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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 she is the one on
her way to a cell. “I’ll miss this.”
“The desert?”
“Well … yes,” she says, sounding surprised. “I will. The wind
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 sort of thing all day. The
closer we get to the dome, the more those moments by the fire seem like a
fever dream. I can’t believe I tasted her, touched her; that I thought I could
reach her with my words. That the real Isra and the real Gem might find a
way to be allies. Maybe more than allies.
But Isra isn’t real. She’s a Smooth Skin. She was raised in an artificial
world built on lies, bought and paid for with the lives of my people. The fact
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
something.”
I grunt.
“It’s true.” She closes her eyes, soaking in the last of the sun’s fading
warmth. “How else would we dream?”
“My people believe some dreams come from the spirit world,” I say.
“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 u
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 could have been an ancestor
dream.”
She turns back to me, abandoning her air drawing. “You think the
woman was one of my ancestors?”
“She could be.” I shrug. “Maybe a grandmother. Or
great-grandmother, since you don’t recognize her face.”
“I never met my grandmother, either,” Isra says. “She died before I
was born.”
“Maybe your grandmother, then. She could be trying to tell you
something.”
“Telling me not to play with fire,” she says, with a ragged laugh.
“Do you have a habit of playing with fire?”
Her lips lift on one side. “I suppose,” she says, voice husky. “In a
ma
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