clutches at my throat. I set off toward my father’s quarters with a heavy feeling in my legs.
How have the other kings done it? How have they lived with a woman, even loved her—I’ve read the poems the fourth king wrote to his first wife, have sung the ballads King Deshi composed in praise of his queen—knowing that her life would be cut short? That her throat would be opened and her blood spilled in the royal garden, often before she reached her thirtieth birthday?
Isra’s mother died thirteen years ago. The roses can go unfed for another ten years, maybe fifteen, but no more. They will have their royal blood. Isra will never see her thirty-fifth year. If the crops begin to fail or other evidence is found that the covenant is weakening, she might not see her twenty-fifth.
She has so little time. It isn’t right that she should live it in darkness.
I don’t care what my baba said, I don’t care what the king made him promise before he died, I will not see my queen suffer any more than she must by virtue of her birth. I will see her eyes light up with wonder. I will see her smile as she looks at me and knows I am the one who restored her.
I will taste her gratitude in her kiss on our wedding night.
It won’t be long. Only two months until her mourning is over. We will be married when the spring flowers poke their green shoots above the earth, long before her garden can bear fruit.
I will put a stop to her playing in the dirt as soon as she is my wife. It isn’t safe for the queen to spend time with a Monstrous. The nobles already worry that she’s out of her mind to allow the beast out of his cage, let alone work closely with it. The creature has behaved himself, thus far, but I see the way he watches Isra, taking in every movement of her hands, every flutter of her throat. He’s a predator waiting for a moment to strike.
He will not have it. I will have my queen, and the monster will be returned to his cage. A proper cage, not the tidy quarters in the barracks that Isra has given him, but a hole deep underground, with stone floors and thick bars.
A place suitable for a beast.
Isra seems to have a soft place in her heart for the creature, but she will forget him soon enough. She will be distracted by my gift, then overwhelmed by my attention, and then, someday soon, big with my child.
A baby will be a far more fitting outlet for her feminine affections than a Monstrous pet.
She would know better than to treat beasts as human if she’d spent more time among civilized people. When we’re married, we will move into her father’s great house near the other high-ranking members of court. We will attend dances and feasts and spend long weekends watching the horse-and-stick matches on the king’s green. And when the time comes for her to go …
For our children, if they are daughters, to go … Or for my second wife and
“Bo, I have news from your father.” The boy soldier running down the path toward me is out of breath and sweating like it’s the dead of summer.
He’s a chubby new recruit, no more than fifteen or sixteen. Too young to shave, too green to know better than to call a superior by his first name, even if that superior is only a few years older. Under normal circumstances, I would discipline him, but I’m too grateful for the interruption. I don’t want to think of the future. I can’t, or I won’t enjoy a moment of being king.
“What news?” I ask, settling for a stern look down my nose rather than an official reprimand.
“There’s trouble,” he pants. “Captain Fai thinks he’s found a crack in the dome.”
A crack in the dome. The covenant keeps Yuan’s shelter strong. If the dome has a crack, it could be seen as a sign that the time for the queen’s sacrifice grows near.
“Show me,” I order through a tight jaw. “Now. Run. I’ll follow.”
I set off after the boy, sprinting hard across the green and up the path to the Hill Gate, past fields of stiff cornstalks browning in the winter chill. I run, and try not to think about losing her before she’s even mine.
GEM NIGHT falls early in winter. Sometimes, I light my lamp right after dinner and practice reading or writing with the paper and charcoal Isra gave me—I’m trusted with flint to light the lamp and can ask for extra oil if it burns out.
But most nights I still choose darkness and the moonlit view out my window.
I stand and watch the roses. They are the only flowers still blooming, as obscenely red as they were in autumn when I was captured. When I was first moved to my new quarters, I would watch the path through the garden late into the night, expecting to catch a glimpse of Isra, hoping to learn more of the roses’ secrets. But after the evening when I told her the story of the girl and the star, she never came again.
Her absence is disappointing, like so many things about Yuan’s ruler.
Now, as I do what exercises I can in my small sitting room, I watch the garden path for soldiers. I memorize the timing of their patrols. I find the weaknesses in their guard. I store away everything I learn and pray to the ancestors that I get the chance to use the information. Taking possession of a rosebush is essential, but getting it to my people is what matters most.
I grit my teeth and bend my knees more deeply, squatting up and down with the heaviest of my new books balanced on either shoulder, building the strength in my legs, though my muscles still tremble in protest.
I’ll learn the magic. I’ll get the truth from Isra. She already tells me more than she knows. More than she should ever tell an enemy.
I tell her nothing that matters. I tell her stories to earn her sympathy and lower her guard. I labor hard beside her and keep my temper in check, slowly winning her trust. I tease her into thinking we are friends. I play the damaged weakling, sighing and groaning and stumbling through my work in the field even though I’m getting stronger every day. By spring I will be completely healed.
If she lets me out to gather the bulbs in a week or two and I return, she will let me out again to gather herb shoots in the spring.
I have to believe he’s still alive. Our chief knew these months would be hard. She will have had the women dry the cactus fruit harvest so it can be rationed throughout the winter. The men will find small game in burrows beneath the sand; the women will boil poison root until the poison is gone and only the mealy meat remains. The Desert People will live to see spring, and I will bring them hope and magic.
With a soft grunt, I shift the books from my shoulders to the floor, stacking one on top of the other. I stand on top of them, dipping my heels down and up, building the strength in my lower legs, the running muscles.
I will have to be fast. By the time I escape, every moment will be precious. Every moment is precious
I should have kept my mouth closed today. I don’t owe Isra the truth, and the Smooth Skins’ outcasts are nothing to me. Let them suffer. They have food and safety, two things my people would give a year of their lives for. And their queen cares for them. In her way. Enough to worry about whether they are soft and pleasing to the eye.
“Queen of fools,” I mutter.
It’s days like these that remind me why I hate her. I’m grateful for every one of them. I can’t afford to forget. I can’t afford to enjoy the way she sighs with happiness when I finish a story. I can’t afford to admire how hard she works. I can’t let myself grow comfortable on the dirt beside her as we share bread and apples from the basket she brings. I can never take her muddy hand in mind and promise her that the winter will end and the pain and loss she feels will fade the way mine did after my mother’s death.
I can certainly never tell her that she is out of her mind, and all the rest of her people with her, if they don’t see the beauty in her. In her green, green eyes, in her smile big enough to light a room, in the way she walks like she’s dancing with the ground beneath her feet, each step careful and graceful and—
“Fool,” I whisper as I step off the books and move closer to the window.
