Cruel Beauty(44)
Author: Rosamund Hodge

“And your people have spent near on two centuries studying the World Before.”

“We were more interested in killing you than in the location of ancient barbarians.” I dropped the book, giving up on it. “But if you died right now, I’m sure we might find time to research Phoinikaea in a decade or four.”

He smiled at me. “Too bad I’m quite intransigently immortal.”

He still spent the nights with me, huddled against my side. Without Shade, he had to bring and arrange all the candles himself, though he could set them all alight with a wave of his hand.

“Much good it does you to be a demon, when you have to carry your own candles,” I told him the second night.

“Who said there was anything good about being a demon?”

On the third night, I lay awake a long time, staring at his face in the flickering candlelight. I still remembered looking at him and knowing something beyond all doubt: an answer that filled me with hope and despair. But try as I might, I could not remember the secret.

I thought back to the Heart of Fire. I had begged Shade for help—the flames had closed over me—

I remembered the bird in the garden, the half-seen figures in the liquid light. I remembered bright blue eyes and the voice of a desperate young man. But I didn’t remember anything more.

Ignifex made a soft noise and shifted closer. Without thinking, I slid an arm around him. I knew I should draw back, that I should harden my heart and prepare to destroy him, but lost in the endless hours of the night, I was finally able to admit it: I didn’t want to defeat him. I knew what he was and what he had done, and I still didn’t want to hurt him in any way.

The thought should have disturbed me. But instead I drifted into a heavy sleep, and all night long I dreamt of sunlight and birdsong, with no fire or pain anywhere.

On the fourth morning, I woke up before Ignifex, when the sky was dim and colorless, veined with charcoal. I tried to lie still, but my body felt like a clock wound to the point of bursting, and in only a few minutes I couldn’t bear it any longer. I had to get up.

The dawn was close enough that the darkness no longer gnawed at Ignifex; I felt no guilt sliding out of his arms and tiptoeing to the wardrobe. I wanted proper clothes, but I couldn’t stand the thought of another layered, buttoned-up dress constricting me. Instead I pulled out a dress of the ancient style: a simple white linen gown belted at the waist and held together with golden clasps at the shoulders.

I eased the door open and ran out into the hallway. My feet whispered against the cool floors; the breath raced in and out of my lungs, but I did not weaken or grow dizzy. I ran through the corridors until finally I caught a pillar to slow myself and, laughing, tried to catch my breath.

I should check on Astraia, I thought, and then I remembered that the mirror was gone, shattered so I could find the Heart of Fire. So that Shade could betray me.

Something touched my neck. I whirled, realizing only after I had moved that it was just wind from an open window, trailing a strand of hair across my neck.

Nobody followed me in the shadows. Nobody waited for me, blue-eyed and solemn, with gentle hands and a quiet voice.

Tears stung at my eyes. I blinked them back, realizing that I was still mourning Shade. I had thought that he loved me, that I might love him. I had certainly trusted him. He had nearly killed me. And now he was surely gone forever.

I tried to show them the truth, he had said. However mad or monstrous he might be, I didn’t think he had become so for little reasons. I remembered knowing that truth, and it had felt like it was tearing my soul apart. I had to remember it again.

Staring at the dawn-dim corridor, however, did not particularly help. I wiped my eyes and went to find the dining room, where platters of breakfast and little pots of steaming coffee awaited me.

The house would gladly render up breakfast, but it would not help Ignifex collect candles to keep himself from being eaten alive by darkness every night. I pondered that a few moments, then decided it was one more sign of the Kindly Ones’ capricious nature, and laid into the breakfast.

Ignifex trailed into the room, rubbing his head, when I was halfway finished. “You seem to be recovered,” he said.

“I hope you aren’t planning to order me back to bed.”

“No, you have far too much crockery at your disposal.” He sat down at the table, got up again, and wandered to my side. I raised my eyebrows, but he said nothing; instead he sat down beside me and started piling apples into a tower.

“You are losing your ability to terrify me,” I observed after his apple tower had fallen twice.

“That is the problem with a wife who survives so long.”

“Have I set some sort of record?”

“Two of them lasted longer. But not by much.” He stared at the far end of the table a moment; then he stood abruptly. “Are you done with your breakfast?”

“Yes,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Good. I want to take you somewhere.”

“I haven’t got any keys for you to steal,” I said, rising.

“Not every one of my actions has an ulterior motive.” He took my hand. “If I pick you up, will you hit me?”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Take you to a garden.” He scooped me up into his arms and strode toward the open end of the hall that looked out on the sky. I realized what he was planning and swallowed.

“I thought I was never to leave this house,” I said, looking back over his shoulder so that I wouldn’t have to see the edge approach. Instead I saw his wings appear. First they were no more than indentations in the air itself; then they thickened into shadow or perhaps smoke, and then they were solid: great arching wings with soot-black feathers.

“Oh, this place counts as part of it.” His wings pumped once and I threw my arms around his neck, squeezing my eyes shut as I hunched against his shoulder; then he leapt into the air.

For one agonizing moment we fell; then his wings pushed us up, and up, and with a strangled gasp I managed to look down. The house was already well below us: from above, as from the hill outside, it looked like a solitary tower standing among ruins. There was no sign of the great open hall from which we had launched, and I wondered what I would have seen if I’d kept my eyes open in those first moments. Would the world have twisted, the lines and corners of the building bending as space curled in on itself?

I realized that I was imagining this transformation happening to a great pillared throne room, and the image felt familiar, like a half-forgotten memory. Was it something I had seen in the Heart of Fire?