Of Beast and Beauty - Jay Stacey - Страница 47
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the time comes, I will do what queens have always done.”
“Your mother didn’t,” Gem says, the heat in his tone making me look
up to find him pacing the thick carpet in front of Needle’s bed.
“Yes, she did.”
“If she burned in this tower, then how did—”
“She didn’t burn,” I say, stomach lurching. I’ve known the truth for a
long time, but it sits differently now that I know it wasn’t only my mother
who wished me dead but my father, too.
Gem stops pacing, and turns to me. “But you said—”
“She set the fire, but she didn’t burn.”
NINETEEN
ISRA
“SHE …” Gem shakes his head, and keeps shaking it, as if doing so will
cause what I’ve said to make sense sooner or later.
“She set the fire.” I lift my hand to my throat and feel it ripple as I
swallow, finding myself comforted by the rush of my blood beneath my
skin. “One night, when Father was reading to me before bed, Mother came
in to light the little lamp I liked to leave burning while I slept.
“Baba had mentioned something about a strange smell in my
bedroom earlier, but neither of us knew what it was until my mother threw
the lamp at the curtains. Apparently she’d soaked them with oil earlier in
the day. They went up with a rush that sucked all the air from the room. I
can’t remember what my mother looked like, but I remember seeing her
silhouetted against the flames, how white her nightgown looked next to all
that red and orange.”
“Why?” Gem asks, his voice breaking.
“She had decided the royal family had to die. Together,” I say, piecing
together what little I remember with what Baba told me of that night. “As
soon as she lit the curtains, she ran from the bedroom. She locked me and
Father inside, and went to set another fire in the sitting room. Father
slammed his fists against the door and begged her to let us out, but she
wouldn’t. She … She said she loved us, but that fire was the only way.”
My brow wrinkles as the unfamiliar piece of the puzzle fits into place.
I don’t know if it’s seeing my bedroom that’s helping my memory, or the
fact that I’m telling the story aloud for the first time, but I can suddenly
hear my mother speak, as plainly as if she were in the room right now. I can
hear the tears in her voice, the genuine grief over what she felt, for some
mad reason, she had to do.
“I didn’t remember that last part before,” I continue, “but I’m sure I
heard her. It was right before my nightgown caught fire.”
I press my fingers to my lips, concentrating until I swear I catch a
whiff of smoke. “I screamed for Baba, and he ran back to the bed and threw
me to the ground before the fire could touch my skin.” I point to the spot
on the floor, only a few feet from where I now sit.
“My head hit the stones beneath the carpet and … everything went
blurry. I don’t remember much after that, but I know soldiers arrived and
broke down the bedroom door. Father gave me to one of them and went to
find my mother. She was in the music room, but she ran out onto the
balcony when she saw Father and the guards. Baba said she refused to
come back inside. When she realized her plan had failed, she leapt over the
parapet, down onto the top of the first roof, and threw herself from the
edge. I heard her scream as she fell.
“My father and Junjie took her body to the rose garden the next
morning.” I glance at Gem, who stands frozen on the other side of the
room, as horrified by the story as the people were in the days after my
mother’s suicide. Suicide was always expected of her, but not like that, not
anywhere but in the garden.
“They slit her throat and spilled her blood on the soil.” I drop my
hand to my lap. “According to the terms of the covenant, the queen should
do that herself—make the first, fatal cut before the royal executioner
finishes the job—so it wasn’t the way things were traditionally done, but it
was a suicide, and the covenant was satisfied. The city had been running
low on water for months, but that very day, the water came surging back
into the underground river at full force. For the next three years, the
harvests were so abundant, Father had to have additional granaries built to
contain the bounty. He named one of them after my mother. Not the
greatest honor for a queen, but it was all he felt proper for a woman who’d
tried to burn her family alive.”
Gem curses. It’s a Desert People word, but there’s no doubt that it’s
a curse.
“She was mad,” I say, defending Mama out of habit. “My father and
mother were married for almost twenty years before she became pregnant.
I was a complete surprise. Mama was forty years old when I was born.
Needle tells me the gossips say she was strange before my birth, but
afterward …”
I sigh. “She started to talk about leaving the city. She even took me
outside the gates once when I was four. It’s one of my earliest memories.
We were spotted by the guards and brought back inside almost
immediately, but … My father couldn’t trust her after that. He moved us
both to the tower. Father said Mother didn’t mind. Court life had always
been a misery for her, and going out into the city center gave her fits. She’d
get so upset, she’d forget to breathe, and faint dead away on the street.”
“Was she sick?” Gem asks.
“Not in body,” I say. “Father said the illness was in her mind but that
she seemed happy in the tower. He never thought she’d … do what she did.
I didn’t, either.” I lean back, resting against the mattress. “I don’t
remember much about her, almost nothing, really, but I remember feeling
loved. I’m sure, in some part of her mind, she did what she did out of love.”
Gem crosses the room, his steps soundless on the thick carpet. He’s
learned to be as silent in his boots as he is in bare feet. He has adapted well
to my world. If only I could have the chance to see if I would adapt as well
to his. I already miss the desert, the wind, the moaning of the dead trees.
I’d never be alone in my sorrow out there. There would always be the wind
to commiserate with.
“I’m sure she did,” he says as he stops in front of me. “It’s not hard to
believe.”
I look up, up, up at him in surprise. “It’s hard for most people. It was
hard for me when I was little.”
“She was trying to spare you a life spent preparing to die.”
“We’re all preparing to die.”
“Not like this.” He squats down, resting his hands on my knees. “You
know it’s not the same.”
“I know,” I whisper, running my fingers over the ridges on the backs
of his hands, down the top of each finger, tracing the places where his
claws go to hide. They’re solid, sturdy chambers, like a second set of bones
on top of the first, barely contained by his thick skin. I’ve felt them before,
but I never expected them to look like this, so … natural. Not scary at all,
really.
I lift his hand, studying the tiny puckers above his fingernails that
must open in order to let his claws out. “I would like to see your claws.”
“No.”
“Please. Show them to me,” I say. “I want to see what gave me the
scar on my shoulder.”
Gem fists his hand before pulling it from my grasp. “I wish I’d never
touched you,” he says, dropping his eyes to the floor. “I wish I’d never
come here.”
“I’m glad you came, and I’m glad you touched me. I wish you
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