Of Beauty and Beast

candles burn brightly; a glimpse of Needle’s head and the cap she wears over her hair; a fragment of the night beyond the dome, lit up with hard winter stars; movement at the edge of the balcony, large hands, and a swiftly moving shadow.

I have to get Bo inside before he sees.

“We have to go to the healers.” I lunge for the door leading into the music room, holding tightly to Bo’s hand, but not tightly enough. His fingers slip through mine as he pulls away.

I know the second he sees Gem. His cry bursts from somewhere deep inside him, raw and brimming with such utter surprise that it’s clear Gem was the last man he expected to find climbing into my tower.

I spin, and the world spins with me. I nearly fall, but Needle tucks herself under my arm and holds me up. I clutch her shoulder and blink furiously as Gem steps out of the shadows.

“How did it get out of its cell?” Bo makes an effort to sound menacing, but fails. Without his spear—which he seems to have left elsewhere—he’s helpless against a Monstrous man, and he knows it. Fear makes his voice squeak as he orders Gem to “Stay back. Keep your distance!”

“I heard you cry out,” Gem says to me, ignoring Bo. “I came to make sure you were safe.”

“I’m fine,” I whisper, swaying as the darkness I was certain was all I would ever know is ripped to pieces.

“You knew he was free?” Bo practically shouts into my ear, but I don’t turn to look at him. “Did you let him —”

“Please … wait …” My breath comes faster as my aching eyes pull Gem into focus. He’s fuzzy around the edges, blooming with black stains that obscure this part or that for a moment or two, but I can see him. I truly can.

“I can see.” My voice trembles. The rest of me trembles harder. “I can see.”

I can. I can see Gem. And he is … nothing like I remembered. His shoulders are wide and well muscled but hardly mountainous. His mouth is generous, but in proportion to the rest of his face. His high cheekbones are severe but elegant, and his long, silky braid is lovely—a thing of almost feminine beauty when compared to the rest of him. Even the places where orange and yellow scales dust his forehead aren’t strange-looking to me now. The scales are nature’s jewelry, bringing out the gold tones in his skin, making his dark eyes sparkle even in the dim light from the candles burning inside the tower.

He is beautiful. Beautiful, and a man, no doubt about it. Larger and stronger and different from the men of my city, but a man through and through. How could I have ever thought differently? How could I have thought him a monster, even for a moment? How could I have looked into those eyes that first night and not seen that we are not only similar creatures but kindred spirits? Not because he is Monstrous and I am tainted but because we are both human in the same way. The way Needle is human and my father—for all his faults—was human. The kind of human who wants to make other people’s lives better, who is willing to sacrifice for the people we love, who puts the good of the majority before the good of the few.

Bo’s voice pricks at my ears again, closer than before. “You see because I made you see. I was the one who told you about the poison.”

“The poison,” I mutter, realizing the bigger implications of my newfound sight. “How did you know about the poison? Who has been—”

“When I tell my father you let the beast out of its cage, and spent the day in the garden with it with no guards present, he’ll wall up this balcony,” Bo says, pointedly ignoring my questions. “You’ll never leave this tower again.”

Yes, Gem is human. Human in a way Bo is not.

I’m not surprised; I’m only relieved he thinks gardening is all Gem and I have been doing. But then, why would he suspect anything else?

When he considers Gem a monster?

“Isra?” That’s all Gem says, simply my name, but I know what it means, what he’s offering. His assistance, whatever I need. I can see it in his eyes so intent on mine.

With one swipe of Gem’s claws, we could be rid of Bo. With a heave of Gem’s strong arms, Bo would go flying over the edge of the balcony, past the edge of the roofs, and down, down, down to his death. I could hide Gem in my room after. I could say that Bo proposed, and when I refused, he was so distraught that he flung himself from the balcony.

I could give Gem the word … but I won’t.

Because I’m not tainted where it counts. There is nothing wrong with my soul. It’s only now, when I have the chance to do something truly wicked and I’m certain I don’t want to, that the truth seems clear to me.

“Isra?” Gem caresses my name with his voice, as if he understands what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, how things are shifting inside me with a speed that makes me grateful for Needle’s wiry body bracing mine.

“You let it call you by name?” Bo asks, his horror clear.

I turn, slowly, so as not to disturb my fragile hold on my focus, and look at Bo with my own eyes for the first time. He looks different than he did the night the roses showed him standing at the tower door. Smaller and softer. He’s a good half meter shorter than Gem, and a few centimeters shorter than me, but broad and solid. His hair is as black as Gem’s, but coarser. Tiny hairs escape his braid to spring around the perfect oval of his face. There, dark, nearly black eyebrows slash down toward the straight slope of his nose, pale brown eyes the color of walnut shells float in shallow sockets, and softly rounded lips perch above a strong but sweetly dimpled chin.

I see at once why women find him desirable. He is strong, healthy, and handsome. But he is not beautiful. Not to me. I will never anticipate his touch. I will never find him anything but repulsive.

And I will regret for the rest of my life that Gem has to witness what I’ll do next.

“You will say nothing to your father,” I say, pressing on before Bo can interrupt. “You will return to your rooms and pretend this night never happened. Then, come spring, when my mourning is over, you will propose and I will accept.”

Bo’s mouth closes, and his angry eyebrows float away from his eyes.

“You will?”

“You have my word,” I say, fighting the urge to look at Gem, to see what he thinks about this. What he feels …

Bo’s gaze shifts from me to Gem and back again. “All right. But in exchange for my silence, you will stop this nonsense with the creature immediately. It isn’t a pet. It’s dangerous.”

“Gem isn’t dangerous,” I say, emphasizing his name, making it clear Gem isn’t an it in my mind.

“How can you say that? One of them killed your father, Isra.”

“Yes, one of them did,” I admit. “But it wasn’t Gem. Gem is my friend.”

“Your friend?”

“And he’s been a great help to me,” I say, ignoring Bo’s scandalized tone, and hoping I haven’t pushed this too far. “I can’t get the new garden ready without him.”

“Then you can give up the new garden.” Bo gives me a stern, almost fatherly look that I can tell I’m going to grow to hate over the course of our marriage, no matter how brief the union may be. “We don’t need another garden. Our people are well provided for with what we have already.”

“No, Bo. They aren’t.” I fight to keep my tone even. “Our city’s customs are unfair to many of our people. The new garden will grow plants that will provide healing and protection from mutation. I need this. We all need it. And Gem has agreed to help me.”

Bo puffs out his chest and tips his chin down, but unfortunately for him, it’s impossible to glare down at someone taller than yourself. “I won’t have my wife playing in the dirt with a monster. The nobles already think you’re strange. What if someone had seen you today? Alone with this thing? What if he’d hurt you? Killed you? Where would that have left the city?”

“Please.” Anger flares inside me, but I know I have no right to it, not when I’ve been as cruel to Gem as Bo is being now. In a kinder way, but still …

Let him go. You have to let him go.

As soon as the thought races through my mind, I know it’s right. I have to give Gem his freedom, no matter how my people will hate me, or how miserable it makes me to imagine my life without him. We’ll plant the garden,