A voice too close to my ear whispered:
“Answer me, Gauri. We were closer than sisters.” My head rang. I scrambled to stand, my eyes drifting up without asking permission from my mind. Nalini stared down at me, hazel eyes bright with accusations. “How could you?”
My voice broke. “I was trying to keep you safe. I thought there was a spy, Nalini. It wasn’t what it sounded like.”
It was the day before the rebellion. I had stopped eating; anxiety chewed at my core. We had one chance to do this right. Months of planning had built up to this day. But I could feel Skanda’s eyes tracking me. Maybe someone had spied on our meetings. Or someone had sold me out. I started keeping information to myself. Refusing to meet people. Even Arjun and Nalini. That night, Nalini visited me in the gardens, and I could have sworn that the nocturnal eyes blinking open in the jungle belonged to Skanda’s spies.
“Gauri,” she said. “What’s happened to you?”
I said nothing, my eyes fixed on the jungle.
“What are you hiding?” she demanded. “You haven’t even visited Arjun since he came back—”
“You mean since I rescued him?” I returned angrily.
A week ago, I had brought Arjun home. It was all thanks to Maya. The day she staged a fire in the harem, I’d been able to escape Bharata and rescue Arjun. Ever since, he had been trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t jeopardize our operation by allowing us to be seen together. Skanda was still furious with me for going against his direct orders and saving Arjun.
“Do you know what horrors he faced? Do you even care? What happened to the promises you made me?”
The darkness rustled. Skanda had spies everywhere. Were they watching us?
“There is nothing to hide, Nalini,” I said, my voice cold and distant. “Arjun is a soldier. When I found him, he was wounded. I saved his life. I don’t owe him more than that, and I certainly owe you nothing.”
If I had told her the truth, would she have escaped imprisonment? When I walked into the jungle after, the rustling had been nothing more than a hare trapped beneath a tree root. Not a spy. I could have apologized to Nalini. But paranoia is a house full of locked doors. So I withdrew.
Nalini reached out, brushing her fingers against my arm. I shuddered. She felt so cold.
“You were never meant to get hurt,” I said fiercely. “You were the reason I fought for the throne.”
Nalini had saved my life. The day she knocked a poisoned spoon from my hand was the day I stopped hiding and started hunting. It was the first time Skanda had tried to kill me. Until he was removed from power, Nalini’s life was at risk. Before then, I hadn’t been willing to risk everything. If I failed, I wouldn’t be able to protect the few that I could. But if Skanda was trying to kill me, it meant that he never intended to keep his promise of naming me his heir.
“I deserved better,” said Nalini.
My heart snapped. “I know.”
“I’ll forgive you, sister. Embrace me as you once did. Let us start anew.”
I moved to her, the grass blades cutting into my feet. Blood beaded on my skin. I looked down, frowning. Grass shouldn’t cut.
“Come to me, Gauri,” said Nalini. Her voice bordered on desperation. “Don’t I deserve an apology and embrace after what you did to me?”
“What did I do to you?”
Nalini said nothing. But the skin on her arms flickered from her usual lacquered brown to an unusual oily black. I stepped back.
“What did I do to you?” I asked loudly.
The question yielded the answer:
I had put her in prison. She was supposed to be lying somewhere in a cell in Bharata.
“Why aren’t you in prison?”
She tilted her head. Cold spread in my chest. The gesture was wrong. Inhuman. I was forgetting something. I stared at my hands: They were dirty. Bloodstained. I shouldn’t be dressed in a man’s sherwani. Slowly, I lifted my hand to my eye, the movement guided by some knowledge that glinted at the edge of my thoughts. Nalini hissed, her jaw snapped open in a gruesome grin.
And then I saw her for what she was:
A monster of smoke and teeth. It clicked its teeth. Wet talons reached for me. I stumbled back, breaking the wall of mist. This thing had used my best friend’s voice.
“Gauri?” it called sweetly, its belly scraping along the ground as it started crawling.
I picked up my knife, flinging it straight at one of its arms and pinning it to the ground. It let out a shrill and icy scream. A small boulder nudged my foot. I lifted it, not looking at the thing as I heaved it over my head and smashed it into the creature’s body. The screaming stopped. I covered my eye, plucked my dagger from the inky arm and started running.
