Cruel Beauty

Every day I went to look in the mirror and see Astraia, and most nights I visited the Heart of Water at least briefly, to walk on the water and watch the lights. Usually Shade was there too; there were not many things he was permitted to say, but we would sit in companionable silence. He often drew the lights down; sometimes he gave them to me, sometimes wove them into lacy patterns around us, in the air or trembling on the surface of the water. I watched and said very little. At those times, I could almost forget my mission, and I felt no hatred festering in my heart. It was the only peace I’d ever known, and I didn’t want to lose it.

I desperately wanted not to lose it. So I never kissed him again. Occasionally he touched my wrist or cheek, and then I wanted to twine and lock our fingers, to kiss him and sink down into the water and be lost in perfect azure peace. But I didn’t know that he would want it. And every other time I’d loved somebody, it had twisted in my heart. I couldn’t risk it with him.

Instead I sat still beside him, my heart beating fast but my face as calm as his, and only darted him sideways glances. A hundred times I wished I could ask him, Why did you kiss my lips? Why don’t you kiss me again? But the words always stuck in my throat: they were too needy, too selfish, too foolish—and how could I ask for more, when he had already given me so much?

I still wasn’t sure that I loved him. Love—the kind that was holy to Aphrodite—was not something I had ever allowed myself to think about much. If you desired someone, if he comforted you, if you thought he might leech the poison out of your heart, was that love? Or only desperation?

Whenever the knot of emotions in my chest grew too tight, I jumped up and practiced racing from the Heart of Water to my bedroom at a dead run. When the time came, I would have to write all the sigils quickly; as soon as one heart failed, Ignifex would surely notice and try to stop me.

I got faster. I learnt to race through the hallways and pick all the right doors back to my bedroom while barely even looking, and I arrived still breathing easily. And once I was in my bedroom—far enough from any of the hearts that I didn’t have to worry about an accidental reaction—I practiced the sigils, training myself to draw them not just accurately but swiftly, until the motions became like a dance.

But no matter how I searched, I never found a trace of the other hearts.

Until one morning, five weeks after I arrived, I tried a new door and walked into the vestibule where I had first met Ignifex. And it occurred to me that I was still a virgin, and my virgin knife—still never used to cut a living thing—was right here, albeit embedded twelve feet up in the wall.

I had never believed in the Rhyme before. And when Ignifex had taken the knife away from me, he had treated it like a joke, not the only weapon that could destroy him.

But I suspected my husband would treat being cast into the abyss of Tartarus as a joke. And while he was happy to let me attack him with all the cutlery at the di

It took me the whole morning to get to the knife. The house did not seem to contain any kind of ladder, so I had to find furniture suitable for stacking, and that day I couldn’t find a single room with tables, only chairs and stools. It was a rather precarious-looking pyramid that I built, but it held when I climbed it, and finally I was able to grip the hilt of my knife again.

I gri

I tugged at the knife. It didn’t move. I tugged again, harder, and then there was the tiniest bit of give. With a grunt, I gave the knife a sudden jerk—and it came out as if it had never been stuck. I wobbled a moment, then fell over backward—

Into a pair of arms. The shock was enough to daze me for a moment, and in that moment Ignifex set me on my feet, plucked the knife from my hands, hid it somewhere on his person, and raised an eyebrow at me.

“I’m starting to wonder if I should ever leave you alone,” he said mildly, dropping a hand to my shoulder.

I stiffened.

“Then don’t,” I said. “Stay right here and never strike another bargain.”

“Oh, you’re that desperate to be with me?” He leaned forward, his hand still on my shoulder. “If you wanted a kiss, you only needed to ask.”

His touch was light, but I felt it as precisely as the lines of a lithograph, with my body for the paper.

“I’m that desperate to stop you,” I said, but the desire for him was back as if I’d never seen what he was capable of doing.

“Desperate enough to kiss me? You are in a terrible state.”

It’s only because he looks like Shade, I thought, but in that moment I knew the words were a lie: this laughing, crimson-eyed creature might wear Shade’s face, but I wanted him for none of the same reasons.

I realized suddenly that his coat was open, and I could see the hollow at the base of his throat but also the leather belts hung with keys that crisscrossed his chest. And Ignifex wasn’t the only one who could turn people’s words against them.

“You boast to me every day about the people you kill,” I said, trying to gauge the location of the keys while keeping my eyes fixed on his. There were two hung high, close to his neck. “Of course I’m desperate.”

“I don’t kill people,” he said easily. “They ask for favors, and I grant them. If they don’t realize the sort of price required by my power, it’s on their own heads.”

Long ago, Astraia once dared me to climb onto the roof. I felt the same way now as I had then, knotting my handkerchief to the weathervane: dizzy and alive, the world swooping around me, my body made of sparks dancing to my heartbeat.

It was monstrous to want him. But to kiss him for the sake of saving Arcadia—that wasn’t entirely evil, was it?

“Then,” I said, “suppose I did ask you?”

“Then,” he said, “this.”

And he closed his lips over mine.

He was my enemy. He was evil. He wasn’t even human. I should have been disgusted, but just like the last time, I couldn’t help myself any more than water could stop itself ru

It was nothing like kissing Shade. That had been like a dream that slowly enfolded me; this was like a battle or a dance. He took possession of my mouth and I took possession of his, and we held each other in a perilous, perfect balance like the circulation of the planets.

The bell tolled in the distance. I barely noticed it—then Ignifex let go of me. I wobbled backward until I hit the wall.

“Some poor soul has called for me.” He bowed. “Until later, my wife.”

Still leaning against the wall, I glared after him as he left, scrubbing my lips with the back of my hand. It was shameful that his kiss could affect me like this. It was humiliating that he knew it.

Though I could not stifle the thought, Perhaps it won’t be so bad if he ever claims his rights.

Then I looked down at the two keys I had stolen. One of them was golden, its hilt shaped into a roaring lion’s head; the other was plain steel. My lips curved in a grin of my own. Let him have his little victory. I was about to go exploring.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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