Of Beast and Beauty - Jay Stacey - Страница 35

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them high enough to hide a scouting party of two or three. I don’t tell her

that I came here on my first scouting mission when I was fourteen and

stood behind the rocks, seething hatred for the dome that festers like a boil

on the horizon.

It’s strange, to stand now in this place where my younger self vowed

to destroy my enemy at all costs, with a Smooth Skin queen clinging to my

arm. I once thought I knew everything I ever wanted to know about the

Smooth Skins. Now … I know nothing. With every passing day, I grow more

and more ignorant. If I keep it up, by the time I return to my people, I’ll be

as rattled in the head as the queen of Yuan.

“Gem?” She tugs lightly at my sleeve. “Gem?”

“Yes?”

She leans closer, hugging my arm to her chest, making me aware of

her, no matter how much I wish I weren’t. I want to push her away. I want

to pull her closer. I want to punch the pile of rocks until my knuckles bleed.

The pain would be a welcome distraction.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I snap, then force myself to ask in a gentler voice, “How’s

your head?”

She tilts her head to one side and then the other, stretching the long

column of her neck. “It still hurts,” she says. “I’ve never had a headache like

this before. I don’t know. Maybe I just need something to eat.”

“Soon.” I stare hard at the horizon, willing the sun to sink faster.

“You’ll be back in your rooms not long after dark.”

She sighs, a mournful, defeated rush of breath, as if she is the one on

her way to a cell. “I’ll miss this.”

“The desert?”

“Well … yes,” she says, sounding surprised. “I will. The wind

especially, even though it’s cold. But …” Her fingers curl into my arm. “I

didn’t mean the desert. I meant … I’ll miss being familiar. Being able

to … touch.”

It’s the first either of us has said about that sort of thing all day. The

closer we get to the dome, the more those moments by the fire seem like a

fever dream. I can’t believe I tasted her, touched her; that I thought I could

reach her with my words. That the real Isra and the real Gem might find a

way to be allies. Maybe more than allies.

But Isra isn’t real. She’s a Smooth Skin. She was raised in an artificial

world built on lies, bought and paid for with the lives of my people. The fact

that I could forget that for even a moment proves how dangerously close I

am to losing my mind. My purpose. My self. If only my father had left Gare

instead. Gare would have already found a way to bring the roses home to

our people. He would never have let his heart soften toward a Smooth Skin.

He would never have loosened his grip on hate.

“Gem?” Isra tips her face up to mine. The dying light catches her eyes

and shrinks her pupils to specks of black, leaving nothing but green so

bright, I can’t stop staring. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” she whispers, pinching my arm through my shirt. “It’s

impossible to think nothing. Even when you’re asleep, you’re thinking

something.”

I grunt.

“It’s true.” She closes her eyes, soaking in the last of the sun’s fading

warmth. “How else would we dream?”

“My people believe some dreams come from the spirit world,” I say.

“That they’re messages from the ancestors.”

“Hm.” Her eyes slit and her brow wrinkles. “I hope they’re wrong.”

“Why? Are your ancestors unhappy with you? Sending you bad

dreams?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I have this same dream …” A strong breeze

ruffles her hair, and she huddles closer to my side. When she speaks again, I

have to strain to hear her over the howling of the wind. “I dream about the

night the tower burned. Over and over again. My mother died that night.

My father and I would have died, too, if the guards hadn’t reached us in

time.”

For the first time since I awoke this morning, the tight, angry knot in

my belly loosens. Fire is a terrible way to lose a life. And four years old is

too young to lose a mother.

I place my hand on hers, warming her fingers. “That doesn’t sound

like a dream from your ancestors.”

“No?” The muscles tighten in her jaw. “Maybe it is. Maybe the dream

is my punishment.”

“For what? Did you set the fire?”

“No,” she says, voice breaking.

“Then stop blaming yourself. You were a child,” I say roughly. She

seems determined to take on unnecessary pain. It’s incredible. Wasteful. It

makes me angry at Isra on Isra’s behalf, which is just … confusing. “Your

ancestors wouldn’t send a dream to torture you while you sleep,” I explain,

trying to be patient. “Not without a reason.”

“That’s good to know.” She squints and rubs her fingers in a circle at

her temple. Her head has been aching on and off all day. At one point, we

had to sit down and rest until the pain passed. It’s best we’re nearing the

dome. Isra isn’t made for the desert, no matter how much she enjoys the

wind. “I had a strange dream last night. At least I think it was a dream,” she

continues. “Before you found me on the trail, I dreamed of the fire again,

but this time there was a face in one of the burning beams.”

“Whose face?”

“I don’t know. A woman. I don’t think I’ve met her, but her face was

made out of flames, so … hard to tell.” She lifts her hand, tracing an image

in the empty air in front of her again and again. Her fingers are graceful,

and I suddenly wish I could see her dance the way my women dance

around the fire on the night of the full moons.

“Did the woman say anything to you?” I push images of Isra—dressed

in the clothes of my people, her long legs free to kick and leap—from my

mind.

“She opened and closed her mouth, like she was trying to speak,”

Isra says. “But I couldn’t hear her over the fire.”

I make a considering sound. “That could have been an ancestor

dream.”

She turns back to me, abandoning her air drawing. “You think the

woman was one of my ancestors?”

“She could be.” I shrug. “Maybe a grandmother. Or

great-grandmother, since you don’t recognize her face.”

“I never met my grandmother, either,” Isra says. “She died before I

was born.”

“Maybe your grandmother, then. She could be trying to tell you

something.”

“Telling me not to play with fire,” she says, with a ragged laugh.

“Do you have a habit of playing with fire?”

Her lips lift on one side. “I suppose,” she says, voice husky. “In a

manner of speaking.”

A memory from last night—Isra’s bare throat golden in the firelight,

my mouth on her skin, feeling her pulse race beneath my lips—flickers

through my mind, making it hard to swallow.

“Maybe that’s it,” I say. “You should listen closer if you dream that

dream again.”

“I will,” she says. “Thank you.”

I grunt. I did nothing worth thanking me for, and I resent her casual

gratitude. If she’s really thankful, then she should send food to my people

the instant we return to the city. She should set me free and tell her advisor

and her people to eat their protests. Set me free and … come with me. Let

me show her that my people aren’t animals, let my people see that the

queen of Yuan has a heart and a soul and a wish to make things better.

And then we can make love in my hut and fly into the sky to slay the

Summer Star together on the back of a golden dragon.

I grunt again. Fantasy creatures will fly through the air before the

peace I’m imagining comes to pass.

“What does that one mean?” she asks, tapping my chest with one

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