A Crown of Wishes

by Roshani Chokshi

  I ran into the baths, leaving him in the shadows. Bracing my hands on the basin, I stared at my reflection and sank my teeth into my cheeks as if looking a little more ferocious could somehow decide this strange battle warring inside me. I never dared to hope for someone who challenged and respected me, knew me at my worst and still coaxed out my best. And yet I had found that in the unlikeliest of places and most inconvenient of people. Wasn’t that enough to fight for? Could I live with knowing that I’d left him standing in the shadows … waiting for me?

  I couldn’t. And that was all the answer I needed.

  I splashed water onto my face, and smoothed down my hair. My heart thudded in my chest. I felt impatient and wary. Why hadn’t I listened more closely to the harem wives’ conversation? I’d always voluntarily lost my hearing, preferring to hide behind my hair. Blood and gore? I wouldn’t blink. But intimacy? Baring yourself to someone else? Nothing horrified me more.

  Outside, the night had begun to retreat. The stars were little more than muted jewels in the sky. I let a cautious wave of happiness run through me. And then I stepped outside.

  But Vikram wasn’t standing by the door where I had run off. And the bed wasn’t disturbed. I frowned, looking toward the cushions and small seating area … but he wasn’t there either. Cold licked up my spine as I moved closer to the door. Something wet and dark glistened on the floor. There, scrawled in a shaking hand, was a message in blood:

  I could make a meal of this desire.

  Couldn’t you?

  The second trial had begun.

  32

  A BELLYFUL OF SNOW

  VIKRAM

  The world ended not with a break, but in a blink.

  One moment, her body had been a column of fire against his. The next, she had disappeared into the baths. He’d slumped against the door, breathless. His gaze, not knowing where to travel, had ventured to the sky beyond the window, where wispy clouds carried the scarlet stain of dawn. The sight had jolted him. That blink of awareness—it’s a new day—flashed in his head. One blink later, and an empty, snowing hall filled his sight. His knees hit frozen dirt. Goose bumps pebbled his skin. He blinked. Breath knotted in his chest, leaving him gasping as his mind feverishly gathered scraps of observation—a kiss at the hollow of his throat, a shard of sky peeled back to reveal a new day. Snow in his eyes. A cold fire burning down to a new truth:

  The second trial had started.

  Cruel and swift.

  His heart felt as if it was left dangling. He paused, pushing his fury out of the way. If he wanted to return to Gauri—and he wanted—he needed to focus. Vikram forced himself to a stand, racking his brains for Kubera’s warning.

  It is a fight through fear …

  … it is like having no tongue to taste victory and filling your stomach with snow …

  Above him, a net of cobwebs formed the sky. Silken threads laced together, spangled with frozen rain like diamonds. It would have been beautiful, but he could feel the cold down to the root of his teeth. The light from those suspended droplets was as harsh as a knifepoint, and the air tasted rusty and dry. Like blood and dust.

  He took one step forward. Ice cracked beneath his feet. He shivered. Gauri had taken off his jacket, a thought that would have warmed him if not for the frost climbing over his shoulder. No sandals covered his feet. The frost burned. He took another step. A sound, like a slide of rocks, lit up the world. He looked up to see something encased in glass spinning before him. It was large, as tall and wide as him, and it was shaped like a chrysalis. Vikram cursed. He had no weapons. How could he win against fear if he couldn’t fight it?

  The chrysalis spun around to face him. It cracked down the middle, splitting with a clammy unclasping sound. There, standing in all his splendor, was his father, the Emperor Pururavas. Puru smiled, his face crinkling with warmth. Vikram stepped back, away from the illusion of his father.

  “Son, you’ve done so well,” said his father. “Merely speak and let me know that you want the throne and it is yours.”

  His father held out his hands and a miniature Council of Ujijain nestled in his palms, staring up at Vikram expectantly.

  Vikram opened his mouth, but not a single sound rose out of his throat. He was mute. He clawed at his skin, trying to scream. Trying to speak. Nothing but air whistled from his teeth.

