And it all began in the next room.
On a whispered prayer for courage, I open the door to the Claiming chamber. The lamplit cave of a room is smaller than I recall but just as chilly. A mosaic of blue, white, yellow, and red swirls across the tile walls. A muslin veil hangs from ceiling to floor. In front of the veil, the red line on the ground is the same, chipped and worn. I set my toes on the painted mark. I stood here blindfolded while Tarek slunk out from behind the veil and first imposed his touch on me.
All at once, I am blind again. I crumple to the floor and hug the henna pot close. Gods alive, how many girls were claimed here? How many shook in terror and shed tears? The gods had a hand in my Claiming, but how many others can say the same?
Sobs wrench out of me. I cry for Jaya, Natesa, myself, and every other ward whose future was stolen in this chamber. For how long I weep, I do not know. But my inner winter emanates into the tile floor, muddying where my misery ends and the poison begins. Finally, spent, I lie in the dimness, too heartsick and frozen to leave this tomb of innocence.
Footfalls echo through the open door, compelling me to push myself up.
Ashwin fills the doorway. He takes in my swollen eyes and red nose. “Pons told me you were here.” He enters the Claiming chamber and turns his attention to the room itself. He runs a fingertip across the colorful wall that is too cheerful for the terrible ritual held here. At the veil, he reaches for the cloth but withdraws before touching it. “I’m sorry I disagreed with you in front of the priestess. My deepest apologies for giving you the impression that I would retain the Claiming. But I wish you had discussed your motives with me before announcing your intentions. I would have approached the priestess with you, Kalinda. We could have told her we wish to do away with the Claiming as a united front.” His levelheaded explanation negates my anger, for Ashwin is not the true source of my umbrage.
“I didn’t think you’d understand.”
He stares at the chipped red line on the floor. “I’d like to try.”
I, too, want him to understand why he can never repeat his father’s actions. “Tarek claimed me here.” Devoid of tears, I am plain in my recounting. “I was blindfolded and naked. He . . . he touched me.” Ashwin’s gaze sharpens to daggers, and I amend. “My hair, mostly. The rite took only a minute, but it was the longest of my life.”
“A minute is too long to be humiliated and terrified.” Ashwin crosses the room and sits beside me, one knee against his chest. “The wards are safe. With the war, no benefactors will come to claim them.” He leans his shoulder into mine. His touch is daylight in this miserable place. “I’ll change whatever you wish about the temples. I depend on your judgment, especially now . . .” His voice collapses to a whisper. “I’m afraid my decision to unleash Udug will be our ruin.”
I grip his knee. “You had to do it.”
“I still brought this war upon us. Because of me, we may have no future. I need you . . .” He shakes his head and starts over. “I beg of you to trust me.”
“I didn’t mean to exclude you. I trust you. I do.”
Ashwin toys with the gold cuff on my wrist, his gold cuff. He curls his fingers around my arm, and his thumb grazes my pulse. His caress smolders into me, lessening the constant cold, and I sink into his body. His mouth steadily lowers to mine and he says, “You came into my life like a star, the answer to all my wishes.”
He rubs his lips lightly over my own. Heat sparks between us. I lift my chin, yearning for more. He clutches at my waist, and delicious warmth sears into me. My mind goes fuzzy, like I am stretching out in a pool of sunlight.
This feels so right.
No, more than right. Necessary.
I drag him closer. Ashwin inclines me back, lowering me to the floor, and presses his body against mine. I splay my hands across his shoulders, and a vision overwhelms me.
Ashwin and I live in the Turquoise Palace. We sleep in late and stay up into the night. We take our meals in his private atrium and rule our people from twin thrones. I bear him an heir, a son, a Burner who will someday rule the empire justly and with compassion for his people, an example set by his father. Ashwin loves his son as much as he loves me. He defers to me in all things and honors me before his court of wives and courtesans.
I am his singular favorite, his kindred and only love.
The strong image is irrefutable. But it is not mine. The palace looks different than I remember. A fine duplicate but missing details that authenticate the vision. The vivid picture transitions.
