by Varsha Ravi
Her eyes narrowed, defiant. “I don’t care about the rest of the tragedies.”
There was an implicit statement in it—I care about yours—and it seared all the way down; he didn’t dare hold onto it for fear it would fall into ashes in his hands, the kind that did not put themselves back together and breathe alive into something more beautiful. Lightly, he said, “Fate loves all its tragedies. I don’t think it will let go of me that easily.”
“I’ll bend fate,” she replied, graceless and lovely, “And I’ll break it, and I’ll empty that river of yours until the world’s drowned with old tragedies and happy endings.”
Despite everything, he laughed a little, unconscious and too soft for it to be anything but strange. It surprised her—the stubborn set to her features softened momentarily and she watched him wordlessly, the ash flower trembling in the breeze.
“Would you believe me,” he asked, soft as petals, soft as palms, “If I told you I’d be bad for you?”
“Like old films, then,” she said, after a moment had passed. Her voice was careful, gaze clear and scrutinizing. He wondered what she meant to find in him, what latent secret or hidden horror she found so interesting. “Love stories.”
What were love stories but dreams of worlds where the sun and moon could linger beside one another long enough to learn the language of the other’s heart? “Yes.”
“Do you want to know a secret?” She didn’t mean the words as a question; she held his gaze, teeth gritted, eyes bright, hair dancing around her face like black flame. She was every bit of fire he held inside his heart. “I’ve never believed in fairy tales. Nor in love stories.”
“You believe in happy endings,” he said, and her mouth split in a jagged smile.
“I believe in happy endings,” she agreed, “And I believe in the gods who grant them. But I don’t believe in their silence damning us. If the gods never answer, then we learn to make happy endings of our own.”
She was not speaking of her own—Kiran felt unsteady, like he could tear into ash and disappear into the flower behind her ear and stay there forever. He was broken with the weight of this love, a bird that had forgotten how to fly.
His lips lifted in a humorless smile. “But fate—”
“Fuck fate,” she said savagely. “And I swear, Kiran, I swear to all your dead saints, if this is why you’re going to leave—because you think you’re bad for me—”
She cut off abruptly. They didn’t talk about him leaving—it wasn’t something they did, because they were both afraid of losing things they loved, and they were both in love. But the air was ripe with confessions and secrets now, and the sharp iron tang of regret disappeared in the mist of it.
Kiran leaned back, and her eyes tracked the movement. They didn’t speak.
Don’t ask me to stay, he pleaded. Please, don’t ask me to stay.
“Has the inner seal broken yet?” she asked, as though she could not feel it in her own chest as he felt it in his.
“Not yet,” he said tonelessly, and the last word hung between them, a promise and an answer, and he pretended not to notice the way it sliced through her, straight through flesh and sinew to shining white bone.
She would not speak, so he made himself spit out the words, clumsy and useless. “I can’t stay. You know I can’t.”
But they were speaking of different things entirely, and he knew it. They both knew he would have to leave, after his ‘sick leave’ ended and he returned to his jobs. Suri meant stay the way humans did—to stay in a heart, to learn the lines of it and never give it up. She meant it in the way of uttriyasi—live and die and live again, and dance across the threads of the world, through darkness and light, and always come back, always. She meant it like two whispered, wondrous words—find me.
Kiran knew this without her having to say it, because he knew her heart how children knew stars in the sky, taught before embarking on journeys. He used the pieces of her heart—the traceries of vessels, the bloody heartstrings, the warm, ceaseless rhythm—as constellations, a bright, infallible sea of light that would always lead him home.
A long time ago, she had told him to run. He had not obeyed her then, but he had spent the rest of his eternity running. And now she was asking him to stay, asking him to stop, and he was afraid of telling her the truth because he thought it might make it real: he wasn’t sure he knew how to.
Snowflakes fell, and dusted her cheekbones like war paint. Carefully, he cupped her face and drew his thumbs across her cheeks, wiping away the flakes.
