Cruel Beauty (Cruel Beauty Universe #1)(55)



“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“It’s your reward for not dying,” he said.

I took a step forward, resisting the urge to twist my hands. “Yes. About that. Can I—if I could talk to Shade—”

He growled.

“You don’t understand.” I didn’t understand either, not entirely, but I thought that if I saw Shade again I might remember. “I know what false kindness is like, because I’ve been smiling and lying all my life. Shade isn’t like that. Long ago, he was truly kind. I think some part of him still is, but he knows something that makes him willing to murder five women. If we knew—”

“And if it was that sort of knowledge, perhaps we’d murder each other and save him the trouble.”

“Or perhaps we could find a solution.” I took another step toward him. “I thought you wanted to know your name and the truth about your origins.”

“Maybe I changed my mind.”

“Maybe you’re contradicting me for the fun of it.”

“You do make it fun.”

I nearly yelled at him, but I knew that was not the way to defeat him.

“Almost every day I’ve known you,” I said slowly and clearly, “you’ve told me how you despise the people that come to you, because they won’t admit their sins even to themselves. Are you content to be such a coward yourself?”

He tilted his head back to stare at the sky. “There’s one advantage to being a demon, you know—”

“Besides the power to cause terror and destruction?”

“Besides that and possibly more important. Yes.” He looked at me, his face turned deadly serious. “Demons know alternatives. I have spoken with the Kindly Ones face-to-face. I have handed out their dooms for nine hundred years. I don’t deny what I am, but I know what I could be if I knew too much truth. So yes, I am a coward and a demon. But I am still alive in the sunlight.”

Looking into his eyes, I remembered the Children of Typhon crawling out of the door. He had guarded that door and commanded those monsters for nine hundred years. If I had done the same, maybe I would think as he did.

But I had not, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “The philosopher said that the virtuous man, tortured to death on spikes, is more fortunate than the wicked man, living in a palace.”

“Did he put his theory to the test?” Ignifex was back to smiling.

“No, he died by poison. But he faced that death because he would not give up philosophy, so he was at least in earnest when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living.”

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.”

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