Of Beauty and Beast

princess doesn’t flinch. Thank the ancestors the girl is blind.

“And good manners,” she says. “Strange …” Her curved lips droop.

“The other Monstrous killed my father.”

I pause. Is she telling the truth? Is the king of Yuan dead?

“They cut him open from his throat to his belly. I felt the wounds.

Before we put him in the river,” she says, her throat working harder. Her bound shoulders tremble, straining the seams of her dress. It looks as if it were made for someone else, some girl even frailer than this one. “He was taking a walk. He was unarmed. He wouldn’t have hurt them.”

He would have. He did. He hurt them every day that he ruled this city.

But I don’t say the words aloud, no matter how much I want to.

Instead I ask, “Where are the others? What did you do to them?”

“If it were up to me, I would have gutted them the way they gutted the king.” I let my arm creep toward her neck, remembering how her flesh parted so easily for my claws the first time. “But I told you, being queen only goes so far. My advisor said we should send the others back to your people with a warning to stay away from the city. Junjie could communicate with your leader. They drew symbols on the dirt floor of the cell. Your leader—your father, if he’s to be believed—offered to leave you here as a gesture of good faith. He knows we’ll kill you if the city is attacked again.”

Her words would wound, but I remember what Father said that night I lay shivering in my cell. I’m not a gesture of good faith; I’m a weed in their garden.

“He seemed confident that you’d recover. I wasn’t sure.” She reaches out. I hold my breath, ready to drop my hand back to the pallet, but her fingers alight on my forehead, not my arm. “But you’re cool now.” The pads of her fingers trace the slope of my nose, over my lips, sending a strange zinging sensation across my skin.

She continues, over my chin, down to my neck, where her hand curls.

Her fingers begin to squeeze, and the zing is banished by the thud, thud, thud of blood struggling to flow.

I should do it. Now. Cut off her arm; go for her throat. But I don’t. I’m still weak. Not only in body, but in mind. I don’t want to kill a motherless, fatherless blind girl. Even if she is my greatest enemy.

“Did you know they would kill him?” she asks.

I think about saying yes, just to see if she’ll try to strangle me to death, but instead I say, “We weren’t here to take lives.”

Her grip loosens. “Why were you here?”

I swallow, throat rippling beneath her fingers. “We’re hungry. We hoped to steal food to take back to our people.” I can’t tell her that my chief’s vision revealed that the roses are the secret to the Smooth Skin’s paradise under the dome. And I can’t kill her. If I do, I’ll never leave this room alive.

My arm falls; my claws ease back into their beds. I don’t know why I’m alive, but I am, and I must make the most of it. I have to find a way into the garden.

“My people are starving,” I say.

She makes an angry sound beneath her breath. “If my father weren’t dead, I would feel sorry for you.” Her fingers tighten again, until my eyes ache and green and pink spots dance around her face. “I would have put food outside the gate.”

“Liar,” I grunt, fighting for breath.

“Maybe.” She bends close, and I smell her breath, sweet like sticky fruit and … roses. “Maybe I am lying. The way you lied when you told me I’d die without your help. But you’ll never know for sure, will you? And your people will continue to starve.”

She smiles, and I move, faster than I thought I could after so much time in a cage. I snatch her wrist, pull her fingers from my throat. She comes for me with a balled-up fist that hits my chest and glances off without damage, and I snatch that wrist as well, holding tight as she struggles. I am so weak that my heart slams inside my chest and my head spins from even this small effort, but she’s weaker. Like a child.

“Release me,” she demands.

“You’re the one who wanted to fight.” I pin her wrists together and hold them, like Gare did to me when I was small and wanted to play rough.

I am determined to show her that I won’t tolerate her abuse, but she struggles only a moment, before her neck bends and her forehead drops to her hands.

I flinch as her eyes shut and her shoulders begin to shake. Water spills from behind her lids, fat drops that slide down her cheeks to fall onto my bare chest.

It wasn’t a fever dream, then.

“What is that?” I breathe.

She lifts her face. Her eyes aren’t empty now. They’re swimming with misery and pain. This girl wouldn’t run through the garden laughing like a child. The death of her father cut that part of her away and left her bleeding inside where wounds hurt the most.

I tell myself it’s no less than she deserves, but my voice is softer when I repeat, “What is that?”

“What?” Her hands squirm.

“The water.” I loosen my grip on her wrists. “From your eyes.”

She swallows and sniffs as she pulls her fists to her chest. “Tears?”

“Tears.” I remember the word, but only vaguely. It wasn’t one that came up often in my lessons or Mother’s songs. My people don’t tear.

Water comes from our skin to cool it, from our body to rid it of toxins, but not from our eyes. We aren’t leaky and fragile like the Smooth Skins.

Yet they hold all the power. They hold me prisoner. Their ruler smiles as she speaks of my people’s hunger; their queen runs her hands over my face and tightens her fingers at my throat, and I must lie here and do nothing.

I smear the tears on my chest away, but some have already soaked into my skin. I can feel them, as if she has marked me, infected me with Smooth Skin weakness.

“Get out,” I growl, hatred burning in my belly.

“Not yet. I have—”

“Now!”

“Quiet, or you’ll wake the guards,” she hisses, her own hatred flashing in her eyes. “You don’t tell me what to do. Junjie and the other advisors tell me, but you do not. Your own father left you here. Forever. For the rest of your life, you are mine. If you’d prefer that life to be a long one, you’ll do what I say, when I say it.”

“I’ll cut you open,” I snarl through gritted teeth.

“You’ll do no such thing.” She doesn’t flinch, or move away from the bed. “If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it already.”

“I nearly did.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Do you believe these?” My claws are at her neck a second later, the tips puckering the skin at either side. Her lips part and a strangled sound gurgles in her chest, but she doesn’t move. She has realized that the slightest twitch will open her throat. “You seem curious about what will happen when you die,” I whisper. “Maybe it’s time for your curiosity to be satisfied.”

She sips air, swallowing like a three-hooved gert picking its way down the rocky slope of a canyon. I tighten my grip. The five puckers on her throat deepen. A little more pressure, and her blood will flow. I tell myself it will be justice, but I’m not thinking about justice. I’m thinking about the way she stuck her nose in the air when she told me I’d do as she says. I’m thinking that I prefer fear in her eyes to any other emotion I’ve seen.

I’m thinking I would rather be a monster than her slave.

“Your father told Junjie that you were a healer.” Each word is careful, formed mostly with her lips, using as little breath as possible.

“I am a warrior.” I come from a family of warriors, the greatest family of warriors. At least until