“Do it!” the Rakkhoshi Queen screamed, a sound full of frustration and anger. I realized that for whatever reason—a sense of self-preservation?—she couldn’t destroy her own soul. “Do it!” she screamed again even as Neel shouted from behind his prison door, “Don’t! Kiran, please!”
I looked at the struggling bee in my hands. Its light was fading, and the fight leaving its small body, like it knew what was coming. “I can’t,” I whispered.
“Ohhh, YOU!” she shouted, like she was so frustrated, she couldn’t even come up with an appropriate insult. And then, with an incredible effort that seemed to use every ounce of her power, the demoness lunged at me. I screamed. I really thought she’d just had it and was going to kill me, but it wasn’t me she was after. Her sharp talons grabbed the bee out of my hand, and in one swift motion, she tore off its wing.
Her scream—or was it the bee’s?—was something awful to hear. Deep and horrible, like someone was being cut in two. The demoness dropped the sword and then fell down heavily next to it. Neel started pounding on the inside of his prison door. “Kiran! Kiran! What did you do?”
But of course, I hadn’t done anything. The Queen had sacrificed herself to free her son. She writhed now on the floor, her arm at a horrible, unnatural angle. She was in obvious pain but still had enough power to glare at me. “Open. The. Door!” the Rakkhoshi Rani commanded with a huge effort.
I had to ignore Neel’s pounds from the other side of the door, his demands to know what exactly was going on, how upset he sounded, and how furious he was with me. My hands trembling, I grabbed the torn bee wing from the rani’s hand and slipped it in the tiny lock on the door. Not only did I feel the prison door give way under my hands as I did, but I heard Neel’s shackles fall off with loud jangles and thuds.
The moment the prison door opened, Neel shot out into the hall. But before he even bent down to see how his mother was doing, the hallway grew colder and a familiar voice made both of us look up.
Welcome, intergalactic viewers! Welcome, live satellite audience!” said Sesha, the Serpent King. “Welcome to Princess Kiranmala’s final test on Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer?”
I whipped around to find not only Sesha sitting on a high throne in the center of the hall, but that suddenly, in addition to the cameras on the walls, there were ginormous TV screens everywhere. They were stacked floor to ceiling, lining the walls five or six high. And on the screens were the eager faces of hundreds of viewers. They were sitting in stands in fairgrounds, they were in the Kingdom Beyond’s palace courtyard, they were in huge movie theaters in the Kingdom of Serpents. I saw with a startled cry that one screen was even broadcasting my own living room—from where my parents were watching me with horrified expressions!
“Ma! Baba!” I cried, reaching toward them.
“Daughter!” I heard Ma’s voice call. “Darling Garland of Moonbeams! Do not …”
“I’m okay, Ma! Don’t worry, Baba!” I yelled at the exact same time. “I’m sorry!”
But with a flick of his hand, Sesha shut the sound off that screen. I could see my mother’s mouth still moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She and Baba were clutching at each other, and the expressions on their faces almost broke my heart. With an effort, I tore my gaze away from them.
“What is this?” I looked around at all the television screens now encircling me, the low wall all around me, the hungry eyes of all the viewers up and down the magically widened hallway. But I didn’t need to wait for the answer, because I realized that the dungeon hallway had been transformed into something that looked, for all the world, like a gladiator arena.
From who knows where, Sesha had made a harmonium materialize in front of him, and now he played it. “A princess split in two—is she boringly good or evil true?” he warbled in a deep baritone. Oh man. Why hadn’t I realized it? It had been him singing those harmonigrams all along. “Will she embrace the skin she’s in, or fight against her birth and kin?”
From behind the Serpent King emerged another figure on the dais, that obnoxious seven-headed serpent, Naga, my brother. Naga butted into Sesha’s song, “Just in case you didn’t get it, this is your last test, oh, Sissster!”
This was super bad. Super-duper-with-extra-cherries-on-top bad. I took a quick look at Neel, who was cradling his mother’s glassy-eyed head in his lap. She was alive at least, but taking in deep, raspy breaths and not looking particularly healthy.
