of them!

I roar again and hope it rattles the loose pieces of her brain. Stupid

girl. Stupid Smooth Skin. Stupid—

“Stop!” she shouts, hands lashing out. Her tiny fists hit my mouth,

bruising my lip as they bounce off my teeth. Before I can react, her fingers

return to my face, gentle this time, curious. I freeze, too shocked to pull

away.

“Hold your weapons,” she orders the soldiers. Boots shuffle forward,

but she shouts, “I am Isra Yuejihua. My word is the word! Hold!”

Yuejihua. The name of the ruling family. It can’t … Not this girl. This

strange one.

The guard closest breathes deeply; another gasps like a woman. A

third says, “My lady—”

“My word is the word and will one day be law. Hold your weapons.”

Silence falls. In it, her fingers trace the outline of my lips, discover my nose,

smooth around my eyes. When she reaches the scaled patches above my

brows, she hesitates, but eventually moves on. She finds the place where

my braid begins and smoothes a shaking hand down the ridge to the end

falling over my shoulder. “It’s soft,” she whispers. “What color is it?”

“You saw.”

“I’m blind.” Her lids flutter. Her eyes are not brown or black like

every other pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re dark green, and as strange

as the flowers in her garden. They are sightless now, but I would have

sworn she saw me before. How else could she have known to run?

“Black,” I snap, keeping one eye on the soldiers.

“Like my people.” Her breath shudders out. “But you have very large

teeth, I think.”

“You think?”

“I haven’t felt many teeth.” Her fingers come to her shoulder,

covering the place where my claws pierced her skin. “Will the poison take

effect soon?” she asks in a small voice.

“Poison?”

“In your claws.”

The guards inch slowly closer, torn between obeying their princess

and saving her life. I smile at them, baring my undoubtedly large,

bone-white teeth. Now that I know how valuable this girl is, I have hope.

Not much, but enough to make my voice smooth when I say, “Take me to

the underground river and set me free. Before I go, I will tell you how to rid

yourself of the poison.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You die.”

“Maybe I’m already dead,” she whispers, her words as haunted as

her eyes. “The roses are hungry. I felt it tonight.”

She’s out of her mind. She makes me … afraid. That’s what I feel

when I look into her vacant eyes. Fear, as foreign as shame. Why I should

fear a girl I have pinned to the ground, I don’t know. She’s helpless, fragile. I

should be afraid of her guards, and their weapons.

The thought has barely formed when I feel it, the sharp jab of metal

deep in the back of my thigh where there are no scales to protect me. I cry

out and swipe at the guard with my claws. I graze his leg and reach for the

spear, but the guards in front don’t give me time. One snatches the girl

from beneath me and drags her across the stones while the second—a man

with a knife longer than my claws—lunges for my throat.

I knock him away with a growl that transforms to a howl of pain as

the man behind wrenches his spear free of my leg. Blood rushes from the

wound, and I scream.

“No!” the girl cries. “Don’t kill him!”

The guard drives his weapon into my other leg, just above the knee,

hobbling me. I wail like the grieving at the funeral fires. It’s over. Even if I

fight off the guards and get to my feet, I’ll never be able to run.

“No! No!” The princess is suddenly by my side, tripping over my arm

and falling to the ground beside me. “Take him alive!” she pants, turning to

address the air around her, blind eyes wide. “Take him alive. We need him

to tell us how to remove the poison. If not, I will die.”

My claws dig into the stone so hard, my knuckles ache. There is no

poison—these Smooth Skins believe such strange things about my

people—but I can arrange for her to die. She’s close. I could slit her throat

before her guards could make a move to protect her.

My pulse beats faster. The agony in my legs fades to a high-pitched

hum of pain that urges me to act. To kill. This is my last chance to take

vengeance. This is their princess, the woman who will be queen and

continue the devastation of the land until not a single living creature

remains outside the domed cities.

I should do it. I will do it.

My heart races. Faster, faster, until I hear it rushing in my ears.

Faster, until sweat beads on my lip and my scales move farther apart to

accommodate the heat building inside me. Faster, until my teeth ache and

my brain pulses and colors swim through the night air.

Red for the blood that’s been spilled.

Blue for the sky I’ll never see again.

Green for her eyes.

Her eyes …

They are the last thing I see before black sweeps in, stealing all the

colors, all my hope, away.

THREE

ISRA

THERE’S a muffled kapluph, and the Monstrous man’s arm goes limp.

It lolls against my leg, heavy and so hot that it burns through my overalls.

He’s as hot as fire, as hot as I’ve imagined the desert sand would be against

bare feet.

No human could live through such heat. Not for long. I don’t know

about a Monstrous, but he certainly wasn’t this warm before.

“Take him to the cells,” I say, my breath coming fast. “Bring the

healers to see him. Find the king and tell him I’ll meet him there.”

Baba. By the moons, he’ll be terrified. And livid. He’s already locked

me away. What will he do now? When he learns I’ve been out of the tower

and met such trouble? Put bars on the windows? Brick up the stairs? The

thought of being any more trapped than I am is almost enough to make me

hope the poison in my blood kills me.

I shiver. I asked the Monstrous to kill me. Why? What was I thinking?

I don’t want to die. I want to live, I want—

“But, Princess—”

“Do as she says,” comes a worried voice from my left. “We need the

monster awake. He might be the only one who knows the cure. I’ll escort

Princess Isra. Hurry!” The air fills with the scuff, scuff of soldiers’ boots,

then grunts and groans as the heavy Monstrous is hauled from the ground

and with more scuff, scuffs is carried away.

“Let me help you, Princess,” the remaining soldier says. His voice is

familiar, though I don’t know why. I’ve never spoken to a soldier. I’ve never

spoken to any men at all except for my father, Junjie, and now the

Monstrous.

The Monstrous was definitely a man, a man the size of a small

mountain, the only being I’ve ever seen longer than I am. My people are

almost invariably small of stature and petite of bone, with nut-brown skin

and straight black hair. The Monstrous had similar hair, but he stood a head

taller than me, with shoulders the size of boulders, covered in orange and

golden scales, like a fish, but dry and smooth.

No, not like a fish, like … a snake.

The thought makes me shudder as I take the soldier’s hand and let

him help me to my feet.

“Are you able to walk, my lady?” His voice pricks at me like one of

the needles in my maid’s apron pocket.

It’s how Needle got her name. The day she came to give me a bath, I

had just turned five and was still feral with grief. She started unbuttoning