Of Beauty and Beast

eyes.

“It’s for the best,” he says. “When he’s dead, the unnatural feelings will fade. I’m sure of it.”

“They aren’t unnatural.” I’m too exhausted to scream the words. It wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. Bo doesn’t think he’s ordered a murder. He thinks he’s asked for an animal to be put down. Raging at him for the wicked thing he’s done is pointless until he understands how wrong he is.

“Gem is like us, Bo,” I say, pleading with him to understand. “He feels and thinks and hopes and dreams. He loves his family and is devoted to his tribe. He’s no different, not in the ways that count.”

“Let’s get you back to the tower,” Bo says, ignoring me. Again. He starts back toward the tower, cradling my elbow as if I’m made of glass. “I’ll have the healers sent to attend you.”

I dig my heels in. “I’m not going,” I say, jaw tightening as I stare through the trees in the direction where Gem disappeared. I can’t see him or the soldiers any longer, but I swear I can feel him. He’s still in the city.

“Not until I know Gem’s safe.”

Bo heaves a tragic sigh, but he doesn’t try to force me to keep walking. He stands beside me, as silent as I am, though I’m certain he’s not straining as hard for a sign that the soldiers’ mission has failed.

“It could have been good,” he finally whispers. “You and I.”

I don’t say a word, though I agree with him. In a way.

We could have had a very different relationship if Gem hadn’t come into my life. If not for Gem, I might have mistaken faint stirrings and budding friendship for something more. I might have thought love could grow between Bo and me. I would have agreed to marry him and would be looking forward to however many years we’d have together before I made the ultimate sacrifice for my city.

Sacrifice.

“I don’t have to do it,” I whisper, my reprieve finally seeming real now that I’m free of the roses. I will never lie down in that wretched bed and slit my own throat. The realization makes my breath come faster, makes my ribs shake with something too hysterical to be laughter. “I don’t have to do it.”

“I’m afraid you won’t have a choice,” Bo says, watching me from the corner of his eye, clearly seeing my relief as another sign of madness.

“Father says the law allows the advisors to compel you to marry.”

My ribs grow still, even as my heart beats faster behind them.

Junjie will kill me if I refuse to go to the roses. I know he will. As soon as Bo and I are married and the city begins to fail, he’ll slip poison into my food or slit my throat while I sleep. Then, once I’m dead, Bo will remarry and that poor girl will pay the price for my refusal to honor the covenant.

She will be a bride in the morning and a dead woman by nightfall, and the wicked thing at the city’s core will never be stopped.

I can’t let that happen. I have to find some proof of what I felt in the garden tonight. I have to convince my advisors and my people that the power sustaining our city is evil.

“But how?” I mumble, biting my lip.

“I don’t know,” Bo says, continuing to labor under the delusion that I’m speaking to him. “I suppose one of the advisors will say your vows and the sacred words for you if you refuse to say them yourself.”

So refusing to speak won’t be enough.… What if … What if I …

“Take me back to the tower,” I say, gripping Bo’s arm. “I want to see Needle.”

“But I—”

“My arms and legs hurt. Needle will tend to them,” I say, not bothering to explain myself any further. A woman has a right to change her mind, and a madwoman even more so. There’s nothing I can do for Gem here and now, but if I can rid myself of Bo and move quickly, while the guards are distracted …

“I’ll send for the healers as soon as you’re safe in your rooms,” Bo says as he leads me through the orchard.

I start to tell him no, that Needle is the only attendant I need, but I think better of it. I don’t want to make him suspicious, and his mission to fetch the healers will keep him busy while I throw together what I’ll need for my journey. Our journey. I’ll go with Gem. Tonight. I’ll leave the city and not come back until—

Never. I’ll never come back. If I’m not here, no one can force me to marry. And if I never marry, then the curse ends with me.

But where does that leave your people? Needle? All the innocent and the damaged who have already suffered so much?

Dead. It leaves them dead. Sooner or later.

I swallow, blinking back tears as Bo and I make our way through the withered stalks that are all that’s left of the sunflowers. Soon, the remains will be plowed under, and bone meal and sheep dung added to the soil, and next autumn’s flowers planted in the enriched dirt. Sunflowers are feeders, Father said. They’ll suck the life from the land if you’re not careful.

I’ll suck the life from this city if I leave it. Innocent children will die.

Needle will die. But if I stay, it never ends. It never ends and all our lives are paid for with blood and hate and fear, and the Desert People will die and I will die and I will never see Gem again.

I can’t leave. I can’t stay. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right; I’ve never felt so ripped apart inside.

“Don’t cry,” Bo mumbles beneath his breath. “Please.”

I swipe the back of my hand across my eyes, hissing as salty tears sting into the cuts at my wrist. I didn’t even realize I was crying, but I am.

Weeping as if my heart is broken. Which it is. Broken in two. One half here in Yuan, with the city I was raised to serve. One half with Gem as he—I hope—runs into the desert to save his people.

Everything is happening so fast. I need more time!

“It won’t be a miserable life for you when we’re married. I won’t be cruel,” Bo says, motioning aside the soldiers guarding the door of the tower. The two men stand gaping for a long moment without moving, before first one and then the other scrambles out of the way.

Bo and I are climbing the stairs by the time I realize why the guards were so surprised. They have no idea how I got out, let alone came to be covered in my own blood.

Get out. I can still get out. There’s time between now and when I’ll be forced to marry Bo tomorrow. I’ll let Needle bandage me up and do some serious thinking. I’ll tell her everything that’s happened and see what she believes I should do. Needle is more practical and selfless than I’ll ever be.

She’ll have advice. Good advice.

“Needle, bring the medicine kit,” I call at the top of the stairs. “And water, please, with two cups.”

Poor Needle. She’s going to be beside herself when she sees what’s happened to the skin she’s fussed over all these years. I wipe at my face again, trying hard to pull myself together.

I’m so busy worrying about the look on Needle’s face when she sees me that it takes me longer than it should to realize she didn’t come when I called.

“Needle?” I call again.

A strange cawing sound comes from the music room in response. I pull away from Bo and race down the hall as fast as my aching legs will carry me. I fling myself through the doorway at the same moment Needle flies through it in the opposite direction. I cry out as we collide, but when my hands find her shoulders, I don’t let her go. Her face is streaked with tears, and one cheek bears an ugly red handprint.

“Who did this to you? Who’s here?” I demand, searching the room behind her. At first I see nothing, but then, movement on the balcony.

Three pairs of wide shoulders shifting, six big hands lifting, two hand trowels busy spreading sluggish gray mortar between heavy red bricks.

They’re building a wall. A wall to take away the world.

I tried to stop them, Needle signs beneath my hand. I tried.

“I’m sorry,” Bo says from behind me. “They shouldn’t have struck her.”

“What is this?” I ask, unable to turn to look at him, unable to glance away from the wall already rising as high as my thighs.