I looked around the arena, realization dawning even brighter. This wasn’t all put together at the last minute. Sesha had known I’d be here. He’d wanted me to come. He’d set me up to do this. And it all made sense now—the instructional video for how to get here, how easy it had been to get away on Raat’s back with Ai-Ma and Naya. “You wanted me to get Neel out of detention like this all along? This was part of the game show the whole time?”
Sesha clapped, slow and mocking. As he did, the satellite audience clapped too. “Of course that was the plan!” He waved his hands at the screens, and instead of the satellite audience, I saw Naya, Mati, Tuni, and me plotting together on my palace balcony. Then Sesha played a video of me in my ridiculous dental hygienist’s costume, assisting Dr. I. M. Pagol. Me escaping with Ai-Ma after fighting with the rakkhoshi skaters. Finally, I saw myself flying on Raat’s back to the hut of demonologist K. P. Das. Then I was shooting down the fish by just looking in the pool. I saw the prisoner parade with Ai-Ma and Naya, I saw us flying here to the Honey-Gold Ocean of Souls, I saw me diving under the water, I saw me making my way to the dungeons, I saw myself solving the witches’ riddle. I saw all of it.
“Everything I’ve done since I got here has all been a part of the game show? You had hidden cameras everywhere? This has all been a part of your sick plan?” I felt like I needed a shower. I couldn’t believe it—all those decisions I’d made, all that planning we’d done, Sesha had been watching the whole time?
“Yes, dear audience!” Sesha boomed, and the screens switched back to the viewers. “That’s my evil, snaky offspring all right! She may not have given in to temptation in the dentist office, when I was so vulnerable. She may not have decided to kill me then, but you know what they say about the poison not falling far from the fang! Use the touch pad on your remote control to vote for your favorite sneaky, snaky move committed by the Princess Demon Slayer! Was it when she plotted with her little friends to steal my tooth? When she refused to kill the rakkhoshis like a true hero should? When she let Prince Neel’s mother sacrifice herself even though he expressly asked her not to save him? Use your remote to vote or text Kiranmala001 for tooth stealing, Kiranmala002 for sparing rakkhoshis, or Kiranmala003 for letting the Queen sacrifice herself!”
“This is totally bonkers,” I murmured. “Bonkers!” Nothing I’d done had been out of the eyeshot of Sesha. He’d been watching and recording and laughing at me this whole time. He’d obviously planned, all along, for me to injure the Rakkhoshi Queen. As I thought this, I turned back to Neel. “How is she?”
My friend’s face was a mask of pain. His mother’s mutilated soul bee flopped helplessly in her loose fist, but even half-unconscious as she was, the Rakkhoshi Rani mustered enough power to yell, “Get off me! You are no son of mine! You half-human weakling! Get away from me!”
“Mother?” Neel’s face was confused, and I could see he didn’t want to believe his mother’s words even as he was hurt by them.
“Idiot,” gasped the weakening queen. I could tell, even if Neel couldn’t, that the Queen was faking it, pretending not to love Neel so that he wouldn’t be distracted from whatever fight was coming.
“Wah! Wah!” Sesha started clapping, slowly and dramatically. “What a shad, shad scene!” he drawled. “Mummy doesn’t love you, is it? You’d have plenty to talk about at your next therapy appointment—if you were going to get out of here alive, that is!”
Neel jumped back, his eyes full of hate and tears. From the ground, he picked up his sword, pointing it in Sesha’s direction. I
was already in fighting stance, my bow raised. Sesha thought he could convince me that I was evil. He’d set me up, again and again, to fail. But I hadn’t. My heart was thudding so loud in my chest, I was sure everyone could hear it. And then, I realized with a start, that the sound wasn’t my heart at all, but the hotel itself, throbbing like a live heart under the ocean. The fortress beat with Sesha’s life force even as the soul bee had buzzed with the demoness’s.
“Don’t come any closer,” Neel warned, taking a protective position right in front of his gasping mother. All around us, as if sensing the danger we posed to its master, the fortress thudded and hummed. The floor under our feet got slick, and it was hard to keep my footing. The arena itself was our opponent.
