Cruel Beauty (Cruel Beauty Universe #1)(31)

I tugged at the knife. It didn’t move. I tugged again, harder, and then there was the tiniest bit of give. With a grunt, I gave the knife a sudden jerk—and it came out as if it had never been stuck. I wobbled a moment, then fell over backward—

Into a pair of arms. The shock was enough to daze me for a moment, and in that moment Ignifex set me on my feet, plucked the knife from my hands, hid it somewhere on his person, and raised an eyebrow at me.

“I’m starting to wonder if I should ever leave you alone,” he said mildly, dropping a hand to my shoulder.

I stiffened.

“Then don’t,” I said. “Stay right here and never strike another bargain.”

“Oh, you’re that desperate to be with me?” He leaned forward, his hand still on my shoulder. “If you wanted a kiss, you only needed to ask.”

His touch was light, but I felt it as precisely as the lines of a lithograph, with my body for the paper.

“I’m that desperate to stop you,” I said, but the desire for him was back as if I’d never seen what he was capable of doing.

“Desperate enough to kiss me? You are in a terrible state.”

It’s only because he looks like Shade, I thought, but in that moment I knew the words were a lie: this laughing, crimson-eyed creature might wear Shade’s face, but I wanted him for none of the same reasons.

I realized suddenly that his coat was open, and I could see the hollow at the base of his throat but also the leather belts hung with keys that crisscrossed his chest. And Ignifex wasn’t the only one who could turn people’s words against them.

“You boast to me every day about the people you kill,” I said, trying to gauge the location of the keys while keeping my eyes fixed on his. There were two hung high, close to his neck. “Of course I’m desperate.”

“I don’t kill people,” he said easily. “They ask for favors, and I grant them. If they don’t realize the sort of price required by my power, it’s on their own heads.”

Long ago, Astraia once dared me to climb onto the roof. I felt the same way now as I had then, knotting my handkerchief to the weathervane: dizzy and alive, the world swooping around me, my body made of sparks dancing to my heartbeat.

It was monstrous to want him. But to kiss him for the sake of saving Arcadia—that wasn’t entirely evil, was it?

“Then,” I said, “suppose I did ask you?”

“Then,” he said, “this.”

And he closed his lips over mine.

He was my enemy. He was evil. He wasn’t even human. I should have been disgusted, but just like the last time, I couldn’t help myself any more than water could stop itself running downhill. I managed to slide a hand up his chest, get two keys off their strap, and clench my hand around them; then I dissolved into the feeling, and kissed him back just as eagerly.

It was nothing like kissing Shade. That had been like a dream that slowly enfolded me; this was like a battle or a dance. He took possession of my mouth and I took possession of his, and we held each other in a perilous, perfect balance like the circulation of the planets.

The bell tolled in the distance. I barely noticed it—then Ignifex let go of me. I wobbled backward until I hit the wall.

“Some poor soul has called for me.” He bowed. “Until later, my wife.”

Still leaning against the wall, I glared after him as he left, scrubbing my lips with the back of my hand. It was shameful that his kiss could affect me like this. It was humiliating that he knew it.

Though I could not stifle the thought, Perhaps it won’t be so bad if he ever claims his rights.

Then I looked down at the two keys I had stolen. One of them was golden, its hilt shaped into a roaring lion’s head; the other was plain steel. My lips curved in a grin of my own. Let him have his little victory. I was about to go exploring.





10

Of course I went straight to the mirror room. But neither of the keys would even fit into the keyhole at the center of the mirror, so I set out to find a new door. Today the house seemed to look kindly on my quest: I found room after room I had never seen before, and door after door I had never opened. But none of the new doors would open to my new keys.

Finally, I found a room full of empty golden birdcages, hung from tree-shaped iron racks in a forest of delicate captivity. I saw no extra doors, and I turned to leave—but then I heard a chitter of birdsong, so faint that for a moment I thought I had imagined it.

I remembered the sparrow Lar. Astraia was the one who liked to see omens in every flight of birds, not me; but I still turned and looked over the room one more time. And then I saw a door in the far left corner of the room, behind the biggest pile of cages, where there had been only empty wall a moment before.

It was such a normal little door—short and narrow, barely large enough for me to fit through without bending, made out of wood and painted pale gray—that for a heartbeat I stared at it without fear.

Then my skin prickled as it always did when I saw one of the house’s transformations. This was not the most uncanny I had seen, but it still brought back that helpless, falling sensation of knowing that the house could kill me anytime it pleased.

But it hadn’t pleased. Most likely, Ignifex would not allow it to do so. And if the sparrow had meant to make me turn around, then . . . I still had no guarantee it meant me any good, but it had given me a few minutes’ peace and that put it ahead of the house.