Cruel Beauty(21)
Author: Rosamund Hodge

Lust after the one who hurt you.

I swallowed the words. “I can’t even find my way around this house, much less find the hearts. My sister has forgotten me and I deserve it, because I—I—” My throat closed up for a moment. Then I shook myself. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

Shade took my hand. “Come with me,” he said.

He didn’t seem angry, but as I followed him through the corridors, my stomach still clenched with dread. Surely any moment he would turn around and explain how I was a foolish, wicked child—a disappointment to my family—

Then I realized we were walking into the room with the mirror.

I stopped, breaking out of his grip. “I’ve seen this.” I hated how high my voice was, but I couldn’t stop it. “I don’t need to see it again.”

“No.” Shade gestured at the mirror. “Look.”

Astraia sat on her bed, clutching one of my old black dresses, her head bowed. Her shoulders shook; then she looked up, and I saw that she was sobbing, her eyes red and a damp strand of hair plastered to her face.

I suppose I’m not the only one to hide things, I thought, but I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t even feel my own footsteps as I turned and strode out of the room.

I did feel my back thump against the wall as I sat down. Then I started sobbing.

After a while, I realized that Shade was kneeling beside me, one hand hovering near my shoulder. I felt the urge to be ashamed, but I was so tired. Without meaning to, I snuffled.

His hand came down on my shoulder, cool and solid, and I leaned into the grip.

“The mirror,” I said after a little while. “Is what it shows real? Or an illusion?”

“Nothing but the truth,” he said.

So Astraia really did mourn me. I knew I shouldn’t be, but I was glad of it.

“It has a keyhole. It must be a door to somewhere.” I looked at him.

He looked back at me and then away, jaw clenching. So it must lead somewhere important enough to Ignifex to want it hidden— maybe even one of the hearts—but knowing that would do me no good without a key.

“Thank you,” I said, and for a while there was silence.

I watched Shade from the corner of my eye. He sat against the wall now, one elbow rested against a knee, peaceful and relaxed as if we were finishing afternoon tea, not snatching rest in the house of a monster.

His face was still and milk white. It came over me again how that face was shaped exactly the same as Ignifex’s—the same high cheekbones, the same perfectly sculpted jawline—and yet it was so different: untwisted by the monstrous addition of catlike eyes, and drained of not only color but malice and malicious glee.

I wanted to touch his face. I wanted to make him smile again, just for me, and then I wanted to kiss him until I forgot myself, forgot the ugliness coiled inside my gut, and became as peaceful as his eyes.

But I had no right to touch him, not when he was an innocent captive and I had looked at his captor and wanted—

And Shade couldn’t want me anyway.

He had kissed me twice, my lips and my hand. One of those times had to mean something, didn’t it?

Several times I opened my mouth to speak but failed. When I finally said, “Shade,” the word came out breathless. Then he turned to me, and for a moment my breath stopped entirely. I clenched my hands and forced the words out. “Why . . . why did you kiss my hand?”

It was the only kiss I could bear to ask him about.

He ducked his head. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not angry,” I blurted. “I’m not.” No matter what his reasons, I couldn’t hate those solemn eyes that did not pretend anything was all right. “But I wondered why.”

“You are my champion.” He said the words as if I had asked for the reason that water was wet. “Our champion. For all Arcadia.”

I knew it, I thought, and, I didn’t have time to want him anyway.

It still felt like I was tied into cold, aching knots. There really was only one reason that anyone would ever want me.

“And you think I can save you?” I demanded.

“I’ve been here for—” His lips stopped; he shook his head and started again. “I have watched all his other wives die. I had given up hope. But you . . . you brought a knife. You have a plan. I believe you will save us all.”

“I don’t,” I whispered, my throat tight. “And even if I defeat him—you don’t know my plan, do you? It’s—”

Shade’s hand covered my mouth. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I still have to obey him.”

I pulled his hand down and couldn’t let go. My fingers clenched around his, and again it unnerved me how cool his skin was, how solid the bones underneath, but I held on.

“You’ll die along with him,” I said. Or be captive with him forever, I nearly added, but he was right: I couldn’t breathe a word of the plan, lest Ignifex order him to speak of it.

He looked right back into my eyes. “I don’t need to live. I just need to see him defeated. No matter the price for that, I’m willing to pay it.”

“You—you shouldn’t—” My voice cracked and I couldn’t go on. Nobody had ever offered to bear a price along with me before.

He touched my cheek with his free hand. “Rest.”

So I did.

8

The next morning, I opened a red-painted door and saw a little room with bookshelves lining its whitewashed walls. In the center of the room sat a round lion-footed table, on which a fat old codex lay open; on the far wall, between a gap in the bookcases, a life-sized bas-relief of the Muse Clio stared at me, her scrolls clasped to her chest, her blind white eyes all-knowing.

It was a library. At first I thought it was very small, but when I stepped inside I saw a doorway leading to another little room of books, which itself opened on two more. It was a honeycomb of rooms, their walls covered in bookshelves, reliefs of the Muses peering from occasional alcoves.

I didn’t mean to spend long when I marched in—just enough time to make sure one of the hearts wasn’t hiding there—but as I wandered the rooms, the familiar scent of leather and dusty paper leeched the tension from my spine. Father’s library had always been my refuge as a child. Maybe this one would be my ally. Surely in one of the Gentle Lord’s books there must be a clue about his house.

I pulled the nearest book off the shelf and flipped it open. The words at the top of the page read, “In the fifth,” and then I was looking at the shelf.