Until now. Until suddenly it’s all right to remember flying at my father in a rage and raking my fingers down his face.
But why was I so angry? Did I know that what he was doing—holding my mother and me captive—was wrong? Did I try to fight back, only to give up and give in and forget? To trick myself into believing a story that made it okay to love the only person I had left?
“If he’d remarried, then that woman would have been the offering?”
Gem asks.
I sniff, and lift my head, slowly. It feels heavier than ever. It weighs more than all the rocks in the desert. “And if they’d had children, one of them would have been the next king or queen. I would have been safe. The crown would have reverted back to me only if they’d had no heirs. I would have had, at the very least, more time. More … life.”
Gem curses beneath his breath as he tucks the hairs stuck to my cheeks back into the mess from which they came. The
“I know I shouldn’t wish for someone else’s death,” I say, sounding broken. “And I don’t. Not really. I just wish …”
“That your father had wished for it,” Gem finishes, proving once again that he is clever and human and privy to at least some of the secrets of my heart.
I smooth the wrinkles from his shirt, trace the damp circles with my fingers where my tears wet the fabric. “I wish he’d told me it wasn’t easy to decide I would die for my city.”
“He never said anything?”
I shake my head. “And he knew what I assumed. About myself. I told him. He’s the only one I talked to … until you.” I look up, wishing Gem were the only one I had ever told.
Gem’s eyes narrow, and for a moment I see the terrifying creature I encountered that first night in the garden. I know he would rip my father open right now if the other Monstrous hadn’t done the job for him already.
“
Tears fill my eyes again, but I refuse to let them fall. “He was my father,” I say, voice lurching as I try to regain control. “He was all I had. He taught me everything I know. I don’t …” I take a deep breath that comes out a terrifying little laugh. I don’t know that laugh. I don’t know myself.
“Who am I now?” I ask. “I don’t know that girl in the mirror. I don’t know how to be her. I don’t know how to think her thoughts or—” Gem lays his hand on my cheek, so gently, I can barely feel his touch.
“You are Isra. And now you’ll be the person you would have been without the lies. His lies, or mine.” His eyes swim with regret. If Gem hadn’t told me it was impossible for Desert People to produce tears, I’d think he was about to cry.
“I don’t blame you.” I put my hand over his, pressing his warm palm closer to my cheek. “I think only good things about you. Except when you’re making me angry. Or being bossy. You’re very bossy.”
“You have to stop this,” he says, his expression grimmer than ever, refusing to let me tease us out of this terrible moment. “You shouldn’t have to give your life. No one should.”
My hand falls to my side. “This is the way things are, the way they’ve always been,” I say, acutely aware of how exhausted I am. I’m a rag that’s been wrung out, leaving only a few drops of me left behind.
“This is dark magic,” Gem says. “Blood is bad enough, but death …”
“One death, to preserve thousands of lives. Without that one death, the crops would fail, the dome would fall, and the city would crumble,” I say, crossing to the bench at the foot of my bed and collapsing gratefully onto its cushioned seat. “Every man, woman, and child living here would die.” I run my fingers over the needlepoint flowers embroidered on the fabric beneath me. Roses. Fitting.
“I can’t let that happen,” I whisper. “I will remain queen, and when the time comes, I will do what queens have always done.”
“Your mother didn’t,” Gem says, the heat in his tone making me look up to find him pacing the thick carpet in front of Needle’s bed.
“Yes, she did.”
“If she burned in this tower, then how did—”
“She didn’t burn,” I say, stomach lurching. I’ve known the truth for a long time, but it sits differently now that I know it wasn’t only my mother who wished me dead but my father, too.
Gem stops pacing, and turns to me. “But you said—”
“She set the fire, but she didn’t burn.”
19
ISRA
“SHE …” Gem shakes his head, and keeps shaking it, as if doing so will cause what I’ve said to make sense sooner or later.
“She set the fire.” I lift my hand to my throat and feel it ripple as I swallow, finding myself comforted by the rush of my blood beneath my skin. “One night, when Father was reading to me before bed, Mother came in to light the little lamp I liked to leave burning while I slept.
“Baba had mentioned something about a strange smell in my bedroom earlier, but neither of us knew what it was until my mother threw the lamp at the curtains. Apparently she’d soaked them with oil earlier in the day. They went up with a rush that sucked all the air from the room. I can’t remember what my mother looked like, but I remember seeing her silhouetted against the flames, how white her nightgown looked next to all that red and orange.”
“Why?” Gem asks, his voice breaking.
“She had decided the royal family had to die. Together,” I say, piecing together what little I remember with what Baba told me of that night. “As soon as she lit the curtains, she ran from the bedroom. She locked me and Father inside, and went to set another fire in the sitting room. Father slammed his fists against the door and begged her to let us out, but she wouldn’t. She … She said she loved us, but that fire was the only way.”
My brow wrinkles as the unfamiliar piece of the puzzle fits into place.
I don’t know if it’s seeing my bedroom that’s helping my memory, or the fact that I’m telling the story aloud for the first time, but I can suddenly hear my mother speak, as plainly as if she were in the room right now. I can hear the tears in her voice, the genuine grief over what she felt, for some mad reason, she had to do.
“I didn’t remember that last part before,” I continue, “but I’m sure I heard her. It was right before my nightgown caught fire.”
I press my fingers to my lips, concentrating until I swear I catch a whiff of smoke. “I screamed for Baba, and he ran back to the bed and threw me to the ground before the fire could touch my skin.” I point to the spot on the floor, only a few feet from where I now sit.
“My head hit the stones beneath the carpet and … everything went blurry. I don’t remember much after that, but I know soldiers arrived and broke down the bedroom door. Father gave me to one of them and went to find my mother. She was in the music room, but she ran out onto the balcony when she saw Father and the guards. Baba said she refused to come back inside. When she realized her plan had failed, she leapt over the parapet, down onto the top of the first roof, and threw herself from the edge. I heard her scream as she fell.
“My father and Junjie took her body to the rose garden the next morning.” I glance at Gem, who stands frozen on the other side of the room, as horrified by the story as the people were in the days after my mother’s suicide. Suicide was always expected of her, but not like that, not anywhere but in the garden.
“They slit her throat and spilled her blood on the soil.” I drop my hand to my lap. “According to the terms of the covenant, the queen should do that herself—make the first, fatal cut before the royal executioner finishes the job—so it wasn’t the way things were traditionally done, but it was a suicide, and the covenant was satisfied. The city had been running low on water for months, but that very day, the water came surging back into the underground river at full force. For the next three years, the harvests were so abundant, Father had to have
