The court of stars watched her, expectant. Waiting for her to wow them; waiting for her to colossally wreck it all.
She shut her eyes, imagining being inspired. In her mind, music danced from her onto the strings, notes ringing out in a metallic glossolalia like a human’s voice.
Story. She was nothing but the words of a story, one tale weaving imperceptibly into the next. She was the loom that wove the tapestry. She was the tapestry that joined all things.
Her insides had been hollowed out, leaving only melody and harmony, scales and song. A remote part of her mind observed that the entire hall had hushed, all whispers silenced, but that observation had no meaning.
Sheetal let her fingers shimmy along the strings, cajoling the instrument to surrender its secrets. It was a love song, a paean to the dreams she had once sung in a backyard full of green grass and white daisies.
The music blazed inside her, demanding release. Now she understood why Nani and Charumati had chosen her as their champion, why they’d planned this moment for when she stood in the space between worlds. The stars gave voice to the sidereal melody, but only Sheetal could actually reach past that and create her own song.
This is what you were born for, star daughter, the starsong told her. Songcraft.
The song was right.
Giving this moment up was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.
“Stop!” Charumati cried.
Sheetal opened her eyes, her core alight, to see the court gawking at her mother. It was happening. She had just enough time to think, I’m going to be sick, before Padmini appeared before her, box in hand.
She could feel Minal, Dev, Padmini, and even Beena eyeing her with concern, and she shut them all out. It was the only way she’d be able to do this.
Before Padmini could ask what was going on, Sheetal wrested the box from her hands and prized out the starry circlet. Her mother and Nani were both running toward her, but they couldn’t reach her before she jammed the circlet onto her head.
And then, finally, finally, finally, she set her fire free.
Instantly her fingers stung as if brushed by invisible nettles. Ice stabbed through her, a knife of cold dousing her inner flame, before it flared again, filling her.
Then she relaxed backward into the song, into the cosmic dance that linked all beings, celestial and earthbound, through all time and space.
The room grew silver with starshine. Sheetal’s temples throbbed in time with her galloping heart.
She sank her teeth into her tongue, taking solace in the pain. First this flame, ignored and suppressed for so long, had burned Dad. Then she’d thought maybe she could use it to fix everyone else. But it had always been waiting to transform her.
A voice came from far off, high with alarm: “Sheetal, dikri, what did you do?”
She was warm, so very warm. Her brain pounded with heat. The song rushed in and around her, discordant, raucous. It hurt so much. But she stayed with it, studying the individual strands, teasing out their meaning.
“Oh, no,” someone else said. Minal.
Sheetal’s blood swirled, afire. Her skin burned so horribly, she wanted to scratch her face off just to stop the pain.
There was anger in the song, wrath and disdain and undisguised hatred. It felt like lava, guzzling everything in its path before it cooled to stone. Its flood of fury and malice nearly washed her away.
This was old, old anger, woven into the very fabric of the starry court, and Sheetal couldn’t blame anyone for feeling it. She’d never be able to undo what Dev’s ancestor had done.
But not everyone wanted revenge. Not everyone thought the old taboo needed to be carried down through generations. She could hear Padmini and Kaushal, full of affection and protective worry.
Sheetal concentrated on that, tuning everything else out. She was sure it would cleave her in two: the call of the constellation, her family in the nakshatra, her blood that even now twisted into a new shade, a new substance.
Every star joined hands in the cosmic dance, encircling her. The mortal part of her submitted easily, folding into the part that was star and shining silver and hot enough to melt anything that resisted it.
Her cells shifted from flesh to light while her core burned as if it would consume her whole. Her sense of time expanded from the brief leaf dance from branch to ground of a human girl to the vast spectrum of days known to a star.
Out of nowhere, Dad appeared in her mind—his laugh, his wit, his love. Memories floated by: their first astronomy lesson, when he’d taught her about quasars and neutron stars and joked about the level of radiation she was putting out. His proud expression whenever they discussed the biographies he’d given her. The moment when she’d seen him lying in the ICU bed, harmed by her hand. No. She wouldn’t give Dad up. Not now, not ever.
