Cruel Beauty

I picked up his hands. One by one, I kissed his bloody fingers, trying to ignore the smell and taste of blood, and his fingers healed under my lips.

Ignifex did this, I thought as I kissed each fingertip. Ignifex knew how he would suffer and did it to him anyway. He deserves this betrayal. If I could concentrate on just that thought, I might be strong enough.

I kissed his palms and laid down his hands. He looked healed now, but he still had not wakened; so I leaned down and kissed his lips again.

This time he woke with a quick, shuddering intake of breath. He stared up at me, eyes wide and dazed. As I had stared up at him when he betrayed me in the Heart of Fire.

He had been trying to save Arcadia. I was betraying Ignifex for the same reason now.

For a moment his mouth worked soundlessly; then he said, still not quite looking at me, “Are you here . . . to punish me?”

His voice was rough and hoarse, as if from screaming, and my stomach curled. All this time, while I had been delighting in my husband, he had been tortured by the Children of Typhon.

“No.” I grabbed his hand. “No. You’re safe.”

He shuddered and focused on me. “Nyx,” he gasped, and then repeated, “Are you here to punish me?”

“I’m here,” I said unsteadily, “to save you and kill my husband.”

He sat up slowly, wincing, and leaned against the wall. “Thank you.”

I didn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “I had to.”

He met my gaze. “You know.”

“Yes,” I said. “You’re the last prince of Arcadia. My prince. I’m going to save you, and you’re going to save us all.”

“No,” he breathed. “You’re going to save us. I knew you would do it.” And he pulled me into a kiss.

Despite the memory of what he had done, the kiss still rippled through my body. But more than his betrayal lay between us now. I pushed him back, my right hand flat against his chest.

“I’m helping you,” I said, my voice low and clear. I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I stared at the ring glinting on my finger. “I chose you and Arcadia, so I will betray Ignifex. I will destroy him so that you can take back everything he stole. But I love him, not you, and I’m his wife, not yours.”

He let out a gentle breath and took my hand. “Then collect the Children of Typhon, and let’s go find your husband.” He stood, drawing me up with him.

I pulled free. “I never told you about needing them.”

He looked back at me silently.

“You knew what to do all along,” I said, my voice clenching with hopeless fury. Everyone had always known what I needed to do. I had just deluded myself that I could have a happy ending. “Why couldn’t you tell me before I fell in love?”

“I can’t start anything.”

“Aside from throwing me into the fire?”

“Almost anything.” His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered in the tone of contempt I remembered. “I know and can’t act. He acts but knows nothing.”

I blinked. Memory flickered at the edge of my mind: something about a fire, no, a face lit by lamplight—an angry voice—

Then it was gone, and maybe it had been nothing, just a half-remembered dream. And there was no dream that could change what I had to do. As the Kindly Ones had said, while Ignifex had power, Shade was helpless. And Shade was the only one who could save Arcadia.

Grimacing, I stepped to the threshold again. The Children of Typhon waited just a breath away, quivering with anticipation but not attempting to trespass.

Because they knew. They knew I had the ring, and they knew I was preparing them a victim who would last forever.

I reached into the darkness with my right hand. Shadow burned and swirled around my fingers, across my palm. I clenched my teeth, bearing it. After a few moments, my hand still burned and my heart still thudded, but I was no longer quite so dizzy with pain.

“Come to me,” I whispered, and the Children of Typhon pooled in my hands, twisting and shrinking into a tiny seed of darkness, like the pearl at the heart of Pandora’s jar. I closed my fist.

There was still darkness beyond the door, but it was no longer terrible: it was an absence of light and no more.

I turned back to Shade. “Follow me,” I said. My voice seemed very cold and far away.

“That is all I can do,” he said, and again there was that trace of a smile.

With him following silently, I strode back down the hallway. When I came to the door at the other end, I paused and thought of Ignifex. When I imagined his face, my hand throbbed with pain; it felt like the Children of Typhon were trying to claw their way out and devour him.

“Soon,” I muttered at them, laying my free hand on the door handle. Now the thought of my mission only made me feel empty and determined. The cold burn in my hand seemed to have taken away my grief.

Take me to Ignifex, I thought at the door, and pushed it open.

I stepped into my bedroom.

It did not surprise me that he had stayed there in my absence. The racks of burning candles were also as expected. What stopped me on the threshold with shock was the state of the room. Drifts of paper covered the floor: page after half-burned page ripped from the books in library. The silver wallpaper was covered in scribbled charcoal notes. At the foot of my bed crouched Ignifex, shuffling anxiously through the papers.

“What are you doing?” I breathed, and I didn’t have to pretend the bewilderment in my voice.

His head snapped up. “Nyx,” he said, blinking hard. His pupils were hugely dilated. “While you were gone, I started . . . What the Kindly Ones said through you. They said, ‘The name of the light is in the darkness.’ I swore to your mother’s grave that I would try. So I stayed up all night. Almost in darkness. And I almost, I almost remember the voice.” His voice was a wandering, lost thing. “There’s a way to save us. If I can just remember.”

I felt like a cobweb strung across the doorway, trembling in the draft and about to tear if I moved. If I had just waited one more day, tried one ounce harder in all the days before, maybe he would have dared the darkness and already remembered. Maybe he would have found a way to save us all. But now I was oath bound to destroy him.

Maybe he would have just remembered that there was no way to save Arcadia but his destruction. Whatever the truth, it didn’t matter anymore.

He stood, swaying slightly, and then he finally noticed Shade standing behind me.

“What—” he started, but his voice had torn me free. I was across the room in two strides and then I stopped his mouth with a kiss. I locked my arms around him; I felt his shoulder blades and the slight ridge of his spine, and the solid reality of what I was about to destroy nearly undid me.

But if I didn’t destroy him, the last prince would never be whole again. Nobody would save Arcadia. And I had sworn an oath to my sister.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and he went still beneath my hands as if he knew. Then I said loudly, “Break his power,” as I opened my hand.

The Children of Typhon rushed out between my fingers. I clung to him—to hold him down or share his fate, I wasn’t sure—but the shadows slid between our bodies, icy cold, as they wrapped around him. Then they began to drag him away. My grip broke; I scrabbled for purchase and managed for one moment to grasp his wrist—and his hand clutched my wrist in return, his eyes wide with fear—then they ripped him away and slammed him against the wall. My legs gave way, and I collapsed to the floor. It was several heartbeats before I could gather enough strength to look up.

The shadows held Ignifex against the wall; they writhed and clawed at him with a thousand tiny fingers. His whole left side was gone, the ragged edge not bleeding but shredded into mist.

Impossibly, he was still alive. And he smiled the wild, vicious smile that had made me fall in love.