Cruel Beauty

The darkness yawned around me. I imagined living out my whole life knowing what I had done and what I had lost, knowing that Ignifex—Shade—my husband was suffering in the dark and would never, ever be rescued.

Then I did cry again, but only a little; I wiped my tears and settled in to wait. Against all hope, I had remembered. I couldn’t give up now. If I had to, I would come back to this place every night for the rest of my life. I knew whom I loved and what I had to do, and for once what I wanted was right: so nothing in the world could break me.

But I could fall asleep.

I held it off for a long time. I would sit bolt upright, forcing my eyes wide as I glared into the darkness, or sometimes I would stand and jump up and down, pumping my hands through the cold air to wake and warm myself at once.

But eventually I was so tired I couldn’t think. Eventually I thought it wouldn’t hurt if I leaned my back against the stones for just a minute; and then I thought I could surely rest my eyes for just a moment; and then I was asleep.

Birdsong woke me, high and pure. I bolted up, my heart pounding, as I remembered speaking to the sparrow.

Then I heard horse hooves in the darkness and saw a flicker of light through the trees.

In an instant I was on my feet and skulking in a corner of the ruins. I saw them ride out of the woods and into the ruins: a gleaming troop of people made from light and air, mounted on horses made of shadow—yet they looked sharper, more solid, more real than the stone and trees around them. They carried no torches, but light and wind swirled around them; the tree leaves laughed as they passed, and they laughed and sang in return.

Except for one. He rode on a gleaming horse, perhaps because he had no light of his own: shadows fell across his face, and he was bowed and silent.

The horses halted. The lady at the front dismounted, and so too did the shadowed man. She turned to him.

“Well, my lord,” she said in a voice like sunlight gleaming through ice. “Are you satisfied?”

He nodded wordlessly.

“Then return to your darkness.” She held out the box, and he reached for it with one hand.

Then I slammed into him.

We tumbled to the ground together. I tried to drag him away but didn’t get far, because he struggled against me as if I were the Children of Typhon myself. He made no sound but short, desperate gasps as he kicked me and clawed at my face.

“You idiot,” I snarled, “I’m your wife.”

He went still.

“Do you think I’ll let you escape?” I demanded, and pulled him closer. He curled against me and went limp in my arms.

The lady looked down at me. She was the same one I had seen making a bargain with him, all those years ago.

“What is the meaning of this impudence?” she asked, and her voice was the same one that had spoken to me in the darkness, that had told me to destroy him.

“You,” I choked out. “You tricked him.”

“We have kept our bargain,” she said. “In the time that was, and the time that is. And we have shown him such great kindness besides. One night every year, we let him out to see the stars and know his people are safe.”

“I know his name!” I yelled. “You didn’t bother to burn it out of history because you thought no one in this time would remember him, but I do. I remember him and his name is Lux. Marcus Valerius Lux. Now you have to let him go!”

My words fell into dead silence. Nothing happened.

“Oh, child.” The lady shook her head with gentle amusement. “That bargain was with the Gentle Lord. It has now been undone, for it was never made, and the Gentle Lord does not exist.”

“If it wasn’t made, then why is he paying its penalty?”

“He is paying what he promised on that last night: every moment after was undone, and he was locked in the shadows as if he had never called on us. Do you think his heart was ever pure enough to look upon the Children of Typhon and escape them?”

The wind rustled in the trees. In my arms, Lux drew a shaky breath. From all around, the Kindly Ones looked down on us, merciless and serene as the stars, and any moment they would drag him away from me.

I had to think. I had never heard of anybody outwitting the Kindly Ones, but it had to be possible.

“You cheated,” I said. “You’re supposed to be the Lords of Bargains, but you cheated. It’s not a game or a bet or a bargain if there’s no way to win, and there was never any way to guess his name.” My fingers dug into his skin. “He said you were always fair. And you always left hints.”

“But we gave him so much more than hints. Every night in the darkness, we whispered his true name. With your own lips, we told him where to find it.”

I remembered his desperate, wandering voice, the moment before I betrayed him: The name of the light is in the darkness.

“It is not our fault that he was too afraid to heed us. Or that when he did find the courage to listen in the darkness, you betrayed him before he could hear it speak. Or that, once reunited with himself, he was too desperate and too guilty to seek his name any longer. We gave every one of him a thousand chances, child, and he squandered all of them.”

My throat clogged with bitter protests, but I knew they were useless. The Kindly Ones would only further explain their fairness. Shade had always known that they were two halves of a whole. Ignifex had always had the power to join them. I had always had the chance to listen to both of them and put their stories together.

That they had made Shade powerless to start anything, that they had convinced Ignifex there was no point in asking questions, that I had been raised to hate and destroy and never imagine I could save the man I loved—

The Kindly Ones would say it didn’t matter. And maybe they were right. We still could have snatched happiness from our tragedy if we had made the right choices, the right wishes. If we had been kinder, braver, purer. If only we had been anything but what we were.

But I was what I was, and my husband had suffered the fate I had chosen for him.

And now I had the chance to redeem what I’d done.

“Then let me make a bargain,” I said. “Release him, and I’ll pay anything you like.” Fear thrummed across my skin, but I couldn’t stop now. “If it’s mine and it doesn’t hurt anyone, I’ll pay it. Just let him go.”

“Oh?” said the lady. “What do you suppose you have to offer?”

I stared at her, trying to think of something she would consider a sacrifice. “My eyes.”