The first time the portal to Ketu opened—for any scientifically measurable length of time, that is—Kaliya’s father had been a young man. There hadn’t been any seeds drifting from a sky split in two, but the discovery of Ketu had inspired her father to engineer his greatest creations. Dr. Hawthorn had named his seven daughters after the mythical Indian vishkanya—damsels so poisonous they could kill with a kiss. He’d named the firstborn Beatrice, a mocking tribute to a dusty story written long ago. Beatrice hadn’t turned out as lethal as her literary counterpart. Dr. Hawthorn refined his experiments: Mara, Dakini, Camille, Jovelyn, Iolanthe, and, finally, Kaliya—the deadliest of them all.
Kaliya walked down the corridor leading to the inner sanctum. Unlike the rest of the compound’s halls, which were crowded with apprentices rushing to fulfill their masters’ whims, the Aconitum was nearly deserted. As usual, the filtered air and laboratory lighting left her feeling anxious and smothered. Sterile shelves of glass and steel lined both sides of the walkway. Relics from Ketu crowded the finely lit cases. Kaliya had spent her developmental years combing through the catalogs in search of clues on how to access the shadow world, but the relics had proved to be nothing more than fragments of a civilization just out of reach.
She paused for a moment in front of Caliburn, the legendary sword turned to stone. Although most of the stone was weathered to a dull gray, the hilt bore scars from more recent times. Kaliya could barely trace the echoes of the woman’s face that had once graced the unearthly object. The memory of her father’s hands grasping a chisel and hammer, his forearms flecked with blood, however, was as bright as the metal he’d removed from her ribcage on her twelfth birthday. When Kaliya had recovered enough to return to the hall, she’d wept to discover Caliburn defaced. The shavings and the metal had disappeared, tucked away in one of her father’s secret vaults, as though stone and bone had never existed. According to him, they never had.
At the end of the aisle, Kaliya moved through hermetically sealed doors from one ecosystem to another. Once inside, she breathed deep. The loamy smell of turned earth, the delicate scent of poisonous flowers, and the cloying sweetness of death was her heaven on earth. The entire bio-dome served as a greenhouse. Unlike the stale and sterile corridors leading to the heart of the Aconitum, the ceiling and sides of the central structure were constructed from reinforced glass. She sighed in relief and smiled.
In her youth, Kaliya and her sisters had roamed wild among the engineered plants. Up in the canopy of variegated leaves, Dakini’s pale pink form could usually be found skipping and spinning along tree limbs that stretched across the artificial sky. But even Dakini’s most graceful dances were just shadows when Camille was compelled to move. With her cinnamon skin and innate ability for martial arts, Camille was the first to realize her potential as a vishkanya. Jovelyn, with her love of sharp things, cultivated thorns as blue and as large as her hand, which she would whittle into makeshift knives. Their darker sister, Iolanthe with her dusky violet skin lurked near the wet places, the cunningly contrived springs and streams that wound through the bio-dome. Kaliya had loved them and they had loved her. But that had all changed after the accident. Everything had changed.
Kaliya gravitated to the fountain situated at the center of the dome. The sound of water frolicking among stone naiads always relaxed her. As she walked, she trailed her fingers along the curling vines that reached out to greet her. Near the fountain, her favorite flower bloomed. The air simmered with their deadly sweetness. She hummed a lullaby and the heavy aubergine heads turned to face her. Kaliya bent to smell them, gathering the fragrant blooms in her glove-clad hands.
“Good. You’re here.” Her father’s voice rattled through protective filters.
Kaliya dropped her arms and turned to face him. His vivid blue eyes stared at her through the glass of his hazmat helmet. Kaliya could barely remember a time when she’d actually been able to touch him. One of the last memories she did have was accompanied by tortured screams and blistered flesh.
“Hello Father.” She peeled off her gloves and let them slip through her fingers to pool in coiled loops at the fountain’s edge. “Is it time?”
He ignored her question and answered with one of his own. “You saw?”
Even though he was completely protected from accidental exposure, Dr. Hawthorn left a few steps untaken between them. Occupied by increasingly frequent appearances of the shadow planet in the sky and the threat it posed to his authority, he was more distant than ever.
