Cruel Beauty
Page 46

“A useful answer, please.”
“The language of my masters.” He flashed a mirthless smile at me. “You seem to have a gift for surviving what kills most other people. First you survived seeing the Children of Typhon, and it made you able to see their holes in the world. Then you survived the visions in the Heart of Fire, and it seems that now the Kindly Ones can speak through you.”
My heart jagged in my chest. The Lords of Tricks and Justice. Speaking through me.
“What did they say?” I asked.
“Nothing useful. Do you know there was a man the Kindly Ones struck mute and used as their mouthpiece? When they were done, they granted his speech back to him, but he cut out his own tongue because he could not bear to profane it with human words again.”
“Distracting me with gruesome stories will only work so often.”
“I’ll distract you with something else, then.” He grasped my shoulders and turned me around. “Look at the world below. Look at the sky. Tell me what you think.”
“It’s Arcadia. Imprisoned under your sky.” I looked around only to demonstrate that there was nothing to see—but then I paused. A memory niggled at the back of my mind: the round room with its perfect model, the wrought-iron ornament hanging from its parchment dome.
I remembered the words written in the round room: As above, so below. As within, so without.
“It’s all inside,” I breathed. “All Arcadia, our whole world, it’s inside your house. Inside that room.”
He leaned his head on my shoulder. “You see the flaw in your plan.”
The realization crashed over me. If I had somehow managed to set my sigils on all four hearts, and if they worked, I would have collapsed not just his house but all Arcadia in on itself. Whatever that meant for the people living there, it could not be good.
I turned on him, shoving him off my shoulder. “And you let me find three hearts, without telling me? Do you know what could have happened?”
“You’re a very special woman, but last I checked, you still couldn’t fly.”
I opened my mouth to demand what he meant—and then finally I felt the heartbeat. “This is the Heart of Air.”
“Mm.”
“. . . You’re still a fool,” I said. “I’m sure I could somehow use this knowledge to kill you.”
“Would you?”
I opened my mouth, then had to look away from him. “Maybe.” My voice came out rough, and my heart had started racing.
Silence stood between us. “What do you want?” I demanded finally.
He tilted his head. “What do you want?”
His face was pale and composed, his pupils narrowed to threadlike slits; there was no hint of hesitation in his body. It came over me again, the knowledge of how little he was human.
He had clung to me in the night. He had saved my life twice. He had seen me, in all my ugliness, and never hated me; and in that moment, nothing else mattered.
“I want my world free.” I stepped toward him. “I want my sister never to have been hurt by me.” I took his hands. “And I want you to say that you love me again.”
His hands tightened around mine. “I love you,” he said. “I love you more than any other creature, because you are cruel, and kind, and alive. Nyx Triskelion, will you be my wife?”
I knew it was insane to be happy, to feel this desperate exultation at his words. But I felt like I had been waiting all my life to hear them. I had been waiting, all my life, for someone undeceived to love me. And now he did, and it felt like walking into the dazzling sunlight of the Heart of Earth. Except that the sunlight was false, and his love was real.
It was real.
Very deliberately, I pulled my hands out of his. “You’re a demon,” I said, staring at the ground.
“Most likely.”
“I know what you’ve done.”
“The exciting parts, anyway.”
“And I still don’t know your name.” My hands trembled as I undid my belt, then started to unclasp the brooches. It seemed forever since that first day when I had ripped my bodice open so easily. “But I know you’re my husband.”
The dress slid down to land on the ground about my feet. Ignifex touched my cheek very gently, as if I was a bird that might be startled into flight. Finally I met his eyes.
“And,” I said. “I suppose I do love you.”
Then he pulled me into his arms.
“I still might kill you,” I told him, much later.
He traced a finger along my skin. “Who wouldn’t?”
19
In the days that followed, I sometimes felt like I was dreaming.
All my life, I had known I would marry the Gentle Lord, and all my life, I had expected it to be a horror and a doom. I had never thought that I would know love at all, much less in his arms. Now that every hour was a delight, I couldn’t quite believe it was real.
We still looked for an answer. We still hunted through the library and prowled the corridors. But it seemed less like a quest and more like a game. And we played in that house. We chased each other through the rose garden, hiding and seeking in turns; we built castles in a room full of sand; I made him sit in the kitchen while I tried to cook for him and set the pans on fire.
And I was his delight and he was mine. I had read love poems when studying the ancient tongues, though I had never sought them out like Astraia; I had learnt the rhythm of the words and phrases, but I had always thought them empty decorations. They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense.
But now I knew that every mad word was true. For Ignifex was still himself, still mocking and wild and inhuman, terrible as a legion arrayed for war; but in my arms he became gentle, and his kisses were sweeter than wine.
From time to time, the bell still rang, and he would leave me to speak with whatever desperate fool had summoned him. But when he returned, he no longer told me what capricious bargain he had struck, and he seemed tired, not laughing at all the world. So I took him in my arms and kissed him without asking, holding back my fears as well as hopes.
From time to time, I thought of Astraia, of Father, of my mission. Of Damocles and my mother and everyone who had suffered. But with the mirror shattered, there was no way to see Astraia anymore, no remotest chance to guess what she was thinking of me. And now that I knew Ignifex was a captive as well, I couldn’t wish vengeance on him.
And sometimes a fall of light, the creak of a door—some little, ordinary thing—would start the crackling in my ears, and I would speak to Ignifex in words of flame. But he would never tell me what I said.