Her skin was so cold under his fingers; they were so close that moving closer was far easier than moving apart, and the realization of it startled him. He began to draw his hands away, but she pulled hers up and held him in place. Ash petals fell away and twirled alongside the snowflakes.
“Why do you touch me like that?”
“Like what?” he asked, gently testing her grip. It tightened, and he gave up, returning to stroking the tops of her cheekbones with his thumbs. Her eyes were dark with unspoken emotion, sorrow without all the sharp parts.
“Like you’re afraid of burning me,” she said, unsteady under his hands. “You touch me like you’re afraid of hurting me.”
The smile came to his lips unbidden, small and bitter. “I’m good at things like that, burning and hurting. The closer you get, the worse your chances get. If you fear death the way you say you do, you should stake me through the heart and feed me to the carrion birds.”
She made a face at the wording, leaning back unintentionally. His fingers slipped, and her grip tightened, nails digging into the backs of his hands. In the suffocating cold, the pain tethered him.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, so firmly it held no warmth. She said it the same way that others would say the sky was blue, the way they would say their heart knew how to beat.
“I could,” he returned, but she caught his gaze, too sharp for the limp, weak words to have any real sway. Could he? Or would his fire bounce off the surface of her skin, tempered by tenderness? He would not have been surprised to learn that she was immune to him.
“You wouldn’t,” she repeated, turning his face to meet hers. The words came slowly, sharply, as if they stung and bit on the way out. “Tell me why you can’t stay.”
Her palm was too cold against his cheek, and he wanted to warm her until the chill left them both. “I was never supposed to stay.”
Suri’s eyes shuttered, dark lashes feathering the tops of her cheeks. There was something strained and knotted in the uneven line of her mouth. “Tell me why you can’t.”
But he couldn’t, not in words. I can’t stay, because—because what? Because he had been born from blood, and he would return to it, knives scissoring through the membranes of his heart the moment he’d opened his eyes. Because he’d burned the world down once, and he’d do it again if she asked him to. Because he had lost so many from the simple, cutting sin of staying beside them, and he couldn’t bear to lose her, not again. Because his was a myth with no happy ending, a tragedy that swallowed its tail, infinite. I can’t stay, because I think I’m in love with you.
“I’m an inconvenience,” he began, and the words came easily; they were not lies, after all. “I live in your apartment and earn money given by your grandmother and irritate you both endlessly. Your lives would be much easier without me, you—” his breath caught, and he took a moment to steady it. “You deserve someone good and whole, and I’m neither. I’m not even a person—I’m person-shaped. There’s nothing in me worth the effort of caring for.”
Suri dropped her hands back to her sides, and took a step back. She looked as if he’d struck her.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, wondrous with anger. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
She gave a sharp, incredulous laugh. “I don’t even know where to begin. There is nothing in me worth the effort of caring for? Do you not know how much the others care for you, how much my grandmother cares for you? Who are you to decide
the ease and cadence of our lives? I—” she paused, exhaling slowly. She fixed her gaze on the ground below. “Are all your reasons to leave this stupid?”
Kiran didn’t acknowledge the question. Perhaps she was right, and they thought they cared for him. But in the long run, they would be better off if he were gone. “Why do you think someone bound us together, Suri? Have you never wondered whether they might come back? The longer I stay here, the more danger you’ll be in.”
“I’ll be in danger no matter what,” she said simply. “I’ve been in danger since the moment I let you in. I’ve been in danger since the moment my parents died. There was no escaping it, not for me. If you leave, technically I’ll be in more danger.”
Still, she would not look up. He examined the ducked curl of her head, the tight fists at her sides. “You really, truly want me to stay, then.”
“Yes,” she said, unflinching. Her heart was the inception of diamond, glittering and adamantine. What a pair they made, a heart that held scars in place of vessels and a heart dipped in iron and filled with fire. Hers would never break, and his would never learn how to heal.
