Cruel Beauty

“Is that not so, sister?”

I wanted to shout, You don’t understand!—but every word she had said was true. People were dying every day, and I hadn’t minded if they kept on dying, so long as the one person I wanted stayed alive. Even though he was the one person who least deserved it.

In the end, all I could do was stare at her and whisper, “Yes.”

“You know he’s a monster,” she said gently. “However much you think you love him, you still know. Maybe he is enslaved, but if he really hated what he was doing, he could have killed himself any time.”

I shook my head, remembering how he had healed from the darkness. “I’m not sure they would let him die—”

“Am I telling the truth?”

“Yes,” I said helplessly.

She laid a hand on my cheek. “I’ve heard the stories about him. I don’t blame you for being beguiled. But if you do not help me, I will never forgive you.” Her lips curved in a su

My nails bit into my palms. She had every right to fling my own words back in my face, and she was probably telling the truth, as I had not.

“He trusts me,” I said. “You know how the gods judge traitors.”

“You must betray one of us. I suppose which one you pick depends on whom you love the most.”

I looked at her. She wanted me to break my promise with Ignifex, to betray him after he had given me absolute trust, to kill the only person who had ever loved me and asked nothing in return.

She was my only sister, the living image of my mother, and the person I had hurt the most when of all the people in the world she deserved it least. She wanted me to avenge ten thousand murdered souls and save all Arcadia from the terror of demons.

I remembered the screams echoing from Father’s study. I remembered huddling next to Astraia when she couldn’t sleep for fear the shadows would look at her. I remembered silently swearing, I will end this.

That oath, too, surely must be kept.

“Nyx.” Astraia cradled my face in her hands. “Please.”

I should have known, I thought dully. Why did I think that I would ever get to keep what I loved?

Why should I think that my love was more important than all Arcadia?

I gripped her hands and whispered, “Yes.”

Our fingers wove together. I felt like there was ice jammed into my chest.

“Swear to me,” she said, “by the love you bear me and our mother, by the gods above and the river Styx below, that you will destroy the Gentle Lord, rescue the last prince, and save us all.”

My heart thumped. I tried to speak, but my throat tightened. Memories of Ignifex flooded over me: His lips against mine. His hands as he slid the ring onto my finger. His voice in the darkness as he said, Please.

But he didn’t matter any more than I mattered. We were both wicked people, and we were both the ones who had to be sacrificed.

“I swear.” The words came out in a whisper. Then I swallowed and ground them out. “I swear by my love for you and our mother, by the gods above and the river Styx below, that I will destroy the Gentle Lord, rescue the last prince, and save us all.”

“And?” Astraia promptly gently.

“And . . . and by the creek in back of the house.”

She flung her arms around me. “Thank you.”

I pressed my face into her shoulder. My eyes stung with tears, and I expected that any moment the cold hate for her would wash over me. But all I felt was emptiness, until I realized that I had finally gotten my wish: I had learnt to love my sister without bitterness. All it had cost me was everything.

It occurred to me that Ignifex would find this fate both amusing and appropriate. Then I cried, my whole body shaking with sobs, and Astraia held me and stroked my back until I quieted.

It didn’t take Father and Aunt Telomache long to find us, but we bolted the door and refused to come out. Father pounded on the door and commanded Astraia—he must have known I was a lost cause—to open it.

“We’re plotting the death of the Gentle Lord!” Astraia called back. “Go away!”

I laughed weakly. “You grew a sharp tongue rather quickly.”

“Twins are always alike, don’t you know?” Her voice sounded almost affectionate, and I laughed again; then her next words caught me like a blow across the face. “Why did you go to the graveyard?”

I remembered my cheek leaned against Ignifex’s shoulder, his arm around my waist, and his lips as he kissed me, fiercely tender. It felt like worms crawling over my skin to remember that Astraia had watched it all, hating both of us.

But I owed her an answer.

“Because I was always a terrible daughter. And . . . in that house, I became a worse one.”

Astraia glanced at me sharply, and I could see the words Because he made you in her eyes, but she was mercifully silent.

I went on, “I wanted, just once in my life, to do something right for her.”

Astraia puckered her lips. “Why did he go with you?” she asked, apparently missing—or accepting—the implication that I had never, in all my life, loved our mother properly.

“I asked him.”

Her nostrils flared. “So he could laugh at her tomb?”

My hands clenched. “He drank the funeral libation with me,” I growled, then couldn’t help adding, “You must have seen; you were spying long enough.”

Astraia stood. “He could pour out all his blood in libation and it wouldn’t pay what he owes us.”

“I didn’t say it did.” I stared at the floor, remembering his dead brides lying in the darkness and the dead sorrow on Astraia’s face when I left her. Neither of us could pay for our sins.

“I suppose by now he trusts you?” She looked down and I felt compelled to meet her eyes.

You can trust me, I had said, and he had whispered, I do.

I nodded wordlessly.

“That’s a good thing. Because after everything, he deserves to know what it feels like to be betrayed.” Her smile was like broken glass. “Someday you’ll be free of him, and then you will agree.”

The next instant I was on my feet, my heart pounding in my ears.

“Of course he’s evil and unforgivable.” My voice felt like it was coming from the far end of a long tu

I clamped my mouth shut. My skin crawled with shame at having revealed what I dared to want. But as I stared at Astraia, hands trembling, the cold wave of hatred still did not find me, did not turn me into a monster who would say or do anything.

Astraia’s face was unreadable. She reached out slowly; I tensed, but she only stroked my hair, and I closed my eyes. Without my hate, I felt bereft.

“He’s going to die,” she said in my ear. “So I’m not discontent.”

“Then can we get on with the pla

“Of course. Tell me what you learnt. Besides kindness.”

So I told her my story. Some of it.

I told her how the darkness tried to eat Ignifex alive, how he needed rows of candles or at least my arms to survive the night. But I didn’t tell her how I had left him helpless in the hallway or how he had said, “Please,” because I knew she would smile at the thought of his suffering and I couldn’t bear that. I told her how I found all the hearts—including the Heart of Air—but though I blushed enough for her to guess, I didn’t tell her what we’d done there.

Most of all, I was careful not to tell her how long I had dallied between finding the Heart of Air and coming to see her. She knew I loved the enemy of our house, but she didn’t need to know how much I had wanted to forget her. Or how easy it had been.