  “What’s this?” asked his father, tilting his head. “Your tongue is your greatest weapon, Fox Prince. It is the thing you’ve shaped your life with. Will you not speak and claim your throne?”

  Vikram looked up, shocked. His greatest fear taking shape in front of him—

  He had no voice. No power.

  Puru’s face disappeared, replaced with the pet leopard’s head. Blood flecked her muzzle. Flat animal eyes stared down at Vikram, full of taunting.

  “Well,” said the leopard with his father’s voice. “You were always a weak thing. Now you can’t speak. In that case—”

  It lunged, tearing free of the glass confines.

  Vikram ran.

  Another fear sprang from the sky. Gauri. He skidded to a halt, heart wild with hope. But then he saw the ghostly shimmer of her skin. Another illusion. Vikram should have known. After his years spent manipulating the council, no two fears bore the same face. This was a fight they’d endure separately.

  “It was so easy to fool you,” she laughed. “I wanted a wish and now I have your heart and your empire. I wonder what it will be like to break both. Or maybe I’ll show you some of that elusive mercy after all and cut you down where you stand. Speak, dear prince. Go ahead. Or I’ll show you my famous mercy.”

  He tried. Over and over, he tried. But the words escaped him.

  Gauri raised a sword high above her head. Vikram slipped where he stood, just barely avoiding the killing blade of his phantasm fear. He clambered to another stand, feeling the press of bodies all around him. His mother hung in the air, spinning and sightless. A collar of frost circled her broken neck.

  “I died for you,” she said. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

  He ducked, narrowly avoiding her swinging body. He took one step forward and her body dropped out of the air, this time shattering on the icy ground.

  The body turned over, torn blue lips murmuring, “I died for you. And look at what you’ve become—”

  He ran, icy wind tearing at his skin. His mother’s body rose up, bent and twisting as she screamed:

  “—I died for you and you became nothing but a human pet supping at the table of your betters, eager for scraps and trying to rut with an enemy princess who’d no sooner smile at you than she would snap your heart between her teeth.” She lurched after him. “I didn’t die for this. I want my life back. Speak, you dog. Show me my death was worth something or I’ll take your life to get mine back.”

  Vikram ran.

  His fears followed.

  They walked with light steps, heavy gaits, swift and sly, pouring out of the shadows and unwinding from the cobwebs above him. They brushed his arm, tickled his throat, laughed at his bewilderment and pulled the ground beneath him. Vikram ran until he’d reached the end of the hall. His eyes scanned the end frantically. Looking for a door, a hole. Something. Anything.

  He turned around to see the pupils and sages of the ashram, Gauri, his mother, his father, the council, Kubera, even himself, lowering their brows and staring down at him. Their eyes burned. Their mouths worked furiously. There was no escape from them. They took a step forward. Shadows spilled over the ground, reaching over him. A wall of inescapable fear hemmed him on all sides. This was it. He wanted to laugh. All this time, he had hoped that he was meant for more. He had fiercely believed it. And now he was staring at the truth, and the truth bore scimitars in its grin and flashed its eyes hungrily. Space squeezed out of the shadows. Vikram quieted his mind, concentrating. There was no direction to move except one:

  Forward.

  Through them.

  He stood up. In his own mind, he stepped side
ways. Shifting his thoughts. His fears were his own, weren’t they? He’d spun them out from himself. He’d forged them from every hurt and fury. Fear was a reminder that even the insubstantial could kill. But insubstantial meant it had no shape. It couldn’t be conquered or tamed or avoided. Only moved through, with force and will. Vikram crouched, his fingers splayed on the ground, his breath forming icicles in the air.

  His fears bore down. Sharp. Hungry. He grinned.

  I made you.

  I own you.

  He repeated the words like a mantra, until he found the strength to stand …

  And run.

  33

  A FEAST OF FEAR

  GAURI

  Panic opened up like an ocean beneath me, but I wouldn’t step over the edge. I wouldn’t drown. This was magic. I should have known that when it was most beautiful, it was only silencing its blade. What I didn’t know was that Kubera would have us fight the second trial without each other.