Ashwin and I are entangled in the sheets of an enormous bed. He wants more heirs. He wants me.
“Marry me,” he whispers against my lips.
His hand slides up the back of my tunic. Before I can stop the vision from returning, we are in a bed once more in my mind’s eye. Ashwin’s hand creeps higher, tugging up my tunic, both in the Claiming chamber and in the palace. I want him to stop, but I am locked in two realities.
No.
I’m not in the palace, and this is not my dream. My dreams always include Jaya and Deven.
Always.
He kisses across my cheek, down my neck. “Marry me, Kalinda. Be my kindred. Fulfill my heart’s wish.” He nibbles at my throat. I push him away and leave my hands against his chest to prevent him from coming closer. His complexion is flushed and his lips damp. His hooded eyes still project the dream that played inside my head.
“What did you say?”
“Be my wife.”
“No, the part about your heart’s wish.”
“You fulfill the wish of my heart.” He leans in for a kiss.
I hold him back. My insides rattle apart. I twist from him, resting my forehead against the cool tile floor. “Oh, gods. I should have seen it before. Your heart’s wish. I’m your heart’s wish.”
“Kali—”
I shove at him. “Get off me. Don’t ever touch me again.”
“I—I don’t understand. What did I do?”
I adjust my tunic and rise on quaking knees. The wall patterns whirl around me. “You wished for me. When you unleashed Udug, you imagined me with you.”
“I imagined ruling in the palace. You know that.” Ashwin climbs to his knees, his hair disheveled from my hands stroking through the dark strands. My hunger for his warmth implores me to return to his arms, fasten my lips to his, and never ask another question.
“Did your heart’s wish include me ruling beside you?”
Ashwin’s eyes gleam his sincerity. “I’ve wished for you since we first met.”
His answer hits me like a staff to my stomach. I bowl over, and the icy sickness inside me spreads fast now that we are apart. Indah said she sensed Ashwin lied when he told the datu we are not intended to marry. In Ashwin’s heart, we are betrothed. When we touch, my pain eases because he wished for our union.
Ashwin wears a blank, slackened expression. “Kalinda, I told you how I felt about you before I unleashed Udug.”
“But you wished for me.” He returns my accusation with a series of rapid blinks. “This isn’t real! I’m drawn to you because you wished it.” The color in his cheeks drains away, and he presses his fist to his lips.
Another stone-cold thought strikes me.
Deven thinks I’m in love with Ashwin.
“If this is all an illusion, then why . . . ?” Ashwin waves at the floor and what just took place there.
“You wished that I’d rule the empire alongside you. Udug cannot defy your bidding.” I grip my teeth together to ward off another round of shivers. “Udug’s powers are still inside me. I’m safe from them when I’m near you.”
“Then stay close.” Ashwin steps forward to defend me from the cold, but I shuffle back and wrap my arms around myself. The violation of his imposed will crawls across my skin, stronger than my need for warmth. My teeth chatter involuntarily. I lock them down, but not before Ashwin sees. “You’re in pain.”
“Please keep away.” Ashwin did not manipulate me intentionally, but
I do not trust myself near him.
He balls a fist and strikes at the veil. “Why won’t you let me help you?”
“Because I love Deven.” I clutch at my aching chest. “He’s my heart’s wish.”
Everything about Ashwin dims and sinks, his demeanor, his posture, his raised fist. Whatever light he shone for me extinguishes.
Why couldn’t he be Deven? I demand of the gods. Why did you tie me to a throne and a man my heart has not chosen? If I thought I could fall in love with Ashwin, I could set aside Deven right now. In his considerate, honorable way, he knows the choice is mine and loves me enough to walk away. But I never wanted Ashwin. Even if I had, any possible future with him has been permanently skewed.
I slip off his gold cuff and hold it out. “This is yours.”
