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Cruel Beauty(45)

By:Rosamund Hodge


I shuddered—we will eat them all, oh!—and slammed my hands into the table, relishing the hard sting against my palms that was not a million nibbling shadows, the splash-thump that was not a million singing whispers.

And I wandered the library. There was no sound besides the drip-drop of melting ice and the occasional splash when I found a puddle. The mist swirled away from my feet and then back around my ankles, like a fearful but affectionate cat. I shivered, but the cold air had a sharp, clean taste as sweet as honey that made me want to linger.

I remembered the hours I had spent in Father’s library, drugging myself with books so I could forget my doom for an hour; how I had stared at the pictures and pressed my hand against the page, wishing I could vanish into the safe lines of a lithograph. Now I felt like I had done it, slipped into a picture or a dream: a place that was uncanny, but without any hidden horrors.

Then, in a little room with one window, I found Ignifex. He sat in a corner, knees pulled up under his chin, his eyelids low and thoughtful. His dark hair hung limp and soaked around his face; his coat too was dripping wet. Mist lapped at his knees, and one slender finger of ivy trailed into his hair.

My feet stopped when I saw him. Words clotted and dissolved in my throat. I couldn’t be kind to him after what he’d done, couldn’t be cruel after what I had done, couldn’t forget his fury or his kiss or his arm about my waist as he saved me from the shadows.

Then I realized that he was watching me.

“Shouldn’t you be off tempting an innocent soul to his doom?” I demanded, striding toward one of the bookcases.

“I told you.” He sounded mildly amused. “It’s never the innocents who come to me.”

I realized I was staring so closely at the books, my nose almost touched their spines. I pushed aside some ivy, grabbed a book off the shelf, and flipped it open, hoping I looked as if I had been searching for it all along.

“Aren’t you going to threaten me with some terrible punishment again?” I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the book. It was a history of Arcadia, so old it was not printed but handwritten with beautiful calligraphy. I only meant to pretend to read it, but then I found that I could read every word on the page. Whatever power had shoved my eyes aside last time was gone.

But I had opened to a damaged page. Little holes were burnt through the paper, just big enough to destroy one or two words, but there were eight or ten holes on each page. I turned the page. More holes.

“Would you find that exciting?”

“Predictable, more like.” I dared a glance. No longer curled in on himself, Ignifex leaned against the bookcase, staring into the air.

“You know, only two of my wives ever thought to steal my keys.”

“That doesn’t say much for your taste in women.”

“I can’t help it if most people that bargain with me have stupid daughters.”

I turned a page. Still more holes. “And those stupid daughters, what happened to them?”

“You met them last night. And then you met their fate. I think you can imagine.”

I shivered, remembering the burning shadows and their childlike, gleeful chanting. One is one and all alone.

“I grew up watching my father try to help the people your demons attacked,” I said. “I’ve always known what that fate meant.”

The whole book was damaged. I pushed it back onto the shelf and pulled out another.

“Trouble reading?”

“You should take better care of your books,” I said. “Look, this one’s burnt too.” In a moment he would surely be leaning over my shoulder and grinning; I shoved the book at him. He took it and flipped the pages—why had I never noticed how gracefully his hands moved?

“Did you go playing in the library with a set of candles?” I asked. “They do seem to be your favorite thing.” Then I clamped my jaw shut, because that was getting too close to last night and all the things that I did not want to discuss or remember, though they curdled the air between us.

He shut the book with a small but definite thump. “No. In fact, the holes in the books might be the only thing in the world that’s not my fault.” A drop of water slid down his throat to his collarbone.

I crossed my arms. “How is anything in this castle not your fault? There weren’t any holes last time.”

“You couldn’t see them before today. And the books are not my fault because it was my masters who censored them.”

“Masters?” I echoed.

He raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t I mention them?”

“Of course not.” I meant to snap the words but they came out sounding hollow.