Cruel Beauty

At the opposite end of the room stood Ignifex, his coat shredded, cradling the box in his hands.

No. His eyes were blue and human. It was the last prince who now stared at me across the room, his face pale and still.

“Nyx,” he breathed, then flung up a hand. Shadows seized me and pi

“No!” I shouted. “You can’t open the box—you’ll be locked in there forever—”

“Because my bargain will be undone, and all Arcadia will go free. No one else will ever be devoured by the Children of Typhon. You wanted that, right?” He walked toward me slowly. “Once upon a time, I wanted that too. I have to want it again.” His voice was soft and sad like Shade’s, but then he cracked a smile that was purely Ignifex. “Or die trying.”

He was before me now, the box still in his hands.

“But you won’t die,” I whispered.

“And once time is unwound, neither will your mother.” Still that soft, sad, implacable voice.

“Then I won’t be born.”

“I saw your father when he was desperate.” That smile again. “I’m sure he’ll think of something. Maybe it will be a better plan this time.”

In an Arcadia that had never been sundered, never ruled by a Gentle Lord or ravaged by demons, my mother and Damocles and a thousand other people would be alive. Maybe Astraia and I would be too, and if we were, then surely we would love each other without bitterness. It would be every one of my childhood dreams come true. But—

“I won’t even remember you,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said, leaning forward over the box. He slid a hand up my cheek, clenched his fingers into my hair, and kissed me.

It was an awkward, desperate kiss; he pulled on my hair ’til it hurt, my arms ached from being pi

Then he stepped away from me again. And I couldn’t stop him.

“Thank you,” he said, “for trying to save me.”

“Wait!” I snapped. “You said, they said, if I guess your name then you’re free. Right?”

He took another step back. “I threw away my name when I made that bargain. Nobody can ever find it again.”

I remembered the tattered manuscripts in the library. Every name had been burnt out of them.

“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered. “I know you.” He flipped the box open. Light streamed out, and I screamed, “I know you!” as the light filled every corner of the room.

Then there was darkness.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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23

I tried. As the darkness closed over me, I fought to remember the name of my husband.

I fought to remember the name of someone I had loved. I fought to remember—

What?

I was alone, and I had no hands to clench around my memories. I had no memories, no name, only the knowledge (deeper and colder than any darkness) that I had lost what I loved more than life.

And then I forgot I had lost it.

Time unwound. Prices were unpaid.

The world changed.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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24

I woke up crying.

Not sobbing, as if my heart were newly broken. I lay on my back and gasped the quiet, hopeless tears of absolute certainty. I felt like I was afloat on an ocean of endless grief. A memory of my dream flickered through my head: I had been underwater, struggling to swim—no, I had been lost among shadows—there had been a pale face, or maybe a bird—

“Nyx. What’s wrong?” Astraia’s voice shattered the memories. She stood by my bed, eyebrows drawn together with concern. The pale blue light of early morning glinted on her hair and glimmered through the gauzy ruffles of her white nightgown.

“Nothing.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes, ashamed that she had caught me crying. I did not deserve compassion, from her of all people—

No. That thought was from the dream, and as soon as I recognized it, then it was gone. I tried to remember, but the images were lost. The feelings, too, were sliding away between my fingers; I knew I had been utterly desolate, but now I only remembered the concept of the feeling: like looking at snow through the window, instead of shivering in the icy wind.

“Nyx?”

I shook my head. “Just a dream.”

Her mouth puckered sympathetically. “I don’t like today either.”

With a huff, I got out of bed. “It’s not today,” I said. A bird chirped outside the window, and I twitched. Usually I loved bird-song, but today the noise scraped across my skin. “You’re the one who cries at the graveyard. I just had a dream.”

Astraia wavered back from me. “You’re not upset about tonight.”

I threw open the curtains, squinting at the morning sunlight that cut across my face. “No,” I said.

She caught me from behind in a wild embrace. “Good,” she said in my ear. “Because I wouldn’t let you get out of it. You’re getting married tonight, come fire or water.”

—fire from the death of water—

The words echoed through my mind, and for once they did not remind me of my Hermetic lessons, but left a vague impression of doors and hallways, a secret place with swirling lights and firelight dancing in someone’s eyes—

Another dream, surely, and the memory was gone as soon as I reached for it. I pushed the window open and sucked in a breath of cold morning air. The birdsong was much louder now: a hundred sparrows perched and fluttered in the birch trees that had turned autumn-gold, and the sky above was bright, infinite blue without a single cloud.

“I’m getting married,” I whispered, and could not stop staring at that blue sky until Astraia pulled me away to get dressed.

I could remember Mother, just a little, from before the sickness took her. But I could not remember celebrating the Day of the Dead with her. The first graveyard visit I remembered was the first one after her death. The memory was in fragments like needles: the stiff black mourning dress scratching at my neck; Astraia’s endless, hopeless sniffling; the bright, unseasonable sunlight that cast knife-sharp shadows across the gravestone and its crisp new inscription.

“THISBE TRISKELION,” my father had carved, and underneath, “OMNES UNA MANET NOX ERGO AMATA MANE ME.”

One night awaits us all; therefore, beloved, wait for me.

It was a line from an old poem about sundered lovers, one awaiting the other on the far side of the river Styx. I had seen the words a hundred times before, yet as I stared at them today—edges now soft from the passage of years—they felt new . . . and ominous. I couldn’t shake the image of writhing shadows closing over a helpless pale face.

“Nyx!”

I blinked. Astraia held out the bottle of wine, her eyebrows drawn together. I took it quickly and gulped dark red wine, rich and spicy. It reminded me of wood smoke on cold autumn air, though today—like that first Day of the Dead—was strangely warm.

Astraia shot me a look but said nothing. She never said more than she had to at the graveyard; none of us did, but because she was the family chatterbox, her silence was especially grim. At least she was no longer glowering at Father and Aunt Telomache, as she had last year when they were just engaged. That had been a strange time: I was not used to being the more cheerful and compliant daughter.

“Nyx, darling,” said Aunt Telomache. Her hand rested on the swell of her stomach—she was always fondling her belly, any moment she had a hand free, as if she couldn’t possibly believe she was so lucky as to be bearing Father’s child. “Won’t you recite the next hymn?”