And it cut across every law of his soul, every bound memory and every mortal one, but he stepped back from her. There were seas between them, entire worlds and entire lives. His mouth tasted like ash.
Her gaze scraped across the snow-dusted stone below them, voice little more than a cold rasp. “You’re not even going to try. You’re not even going to give this a chance.”
Kiran looked at her, and he saw the fractured, broken threads of Annabel’s soul. He saw shattered pottery, and blood filling the clear water of a shallow pool like ink. He saw unmarked graves on the freshly broken ground of a battlefield, and red-flecked lips mouthing a single word, a single command. Run.
A laugh rolled through him, low and quiet. “I don’t mind if you hate me for it. Spit on my shrine, or wish for another early death, or thank fate for my tragedy. Do whatever you need to do. But I will not stay and doom you.”
Suri forced herself to look up, the movement so slow and cutting it could have drawn blood. “Don’t.”
But he was already gone, and the winter air had washed away the remnants of his presence, leaving behind only the faint scent of smoke and ash.
27
Enesmat
Kiran could not understand why the city was burning.
He seized the bloody knife on the altar, holding it close to him as if it would explain—as if it would tell him the secrets of the flames. But it did not, and above, Avya did not answer him.
Viro was dead, slumped against a column and half melted—and yet, Kiran could not fathom having killed him. The city was dying, and yet the flames were not his. But there was no other fire, no other flame-spun heart that could have burned them, and so it must have been him—it must have.
His head ached, chest still pained with the echo of death. But death could not free him from this pervasive, sickening scene: the odor of burning flesh and blossoms, of blood turned to smoke, of gods turned human with ferocious love.
It is your fire, said that old, wry voice, mocking him. It is your fire, and these are your ashes.
He was wreathed in cold fire, knelt on the stone of the temple floor. It ripped him apart from inside, metal hooked into flesh and meant to rend. A hundred ashen heartstrings severed in a second, sweeping him into blissful oblivion.
This time, he did not dream of divinity. He knew there was nothing left in him that resembled the stars, nor the gods. There was only this strange, ceaseless fire, this sea of wrath and blistering kantal blossoms melted into blood, this nameless, aching regret.
Kiran shut his eyes and waited for the flames to take him. When he opened them, he was in an unfamiliar, empty cavern, twice the size of the palace in width and length, and yet empty throughout. The walls were the color of probed flesh, wound through with veins of black and red. Along the near side, a slender, rushing length of liquid ran from one edge of the cavern to the other, uninterrupted and volatile. From darkness to darkness.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” someone said, resolving from vague, faded static into a real voice. “He has the constitution of an infant. Mortals usually cannot stand the strain.”
“I do not think he would agree with that assessment,” another voice replied, familiar and faintly amused. Kiran blinked once, and the cavern was no longer empty. A man in dark mourner’s robes stood beside the river, gripping a carved holly staff. He scrutinized him with piercing silver eyes, his ebony complexion glinting in the low light.
Beside him stood Avya. There was an odd, sad smile on his face. A smile of mourning, of pity.
Kiran’s blood was ice in his veins. “Where am I?”
“Poor critical thinking skills,” put in the man beside the river—a god, then. “The others will mock you for centuries if you go through with this. They will say you are far too soft for your position.”
“Oh, hush,” Avya said crossly. “They already know I am too soft.”
Kiran glanced around the empty, beating cavern. Distant, overlapping voices twined with one another and sang in the background. “Dhaasthur.”
Neither of them replied, but the man beside the river glanced back in appraisal. Whatever he saw, he did not feel the need to make a comment upon it—he snorted and focused on the river once more. Once in a while, he would tap the staff gently against the floor of the cavern, and strands of dark, shining liquid—almost reflective, like mercury—would leap into the air and dissipate.
Dhaasthur. The land of the dead. Which meant the man beside the liquid was Dhaasan, the god of the dead, and that was the River Asakhi. The river of souls, of death. Of rebirth.