Wait, Sheetal screamed. I don’t want this! I was wrong.
Terror ate black holes in her as she tried to get away. But there was nowhere to go, and so she sang. She sang and sang, her voice tearing free and dissolving into starlight. She sang her love, her defiance. She sang for herself. It was a song no one else could hear, a song of flame, of transformation.
Continuing to sing, she ripped open the scab on her thumb, and a drop of still-human blood appeared.
As she thrashed and tumbled through the cosmos within herself, she pinned her attention to that red bead. This is who I am. She drove it like a stake deep into the soil of her heart and secured it with her love for Dad, Radhikafoi and her family, Minal, and Dev. Whatever else happened to her, that part would always bloom.
“Sheetal!” Nani’s voice lashed through the night. “Stop this.”
But it was too late. Sheetal’s radiance flooded the universe as she took her place in the Pushya nakshatra.
When she opened her eyes, she stood by the viewing pool, and she knew right away that everything was different. The way it gleamed brighter, felt more ethereal . . . the way she now realized the starsong she thought she’d heard so distinctly before had been muffled, scratchy, like a video call with bad reception. Now it rang out in unadulterated perfection, each note a miracle.
The whispers and murmurs intensified until they hissed around her like vipers.
Sheetal saw understanding dawn in her grandmother’s silver-brown eyes.
“Beti,” said Nani, a volcano of grief and fury bubbling just beneath her outer layer of calm. “You cannot do this.”
Sheetal should probably feel triumphant. Instead, she just felt sad and exhausted. And she still wasn’t done.
Minal gave her a searching look. “Are you okay? That was . . .”
Sheetal obliged her with a strained smile, then faced the hundreds of pairs of disbelieving eyes. Blood fizzing bright in her veins, she could only pray she’d done the right thing.
“Yes, I am,” she told Minal. “Yes, I can,” she told Nani. “You swore as long as our nakshatra won, I could have the blood. You didn’t say who had to win for us.”
Charumati laughed with sheer delight.
Forgetting the rest of the court, forgetting its whispers, Sheetal turned to the boy who had come such a long way to support his cousin—but also to support her. The thing she was about to ask was so huge, she wouldn’t blame him if he said no. “Sing for me?”
To his credit, Dev sounded more skeptical than anything. “You want me to compete.”
“Yep. As my champion.”
Next to them, Jeet snorted. “Pitting my cousin-brother against me? That’s your plan?”
Sheetal jerked. She’d forgotten he was even there.
Dev glanced at Sheetal, his dark brown eyes even softer in her new vision, then at Jeet. His mouth tightened. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Something sharp glittered in Jeet’s grip. “I don’t think so. You’re not going to screw me over like this.”
“Whoa, bhai, what are you doing?” Dev dove for him. “Have you lost it completely?”
“Stay out of this,” Jeet snapped
, jumping aside. “You betrayed me. Both of you.”
Minal grabbed for the knife, but he shoved her away.
“What?” he taunted Sheetal, his blade glinting. “Don’t tell me you thought Dev would save you.”
And in the dark tradition of his ancestor, he cut her.
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Sheetal stared at her bleeding stomach, at the silver liquid gushing from the wound. Seconds later, the agony hit, a sharp shriek, just as Dev pinned Jeet’s arms behind him, aided by guards who had come rushing in through the wings.
Jeet’s eyes were fixed on the blood. The rancor was gone from them, displaced by desperate need. “Just give me a drop,” he wheedled. “I can still win!”
Padmini, Charumati, and Nani all surrounded Sheetal. “Oh, dikri,” said Charumati, bending to examine the wound. “Oh, my daughter. I never wanted this.”
“Nor did I,” said Nani. Through the starsong, which was now woven around her like a net, Sheetal could feel Nani gathering healing magic.
Jeet broke free of Dev’s hold. He lunged, and Sheetal cried out, but he wasn’t even looking at her. At least, not at her face. In the next instant, he was kneeling before her, swiping at the blood that had collected like mercury at her feet.