  I focused on the dark between each of my racing heartbeats, finding that elusive calm and not letting go. This was war. Treat it as such.

  The second trial was for the second half of the key of immortality. I didn’t know whether the ruby was its own weapon, but I ran to the drawers, pulling it out anyway. Next, I circled the message on the floor. Vikram was no warrior, but he was far from weak. He should have been able to fight back. Or scream.

  The fact that he’d done neither sat inside me like a cold stone.

  I pushed open the door, half hoping for and half dreading a footprint or spot of blood. I found nothing. Downstairs, everything was still. Nothing but silence and stone met my eye. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run into that demon grove, hack a fruit out of its tree and tear up the foundations of Alaka if that’s what it would take to find Vikram.

  I breathed deeply, stilling my heart. If I approached this like a heartsick fool, I would fail. Emotions could be sylphs lulling you to smash your head on the rocks. I closed my heart to every emotion except one: rage. Rage spiraled inside me, honing my thoughts. I bit down on my cheeks just as dawn sneered through the cut windows studding Alaka’s halls. The air felt as sharp as a rebuke that taunted one thing over and over: Time to play.

  I patted the daggers at my side.

  Ready when you are.

  A scraping, scuffling sound came from one of the chambers on the other side of the hall. I followed the sound, keeping close to the walls. We had explored this part of Alaka the other day and found nothing but a glass garden and a hall of stories. But Alaka was a riddle of whim and horror. It could do whatever it pleased.

  A dim light shone at the end of the hall, casting waxen brightness over three glass doors. Light had never seemed threatening until now. This light didn’t illuminate the other side, but it spared just enough glow to show me what covered the floor: blood.

  In the middle of war, the mind and body either fused or fractured. I’d seen men fracture right before my eyes as some final horror—sometimes a delicate thing, like a wedding bangle trampled in waste, or sometimes a terrible thing, like a body at the mercy of carrion birds—broke them. I survived by forcing every emotion so far down that there were days afterward where I had to dig my nails into my palm and draw blood just to know I was there. In war, I knew only movement and stillness. Life and death.

  As I walked, blood soaked my ankles, thick and warm. Rust and salt studded the air. Clenching my jaw, I walked forward. The blood didn’t give like water. It clung. Every emotion that I had shoved deep inside me bubbled furiously to the surface. I closed my eyes, imagining the victory that I had to believe was waiting for me at the end of the hall.

  One step.

  When I closed my eyes, I didn’t just see the throne of Bharata waiting for me or Nalini standing tall and free. I saw fingers tangled in my hair and a mouth made for grinning lowered to my skin.

  Another step.

  I felt a light within me that dimmed the world in comparison. That feeling pushed me forward—the hope for more, the promise of something better. Not just the quest for power, but the quest for hope.

  I pressed my nose to the glass doors, trying to decipher the shapes behind them. In the middle of each door was a hollow where the ruby key would fit inside perfectly.

  In the first: a table surrounded by a haze of figures. I pushed myself closer to the glass, but it was impossible to tell whether the figures at the table were even people.

  In the second: a pool of murky water. I breathed in sharply. Floating across the surface, arms flung out and face down, was the figure of a man the same size and shape as Vikram.

  In the third: my bedroom in Bharata. I could even smell the musk of my favorite perfume, sandalwood and sweet almond.

  Instinct guided me to the second door and to the figure that had to be Vikram, but I hesitated. Instinct had been no friend of mine once magic entered my life. I thought of Vikram in the Crossroads, pleading with me to have a little more faith, to throw out the human reaction. The blood-scrawled words drifted to me tauntingly: I could make a meal of this desire. Couldn’t you?

  Meal. I turned to the first door, with the table. One part of me screamed that it felt too easy. And the other part screamed: Who cares? I stood there, caught between my past self and my present. I wanted to be strong, but showing strength wasn’t always about physical valor or even cunning. True strength sometimes demanded unstitching everything you knew. I unstitched myself. I turned myself blind to what I expected, and what I would have done had I never met Vikram or been forced to reckon with magic. I turned my back on the image of him floating facedown in the pool, ignoring how cowardice chased me.

