Of Beauty and Beast

her dig up one of the bushes and whisper the roses’ secrets while she does it. If she’s helpful and quiet, I’ll let her go. If not, I’ll—

“No,” she gasps. Her eyes go wide. Her thin chest heaves as her breath grows faster. If I didn’t know she was blind, I’d think—

“No!” she says, louder this time. “Help me!”

I lunge for her, but she darts away, leaping off the edge of the flower bed, leaving a smattering of blood behind. “The Monstrous are in the city!”

She runs, as fast as the desert wind, around the flower bed and down a stone path lined with more flowers. “Monstrous! In the royal garden! Help me! Help!”

I race after her. I have no choice. I need her silence before it’s too late, before—

More Smooth Skins appear at the end of the path, spears raised. I know the moment they see me. I see their silhouettes ripple in the yellow moonlight. I smell their fear. I lift my clawed hands and roar—a warning to my people. Wherever their search has taken them, my father and brother and the others in our raid party will hear me and know I’ve been discovered. They’ll make it to the caverns and into the river before they’re caught, but they’ll do it without the roses we came for. We’ve failed. I’ve failed. I let this girl doom my tribe. I should have killed her. I should have slit her throat and lapped the blood from my claws. Now everyone I love will die—my father, my brother, my friends. My son.

He’s only six weeks old. He’ll be the first on the pyre.

I roar again, a sound so terrible the girl screams and stumbles, falling to the ground. I leap and land on top of her before the guards can throw their spears. They’ll kill me sooner or later, but I’ll kill this girl first. I’ll take her life as payment for the destruction of my people.

I grab her shoulder and flip her onto her back, the better to get at her throat. Her skin gives like water beneath my claws. Her blood is the exact color of the roses, red that swallowed brown and black and holds them prisoner in its belly.

I stare at it. It’s beautiful. Terrifying.

I’ve never killed something so large before. So large or so delicate. I didn’t even mean to cut her. I didn’t—

“Do it,” she whispers, her voice fearful, but angry, too. She trembles beneath me, her long body quaking, her eyes once again without focus. “Do it! Kill me!”

Her words make my blood burn. “You’re so ready to die?” I demand in her language. “My people would do anything to live. Anything.”

Her eyes bulge in her narrow face. “You—you—s-speak. How—” A spear falls next to my arm, and another glances off my bare shoulder, but my skin isn’t like theirs, so thin that it’s practically pointless to have skin at all. My hide is thick, scaled across my chest, over my neck and shoulders, and down my back. If they want to kill me, they’ll have to hit my belly. I lift my head, roaring at the two guards who’ve dared come close enough to hurl their weapons.

“Wait!” the girl screams. “Take it alive! Don’t kill it!”

It.

I snarl into her face. She screams, and her eyes squeeze shut. Her hands cover her mouth, muffling her sobs. Another spear flies. And another, but I knock them away, rage making my warrior’s reflexes even swifter.

I am not an it. I am a Desert Man. I have nineteen years. I have a son.

I might have had a mate if there were no Yuan, no tunnel to dig, no scouting missions to take me away from my tribe over and over again. But Meer chose a different mate, and my son sleeps in another family’s hut.

Now my son will die and be burned without ever knowing my face. Because of them!

I roar again and hope it rattles the loose pieces of her brain. Stupid girl. Stupid Smooth Skin. Stupid—

“Stop!” she shouts, hands lashing out. Her tiny fists hit my mouth, bruising my lip as they bounce off my teeth. Before I can react, her fingers return to my face, gentle this time, curious. I freeze, too shocked to pull away.

“Hold your weapons,” she orders the soldiers. Boots shuffle forward, but she shouts, “I am Isra Yuejihua. My word is the word! Hold!”

Yuejihua. The name of the ruling family. It can’t … Not this girl. This strange one.

The guard closest breathes deeply; another gasps like a woman. A third says, “My lady—”

“My word is the word and will one day be law. Hold your weapons.”

Silence falls. In it, her fingers trace the outline of my lips, discover my nose, smooth around my eyes. When she reaches the scaled patches above my brows, she hesitates, but eventually moves on. She finds the place where my braid begins and smoothes a shaking hand down the ridge to the end falling over my shoulder. “It’s soft,” she whispers. “What color is it?”

“You saw.”

“I’m blind.” Her lids flutter. Her eyes are not brown or black like every other pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re dark green, and as strange as the flowers in her garden. They are sightless now, but I would have sworn she saw me before. How else could she have known to run?

“Black,” I snap, keeping one eye on the soldiers.

“Like my people.” Her breath shudders out. “But you have very large teeth, I think.”

“You think?”

“I haven’t felt many teeth.” Her fingers come to her shoulder, covering the place where my claws pierced her skin. “Will the poison take effect soon?” she asks in a small voice.

“Poison?”

“In your claws.”

The guards inch slowly closer, torn between obeying their princess and saving her life. I smile at them, baring my undoubtedly large, bone-white teeth. Now that I know how valuable this girl is, I have hope.

Not much, but enough to make my voice smooth when I say, “Take me to the underground river and set me free. Before I go, I will tell you how to rid yourself of the poison.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You die.”

“Maybe I’m already dead,” she whispers, her words as haunted as her eyes. “The roses are hungry. I felt it tonight.”

She’s out of her mind. She makes me … afraid. That’s what I feel when I look into her vacant eyes. Fear, as foreign as shame. Why I should fear a girl I have pinned to the ground, I don’t know. She’s helpless, fragile. I should be afraid of her guards, and their weapons.

The thought has barely formed when I feel it, the sharp jab of metal deep in the back of my thigh where there are no scales to protect me. I cry out and swipe at the guard with my claws. I graze his leg and reach for the spear, but the guards in front don’t give me time. One snatches the girl from beneath me and drags her across the stones while the second—a man with a knife longer than my claws—lunges for my throat.

I knock him away with a growl that transforms to a howl of pain as the man behind wrenches his spear free of my leg. Blood rushes from the wound, and I scream.

“No!” the girl cries. “Don’t kill him!”

The guard drives his weapon into my other leg, just above the knee, hobbling me. I wail like the grieving at the funeral fires. It’s over. Even if I fight off the guards and get to my feet, I’ll never be able to run.

“No! No!” The princess is suddenly by my side, tripping over my arm and falling to the ground beside me. “Take him alive!” she pants, turning to address the air around her, blind eyes wide. “Take him alive. We need him to tell us how to remove the poison. If not, I will die.”

My claws dig into the stone so hard, my knuckles ache. There is no poison—these Smooth Skins believe such strange things about my people—but I can arrange for her to die. She’s close. I could slit her throat before her guards could make a move to protect her.

My pulse beats faster. The agony in my legs fades to a high-pitched hum of pain that urges me to act. To kill. This is my last chance to take vengeance. This is their princess, the woman who will be queen and continue the devastation of the land until not a single living creature remains outside the domed cities.