Cruel Beauty(63)

Ignifex snorted. “Tell that to Pandora.”

“And if Prometheus had told her what was in the jar, she’d never have been so foolish.”

“Or been more culpable, when she opened it anyway. There’s no wisdom in the world that will stop humans from trying to snatch what they want.”

My head ached. Flame crackled in my ears.

“Sometimes ignorance,” I said, “is the most culpable . . .”

The crackling turned to the rustle of leaves in the wind, and then to laughter. My lips and tongue continued moving, but what came out were little sharp noises like the language of fire. I tried to silence myself but could not, and I stared at Ignifex in helpless terror.

In an instant he was on his feet, and then he seized my face and kissed me. My lips fought him only a moment; when we finally broke the kiss, both breathless, my mouth and my voice were my own again.

“What . . . was that?” I gasped.

“I will kill him,” Ignifex muttered, hugging me to his chest.

I pulled free. “If he’s just your shadow, I can’t see how that’s possible, and you aren’t answering the question. What was that?”

He looked away. “Something I have not heard in a long time.”

“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.