The cave at the end of the Grotto shone with light. I ran. I ran past a vision of Maya sprawled out with her throat cut. I dodged a vision of Mother Dhina rocking back and forth, blood running down her wrists. Vikram passed me. I chased his lean shadow, and the ground disappeared beneath me. My memories loomed dark and lurid until a crease of light caught my eye. The cave. I was nearly there. As the mist sulked and spun, a dark blot scuttled toward me on ragged wrists and knees. The vetala. His hand wrapped around my foot.
“The boy thing is dead,” he huffed. “Pick me up.”
12
THREADBARE HEART
VIKRAM
As a rule, Vikram ran only when he was furious. As it so happened, he was almost always furious. Every day he treaded the threadbare line between livid and lucent. There was horror in knowing that he was only ever meant to be a puppet king. And there was hope in knowing that he was capable of so much more. When he ran, those sticky intangibles—title, birth, expectations and resentments—couldn’t cling to him.
He was simply moving too fast.
The vetala cackled, roping bony arms around his neck.
“Faster, donkey! Faster!” he screeched.
Vikram knew what the Grotto would show, which memories it would pluck from his mind and spin into spiteful sylphs. It took years of practiced charm to erase the boy that the Ujijain Empire grudgingly accepted. Only his father remembered the day he was found. No one remembered the wilting blue flowers in his hand, or the way he had clung to the brittle, colorless blossoms until they crumbled to dust. No one chose to see. It was the way of royalty.
He was nearly at the cave, dry winds burning in his lungs, when he heard it:
“Beta?”
I knew you would come for me.
The vetala cackled and whispered in his ear: “Protect the head, protect the head.”
Vikram clapped one hand over his eye, but a tug in his heart stalled his feet. He had steeled his heart against seeing her. But hearing her? He hadn’t trained his heart against the longing to curl around the sound of her voice. Whenever his mother spoke or sang, the sky brightened. Even the stars would drift a little closer to catch the silver of her voice.
“My child, have you forgotten me? I waited a long time for you to come back,” said his mother. “You wanted to surprise me. Remember?”
“Yes,” he said, hoarsely.
“I forgive you, for what you did to me. Won’t you embrace me, my son?”
Vikram looked up from his feet, and found himself at the edge of a dusty cliff. He stumbled back, his nose filling with the sharp scent of pine. A net of tree limbs danced above him like laced fingers.
“Beta,” breathed his mother. “Come to me.”
He wanted to. Gods, he wanted to. But something stayed his hand. Hand. His mother stood with her arms folded across her chest. A burst of blue caught his eye. Blue blossoms. It was the blue tingeing her neck at the bottom of a cliff, her mouth full to the teeth with rocks. He frowned. Impossible.
The image burst.
He stumbled out of the mist, his head ringing as the vetala screamed: “—fool of a boy!” He started running again, heart racing, to get to the other side. With only one eye open, he turned and found the thing from the Undead Grotto stum
bling after him.
“Come back, Vikram!” it called in his mother’s voice.
He ran blindly into the mist, dodging thin tree limbs. But his foot slipped just as a boulder draped in mist lurched into sight. The last thing he saw was the gravelly dirt rising to meet him.
* * *
Vikram woke to being dragged across the uneven ground of a darkened cave. Small threads of light stitched their way across the rock, casting a thin and stingy illumination. The vetala squatted on his chest, and cackled when Vikram tried—and failed—to shove him off.
Gauri’s silhouette caught the dim light. Dirt streaked her arms, but she carried herself like a queen reclaiming her country. She was also, to his infinite loathing, hauling him around like a sack of fruit.
He groaned. Do I make you laugh, Universe? Once, when he was ten, he attempted to fly by attaching silk scarves to his arms and leaping from a tree. It did not work. When he was fifteen, he dressed like a courtesan to sneak into the harem. He ended up appearing too convincing to a palace guard and was forced to throw off his silks and punch the man. All things considered, this was not the most shameful thing he had endured.
But it was certainly one of them.
