Cruel Beauty

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.

“Who do you think made all those rules for my wife?” he asked. “Not me, or you’d have to give me a goodnight kiss.”

I felt as if the ground were melting beneath my feet. The Gentle Lord was the most evil creature besides Typhon, and the most powerful after the gods. Everyone knew it.

Everyone was wrong.

What kind of creature was powerful and vicious enough to command the prince of demons?

“But never mind that. There’s another thing you couldn’t see before today. Come look.” He beckoned me to the window.

I looked out, and the air stopped in my throat. The green, rolling hills were just as I remembered them—but the parchment sky above was pocked with ragged holes, burnt-brown at the edges, through which I could see nothing but darkness. Shadow.

“They look a lot like the holes in the books, don’t they? But unlike the books, I suppose you could say they are my fault. My masters only made them because they find it more amusing when I have a challenge.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a boy driven mad in your own village, wasn’t there? Even though your father paid all the tithes correctly? Sometimes the Children of Typhon escape against my will, and I have to hunt them down.”

I stared at the holes in the sky, their burnt edges, and couldn’t look away. It felt like I had swallowed an entire black pudding, heavy and cold and made of blood.

“The holes in the sky are how they enter,” he said. “You can see them now because you looked on the Children of Typhon and survived.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I whispered.

“You looked at them and they looked at you. Do you think that gaze will ever really end?”

The holes were like eyes. Like windows. Like that black infinity of a doorway I had faced, and I hugged myself as I remembered the shadows weeping out of my eyes, bubbling out of my skin—if Ignifex hadn’t found me, maybe I would have become a parchment shell burnt full of holes, darkness dribbling out my ragged mouth—

Ignifex leaned in front of me. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m not!”

In one motion he scooped me up into his arms. “You look cold.” He strode toward the door. “I’m taking you somewhere warmer.”

“What—” I thrashed, but his grip was too strong . . . and the warmth of it was not unpleasant.

“Don’t worry, it’s somewhere nice.”

“Why would you do anything nice for me?” I meant the words to sound angry, but they came out a little too wavering.

“I’m the Lord of Bargains. I can reward you if I want.”

I rocked with the swing of his footsteps and it felt like being swept down a river.

“You don’t have to carry me,” I said. “I can walk.”

“I’m your lord husband. It’s in my arms or over my shoulder.”

“Over the shoulder.”

“You want me holding you by the thighs? Not that I would mind.”

I glowered, but he only laughed and dropped a kiss on my forehead. I supposed that if this was his revenge for last night, it wasn’t too bad.

He carried me through five more rooms of the library, then kicked open a green door I had never seen before and strode out into light.