Cruel Beauty (ARC) by Rosamund Hodge

Author:Rosamund Hodge
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780062224736
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-07-11T21:00:00+00:00

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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14

That’s all I could see at first: brilliant white-gold light that dazzled my eyes so I had to squint and blink back tears. Then my eyes adjusted, and I caught my breath in wonder. We stood in a field of grass and yellow flowers that stretched out to the horizon, where it met not the parchment sky I had always known but pure, bright blue.

I looked up. Only for a moment, before the absolute light stabbed my eyes and forced me to look down again, purple and green blobs swimming in my vision, but it was enough. I had seen the sun.

I had seen the sun.

But that was impossible. The sun was gone, lost beyond whatever infinities separated Arcadia from the rest of the world. I could not be seeing it, could not be feeling its warmth prickle down my nose like the heat from a fireplace.

I could not, and yet I was.

“Are we . . .” I began softly.

Ignifex set me down. “No,” he said. “It’s another room. An illusion.” He sat down and flung himself back on the grass. “But it looks almost the same.” He sounded wistful.

I turned around slowly. Behind me stood a narrow wooden doorframe, through which I could see the library, but otherwise the illusion was perfect. A breeze ruffled the flowers and whispered against my neck; it had the same delicate immensity as the breezes I had felt running through the fields around the village, and it smelled of summer, warm grass, and wide-open spaces.

Yet despite the sameness of the air, despite my knowing it was a room, it still seemed vaster than the open hills of Arcadia. At first I wasn’t sure why; I thought it simply might be the blue sky or the brilliant sunlight, but then I realized it was the shadows. In Arcadia, the sun cast soft, diffuse shadows that were like a murmur of darkness. Here the shadows were sharp and crisp as those cast by a Hermetic lamp without its shade—but the light here was infinitely brighter, clearer, and more alive. It felt as if I had lived all my life inside a flat painting and only now had I stepped into the real world.

I couldn’t help myself. I spun around, gulping great breaths of the sunlit air, until I suddenly realized that I must look like a foolish child. I stopped and glanced down at Ignifex. He lay on his back, gazing up with eyes slitted against the sun. The wind rustled his damp hair; his face looked more relaxed and human than I had ever seen it.

He had told me the truth: he had brought me to someplace warm, a peaceful, golden place with a sky untorn by shadows. He had rewarded me, though last night I had tried to let the darkness eat him.

I sat down beside him. “You remember the world from before,” I said.

He didn’t move. “That’s a safe bet, since I’m the demon who tore you from it.

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