Sesha snarled, his lip curling above razor sharp teeth and two perfectly formed fangs. I couldn’t believe it. The whole scene at the dentist had been an act. I must have “pulled out” a tooth that had already been pulled earlier. And he’d lain there, pretending to be knocked out, so that I would be tempted to kill him and embrace my evil side? Why? Because it would get him better ratings for his show? It was all so twisted.
The Serpent King pointed at Neel with a menacing finger. “Look where you are, little half demonling. This isn’t just any fortress—you are inside the deepest heart of my power. And you stand here, in my underwater dungeons, in the arena of my hit game show and threaten to k-k-k-k-kill me? Are you k-k-k-kidding?”
Naga, the brainless follower that he was, copied our father, “Yeah, are you k-k-k-kidding?”
“So, you deep disappointment of a daughter, how do you like the TSK hotel—Honey-Gold Ocean of Souls location?” The Serpent King asked this of me like he really cared about my opinion. “It could have been your inheritance. If you had joined me willingly, that is.”
“I don’t think so, you slimeball!” I started firing my moon-magicked arrows at my snake father, but he just raised a mocking hand, and they all fell short of reaching him.
“How dare you fire on our father?” hissed Naga, charging toward me from the dais. “Die, sssissster! Die!”
“Oh, really, Naga? Didn’t take you too long to fall back in line with dear old Daddy, did it?” I fired two arrows at a time, and then three at my seven-headed brother serpent. “Last time I saw you, you’d quit working for him because he wouldn’t stop insulting you.”
That made Naga pause, but only for about a millisecond. “He promised he’d stop doing that.”
“And you believed him because he’s so trustworthy? Good move, Bro!” I felt my power grow and expand, as I made it rain magical moon arrows on the serpent’s hooded heads. Since swords weren’t particularly useful except at close range, Neel kept unnecessarily directing me—“Aim for that head!” “No, the other!” “Now that ugly one!” “The other ugly one!” “Watch out!” As I fired, I threw down my backpack from one shoulder, watching its contents scatter partially over the floor. It didn’t matter. The heavy thing was throwing off my aim.
“Father!” Naga whined. He looked like a slithery porcupine now, there were so many magic arrows hanging off his skin. “Shhhe’s hurting me!”
“Oh, shut up, you dolt!” Sesha snapped his fingers, and Naga was hurled back from us, landing mewling in the corner.
“You promised you’d stop saying mean things like that!” the seven-headed serpent cried, but our father ignored him.
“And so, we begin the third test.” Sesha was playing now for the hungry crowds. “Are you ready, satellite audience, to see a hero being born? Will the Princess Demon Slayer claim her destiny or will she die trying, and pass into song and legend?”
My parents were banging desperately on the other side of their TV screen now, and I willed myself to look away. What was coming next? What would my poor, loving Ma and Baba be forced to watch? I couldn’t even guess.
I turned my gaze toward where Neel’s mother lay on the floor. Her bee’s light was almost gone. She was getting weaker and weaker, too weak to even speak. Neel had run back to her side, ineffectively stroking at his mother’s hair. The demoness wasn’t exactly a hero. She had tried to kill Lal and Mati, hurt Neel and me. She was infuriating, and frightening, and totally untrustworthy. But she was his mother, and she was willing to sacrifice everything for her son. Just like Ma and Baba were willing to do for me. I realized what I had to do.
“Fine, we’ll fight!” I stood squarely in the middle of the arena, facing Sesha. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Neel give me a startled look. All around us, viewers on the TV screens gasped with shocked delight.
“That’s what this has been all about, right? Why you captured Neel, why you set up this whole game show in the first place? Fine, I’ll do it. You win. I’ll fight Neel if you fix, or heal, or however it works, his mother’s soul bee!”
“Kiran, you’d do that for her?” Neel said, his voice tight and full of emotion. His dark eyes danced over my face, warm and open for the first time in what felt like forever.
“I’d do it for you,” I said. And I saw his expressions change quickly from gratitude to hope to guilt to defeat.
“I could never fight you,” Neel said finally. “I never would.” But his eyes told me what I needed to know. He didn’t hate me after all. Even in the midst of our current horror, I felt something heavy and painful lift from my heart.
