Of Beauty and Beast

15 ISRA

CLIMBING is harder than it’s ever been before.

My arms tremble and my fingers cramp. My breath comes fast and my toes slip more times than I’d like— especially knowing Gem’s watching from below, close to where we’ve hidden the bulbs beneath a shallow layer of dirt in the fallow cabbage field.

I wanted to impress him, but by the time I pull myself up and over the edge of the third roof, I’m wishing I’d found some way to distract the guards and gone through the wretched door.

I’m starving and exhausted, and not certain I’m going to make it to the top. It makes me think about my mother, about what it must have been like to jump from the balcony and keep falling and falling. It would be just my luck to tumble off the tower and break my neck right when I feel ready to take on the world.

My world, anyway. Yuan seems smaller after my days in the desert.

More manageable, somehow. Even thoughts of the power struggles and hard talks and difficult decisions in my future don’t daunt me. I feel strong.

In mind. In spirit.

The flesh, however …

By the time I drag myself over the balcony ledge, I’m covered in a cold sweat and shaking from head to toe. I collapse on the stone floor in a grateful heap, breathing hard, my heart beating in my stomach, my head throbbing so fiercely, colors bloom in my darkness. My bones vibrate like bells after they’re rung too hard, but I’m alive. I made it.

“Thank the ancestors,” I sigh, then giggle softly to myself.

I don’t know why I find it funny to say things Gem says, but I do. I love the way he talks, his myriad grunts, the rumble in his chest when he laughs. I even love the way he gets grumpy with me and isn’t afraid to show it.

But most of all, I love the way he touches me, the way I touch him.

I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I just don’t see how something that feels so right can be wrong.

“It does feel right,” I whisper, rolling onto my back, breath finally coming easier. “It feels … wonderful.” I smile despite the pain still pulsing behind my eyelids. Not even this nasty headache can dampen my spirits.

I stretch my arms above my head and point my toes and arch like a cat, more aware of my physical being than I’ve ever been. My entire body tingles at the thought of being back with Gem. Unfortunately, my body is also dirty and, a quick sniff confirms, none too fresh-smelling. There isn’t time for a bath—though Gem is well hidden behind the bushes on the unguarded side of the tower, I don’t want to leave him waiting—but I can at least have Needle bring a bowl of water and a sponge and beg her to do something with my hair before I head back out into the night.

After I ask her to bring me something to eat. I’m faint with hunger.

“Needle!” I call from my place on the ground, too exhausted to bother getting up. “I’m back. I’m on the balcony. Can you bring some fruit and nuts? Enough for two?”

“Who else are you feeding?” The deep, angry male voice is completely unexpected, making me bolt into a seated position.

I knock my head on the parapet but ignore the agony blossoming in my skull as my headache becomes something much more painful. I spin and spring onto the balls of my bare feet, staying in a crouch, ready to hurl myself at this man’s voice and knock him flat the second he proves he’s here to hurt me.

Bo’s hint that someone in Yuan has been poisoning me comes back in a rush, making me shake as I demand, “Who’s there? Who are you?”

“It’s Bo,” he says, making my jaw drop. He sounds nothing like himself. His voice is so deep and angry and … cutting. “You’re filthy. Get up off the floor. You look like an animal,” he continues, barking at me like one of his misbehaving underlings.

“Bo, I …” I want to tell him to leave me be, but I can’t until I learn how much he knows. “What are you doing here?”

“Better question, where have you been? I discovered you were missing early this evening.” I hear his footsteps moving closer, and the hair at the back of my neck prickles. My mind tells me Bo wouldn’t hurt me, but something instinctive urges me to run, to fight him if he tries to stop me.

“Who have you been with, Isra? What kind of man leaves you looking like that? Like he had you in the dirt?”

“What?” I laugh, even as my cheeks heat. Surely he can’t mean—

“You think this is funny?” Bo snatches my arm, and pulls me to my feet. My laughter ends in a gasp of surprise. And pain. His fingers don’t feel soft anymore. They bite through my flesh, not shying away when they find bone. “You think it’s funny to make a fool of me?”

“Let me go,” I order in my iciest tone, doing my best to ignore the fear making my blood race and my splitting head spin.

If Bo decides to abuse me—here in my private chambers, where no one but he and his father have ever dared set foot—there will be no one to stop him. Needle’s life will be over if she lays hands on a soldier. The punishment for assaulting a member of the guard is death.

The thought makes my heart beat even faster. Penalty of death or no, she would still defend me. I have to tell her to stay out of this, no matter what. “Where’s Needle?” I ask, trying not to wince when Bo’s grip grows tighter. “I require my maid.”

“Your maid is in your bedroom,” he says, his tone openly mocking.

“With orders not to set foot outside it until I find out who the queen has been rutting with tonight.”

Fury banishes my fear and pain. How dare he? “Get out,” I snap.

“Now. Before I punish you the way I would anyone else who spoke to me that way.”

Now it’s his turn to laugh, an ugly laugh that makes my throat tight.

“Are you threatening me?”

“It’s not a threat; it’s a warning.” With a sharp jerk, I wrench my arm from his grasp. Pain knifes through my head in response, but I blink it away, ignoring the throbbing behind my eyes and the pitching of my stomach. I can’t show weakness, not if I want to take the upper hand. “I am the queen of Yuan. If I wanted you wrapped in chains and tossed into the river, I could have it done. Within the hour. You forget yourself.”

“No, you forget yourself,” he snaps. “You aren’t a queen; you’re a disgrace. Everyone knows it. That’s why your father locked you away in the first place.”

“You have one minute to leave before I call the guards.”

“I can’t believe I felt sorry for you.” His anger is a live thing, hovering in the air between us, threatening to dig its claws into me all over again. “I can’t believe I defended your life while you deceived me!”

“You’re out of your mind.” I try to stand tall, but the torture in my skull makes me sway. I brush my hair from my clammy forehead and swallow the bile rising in my throat. “I’ve never deceived you,” I say, voice breathier than I would like.

“But you would have,” he says. “When we were married, and you bore me a bastard.”

For a moment all I can do is lean against the parapet, gaping in his direction, reeling from shock and trying not to be sick. “We aren’t even betrothed.”

“But we would have been. It was understood. By everyone, and I don’t—” I cut him off with a hand held in the air between us. “It doesn’t matter what was understood. There are no papers signed. You never even asked permission to court me. You certainly haven’t earned the right to act like a jealous husband.”

“I planned to ask you to marry me tonight,” he says. “But instead of finding you waiting for news about the