Cruel Beauty(47)
Author: Rosamund Hodge

“We’re receiving messages from the Kindly Ones and you won’t tell me what they are?” I demanded one afternoon. We were in a musty room with shelf upon shelf of enameled clockwork birds, and when Ignifex wound one up, the jerky motion of its red-and-blue wings made the strange words tumble from my lips until Ignifex pressed me against the shelves and kissed me thoroughly. There was now a cramp in my neck and I did not feel patient.

Ignifex turned away, flung the offending bird to the ground, and crushed it under his boot.

“It’s not ‘messages,’ it’s always the same thing.”

“Then it can’t hurt me to hear, if you’ve survived fifteen repetitions.”

He didn’t look at me. “Do you know why I survive the darkness, no matter how it burns me?”

“Because you’re an immortal demon lord?”

“Because I forget. I always hear a voice in the darkness, saying words that burn me alive. I survive because I always make myself forget that voice as soon as it speaks. But you, my dear Pandora—” He turned on me with a vicious smile. “You are not half so good at forgetting. So I will have to do it for you.”

He whirled and strode out of the room. I stared at the remains of the bird, shattered enamel and twisted springs, and the colorful wreckage made warmth flicker at my temples until I ran after him. I didn’t want to risk an attack when he was not there to break me out of it.

After that, no matter how I begged, goaded, or kissed him, he wouldn’t drop another hint about what I said in words of flame, or what voice spoke to him in the darkness.

Even so, the days were like a dream of delight. But the nights were different. Ignifex was still haunted by the darkness, and he still slept in my arms. And sometimes I slept easily beside him, but more often, I lay awake for hours, staring at the shadows in the corners of the room. At night even more than in the day, I felt as if the past were beneath my fingertips, trembling between one breath and the next, a bottomless well that would drown me if I blinked.

When I did fall asleep, I always dreamt of the garden and the sparrow. Leaves swirled around me, turning to sparks as they flew through the air. I tried to catch a handful; they crackled in my grasp and crumbled to gritty ash.

One is one and all alone, said the sparrow, and ever more shall be so.

“Please,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

The dream always changed then. Sometimes I glimpsed a blue-eyed prince. I was sure he was Shade, for I would know those eyes anywhere—but though I could never quite remember his face when I woke, I remembered that it was always full of life. He shouted, wept, and laughed: he was never calm and blank like Shade had usually been.

But then he had been free and sane, not a prisoner for nine hundred years and driven to desperate measures.

Sometimes I saw the castle torn down, stone by stone, with wind and fire. Sometimes I saw a wooden door swing open and the Children of Typhon crawl out. Sometimes I saw roses wilting into shriveled brown heaps that burst into flames.

Until one night I did not dream of the sparrow at all. I dreamt that I walked into the room of Ignifex’s dead wives, and there lay Astraia with the rest of them.

I knew I was dreaming, and I knew that nightmares always ended with the moment of pure horror, that just when the dream became impossible to bear, it was over. As I stared at Astraia’s pale face, my throat tight, I knew that I would wake in a moment.

But I didn’t. I stared at my dead sister until I began to sob, and then I cried for what seemed like an eternity, until at last my tears ran dry. Still I did not wake, and by that time I had forgotten I was dreaming. I only knew that I had failed my sister, and that for my punishment I must live with that sin forever. I lay down beside her—the cold, clammy skin was horrible to touch, but I curled closer—and I stared into the darkness and waited.

And waited.

I cried again, and stopped. The tears itched and dried on my face. And I waited, until my vision had faded away, leaving me in total darkness, and I could not feel my sister or the stone slab, only cold all around me.

Finally Ignifex shook me awake. I huddled shaking in his arms, and would not tell him what I had dreamt. All my life had been veined with hatred; I didn’t want to remind us both of the feud between us and maybe awake it again.

But after that night, I couldn’t entirely ignore the knowledge that it was still there.

“Our sky is the dome of that room, right?” I said one evening.

“More or less,” said Ignifex without looking up.

We were in a room with wood-paneled walls and a great fireplace; the entire floor was covered with puzzle pieces that drifted as if moved by invisible currents. The only piece of furniture was a plump maroon couch with gold tassels; I lay draped across the couch while Ignifex sat cross-legged on the floor and tried to assemble the puzzle.

I was trying to read a book about astronomy, but half the words were burnt out. I wanted to know why the Kindly Ones had censored thoughts of the sky and the ancients’ theory of celestial spheres.

“But no one’s ever seen you looming over the horizon,” I said thoughtfully, watching his shoulders move. For once he was not wearing his coat, and the firelight glowed through the white fabric of his shirt.

Ignifex lunged forward, hair swinging, to catch a drifting piece with one finger. He drew it back and fitted it into a corner between two other pieces; it trembled a moment and then was still.

“You would know better than I,” he said, tapping a finger thoughtfully against what he’d assembled. So far it showed part of a castle.

“And when you’re in that room, it looks like a model instead of the whole world. What would happen if you dropped a rock on it?”

He finally looked up, the firelight flickering in his eyes. “And they call me cold-blooded.”

“I wouldn’t do it, I just want to know how this house works.”

“I’m not sure even the Kindly Ones know that.”

“Most of the other rooms have windows,” I said, as much to myself as him. “And I can always see the sky through them. They’re inside Arcadia and Arcadia is inside that room, so . . . that’s the only real place, isn’t it?”

“Or that room is the only place that isn’t real. Does it matter?” He caught a piece that had drifted up from the floor and twisted it between his fingers.

I leaned forward. “What was that box?”

“What box?”

I poked his head. “You know, the one I picked up and then you bore down on me like all the Furies rolled into one.”