Of Beauty and Beast

“Yes. Yet. You can change your world. You have that power.”

“You don’t understand,” I say. “Even if the garden—”

“Forget the garden. You don’t need the garden.” He turns me to him before pushing my hair from my face with a tenderness that makes me ache. “You can make the wrong things right without the garden. You can give the outcasts a place in your city. You can send food to my people. You don’t have to wait. Children are starving now. My … my child is starving.”

My lips part. I never even considered. He’s only nineteen.

“I don’t know his name. He didn’t … He wasn’t named before I left,” Gem says, grief clear in his voice. “But I think of him every day. His mother chose another mate, and I’ll never be a father to him in the way that man will, but I want to know him. I want him to live to see the first anniversary of his birth, but many don’t.”

“Please,” I beg, the thought of those hungry children, of Gem’s hungry child, hitting me harder than it has before. He has a child, and I’m still not much more than a child myself. I’m crazy to think we’ll ever understand each other. “I’m sorry. I don’t want your people or your baby to suffer, I truly don’t, but I … I don’t …” I try to drop my head to my chest, but Gem catches my chin in his hand.

“Then don’t back down.” His finger traces slowly back and forth across my cheek. “Help my people. Help yourself.”

“I can’t.”

“You can,” he whispers, leaning so close I can feel his breath on my face. My lips tingle and my heart beats faster, and all I want to do is taste him again—to lean in and lose myself in the dizzy rush of his mouth on mine— but I can’t.

I push his hand away gently but firmly. “I can’t. The people wouldn’t allow it. I’m tainted.”

He makes a disgusted sound, but I push on before he can make another grand speech about what his chief would do in my place.

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but that matters to my people,” I continue. “They are repulsed by Monstrous traits, and it isn’t just the outer ugliness of the tainted that they despise. We’re raised to believe the Monstrous are worse than animals, that they are savages who kill for pleasure, and that their ugliness is a sign of the corruption of their souls.”

He sighs, his frustration clear in the sound. “But you know that isn’t true.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything for sure,” I confess before I think better of it, the pressure of his expectations making me anxious. As soon as I realize how my words sounded, I hurry to explain. “I mean, I know you aren’t anything like what I imagined a Monstrous would be like, but one of your people slaughtered my father. And I—I’m not like the rest of my people. It isn’t just my size or my rough skin or my wild hair. I’ve never done as I was told. I lie and take chances I shouldn’t and think only of myself and—”

“And you think …” His breath rushes out. “You think that means your soul is corrupt?” he asks, disgust and shock warring in his tone. “Like mine?”

I shake my head, sending my hair flying into my face. “No! No, of course not. I don’t think your soul is corrupt. You’re not listening.”

“You’re not listening,” he snaps. “If you were, you’d hear how rattled you sound.”

“I am not rattled. I’m trying to explain why I can’t rush in and change the world. The world is complicated,” I say, feeling more confused with every passing second. I’m not ready for this. I don’t know what to say. “I just … I know some of what I’ve been taught is wrong, but you can’t deny that we are different. You said so yourself.”

“Not as different as either side would like to think,” he says, before adding in a harsh voice, “Women are women, I can promise you that much.

The same tricks work the same way. You even make the same sounds when you—”

“Stop,” I choke out, struggling to swallow past the sick feeling rising inside me. For the first time since we touched, I feel ashamed. How could he? How could he be so understanding one minute and cheapen every unguarded thing that happened between us the next? “You’re cruel,” I say, hating the catch in my voice.

“What did you expect from a corrupt soul?”

“Fine,” I snap. “Never mind. I should never have—”

“What if you weren’t tainted, Isra?”

I blink, startled by the change of direction. “What?”

“What if you’re wrong? What if you’ve been wrong your entire life?”

he asks. “What if there’s nothing Monstrous about you?”

“I thought you hated that word,” I whisper.

“I hate a lot of things.”

“I know you think …” I pause, not wanting to inspire any further spite, but feeling I owe him honesty in a way I didn’t before. Spiteful or not, he saved my life. And kissed me and held me and admitted it felt right, and that has changed things between us. I can’t pretend it hasn’t. “I know you find your people beautiful,” I say, “and I envy you that, I really do. But my people … they don’t see beauty in mutation. It scares them. They were horrified when they saw me for the first time at my coronation.”

Gem snorts as if I’ve said the most ridiculous thing in the world, and anger flares inside me again. He wasn’t there. I was, and I heard the people pull in a collective breath; I felt their surprise when they looked upon their tainted queen for the first time.

“Believe what you want,” I snap, “but I know—”

“You know nothing. You’re not tainted. You’re nothing like a Monstrous girl. Any one of them could break you in half, and not one has skin that peels everywhere but their face,” he says, making me wince and my fingers curl self-consciously, drawing up inside the long sleeves of my sweater. “Whatever’s wrong with you, it’s not caused by resembling my people. As far as I’ve seen, you look almost exactly like the other Smooth—”

“I do not look like them,” I snap. “And no matter what you think, I know if I weren’t queen, my life would be very different than it is now. I might not be tainted enough to be cast out, but I am, without a doubt, ugly in a way that puts the state of my soul and mind in question. That’s why I can’t start issuing bizarre orders. I have to win my people’s trust. I believe the garden will—”

“Stop,” he says. “I can’t listen to it again. I can’t.”

“I won’t talk at all, then!” I turn back to the fire and lean away from him, wishing with every bone in my body it were safe to go for a walk. The last thing I want to do is stay within spitting distance of this stubborn, infuriating creature.

“There’s one thing I want to know first.” The gravel crunches, and I sense that Gem’s moving closer, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of scooting away. “If I’m hideous, inside and out—”

“I never said—” His arms close around me, and my words end in a sharp intake of breath as he hauls me onto his lap. “Put me down!” I push at his chest, but he ignores me and pulls me close, whispering his next words against my skin.

“If I’m so ugly in every way,” he continues, the feel of his mouth moving against my cheek making my blood rush in spite of myself, “then why do you want me, Isra?”

“I—I need your help. And your father promised you would—”

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean.” His hands skim over my body, one teasing the skin at the back of my neck, the other tracing the column of my spine from top to bottom before smoothing around to my hip and squeezing tight, fingers digging in until my belly flutters.

I shiver, and I know he knows the reason why. My lips part and my breath rushes out, but I don’t scramble away. I close my eyes and count slowly to ten and try to remember how hurt I was when he compared me to all the other knots he has untangled.

But it’s so hard. Because he’s right. I do want him. I wanted him before, and I want him even more now. I want to banish the ugliness between us with my lips on his. I want to kiss him until his blood runs fast and he whispers my name in his thick, needy voice instead of his tight, angry one.

Words only bring pain; we should use hands instead. I lift my hand to his face, smoothing my thumb across