“Wakey! Wakey!” shouted the vetala, slapping his face. “I jumped off because I thought you were a husk of a thing. But the pretty monster came back for you.”
He wanted to strangle the creature. It would have been far better to feign unconsciousness and just allow himself to be dragged across the cave. Maybe the Universe would have smiled down at him and knocked his head against a rock. He twisted out of Gauri’s unnervingly strong grip. She dropped his leg with little ceremony.
“Get up,” she said.
“I appreciate your concern and my mind is perfectly intact. Thank you for inquiring.”
He wobbled to a stand and snuck a glance into her eyes before breathing a sigh of relief. The vetala’s enchantment had worn off. Their memories had retreated back into their skin. Still, he wondered what she had seen in that Undead Grotto. Her face looked pinched in the cave light, her lips pressed tight. Now that her hands were free, her fingers twisted protectively around her necklace. When he looked at her under the enchantment, he had seen a girl who wore a hundred faces and never smiled in any of them. He’d glimpsed a memory of a princess who hid a sparrow with a broken wing in her room. He’d seen her clutch her blue necklace tight to her throat and drop her shoulders when no one was looking. Who was she?
The vetala raised his arms like the most grotesque infant. “Pick me up.”
Grumbling, Vikram swung the creature onto his back. The vetala promptly rested his chin on Vikram’s head with a delighted sigh. There was nothing else to do but follow the light. As they walked, Vikram sensed the enchantment of the Otherworld buried in the cave silt. It was subtle. Like moonlight soaking fruit trees, storm clouds crouching over palace spires and watchful eyes blinking open in the dusk. And it stirred him awake and wide-eyed.
“Thank you,” he said, partially to break the silence, but mostly because he truly meant the words. “You went back for me.”
“We need two to participate in the Tournament. And the vetala”—she jerked a disdainful nod at the creature—“would be of little use. So don’t thank me. I did it for myself.”
The vetala brought his head to Vikram’s ear. “I heard her heart leap from its cage of bones when I said you were dead.”
His own heart did a strange flip. They’d crossed through a Grotto where their own memories had been treacherous, but all he remembered was the sound of her laugh when he asked if they should race. Her laugh was low and throaty, as if rusty with disuse. He hadn’t been able to shake it from his mind.
“Vikram!” shouted Gauri.
His head snapped up. A moment from his toes, a massive rip in the cave floor reared to meet them. He ground his heels into the floor, his stomach turning as if he had fallen through the hole. Smack. The vetala brought his bony elbow down sharply on Vikram’s head. His body jerked forward, just as the vetala shoved Gauri.
“Jump! This way, cowards!” the vetala shouted.
Vikram’s heels slipped. He kicked uselessly, his arms spinning. Gauri tumbled alongside him. A furious, near-inhuman roar ripped from her throat. Vikram let himself fall, bringing out his arms as if he could fly. This would not be his death.
He hollered, an impossible grin stretching on his face. The dark slid over his thoughts. He reached into the shadows for Gauri. And found her.
13
THE TRUTH OF FIRST LIGHT
GAURI
A warm hand brushed against my forehead. Without thinking, I had leaned into the embrace when a voice splintered that stolen calm:
“If the girl thing does not awaken by dawn, I claim her body, yes?”
Then followed the thumping sound of someone smartly smacking another person. I blinked. Vikram stared down at me, his lips pressed in a tight line. This close, I could see that his eyes weren’t quite as dark as I’d thought. Lines of gold shot through the deep brown. Like stars breaking through the night. Or sunlight threading through branches. I sat up quickly—
“I wouldn’t do that—” Vikram started.
As if in response, a dull ache throbbed behind my eyes. My vision went black before sight returned. Once more, I was on the ground. Only this time, Vikram’s arms were not around me.
“You hit your head,” he said.
I glared. “That can happen when you’re pushed into a hole in the ground.”
“You’re welcome,” said the vetala brightly.