“Jeet!” Dev pleaded, his whole broken heart in that one name.
Before anyone could stop him, Jeet licked his finger.
Sheetal’s heart swelled with revulsion and pity. No one should be drinking star’s blood. Ever. And Jeet had been tricked into it. She had to help him.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, she grabbed his arm, the one that had held the blade, and hoisted him to his feet. Then she ignited.
She flared; she smoldered; she burned. Her silver radiance ratcheted higher and hotter, higher and hotter, until she blazed like Nani, as dazzling and fiery as a supernova. Dev lurched backward, and Minal hid her face against Padmini’s shoulder. Charumati and Nana clasped hands, while Nani observed with a hawkish scrutiny.
Sheetal’s near-unbearable brilliance bleached the room of everything else. White, blinding, but the opposite of a snowbank. Pure light, pure heat.
The flame sprang from her into Jeet, but this time, unlike with Dad, she was in control. She conducted it like a song: the pitch, the tempo, the scale. Jeet paled with that peculiar silvery cast as she scorched the stolen stellar blood right out of him.
He moaned. Sheetal knew he felt every second of the flame, felt it searing through his bones and into his marrow in search of every last droplet, and she didn’t care. Let him suffer a little. It was only fair.
The pilfered blood rose around him in a halo of smoke and sparks, so bright no one watching could possibly miss it. The court erupted in shouts until Sheetal could hardly make out her own thoughts. For the first time ever, she felt whole.
She also felt like she was going to faint as her wound started spurting blood again.
“There,” she cried, dropping Jeet’s sleeve. He fell to the floor, panting. “See what happened to this mortal because of all these power games?”
With a detached expression like he’d removed himself from what was happening, Dev held out the vial he’d taken from Jeet’s drawer, and the viewing pool magnified it a million times. “Like this.”
“Don’t forget, Rati gave him that blood,” Sheetal called so the entire court could hear. “He didn’t exactly have to twist her arm, either.”
The sidereal melody grew deep and ugly, hungry bass notes where there should have been a clear treble. It raged around them, an inward assault. The ruling Esteemed Matriarch and Patriarch looked furious.
Rati, though, only seemed amused, a sly smile slipping over her face. She vanished into the audience, probably to leave the court while she still could. Well, she’d gotten what she wanted—seeing House Pushya publicly disgraced.
Both Charumati and Nani approached Sheetal then. She instinctively stepped back.
“Be still, child,” Nani said. “We are trying to heal you.”
“Child?” Sheetal laughed. “I thought I was an adult now?”
She felt more than saw Charumati steady her as Nani grasped her hand. “Hold fast, beti.”
Sheetal half-heartedly leaned back into her mother’s arms. But seconds later, she clutched at Charumati, writhing as Nani inundated her with heat, with radiation, with power.
When Nani let go, the wound was gone, the skin perfect.
Sheetal felt amazing, like she could soar through the universe and never stop. Or kiss Dev for hours. Or eat all the things she’d missed on the banquet tables at the ball.
While Charumati held the bloody knife by its hilt and incinerated it, Nani advanced on Jeet.
“What is the meaning of this?” Her barely checked wrath made Sheetal’s look like cooling cinders in comparison. “You intrude into my court and harm my family? Did you truly believe you would succeed?”
Sheetal glanced from Nani to Jeet, and her fury trickled out of her as swiftly as it had come, leaving only sorrow. Pain bridged the gaps between them. And how very fast unchecked pain could fester, one terrible choice turning into a chain of terrible choices through the centuries, each feeding the next. “You really hate me, don’t you?” she asked him.
“You took my chance from me,” Jeet said hoarsely. “What do you think?”
She turned to Nani and Charumati. “Honestly? I think it’s time we all stop holding grudges.”
Her grandmother, however, loomed over the still-pinioned Jeet.
Her words were antagonistic, full of barbs. “This mortal boy will be made a black hole and loosed into the night sky. It will be his fate to spend eternity fruitlessly swilling all things into himself, always thirsting for the light that can never warm him.”
