
however long I live.
The memories fan the fever flames. I’ve had fevers before, but
nothing like this. I grit my teeth and turn my head. The greens and reds
pulse and bleed. Black slashes like claw marks slide back and forth before
my eyes. It takes a moment for the marks to still, another moment to
understand what they are.
Bars. A cage.
“Don’t pretend to be ignorant.” A gray blur behind the black slashes.
My throbbing eyes strain, pulling the blur into focus.
It’s the princess in her baggy gray clothes, trembling in front of
another set of bars. Behind them, my brother, Gare, stands as still as the
stone walls, tall and strong in the face of her interrogation, though his
cheek is split open and his eye swollen shut.
“Tell me!” she shouts, stepping closer to him.
“No, my queen.” A man—shorter than the princess, but with broad
shoulders and the hard face of a leader—reaches for the girl’s arm and pulls
her back. “You’re too close.”
She turns, and I see her face. It is red and puffy; her cheeks and nose
are wet. “Junjie. Please. Help me.” On the last word her features crumple,
her eyes squeezing shut and water leaking from behind her lids. More
magic. I’ve never seen anything like it. I blink, and her face swims like the
air above a fire.
away from the flesh. I shiver until my teeth knock with a dull
of the Desert People, not the Smooth Skins, so it must be—
“Gem? Can you hear me, boy?”
fat and slow. I’m dying. I know it. My body feels cut in half—the top made
of ice, the bottom still hot, scattered with knots full of poison.
“Gem, if you can hear me …” He draws a ragged breath. “You are our
hope. Remember what we came for. Leave a message at the gathering
stones if you’re able. We’ll come back for you if we can.”
Come back? Where are they going? Have they found a way to
escape?
“If not, you must finish—” A long, hollow scrape interrupts him.
“Silence in the cell,” a voice booms in the Smooth Skin language.
Father ignores the warning. “Bring life to our people. Save them,
Gem. You—”
“I said silence.” There’s another scrape, and then footsteps and the
clang of metal on metal. “Bring the darts!” Another man answers, and more
footsteps fill the room, and my father is still shouting, but somewhere
beneath it all, I swear I hear Gare growl that he should be the one to stay
behind, that he doesn’t need Smooth Skin words to claim Smooth Skin lives.
I try to tell him he’s right, to confess my weakness, to tell father I’m
dying and it’s too late, but I’m already floating away from my body. Up, up,
up, until I look down at the slab of meat that housed my spirit, down from
the ceiling where the air is silent and peaceful.
I want to keep going. I want to leave my corpse to cool on the stone,
but I worry.…
Will I be able to reach the land of my ancestors if I die here? Without
a funeral fire or the songs of the Desert People singing me into the night?
Or will I stay in this hole, a lost spirit, haunting the Smooth Skins for the rest
of time?
They deserve a haunting, but I don’t want to be the spirit to do it.
I am weak. How could I have ever thought myself strong?
My heart
my body. To the knocking of my teeth, and the sound of my father crying
out in pain as he’s shot. When the blackness comes again, I’m grateful.
In and out. In and out.
Days—maybe weeks—pass in a haze. My feverish body is moved
from the stone slab to a pallet so soft, I’m sure I’m dreaming it. It cushions
me like a cloud. A blanket made of whispers covers my body. Gentle fingers
pry open my lips and pour bitter liquid down my throat. I swallow. I don’t
care if it’s poison. I sleep. I don’t care if I wake. I’m ready to die. I don’t
want to live or think or dream anymore.
The dreams are the worst. Even when the sick heat in my legs fades, I
still dream of flame, of a pyre where I burn forever to pay for failing my
people.
I am more than shamed. I loathe myself.
“Father …” The sound of my own voice startles me awake. I open my
eyes wide, but immediately slide them half-closed again. It’s bright in this
room. Sun-filled. I never thought I’d see the sun again. I never thought I’d
see
blind eyes staring through me. “Are you awake?” Her voice is different than
I remember. Emptier. She looks different, too.