Of Beast and Beauty - Jay Stacey - Страница 59
- Предыдущая
- 59/73
- Следующая
of them, more than a dozen. Twenty. Thirty. Fires all around, and at the
center of them, an ancient-looking Monstrous man shaking with grief. His
shoulders convulse, his chest heaves, but no tears spill from his eyes. The
Monstrous can’t cry, but they can obviously feel tremendous pain, pain that
takes over and has its way with a body.
I watch him, feeling his agony as my own, and then suddenly I am
somewhere else, in a time before the fires, standing beside the old man as
he places a shriveled black root into the hands of devastatingly thin
Monstrous people. Old men, young children with distended bellies, boys
Gem’s age with their wide shoulders concave with starvation, girls my age
with glassy-eyed babies clinging to their necks. One of the girls is even
thinner than the rest. Her baby still has the strength to wail, to squeeze his
eyes closed and scream as his mother slips the root between his lips.
He’s dead almost instantly.
“No!” Heat floods my face; tears spill from my eyes.
The scene changes again, going back even further, showing
Monstrous men and women gathered around a fire. Their faces flicker with
orange and red from the flames, but their backs are kissed by pale blue
winter moonlight. It’s a night like tonight—it could even be tonight—and
the people are thin, but not dying.
It’s not too late. It’s not too late to help them, to save them. Gem
and I can go into the desert. We can bring food and—
A growl—loud and deep and fierce enough to make the hair on my
arms stand on end—shatters the scene playing behind my eyes. I land back
in my body with a jolt and wrench my neck toward the sound, a relieved
breath already bursting from my lips.
Gem! He’s here. He’ll free me, and together we’ll—
“Ah!” I cry out as the roses jerk me closer to the flower bed, hauling
me over the retaining wall and into their midst, surrounding me with
thorns, crowding my eyes with blossoms fattened on centuries of blood.
TWENTY-THREE
ISRA
RED floods my vision. The smell of rot and metal and bitter herbs
sweeps into my nose. My skin crawls as sharps mean as needles press at
me through my clothes. I squeeze my eyes shut and scream as I cower
closer to the ground.
“Let her go!” Gem shouts. I hear a whistling sound and a muffled
thud as something soft, but heavy, falls to the ground. Before I can turn and
see what’s happened, the roses are moving, their thorns piercing through
my clothes, making me howl like a trapped animal.
“No!” I beg. “They’ll kill me! Don’t touch them!”
“I have to get you out,” Gem says, sounding so fearful and desperate
that I know he cares for me. Now I have to prove I care for him as much.
“You have to go,” I say, panting against the urge to be sick. The pain
is too much, coming from everywhere all at once. “Your tribe. They’re in
trouble.”
“How do you—”
“I saw it. In a vision.”
“A vision.” He lets out a shaking breath. “From the roses? Were
there—”
“Please, Gem. Half your tribe will die if you don’t go.” I grit my teeth,
refusing to whimper, to do anything to make Gem feel compelled to stay
with me. “Needle prepared a pack for you this afternoon. It’s waiting by the
King’s Gate. Take it and go. Now.”
“I won’t leave you,” Gem says, voice breaking. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” I say, and then add silently, But you can come back.
Oh, please come back. Oh please, oh please.
If he comes back … If he cares enough to come back … maybe we can
find a way to end this, to escape from the Dark Heart and make a better life
for both our peoples.
The thorns press deeper, and I can’t keep a soft cry of pain from
escaping my lips.
“Isra … they’re killing you.” His hand finds mine. I can’t turn my head
to see him, but I know he has risked his life to reach out for me. I cling to
him, selfishly needing to touch him one last time.
“They’re not killing me. They’re keeping me here. They know my
thoughts. They know I wanted to go with you.” I close my eyes, memorizing
the feel of his fingers threaded through mine. “They’ll release me when
you’re gone.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I lie, knowing that Gem will refuse to leave unless I properly
convince him. “They need a willing sacrifice, a suicide. They can’t murder
me,” I say, hoping it will be enough to make Gem go before he’s caught.
“How did you get out of your cell?”
“I broke the lock on the door. After I …” His breath shudders out, and
his grip on my fingers gets tighter. “I saw you coming into the garden and I
tried to call your name, but—I felt something, a terrible magic.”
He has no idea how terrible, and I can’t tell him. Not now.
“There’s no time.” I release his hand, pushing him away. “Go. Run.
Hurry.”
I hear a rustle in the leaves, and when he speaks again, he sounds
farther away. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he says. “If you’re not alive,
I’ll burn this city to the ground. Starting with this garden.” The blossoms
closest to my face rotate on their stalks, moving out of my line of sight as
they turn to Gem.
I lift my head, meeting Gem’s worried eyes through a jumble of
leaves and thorns. I want to tell him how beautiful he is to me; I want to tell
him everything I’ve held back. I want to share everything that’s happened
since he left the tower last night, because only after sharing it with Gem
will it seem real.
I want to tell him that, too, but instead I say, “Please go.” He has to
go. There’s no time. “I’ll watch for you on the wall walk. Every night. Set a
fire by the gathering of stones. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
“You’re bleeding,” he says, throat working. I can see it, even in the
moody blue light of my least favorite moon.
“Don’t forget me,” I whisper. “Please. Don’t forget.”
“I’ll come back,” he says. “If I have to drag my body across the desert.
I swear it. On my life.”
I nod, squeezing my eyes closed to keep the tears at bay. By the time
I open them, he’s gone.
“Let me go,” I whisper to the roses after several long moments have
passed. They’ve gone as still as any plant now, but I know they’re listening.
“You’ve gotten what you wanted.” The Dark Heart clearly wanted Gem to
leave the city. There’s no other explanation for why it showed me the
suffering of the Monstrous out in the desert. It wanted Gem—and the risk
he poses to the continuation of the covenant—removed from Yuan.
But he’ll come back to me. I know it. I haven’t lost yet, not if I gain my
freedom tonight.
“Let me go.” I try to straighten my legs, but the ancient vines lie
heavy and motionless across my thighs. “Let me go! I won’t be held like—”
“What have you done to yourself?” The voice is soft, shocked, and so
unlike Bo’s that I don’t guess who it belongs to until I look up to see him
standing where Gem stood a few moments ago.
“Who were you talking to?” Bo asks again, in that same numb way
that makes me more nervous than his angry voice ever has.
“No one. Myself.” I lick my lips, taste my tears, and shiver despite the
fact that the night is the warmest we’ve had since autumn. Why is Bo here?
How much has he seen?
“The Monstrous is out of his cell, Isra,” Bo says. “Do you know
anything about that?”
“Y-yes,” I stutter, my heart beating faster. “I needed him to take care
- Предыдущая
- 59/73
- Следующая
