Cruel Beauty(91)

His eyes flickered open and focused on me. They were bright blue eyes, the pupils round and completely human, but they were not exactly Shade’s eyes; the way he squinted against the light, his whole face wrinkling into the expression, was exactly like Ignifex.

Then his lips curved in a faint smile and he reached up to touch my face. I caught his hand against my cheek and held it; his fingers were warm and gloriously real, but they felt rougher than I remembered. I held his hand to examine it and saw that his palms and fingertips were covered in a network of thin, pale scars.

“This is real,” he whispered, sitting up.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re real. I thought—I started to think—” He was shaking now. Shame burned through my body, but I pulled him into my arms, and still holding on we rolled back down to lie on the grass.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

For an answer, he only buried his face in the crook of my neck, and we lay still together for a long time, until at last he whispered in my ear, “At least you’re not as shy as when we met.”

I was about to say, Do I need to remind you how much I am used to you?—and then I bolted upright, skin burning. Because I remembered everything we had done together, remembered being this woman at ease in his embrace, yet I knew bone-deep that I had never even held hands with a man, let alone kissed one. Memories tangled in my throat and I couldn’t breathe.

Then I realized I had thrown him to the ground. “I’m sorry,” I blurted, hoping I had not hurt him.

But he was sitting up now too, leaned back with his hands behind him, his head tilted to one side. It was exactly the sort of posture that Ignifex might have sat in.

“You saved me,” he said quietly. The cadences of his voice were uncanny: entirely familiar, but not exactly like either Ignifex or Shade. “You saved me, and I think that covers almost half your sins.”

I snorted. “I was more than a little late.”

“Better than never,” he said. “Besides, I did deserve it. I wronged you. Both of me.” His mouth tightened, and then he said, whisper-soft, “I’m sorry too. Please forgive me.”

Neither one of them would ever have apologized so desperately. It was a new person staring back at me with blue eyes—but I was a new person too. And if he, so long divided, could gather himself together and remember how to love me, then I could do the same for him.

“Well, you were at least both handsome, too.” I took his hand again; our thumbs rubbed together, and then suddenly we were kissing.

When we finally stopped, Lux said, “What happens now?” He looked around at the ruins as if seeing them for the first time.

I pushed hair out of my face and tried to think past the warmth of his arm around my waist. “Well, we should tell somebody I’m alive, since I ran out into the night. And we’d better prepare to get shouted at, since I jilted Tom-a-Lone.” I remembered that the world he’d known hadn’t had that tradition. “At the festival, they—”

“I’ve seen the festivals.” His soft voice stopped the breath in my throat. But then he went on, “So, you were running after another man? I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

“Then don’t,” I said. “Never leave me again.”

I had just created the kind of scandal I’d spent all week scheming to avoid. But with the sky an impossible blue overhead and my impossible, blue-eyed husband sitting beside me, I couldn’t much care.

“Come on.” I took his hand and stood, pulling him up with me. “Let’s go home. Aren’t you tired of being in this house?”

I meant the words lightly, but he looked around the sunlit ruins with solemn eyes. “It’s strange,” he said softly. “I think I’ll miss it.”

And I realized that in every life he had lived, this was his only home and he had never left.

“I miss hating my sister,” I said, pulling him toward the gateway. “She’s a little bit more wicked now, so I can’t even hate her for being too kind.”

But when we were almost at the threshold, he paused again, and this time there was naked fear on his face.

“You do realize,” he said. “I don’t remember how to be anything but a demon lord and his shadow.”

“I’m still not very good at being anything but a wicked sister.” I took his other hand.

A handful of kindness, the sparrow had said, and now we each had two.

“We’ll both be foolish,” I said, “and vicious and cruel. We will never be safe with each other.”

“Don’t try too hard to be cheerful.” His fingers threaded through mine.