The crowd hummed with shock. Even Nana looked perturbed. But he merely said, “As you will, my wife.”
Sheetal exhaled irritably. There Nani went again, taking over. “No.”
The crowd whirled in its seats.
“I get it,” she said, glowing with all the fire she could call up. “I do. He did a horrible, horrible thing, and I kind of want to cut him back. But we can’t do this anymore.”
Charumati touched her arm. “He hurt you, my daughter.”
“And that’s why I’m the one who gets to decide what happens to him.”
Sheetal knelt before Jeet, who flinched. He might have done some seriously awful stuff, but he was far from the only one, and it wasn’t like he’d gotten to this point alone. She wouldn’t let Nani ignore the stars’ own culpability and pin everything on him.
This was Sheetal’s story, and a fairy-tale crime deserved a fairy-tale punishment. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to lay a finger on you. I don’t have to, not when the stars will turn their faces from you. And you know what that means? No more inspiration. You wanted to be remembered for all time? Too bad. Feel free to toil away in obscurity, though.”
He blanched.
“And,” Nani vowed, not to be outdone, “though it is traditional to do so, your memory will not be cleansed. You will recall every moment of this. I will see to that myself.”
Sheetal wanted to argue—that was way too harsh; none of the other contestants would ever remember they’d been here, and wasn’t losing inspiration enough of a blow?—but Nani’s merciless manner made it clear that if Sheetal pushed any further, Nani would just override her completely. At least this way, Jeet got to live.
So even though she ached to think of what it would do to Dev, Sheetal let it pass.
“Oh,” she went on, “and if you try to pick up a knife to hurt anyone ever again, it’ll rebound and cut you. Probably better to steer clear of knives altogether.”
She didn’t actually have that power, of course, but it wasn’t like Jeet knew any better.
“You can’t do this,” he spat. “I’m under House Revati’s protection.”
Sheetal swept her arm to encompass the court. “Do you see House Revati up here with you? No? Then I guess they’re not protecting yo
u anymore.”
“You’re a poseur,” he informed her. “You only got this far by luck, and that’ll never hold out.”
Sheetal let the words spray over her like sea foam. The wave might sting, but in the end, the foam would dissolve. “You can still fix things with Dev. Just, you know, do better than this.”
Jeet’s gaze hardened as he met his cousin’s devastated face. He stared, cold as a midwinter night, then turned away.
The ruling Esteemed Matriarch, who had been observing from the stage, nodded in acknowledgment. “A fine solution. Remove the mortal,” she told the guards. “It is time for the judges’ deliberation.” She glanced quizzically at Sheetal. “I trust you understand that, having relinquished your mortality, you are now disqualified from acting as champion?”
“I do, but hang on.” Sheetal inhaled down to her diaphragm, siphoning strength from the sidereal song as it enveloped her in its notes. “We’re not done yet.”
Nani and Charumati had been right about one thing. This was her blood, her birthright. This was her.
She stood tall and addressed the court. “I, Sheetal Mistry, of the Pushya nakshatra, name mortal Dev Merai as my champion. He will be singing an original composition for you today.”
That would have to be eloquent enough.
The audience exclaimed, sending currents of delight and dismay through the starsong, mixed with relish at the unexpected scandal. Jeet screwed his eyes shut before the guards dragged him away.
“This is ridiculous,” said Nani. “You have hardly reached majority!” Sheetal heard voices in the audience that agreed, that supported Nani and her stance on separating the realms.
“Well?” asked the Esteemed Patriarch of House Dhanishta. “We will honor this declaration, but do not expect us to wait.”
“I refuse to honor this declaration,” Nani said.
“Stand down, Eshana,” warned the ruling Esteemed Patriarch. “We will hear Sheetal’s champion. I must confess, I am intrigued.”
“So you were saying, dikri?” Charumati asked, her mouth twitching like she was suppressing a smile. Nani’s look, on the other hand, threatened to burn the entire court to ashes.
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