When I’d given my body a chance to adjust, I looked around the silk tent, which was half-opened to reveal part of the land and sky. Everything was familiar and unfamiliar. I recognized the citrus and sweet-almond trees to my right. They were identical to the ones in Bharata’s gardens. A wave of homesickness rushed over me, so strong and unyielding that I couldn’t breathe. Beside the trees, the silk pennants of Ujijain fluttered in the windless air. But what stole my breath was the sky dusted with stars. Silvery stairs rose and dwindled into the night sky and I wondered what impossible kingdom they climbed toward.
I looked down and found that I was sitting on a rich rug. Two cotton beds sat low to the ground, downy pillows and warm blankets spread across them.
And the feast.
Split guavas sprinkled with cane sugar filled a crystal bowl. Saffron rice, buttery naan, savory onion and potato dishes, cold yogurt studded with pomegranate seeds like rubies and silver cups of spicy dal waited for us. My vision filled with desserts: crystallized pistachio slivers, dusky almond chews and creamy ras malai sprinkled with rose petals. My favorite—golden, syrupy gulab jamun—called to me. My mouth watered.
As far as I could tell, there was no one here but us. I checked the makeshift belt I had made from part of Vikram’s jacket, and found my dagger resting warmly against my hip. Aside from the slight headache and the scratch along Vikram’s forearm, we were unscathed from the tumble and the Grotto. Physically, at least.
“Where are we?”
“The Crossroads,” said the vetala, singing.
I thought back to the rhyme from the ruby. We’d already crossed the Grotto, which fit the place where memories shall devour. Did that mean we were in the held-breath place to put an end to cowards?
“Well. A feast calls, and I shall answer.” Vikram stood up, dusting his torn tunic.
“Have you gone mad?” I shouted. “We need to think through this!”
This place was clearly enchanted. It didn’t matter that no one else was around us. Magic hid its knives behind a closed-mouth grin. I wasn’t taking any chances.
“I believe he was mad before this,” mused the vetala. “Or maybe it’s the effect of the Crossroads. It likes to unspool things of comfort.”
So that explained the bits of Bharata springing up in this strange place. I paced in the tent. “But how do we get out?”
Vikram heaped food onto his plate and offered me a dish. I hesitat
ed. Ever since the poisoning attempt, I didn’t like eating food that I hadn’t seen prepared. Besides, Maya had always warned me about eating the food of the Otherworld. One bite of the demon fruit had been enough to prove that.
“Do you think I’m trying to poison you?” asked Vikram, raising an eyebrow.
“Are you?”
“You saved my life,” said Vikram. “I would not try to poison you after that. I owe you.”
“Don’t eat that!” I said, making a grab for his plate. But Vikram moved faster, holding the plate aloft. “Do you intend to reward me by dying?”
“Not at all,” he said, turning back to his food and defiantly heaping even more rice onto his plate. “I could marry you, if you’d like. That seems to be a popular reward back home.”
“I prefer the poisoned food.”
“You may be rewarded yet,” he said. He popped a handful of pomegranate seeds in his mouth.
He froze, some of the juice spilling from his lips.
“Oh no,” he breathed, clutching his chest.
“Vikram!” I screamed.
He held up his hand. “I meant to start with mangos.”
I stopped short of scrambling toward him, cold flushing my body as he laughed. Fiend. I left him to his cackling and poked the vetala in the side.
“How will we get to Alaka from here?”
The vetala grumbled and cracked open one eye. “Are you daft? Follow the directions, of course!”
Directions?
I pushed back the silk curtain and walked to the back of the tent where eight statues loomed far above us. Even from a distance, the statues were as tall as elephants. The cardinal directions were inscribed beneath the statues, which depicted the directions’ respective guardians. Kubera, the Lord of Alaka and guardian of the North, carried a mace in one hand, a necklace of gold on his stone chest. Northeast: Ishana, the Lord of Destruction, with his matted hair and fearsome trident. Northwest: Vayu, the Lord of the Winds, waving a flag in one hand. East: Indra, the Lord of the Heavens, gripping a thunderbolt in one hand. West: Varuna, the Lord of the Waters, holding a lasso. Southeast: Agni, the Lord of Fire, carrying his spear of fire. Southwest: Nritti, the Lady of Chaos, with a scimitar in a lovely hand. South: the Dharma Raja carrying his staff and noose.
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