Cruel Beauty

In the island nation of Arcadia, sealed nine hundred years ago beneath a false parchment sky by the demon prince known as the Gentle Lord, Nyx Triskelion has been raised for a single purpose: to marry the Gentle Lord and destroy him from within. Her father, Leonidas, leads the Resurgandi, a secret society that practices the Hermetic arts, a system of magic that manipulates the four classical elements through inscribed diagrams and sigils. Years ago, Leonidas bargained with the Gentle Lord for children because his wife, Thisbe, was suicidal over her infertility. The Gentle Lord granted twin daughters but ensured Thisbe could not survive their birth. Leonidas chose Nyx as the expendable daughter and her twin, Astraia, who resembles their dead mother, as the one to live free. The Resurgandi believe the Gentle Lord's house is a vast Hermetic working; if Nyx can inscribe nullifying sigils on its four elemental hearts, the house will collapse, freeing Arcadia, though Nyx will be trapped or killed.

On the morning of her wedding, Nyx chokes on resentment toward the family that raised her as a weapon. Astraia presents her with a specially forged knife that has never cut a living thing, believing in the Sibyl's Rhyme: "A virgin knife in a virgin's hand / Can kill the beast that rules the land" (29). In a moment of cold fury, Nyx tells Astraia the Rhyme is a lie and that their mother died because of Astraia. She departs, speaks her wedding vows to a stone statue standing in for the Gentle Lord, and is driven to his tower.

Inside, the house is far larger than its exterior, a shifting labyrinth of rooms. The Gentle Lord introduces himself as Ignifex. He is strikingly beautiful with sharp features and black hair, but his crimson, cat-slit eyes betray his inhuman nature. He discovers the knife strapped to Nyx's thigh and throws it out of reach. He sets the rules of their arrangement: each night he will offer Nyx the chance to guess his true name. A correct guess wins her freedom; a wrong guess means death. He gives her a silver key to explore permitted rooms and warns that forbidden rooms are deadly.

That night, Ignifex's shadow detaches from the wall and takes semi-corporeal human form: a gray-skinned figure with vivid blue eyes wearing Ignifex's face but without any malice. Nyx calls him Shade. He leads her to the Heart of Water, one of the four elemental hearts she must find, a ballroom transformed into a vast, still lake with tiny lights swirling above it. By pressing her hand to her heart, he helps her feel the Hermetic working's pulse. Shade has risked his master's wrath to help her. He reveals he was cursed by Ignifex and cannot speak his master's secrets, but he calls Nyx their only hope.

A pattern forms. By day, Nyx explores the house, discovering a secret room open to the sky containing a bronze sparrow she recognizes as a Lar, or household god, and a mirror through which she can see Astraia. By evening, she dines with Ignifex, their conversations sharp and increasingly charged. By night, she visits Shade. She grows close to both: drawn to Shade's quiet kindness and to Ignifex's fierce honesty.

Over weeks, Nyx and Ignifex strike a bargain of their own: she surrenders the virgin knife, and they search for his true name together. Ignifex reveals he has masters called the Kindly Ones, ancient beings who are neither gods nor demons. They lend him power, set the rules of his existence, and ordered him to take wives. He cannot remember his origins or his name. He tells Nyx he loves her because she knows what she is and never lies to herself about her own cruelty.

Shade leads Nyx through a shattered mirror to the Heart of Fire, where he tries to show her the truth about the Sundering. The visions overwhelm her, and the fire burns away her memories. For one instant upon waking, she knows Ignifex's true name, but it slips away. Ignifex later carries her to the Heart of Earth, a room simulating a true blue sky over a field of grass and sunlight. He then flies her on great black wings to the Heart of Air, a garden suspended at the apex of the parchment dome. From this height, Nyx grasps the devastating truth: all of Arcadia exists inside the house. A round study she found earlier contains not a model of Arcadia but Arcadia itself, sealed beneath a miniature dome. Collapsing the four hearts would destroy the entire world. The Resurgandi's plan is useless.

Ignifex gives Nyx his golden ring, which allows her to open any door in Arcadia. She uses it to visit home, where she finds Astraia transformed: thinner, harder, studying Hermetic texts. Astraia demands that Nyx kill Ignifex. Nyx argues he is also a captive and that killing him might unleash the demons he barely controls, but Astraia dismantles every argument. Overwhelmed by guilt, Nyx swears a binding oath to destroy the Gentle Lord, rescue the last prince of Arcadia, and save the island.

That night, Nyx submits to the burning darkness while wearing Ignifex's ring and receives a vision from the Kindly Ones. Nine hundred years ago, the last prince, whose heart was full of hatred and fear, bargained with the Kindly Ones to spare him from a test every king must face: looking into a box containing the Children of Typhon, shadow-demons born of Tartarus. The Kindly Ones sealed all Arcadia inside the box and split the prince in two: Shade, the gentle half with human blue eyes, and Ignifex, the fierce half with crimson demon eyes. Neither remembers being the same person. To free Arcadia, Nyx must use the Children of Typhon to rend Ignifex until his power transfers to Shade, making the prince whole so he can open the box. Ignifex will be locked inside forever.

Nyx returns to the house, frees Shade from imprisonment, and together they find Ignifex desperately trying to remember the voice in the darkness. Nyx kisses him, whispers an apology, and releases the Children of Typhon. The shadows tear Ignifex apart while Shade simultaneously dissolves. Their hands touch and light explodes. The merged prince, now one person with blue human eyes, holds the box. Opening it will unwind time to the moment before his original bargain, freeing Arcadia. He will be locked in the box with the shadows, but the Sundering will never have happened. He kisses Nyx and opens the box.

Nyx wakes in a restored Arcadia under a true blue sky. There is no Sundering, no Gentle Lord. She remembers nothing, only an inexplicable grief. That evening, at a village festival where she plays the mock bride of the hedge-god Tom-a-Lone, she is given a heavy gold ring shaped like a rose. She recognizes it. When the counting song ends with "One is one and all alone / And ever more shall be so" (324), all her memories crash back. She realizes the last prince, Marcus Valerius Lux, haunts his castle ruins on this one night each year. She puts on the ring and runs.

At the castle, the Kindly Ones arrive escorting Lux, released for one night before returning to the darkness. Nyx offers her eyes, her life, her eternal servitude, but nothing suffices. So she changes her bargain: she will stay with him in the darkness forever, sharing his punishment, asking for nothing in return. The bronze sparrow appears on her wrist and addresses the Kindly Ones, calling Nyx's bargain "the answer to your riddle" (335). A selfless sacrifice that asks nothing is a revolt against the entire system of bargaining. The Kindly Ones vanish.

The ground dissolves and Nyx and Lux fall through infinite darkness as the Children of Typhon strip away everything. Nyx clings to someone she no longer recognizes but knows is hers. She wakes in morning sunlight amid the ruins. Lux lies beside her, whole and human, with black hair, blue eyes, and scarred hands. He is not exactly Ignifex or Shade but a new person containing both. They are tentative with each other, both altered, both flawed. Nyx takes his hand and says they will pretend they know how to love, and someday they will learn. Together they walk out through the gateway.