  I placed the ruby key into the door showing the dining table, and held my breath as the door absorbed the key and swung open. I stepped inside. The door swung shut behind me, plunging me into a darkness so thick I could feel it pressing against me. Had I chosen right?

  Silently, I removed my daggers. Nothing charged at me. Nothing moved. In front of me, twelve starved and naked bodies hunched over a dining table. Each being hid its head beneath a piece of red cloth. The cloths were identical in color: crimson. Crimson as bloodlust in someone’s soul, lustrous and visceral. This shade of red did not exist in the human world.

  I took a step closer, but none of the diners moved. Their heads were bent over the table, hands flat against their thighs. They gave away nothing. Not even a tremor. No food appeared on the silver table, and yet I could hear and smell a feast.

  A thirteenth diner appeared at the end of the table. He wore no silk to obscure his face. My heart dropped.

  “Vikram?” I called softly.

  But he didn’t answer. He was staring straight ahead. A lace of frost spidered over his shoulder, as if he were freezing before my eyes. His chest didn’t move. Was he even breathing?

  I stepped forward, but a wall of air forced me back. My heart began to pound. Another blood-scrawled message seeped out of the ground like a wound:

  We can eat first.

  Or you can.

  The message distorted and pooled across the floor. My mind started racing. Eat first? I stepped back out of the reach of the blood. Whatever invisible fence had blocked me from getting to Vikram shimmered into visibility: a thick wall of red. Nausea gripped my stomach. The wall repulsed me to the core. It looked … soft. The way rot corrupts a body and turns it into a stew of entrails. Or the way fruit left out too long puckers and collapses in upon itself. The blood on the floor reached my skin. I felt it. Not the texture, but the soul of it.

  A vision flashed behind my eyes: bees buzzing near my ear. I swatted at it. I hated bees. I’d been stung once when I was seven and used to have nightmares of a whole hive chasing me deep into the forest where I’d never be able to find my way home. I jumped, moving away from the reach of blood. It seeped, finding my skin once more. This time I felt that I was standing over a tall cliff. A gray sea churned hungrily below me. Once more, I moved away from the blood.

  I raised my dagger and plun
ged it into that soft wall. The wall burst, sending wet chunks of red all over me. I tried to reach through the gap and claw my way out, but the hole closed immediately. I felt a wet piece of the wall on my mouth. Disgusted, I dragged my hand across my face, but the nausea was so overwhelming, I gagged and some of that wall found its way past my teeth. The taste was bitter and metallic. I was clutching my stomach when I noticed something … a bit of the wall opened. And stayed open.

  We can eat first.

  Or you can.

  Once more, the blood crept to my skin. I let it. This time I was prepared for the wave of fear that rushed over me … deeper this time. I saw myself riding triumphantly back to Bharata only to discover Nalini’s funeral ceremony just past the gates. I opened my eyes, finally understanding the trial.

  To get to the other side, I had to eat my fears.

  Fear was no stranger to me. All my life, fear had been the hand on my back, steering me. Fear had cushioned my mind in wartime, sharpening my senses and keeping me a breath away from death. I narrowed my eyes, grabbing a fistful of the wall. It gave way with a sickening, unclasping sound. I closed my eyes. Chewed. Swallowed.

  I wandered through the forest and found Maya’s body. All those stories I had imagined for her, endings dancing out of sight where she wore a crown of stars and forgot how to grieve, shattered.

  Another bite.

  I fell in love with Vikram only to discover that love was a far better control than fear. His love and control would break me until I could not recognize myself.

  The hole in the wall widened. Nearly wide enough to step through. My hands shook.

  While I’d been eating fear, it had tasted me too. I felt like a bone licked clean. My memory lost focus.… Why was I raising my hand to this wall of flesh? What was so important on the other side? I didn’t want to fight anymore. I wanted to curl around the cold, close my eyes. Ice knitted over my body. The blood pooled around me. Inescapable. Wave after wave of tiny fears assaulted me: spiders in my throat, holes opening up in the ground, doors that locked me inside where no one would hear me scream.