Ashwin opens his mouth, but no words come. He reaches for his cuff, and his finger brushes my palm. My need for him hurts so badly tears spring into my vision. I pull back, and his chin falls to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
The door opens. Sarita sees my watery eyes and averts her gaze. “Kindred, the Lestarian woman asked me to find you and the prince. She said for you to meet her and the baldish man in the courtyard.”
Indah would only summon us for one purpose—the rebels must be close. Sarita watches us from the corner of her sight. Ashwin’s hair is still mussed and his tunic offset. Sarita is too innocent to conclude what we have been doing here alone, but I have a clear memory and suffer the ensuing guilt. I should have guessed my connection with Ashwin was contrived.
“That will be all, Sarita,” I say.
She hesitates in the doorway. “I’d like to go with you when you leave.”
The complication of another person on our journey is too much to consider now. “I’ll think on it. Thank you.” She exits the way she came. “We should go.”
The prince still will not look at me.
“Ashwin, please.”
He tips up his head, his eyes frigid. I risk my willpower and edge closer. Tempting soul-fire wafts off him, physical solace within my reach, but I hold myself taut.
“I’m still with you, Ashwin. You have my loyalty through whatever comes next. I know you’ll give the empire your all.”
“Don’t patronize me. I may be younger than you, but I’m not a child.” He tugs down his tunic jacket, a meticulous gesture Tarek was known for. “You may still be kindred, but this is my empire, and the gods will hold me responsible for what comes next.”
Ashwin storms out, his footsteps sounding like Tarek’s the day he walked into my life and flipped my future upside down. Rajah Tarek was a vengeful man, turned hard-hearted after the woman he loved, my mother, jilted him for my father. But I am not my mother any more than Ashwin is his father.
I pick up the henna pot I left on the floor, dip my finger into the sticky paste, and paint the backs of my hands. Soon enough, the henna will dry and flake off to reveal the mark of the kindred. Then Ashwin will be reminded that my fate is also tied to what becomes of the empire, and he will see that I will continue to fight to make certain that the most important aspect of his heart’s wish comes true.
Ashwin will be the next rajah. That is the only destiny I will accept.
16
DEVEN
Late into the afternoon, the plodding wagons spread out. The weariness of the day strings us apart and heavies our steps. Long trails of men wind from the woods and descend into the lowlands, where the air thickens with the dank scent of wet land. The sky opens to unstoppable stretches of blue over verdant grasslands. Men toil in the rice fields and the higher wheat fields, both crops recently planted for the coming winter.
Though I scrutinize every wagon and group of soldiers we pass, I have not seen or heard anything about Brac or Opal. The farther we walk, the more my premonition festers that they are in danger.
Ahead, our troops trudge through a village. Our catapult is one of the last to pass through the roadways lined with ramshackle huts. Yatin was raised not far from this area. His widowed mother and two eldest sisters worked long days in the fields while he and his other siblings kept house.
Women and children watch us roll through from their worn doorways. About a hundred strides in front of us, Manas, riding on horseback, stops at a hut. He and another soldier speak to the woman. All four members of my unit conceal our faces as we march toward them.
“Where’s your husband?” Manas demands.
The middle-aged woman props a child on her hip, an older boy beside them. “The gods took him to the Beyond three years past.” Her burr is rich and throaty, much like Yatin’s accent.
“Any older children?”
“A fifteen-year-old son. He’s in the rice fields.”
“Send your son here to fetch him,” Manas says and then calls to the other women shying away from the soldiers in their huts. “Rajah Tarek requires all able-bodied men ages fourteen and older to take up arms and join us.”
Though Manas states no punishment for noncompliance, his talwar hangs off his hip. Most women shut their doors. Widows are common in the empire, and the life span of field workers is short. The young son of the woman Manas first addressed starts out for the fields, but Manas bends down from his saddle and snags him by the back of his tunic.
“How old are you?” Manas asks as we steadily march nearer.
“Twelve,” he squeaks.
“I served the rajah as his boot-shine boy at your age. Fetch your older brother and return here to bid your mother good-bye. You’ll work as a water servant.”
My lip curls and I fist my sword.
