“Better than never,” he said. “Besides, I did deserve it. I wronged you. Both of me.” His mouth tightened, and then he said, whisper-soft, “I’m sorry too. Please forgive me.”
Neither one of them would ever have apologized so desperately. It was a new person staring back at me with blue eyes—but I was a new person too. And if he, so long divided, could gather himself together and remember how to love me, then I could do the same for him.
“Well, you were at least both handsome, too.” I took his hand again; our thumbs rubbed together, and then suddenly we were kissing.
When we finally stopped, Lux said, “What happens now?” He looked around at the ruins as if seeing them for the first time.
I pushed hair out of my face and tried to think past the warmth of his arm around my waist. “Well, we should tell somebody I’m alive, since I ran out into the night. And we’d better prepare to get shouted at, since I jilted Tom-a-Lone.” I remembered that the world he’d known hadn’t had that tradition. “At the festival, they—”
“I’ve seen the festivals.” His soft voice stopped the breath in my throat. But then he went on, “So, you were running after another man? I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”
“Then don’t,” I said. “Never leave me again.”
I had just created the kind of scandal I’d spent all week scheming to avoid. But with the sky an impossible blue overhead and my impossible, blue-eyed husband sitting beside me, I couldn’t much care.
“Come on.” I took his hand and stood, pulling him up with me. “Let’s go home. Aren’t you tired of being in this house?”
I meant the words lightly, but he looked around the sunlit ruins with solemn eyes. “It’s strange,” he said softly. “I think I’ll miss it.”
And I realized that in every life he had lived, this was his only home and he had never left.
“I miss hating my sister,” I said, pulling him toward the gateway. “She’s a little bit more wicked now, so I can’t even hate her for being too kind.”
But when we were almost at the threshold, he paused again, and this time there was naked fear on his face.
“You do realize,” he said. “I don’t remember how to be anything but a demon lord and his shadow.”
“I’m still not very good at being anything but a wicked sister.” I took his other hand.
A handful of kindness, the sparrow had said, and now we each had two.
“We’ll both be foolish,” I said, “and vicious and cruel. We will never be safe with each other.”
“Don’t try too hard to be cheerful.” His fingers threaded through mine.
“But we’ll pretend we know how to love.” I smiled at him. “And someday we’ll learn.”
And we walked out through the gateway together.
Acknowledgments
The difficulty in writing acknowledgments for a first novel is that you aren’t thanking everyone who helped you write the novel, you’re thanking everyone who ever helped you become a writer. This is a project doomed to failure, but since I love heroic tragedies, I’ll make the attempt anyway.
So first of all: thank you, Mom and Dad, for teaching me to love stories and never getting tired of listening to mine. I could fill a hundred books with thanks and it wouldn’t be enough.
Secondly, I owe a huge debt to Sherwood Smith for years of mentoring, encouragement, and advice. (And for being brave enough to read my juvenilia.)
Thanks also to my brothers: Tim, who played at storytelling with me when I was little, and Brendan, who first put the idea of writing into my head.
My agent, Hannah Bowman, not only found this book an excellent home but has been a source of unfailing enthusiasm and support. It was totally worth getting rejected by the other sixty-two agents to find her.
My editor, Sara Sargent, has also been amazing and helped make this book far better than I ever imagined it could be when I finished that first draft.
The entire Balzer + Bray team has been great, but I especially would like to thank Erin Fitzsimmons for the gorgeous cover design.
The early manuscript of Cruel Beauty was beta-read by Marta Bliese, Bethany Powell, Jennifer Danke, and Leah Cypess, all of whom helped shape it in important ways.
I try to steal from all the best authors, but Cruel Beauty owes a special debt of inspiration to C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot. It was Lewis’s Till We Have Faces that helped me realize what I wanted out of heroines and stories retold. Eliot’s poetry has inspired me in a host of ways over the years, but he particularly influenced the imagery in this book; those who have read his Four Quartets will notice several allusions. (If you haven’t read Four Quartets, please do; it’s one of the most beautiful poems in the English language.)