Of Beast and Beauty

of them, more than a dozen. Twenty. Thirty. Fires all around, and at the

center of them, an ancient-looking Monstrous man shaking with grief. His

shoulders convulse, his chest heaves, but no tears spill from his eyes. The

Monstrous can’t cry, but they can obviously feel tremendous pain, pain that

takes over and has its way with a body.

I watch him, feeling his agony as my own, and then suddenly I am

somewhere else, in a time before the fires, standing beside the old man as

he places a shriveled black root into the hands of devastatingly thin

Monstrous people. Old men, young children with distended bellies, boys

Gem’s age with their wide shoulders concave with starvation, girls my age

with glassy-eyed babies clinging to their necks. One of the girls is even

thi

eyes closed and scream as his mother slips the root between his lips.

He’s dead almost instantly.

“No!” Heat floods my face; tears spill from my eyes.

The scene changes again, going back even further, showing

Monstrous men and women gathered around a fire. Their faces flicker with

orange and red from the flames, but their backs are kissed by pale blue

winter moonlight. It’s a night like tonight—it could even be tonight—and

the people are thin, but not dying.

It’s not too late. It’s not too late to help them, to save them. Gem

and I can go into the desert. We can bring food and—

A growl—loud and deep and fierce enough to make the hair on my

arms stand on end—shatters the scene playing behind my eyes. I land back

in my body with a jolt and wrench my neck toward the sound, a relieved

breath already bursting from my lips.

Gem! He’s here. He’ll free me, and together we’ll—

“Ah!” I cry out as the roses jerk me closer to the flower bed, hauling

me over the retaining wall and into their midst, surrounding me with

thorns, crowding my eyes with blossoms fattened on centuries of blood.

TWENTY-THREE

ISRA

RED floods my vision. The smell of rot and metal and bitter herbs

sweeps into my nose. My skin crawls as sharps mean as needles press at

me through my clothes. I squeeze my eyes shut and scream as I cower

closer to the ground.

“Let her go!” Gem shouts. I hear a whistling sound and a muffled

thud as something soft, but heavy, falls to the ground. Before I can turn and

see what’s happened, the roses are moving, their thorns piercing through

my clothes, making me howl like a trapped animal.

“No!” I beg. “They’ll kill me! Don’t touch them!”

“I have to get you out,” Gem says, sounding so fearful and desperate

that I know he cares for me. Now I have to prove I care for him as much.

“You have to go,” I say, panting against the urge to be sick. The pain

is too much, coming from everywhere all at once. “Your tribe. They’re in

trouble.”

“How do you—”

“I saw it. In a vision.”

“A vision.” He lets out a shaking breath. “From the roses? Were

there—”

“Please, Gem. Half your tribe will die if you don’t go.” I grit my teeth,

refusing to whimper, to do anything to make Gem feel compelled to stay

with me. “Needle prepared a pack for you this afternoon. It’s waiting by the

King’s Gate. Take it and go. Now.”

“I won’t leave you,” Gem says, voice breaking. “I can’t.”

“You have to,” I say, and then add silently, But you can come back.

Oh, please come back. Oh please, oh please.

If he comes back … If he cares enough to come back … maybe we can

find a way to end this, to escape from the Dark Heart and make a better life

for both our peoples.

The thorns press deeper, and I can’t keep a soft cry of pain from

escaping my lips.

“Isra … they’re killing you.” His hand finds mine. I can’t turn my head

to see him, but I know he has risked his life to reach out for me. I cling to

him, selfishly needing to touch him one last time.

“They’re not killing me. They’re keeping me here. They know my

thoughts. They know I wanted to go with you.” I close my eyes, memorizing

the feel of his fingers threaded through mine. “They’ll release me when

you’re gone.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” I lie, knowing that Gem will refuse to leave unless I properly

convince him. “They need a willing sacrifice, a suicide. They can’t murder

me,” I say, hoping it will be enough to make Gem go before he’s caught.

“How did you get out of your cell?”

“I broke the lock on the door. After I …” His breath shudders out, and

his grip on my fingers gets tighter. “I saw you coming into the garden and I

tried to call your name, but—I felt something, a terrible magic.”

He has no idea how terrible, and I can’t tell him. Not now.

“There’s no time.” I release his hand, pushing him away. “Go. Run.

Hurry.”

I hear a rustle in the leaves, and when he speaks again, he sounds

farther away. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he says. “If you’re not alive,

I’ll burn this city to the ground. Starting with this garden.” The blossoms

closest to my face rotate on their stalks, moving out of my line of sight as

they turn to Gem.

I lift my head, meeting Gem’s worried eyes through a jumble of

leaves and thorns. I want to tell him how beautiful he is to me; I want to tell

him everything I’ve held back. I want to share everything that’s happened

since he left the tower last night, because only after sharing it with Gem

will it seem real.

I want to tell him that, too, but instead I say, “Please go.” He has to

go. There’s no time. “I’ll watch for you on the wall walk. Every night. Set a

fire by the gathering of stones. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

“You’re bleeding,” he says, throat working. I can see it, even in the

moody blue light of my least favorite moon.

“Don’t forget me,” I whisper. “Please. Don’t forget.”

“I’ll come back,” he says. “If I have to drag my body across the desert.

I swear it. On my life.”

I nod, squeezing my eyes closed to keep the tears at bay. By the time

I open them, he’s gone.

“Let me go,” I whisper to the roses after several long moments have

passed. They’ve gone as still as any plant now, but I know they’re listening.

“You’ve gotten what you wanted.” The Dark Heart clearly wanted Gem to

leave the city. There’s no other explanation for why it showed me the

suffering of the Monstrous out in the desert. It wanted Gem—and the risk

he poses to the continuation of the covenant—removed from Yuan.

But he’ll come back to me. I know it. I haven’t lost yet, not if I gain my

freedom tonight.

“Let me go.” I try to straighten my legs, but the ancient vines lie

heavy and motionless across my thighs. “Let me go! I won’t be held like—”

“What have you done to yourself?” The voice is soft, shocked, and so

unlike Bo’s that I don’t guess who it belongs to until I look up to see him

standing where Gem stood a few moments ago.

“Who were you talking to?” Bo asks again, in that same numb way

that makes me more nervous than his angry voice ever has.

“No one. Myself.” I lick my lips, taste my tears, and shiver despite the

fact that the night is the warmest we’ve had since autumn. Why is Bo here?

How much has he seen?

“The Monstrous is out of his cell, Isra,” Bo says. “Do you know

anything about that?”

“Y-yes,” I stutter, my heart beating faster. “I needed him to take care