The woman yanks her son from Manas’s hold. “Please. I need my sons. Someone has to work in the fields and earn our keep.”
We come up to them, the wagon nearly in line with Manas’s horse. Every other door on the road is closed.
Manas regards the woman without a single yarn of compassion. “Send them both.” He posts the soldier with him to stay and enforce his orders and then rides to the next road.
The woman sets her younger child down, a girl, and grabs her son to her chest in a double-arm hug. Her daughter cries at her knees. The sight of them, the mother and her two children, throws my mind back to my mother, brother, and me. The nursemaids had to drag us away from her after our weekly visiting hour in the courtesans’ wing. Each time Mother had to return to entertaining the rajah or his men of court, our hearts were crushed. Brac took our partings especially hard. Afterward, I would hold him on our double cot in the nursery bunk room while he cried himself to sleep.
We roll up to a family’s run-down hut. Our wagon is the only one in sight on the road. The soldier Manas left works to pry the mother and son apart, but the woman will not forfeit her child. The more the soldier wrenches, the more hysterical and desperate she becomes. Finally, he draws back and strikes her. She cries out and falls against the doorjamb.
The scene around me gives way to another.
Mother’s hour with Brac and me has come to an end. She dallies for one last hug, surrounding us in the softest silk and sweetest jasmine. A man barges in and tells her he’s tired of waiting. I stand between them, but he shoves me to the floor and hauls her off by the hair. Brac’s hands start to glow in fury. I shield him from their view. His fingers singe my sleeve and nearly burn my skin. I hold him close, but I cannot cover both his eyes and my ears, which echo with Mother’s fading scream.
The soldier scuffles with the twelve-year-old. I step away from the slow-moving catapult and pull my khanda. “Leave them be.”
The soldier turns on me, and his eyes bulge. I recognize him as well. He and I were in the military encampment together in Iresh. He forgets the boy and draws his sword on me.
“General Manas!” he calls.
Manas has strolled around the bend in the road, out of sight. No other soldiers are near. I can scarcely hear my quick breaths over the woman’s wailing.
The soldier shouts louder. “General! Cap—”
; “Afternoon, soldier,” Natesa purrs, pulling off her turban. Her dark-brown hair falls around her dirt-smudged face.
The soldier is so stunned by the sight of a woman—and a beautiful one at that—he does not see Yatin throw his haladie until it is too late. The blade sinks deep into the soldier’s chest, and he collapses before the family. The woman abruptly stops crying and picks up her young child. I shuffle forward to examine the fallen soldier. He is dead, or will be soon.
Yatin speaks from near the wagon. “Rohan, stay here and redirect all sound. Warn us when the general is coming. Natesa, put your turban back on.”
Rohan kicks up a subtle wind, concentrating on Manas’s whereabouts. One would not detect the mood in the skies unless already suspicious. Natesa quickly ties on her turban. Yatin strides past her to the family’s hut. Adrenaline takes over, overriding my shock, and I help him lug the body inside.
Yatin retrieves his haladie and kicks dirt over the trail of blood on the ground. “Hide and don’t come out until the army is gone,” he tells the woman, who nods avidly. “Don’t speak of this, and you’ll be left alone.”
She ushers her children inside, closes their door partway, then pauses. “Thank you, Yatin. Your sisters and mother will be overjoyed to know you’re well.”
I startle at his given name. She shuts the door, and Yatin and I hustle back to the wagon, into Rohan’s winds. Two minutes, maybe three, have passed since Manas rode off. Natesa’s turban again covers her hair. We lead the horses onward, and the next wagon comes around the bend. Rohan weakens his gusts, and we march on.
My heart beats two times faster than my feet.
“He’s coming,” says Rohan.
Manas rides nearer to us. At my prompt, Natesa tucks a loose strand of her hair down the collar of her jacket. Manas’s horse canters past our wagon and slows. He looks back at the woman’s door.
He remembers he left a soldier there.
The Rogue Queen (The Hundredth Queen Series Book 3) Page 15