Of Beast and Beauty - Jay Stacey - Страница 6
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of them!
I roar again and hope it rattles the loose pieces of her brain. Stupid
girl. Stupid Smooth Skin. Stupid—
“Stop!” she shouts, hands lashing out. Her tiny fists hit my mouth,
bruising my lip as they bounce off my teeth. Before I can react, her fingers
return to my face, gentle this time, curious. I freeze, too shocked to pull
away.
“Hold your weapons,” she orders the soldiers. Boots shuffle forward,
but she shouts, “I am Isra Yuejihua. My word is the word! Hold!”
Yuejihua. The name of the ruling family. It can’t … Not this girl. This
strange one.
The guard closest breathes deeply; another gasps like a woman. A
third says, “My lady—”
“My word is the word and will one day be law. Hold your weapons.”
Silence falls. In it, her fingers trace the outline of my lips, discover my nose,
smooth around my eyes. When she reaches the scaled patches above my
brows, she hesitates, but eventually moves on. She finds the place where
my braid begins and smoothes a shaking hand down the ridge to the end
falling over my shoulder. “It’s soft,” she whispers. “What color is it?”
“You saw.”
“I’m blind.” Her lids flutter. Her eyes are not brown or black like
every other pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re dark green, and as strange
as the flowers in her garden. They are sightless now, but I would have
sworn she saw me before. How else could she have known to run?
“Black,” I snap, keeping one eye on the soldiers.
“Like my people.” Her breath shudders out. “But you have very large
teeth, I think.”
“You think?”
“I haven’t felt many teeth.” Her fingers come to her shoulder,
covering the place where my claws pierced her skin. “Will the poison take
effect soon?” she asks in a small voice.
“Poison?”
“In your claws.”
The guards inch slowly closer, torn between obeying their princess
and saving her life. I smile at them, baring my undoubtedly large,
bone-white teeth. Now that I know how valuable this girl is, I have hope.
Not much, but enough to make my voice smooth when I say, “Take me to
the underground river and set me free. Before I go, I will tell you how to rid
yourself of the poison.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You die.”
“Maybe I’m already dead,” she whispers, her words as haunted as
her eyes. “The roses are hungry. I felt it tonight.”
She’s out of her mind. She makes me … afraid. That’s what I feel
when I look into her vacant eyes. Fear, as foreign as shame. Why I should
fear a girl I have pinned to the ground, I don’t know. She’s helpless, fragile. I
should be afraid of her guards, and their weapons.
The thought has barely formed when I feel it, the sharp jab of metal
deep in the back of my thigh where there are no scales to protect me. I cry
out and swipe at the guard with my claws. I graze his leg and reach for the
spear, but the guards in front don’t give me time. One snatches the girl
from beneath me and drags her across the stones while the second—a man
with a knife longer than my claws—lunges for my throat.
I knock him away with a growl that transforms to a howl of pain as
the man behind wrenches his spear free of my leg. Blood rushes from the
wound, and I scream.
“No!” the girl cries. “Don’t kill him!”
The guard drives his weapon into my other leg, just above the knee,
hobbling me. I wail like the grieving at the funeral fires. It’s over. Even if I
fight off the guards and get to my feet, I’ll never be able to run.
“No! No!” The princess is suddenly by my side, tripping over my arm
and falling to the ground beside me. “Take him alive!” she pants, turning to
address the air around her, blind eyes wide. “Take him alive. We need him
to tell us how to remove the poison. If not, I will die.”
My claws dig into the stone so hard, my knuckles ache. There is no
poison—these Smooth Skins believe such strange things about my
people—but I can arrange for her to die. She’s close. I could slit her throat
before her guards could make a move to protect her.
My pulse beats faster. The agony in my legs fades to a high-pitched
hum of pain that urges me to act. To kill. This is my last chance to take
vengeance. This is their princess, the woman who will be queen and
continue the devastation of the land until not a single living creature
remains outside the domed cities.
I should do it. I will do it.
My heart races. Faster, faster, until I hear it rushing in my ears.
Faster, until sweat beads on my lip and my scales move farther apart to
accommodate the heat building inside me. Faster, until my teeth ache and
my brain pulses and colors swim through the night air.
Red for the blood that’s been spilled.
Blue for the sky I’ll never see again.
Green for her eyes.
Her eyes …
They are the last thing I see before black sweeps in, stealing all the
colors, all my hope, away.
THREE
ISRA
THERE’S a muffled kapluph, and the Monstrous man’s arm goes limp.
It lolls against my leg, heavy and so hot that it burns through my overalls.
He’s as hot as fire, as hot as I’ve imagined the desert sand would be against
bare feet.
No human could live through such heat. Not for long. I don’t know
about a Monstrous, but he certainly wasn’t this warm before.
“Take him to the cells,” I say, my breath coming fast. “Bring the
healers to see him. Find the king and tell him I’ll meet him there.”
Baba. By the moons, he’ll be terrified. And livid. He’s already locked
me away. What will he do now? When he learns I’ve been out of the tower
and met such trouble? Put bars on the windows? Brick up the stairs? The
thought of being any more trapped than I am is almost enough to make me
hope the poison in my blood kills me.
I shiver. I asked the Monstrous to kill me. Why? What was I thinking?
I don’t want to die. I want to live, I want—
“But, Princess—”
“Do as she says,” comes a worried voice from my left. “We need the
monster awake. He might be the only one who knows the cure. I’ll escort
Princess Isra. Hurry!” The air fills with the scuff, scuff of soldiers’ boots,
then grunts and groans as the heavy Monstrous is hauled from the ground
and with more scuff, scuffs is carried away.
“Let me help you, Princess,” the remaining soldier says. His voice is
familiar, though I don’t know why. I’ve never spoken to a soldier. I’ve never
spoken to any men at all except for my father, Junjie, and now the
Monstrous.
The Monstrous was definitely a man, a man the size of a small
mountain, the only being I’ve ever seen longer than I am. My people are
almost invariably small of stature and petite of bone, with nut-brown skin
and straight black hair. The Monstrous had similar hair, but he stood a head
taller than me, with shoulders the size of boulders, covered in orange and
golden scales, like a fish, but dry and smooth.
No, not like a fish, like … a snake.
The thought makes me shudder as I take the soldier’s hand and let
him help me to my feet.
“Are you able to walk, my lady?” His voice pricks at me like one of
the needles in my maid’s apron pocket.
It’s how Needle got her name. The day she came to give me a bath, I
had just turned five and was still feral with grief. She started unbuttoning
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