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I watch the girl’s face— my face—crumple in the reflection, see the
way her upper lip pulls up, the way the cords on her slender throat stand
out garishly from her skin, and her large nose turns red as she begins to cry,
and I am momentarily comforted.
I can be ugly, after all. I can be as wretched-looking as I feel.
Gem turns me gently and pulls me into his arms. I fist my hands
against his chest, bury my face between them, and sob as if the world has
come to an end. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles into my hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t
tell you.”
I shake my head, my forehead rubbing against the stiff cotton of his
shirt, but I can’t talk. I don’t blame Gem. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d
told me. I wouldn’t have believed him. I was certain I knew the truth, that I
knew it all. At least when it came to the who and why and what of Isra.
But I knew nothing. Nothing. I am worse than the emperor without
clothes. I am the biggest fool in the world.
“You were right,” I say, forcing out the words. “I am stupid.”
“You’re not. You were ignorant, and you didn’t stay that way on your
own.”
He’s right. I didn’t become this fool alone. Baba made me this way.
My father hid me away in this tower, and provided me with a mute maid
incapable of telling me about myself. By the time Needle and I learned to
communicate, I was older and unwavering in my beliefs, the reality of my
world set so firmly in my mind that Needle’s compliments trickled in
through my fingers and out through both ears. She was a servant, she was
obligated to flatter me. I never imagined …
I couldn’t have imagined. If I had, if I for one second had thought I
was nearly as whole as any other citizen of Yuan, then I would have known
there was no excuse for any of it. No excuse for keeping me prisoner. Or for
not, at the very least, allowing me visitors aside from the rare music tutor,
sworn to silence about her time in the tower. If my father had been worried
only about my safety, he still could have brought friends. Girls my age to
play with when I was younger, to gossip and make music with when I was
older. I didn’t have to be alone. I didn’t have to grow up feeling like a
disgraceful secret.
But I did. No matter how much time Father spent with me, no matter
how many times we laughed together or sang together or how many times
he said he loved me, I always believed he was ashamed of the tainted girl
who was all that remained of his family.
But I’m not tainted. I’m not. And as Gem said, there might be some
way to treat my skin if I ask the healers for help. But Father never called the
healers, even when it became obvious that Needle’s honey baths and
creams weren’t making me better. I didn’t imagine it was possible to get
better, not until Gem came to the city.
“I don’t understand,” I say, fists tightening until my nails sting my
palms. “Why did my father do this? Why did he keep me here? Away from
almost everyone? Why did he let me think …”
“I don’t know.”
I shake my head again, struggling to breathe past the rage burning
white-hot inside me. I’m devastated and hurt and betrayed, but most of all,
I’m furious. I want to hit something. Someone. I want to bloody them. Him.
A sense memory rises from somewhere deep inside me. My hands
clawed, my nails torn, and blood—some mine, some not—hot and sticky on
my stinging fingertips. The memory has the cold, silent terror of all my
earliest memories, of those days when I was newly blind, but somehow I
know it’s older. It’s something I’ve forgotten. Until now. Until suddenly it’s
all right to remember flying at my father in a rage and raking my fingers
down his face.
But why was I so angry? Did I know that what he was doing—holding
my mother and me captive—was wrong? Did I try to fight back, only to give
up and give in and forget? To trick myself into believing a story that made it
okay to love the only person I had left?
“If he’d remarried, then that woman would have been the offering?”
Gem asks.
I sniff, and lift my head, slowly. It feels heavier than ever. It weighs
more than all the rocks in the desert. “And if they’d had children, one of
them would have been the next king or queen. I would have been safe. The
crown would have reverted back to me only if they’d had no heirs. I would
have had, at the very least, more time. More … life.”
Gem curses beneath his breath as he tucks the hairs stuck to my
cheeks back into the mess from which they came. The lovely mess. I am a
lovely mess now. That should matter, I think, but it doesn’t.
“I know I shouldn’t wish for someone else’s death,” I say, sounding
broken. “And I don’t. Not really. I just wish …”
“That your father had wished for it,” Gem finishes, proving once
again that he is clever and human and privy to at least some of the secrets
of my heart.
I smooth the wrinkles from his shirt, trace the damp circles with my
fingers where my tears wet the fabric. “I wish he’d told me it wasn’t easy to
decide I would die for my city.”
“He never said anything?”
I shake my head. “And he knew what I assumed. About myself. I told
him. He’s the only one I talked to … until you.” I look up, wishing Gem were
the only one I had ever told.
Gem’s eyes narrow, and for a moment I see the terrifying creature I
encountered that first night in the garden. I know he would rip my father
open right now if the other Monstrous hadn’t done the job for him already.
“He’s the monster you should have been protected from,” Gem says.
Tears fill my eyes again, but I refuse to let them fall. “He was my
father,” I say, voice lurching as I try to regain control. “He was all I had. He
taught me everything I know. I don’t …” I take a deep breath that comes
out a terrifying little laugh. I don’t know that laugh. I don’t know myself.
“Who am I now?” I ask. “I don’t know that girl in the mirror. I don’t
know how to be her. I don’t know how to think her thoughts or—”
Gem lays his hand on my cheek, so gently, I can barely feel his touch.
“You are Isra. And now you’ll be the person you would have been without
the lies. His lies, or mine.” His eyes swim with regret. If Gem hadn’t told me
it was impossible for Desert People to produce tears, I’d think he was about
to cry.
“I don’t blame you.” I put my hand over his, pressing his warm palm
closer to my cheek. “I think only good things about you. Except when you’re
making me angry. Or being bossy. You’re very bossy.”
“You have to stop this,” he says, his expression grimmer than ever,
refusing to let me tease us out of this terrible moment. “You shouldn’t have
to give your life. No one should.”
My hand falls to my side. “This is the way things are, the way they’ve
always been,” I say, acutely aware of how exhausted I am. I’m a rag that’s
been wrung out, leaving only a few drops of me left behind.
“This is dark magic,” Gem says. “Blood is bad enough, but death …”
“One death, to preserve thousands of lives. Without that one death,
the crops would fail, the dome would fall, and the city would crumble,” I
say, crossing to the bench at the foot of my bed and collapsing gratefully
onto its cushioned seat. “Every man, woman, and child living here would
die.” I run my fingers over the needlepoint flowers embroidered on the
fabric beneath me. Roses. Fitting.
“I can’t let that happen,” I whisper. “I will remain queen, and when