“Oh, that’s rich! That’s really, really wonderful!” Sesha all out guffawed, after watching our discussion with the interest of a TV viewer himself. “Is that what you thought, you little imp? That I wanted to have you fight your puny half-demon friend for my own pleasure?” Sesha looked out at the TV audience. “Isn’t that wonderful, viewers? Aren’t children just precious?”
The audience on the TV screens cheered, but a little less than before, as if they too were confused by what was going on.
“You don’t want me to fight Neel?” I asked. “That’s not my third test?”
“If I wanted that kind of cheap entertainment, I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble!” Sesha was laughing so hard, he actually had to catch his breath and wipe his eyes. “No, what I want is altogether different. I want to kill you, my youngest child. I would have thought that was utterly obvious. Oh, yes, I want to kill you and the Rakkhoshi Queen both.”
At Sesha’s admitting he wanted to kill me, the Kingdom Beyond audiences on the TV screens let out collective gasps and exclamations of “Princess Demon Slayer!” “No!” “The game was rigged after all!”
“Silence!” Sesha shouted at the on-screen spectators, and they obediently quieted. Ma and Baba were still on mute. I couldn’t even look anymore at that screen with my parents, though. I didn’t think I could keep it together if I saw their faces.
“So,” I said slowly, playing for time. “The entire Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? game was a big joke? I’m sure your sponsors won’t like that, will they? The whole killing-Princess-Demon-Slayer bit of your dastardly plan?” I looked directly at one of the cameras on the wall. “Hey, Princess Pretty Pants people! You really want to partner with TSK industries on your product? What about you, KiddiePow? Or you, Samosa Drone, Inc.? This evildoery isn’t exactly on message for any of your companies, is it? Well, I guess with the exception of Dead and Lovely skin cream.”
“Shut up!” I knew I’d gotten to Sesha when he blasted a bolt of green lightning at the camera into which I’d been speaking. Like the witchy sisters, the Serpent King obviously felt strongly about his corporate sponsorships. I felt a little spark of triumph. I’d figured him out, and I’d gotten to him.
My happiness was cut a little short, though, by the fact that Sesha then shot a bolt at me, encasing me in one of his green orbs of pain and torture. Immediately, I dropped to my knees inside the floating bubble. The sharp, hot pain on my skin and in my bones was so intense, I couldn’t stop from crying out.
“Leave her alone!” yelled Neel, charging at Sesha with his sword raised. They clashed, sword to green bolt, making an enormous explosion of light every time their weapon
s made contact. Through the mossy haze of the orb, I saw that as Neel charged at the Serpent King, the hallway seemed to get longer, making it harder for him to reach his goal. When Sesha charged, the floor itself buckled and softened under Neel’s feet, making his every step treacherous.
“Neel!” I yelled, even through the torment. “The hotel’s alive! It’s fighting dirty!”
But I was too late. The floor turned oil-slick slippery under Neel’s feet, throwing him off balance and making him skid halfway across the arena, clunking his head painfully on the wall. Even with their volume down, I could hear the audience shrieking. Several viewers jumped up or covered their eyes. Of course, despite their disapproval or even disgust, none of them stopped watching.
“Neel, stop!” I moaned through the pain as my friend struggled to get back on his feet. “Don’t. It’s useless!”
Sesha raised his eyebrows. “Good advice. You’re not as stupid as you look, Daughter. Too bad I have to kill you for my plan to work. You might have been better company than that reptilian rube in the corner.” He pointed mockingly at where Naga still lay, half-dazed. Then the Serpent King waved his hands and broke the spell of the orb around me. I knelt, gasping on the ground, and Neel dashed over to me to help me to stand again.
“Why?” I panted through my pain. It was all I could manage. My skin was burned and bruised, my insides felt like molten lava. I struggled desperately to catch my breath.
This whole ridiculous game had been because Sesha wanted to kill me? Not incorporate me into his snaky minions, but outright kill me? I remembered Zuzu’s warning. I remembered how adamant my parents had been about my not coming here. Neel had been the bait, yes. But not so that I would fight him. He had been the bait that caught both me and his mother—because Sesha knew that we would both try to free him.
Game of Stars Page 21