Kiran could not help but think that it was rather small for the underworld. Dhaasan made a scornful noise. Without deigning to elaborate on how he knew his thoughts, he said, “This is only one of many places where the river touches the earth, boy. Asakhi is everywhere, just as death is. To think it confined by the constraints of mortal lands is disappointingly naive.”
“Kiran,” Avya broke in gently. Impossibly gently. “Do you know why you are here?”
“I died,” he said warily. “I sacrificed myself, and died.”
Avya and Dhaasan exchanged glances. Frustration burned in his chest. “Where are they? You have to take me back—you have to save them. The city was burning. You have to go save them.”
Avya’s gaze softened slightly. “I cannot. You know why I cannot.”
Kiran knew, but he could not force himself to face it. He already felt changed, unnatural. As though he knew intimately every single emotion he was meant to feel, and yet sensed none of them. There was something horribly distant about the entire ordeal, a crushing, impossible despair he could not access, a heart he no longer had.
He tasted bile on his tongue, acrid. “I killed them.”
“No,” Dhaasan cut in, throwing a glare in Avya’s direction. “You did not. Blame yourself for whatever you want, boy, but you did not kill those people.”
“Then—”
“I did,” Avya said firmly. Even now, his gaze was steady. But there was a sharp resolution he had not noticed before. There was no softness there—the death of an entire city was little more than a simple punishment. Kiran heard Viro’s voice, echoing: An example must be made. “I have given them many chances, for centuries and centuries before your birth. I told you they would hurt you, and you did not believe me. What did you invoke? ‘Their inherent good?’ How little that helped you in the end.”
“You burned the city down,” he whispered. “Because of me.”
The god of death narrowed his eyes at him, as if in disbelief. “The boy’s even more pigheaded than you are.”
Kiran ignored him. Self-hatred was a welcome, jagged ache in his blood in the face of this newfound lack of sensation. “Intent. I must have sacrificed myself with a latent intent—to hurt. Otherwise, you would not have been able to burn the city and accept my sacrifice in the same bre
ath.”
His mouth thinned, and he knew he was right. The god held up a hand. “It was my decision. If you’d had any say, you would not have done it. I know that. The people would have known it. Dhaasan knows it—”
“Unfortunately,” the god grumbled, tapping his staff once again.
“This is not your burden to carry,” Avya finished, his gaze uncomfortably bright.
The words washed over him. He held the god’s stare defiantly. “So why am I here? Why am I not—” he nodded toward the river of souls. “Dead, as I am supposed to be? Awaiting reincarnation?”
Dhaasan barked out a sharp, harsh laugh. “I do not envy you now, old friend.”
Avya folded his arms. There was an edge of something resembling nervousness in his eyes—if gods even felt such things. “Kiran, as you know, you are part human and part god. An uneven, imprecise mixture.”
Anxiety chafed against him. “And?”
“And,” the god continued, “There has always been more god in you than mortal. More flame than flesh. And when you… died and invoked my blessing and I burned the city, you took in more of my fire in my wrath.”
“What do you mean to say?” Kiran whispered. Distantly, he registered the crack of stone, the rumble of pressure.
Dhaasan paused beside the river, glancing up toward the ceiling of the cavern. Kiran could not—he felt as though if he moved his attention away from keeping himself still, he would crack, would split apart into flame and ash.
Avya’s gaze had not left his. “You did not wholly die in the temple. There was enough divinity in you that you simply lingered, lost between two states. And so I… I allowed you to ascend. I gave you more of my power, enough to make you something near whole. And yet, it is not mine anymore.” He glanced at the ceiling of the cavern, and then back. “You have made it your own. Despite what any of the other gods may say,” he said, shooting a look at Dhaasan, “It is entirely yours now.”
Kiran thought he might vomit. The ache of an old wound throbbed in his chest, six sharp points splintering flesh—flesh that was no longer mortal, that no longer bled red, that no longer beat with a proper heart. “I slaughtered an entire city, and—and as a present, I am given godhood?”