That empty space reminded her of Beatrice. Unlike the others, Beatrice had kept to herself, preferring the words of dead poets over the company of her sisters. Their father had protected his eldest daughter’s desire for privacy, something denied to the rest of them. Only Mara, sweet as an overripe apricot and as lethal as the cyanide contained in its seed, was allowed near her. Kaliya had pretended she didn’t care, but she had, and she’d tried everything she could think of to gain her father’s favor. Kaliya had transformed herself into the perfect weapon, a weapon honed by hate and edged with envy. She just needed to prove she was better than Beatrice, better than all of them.
“Yes.” Kaliya leaned back against the stone, alert yet still taking advantage of the heat streaming through the glass dome. “Do you have a sample?”
Her father held out a sealed container. Inside, a scattering of seeds glittered, perfect golden ovals soaking up the sun. Kaliya reached out. She touched his hand, protected against biohazards, and paused. Her pale green skin appeared waxy and alive compared to his sterile white suit. The moment passed and she collected the container. Kayila held it up and peered inside, marveling at the texture and color of the foreign seeds.
“They’re beautiful,” she said, awed by the potential she sensed in the golden ovoids.
“They’re toxic,” he snapped, “just like everything else that has come from that cursed planet.”
Behind the faceplate, his lined face creased into even deeper furrows and his lips pursued as though he’d sampled an especially bitter fruit. “The Watcher must have gone mad to release such destruction on Earth. Someone has to stop her. Someone should have stopped her already.”
As far as Kaliya could tell from her father’s charts, the way between the two worlds had closed abruptly months before Beatrice had been born. It had remained closed for more than three decades before suddenly appearing in the sky just recently.
Over the course of those long years, Dr. Hawthorn had secured a seat on the council and had moved up in power through the judicious deployment of his daughters.
“The Watcher?” Kaliya traced the cockatrice etched into the clear lid.
Leave it to her father to take on the sigil of a creature that could kill with a glance. She still wasn’t sure if it was his idea of a joke or if he’d actually believed he could engineer daughters as deadly as the mythical beast.
“There’s a balance that must be maintained.” Dr. Hawthorn looked up as though he could see through the dome, past the city’s protective shield, and through the brane that separated Earth from her shadow sister, Ketu.
Kaliya followed his gaze. The only thing she saw was the network of branches crisscrossing the dome like a neural network programmed to feed the fancies of a daredevil dancer. But there was no promise of pink among the green. Daniki had been one of the first of Dr. Hawthorn’s daughters to leave the Aconitum on assignment to never return.
Kaliya twisted the lid off the container and lifted a single seed to her lips. She ran her tongue over its smooth surface, feeling the contours, tasting its potential, before swallowing it whole. She repeated the process two more times and then recapped the container, handing it back to her father. “Do you have the coordinates and times pinned down for the next event?”
“I’m a scientist, not a spy.” Dr. Hawthorn frowned through the faceplate. “The harp must be silenced. The portal to Ketu must be closed forever or everything I’ve built will be destroyed. Do you understand?”
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��Yes, Father.” She looked through the glass, hoping to catch a glimpse of pride in those blue eyes.
His expression remained calm and clinical, as though he was comparing her to someone else—and found her lacking.
“Don’t fail me this time.”
“Father.” Kaliya looked away and gathered her gloves from their resting place on the fountain’s edge.
ALTHOUGH SHE KNEW WHERE BEATRICE had taken refuge from the world, she’d never been there. After locating the correct address, it had taken her more than an hour of wandering the winding garden paths before she found her eldest sibling, puttering away in the rose beds as though she were a common gardener.
“Hello, Beatrice.”
Her sister froze, pale yellow hands sunk deep in the loamy soil. Of all of Dr. Hawthorn’s daughters, Beatrice was the loveliest. She matched the billowy blooms of the hybrid rose she tended. The golden glow of the Alchymist mirrored Beatrice’s creamy yellow skin and unbound apricot hair. Her sister’s tensed shoulders released, and she returned to her work as though a visit from her deadliest sibling was a welcome event.
Kaliya knew better.
All of Dr. Hawthorn’s vishkanya had kills to their credit by the time they reached puberty—all of them, except his beloved Beatrice. After the accident, he’d married off his most precious flower to his closest ally, the one man on Earth who’d managed to chart the stars of the dark universe that existed alongside their own.
Kaliya had not been invited to the wedding.
The dark green leaves of the climbing roses stretched up to soak in the sun, but the flowers shifted to follow the face of the poet who tended them. The perfume of Beatrice’s fear lay heavy in the air. Kaliya smiled.
“I never understood your fascination with roses,” Kaliya said as she moved to kneel next to her sister. “But this strain is lovely in its own way, I suppose.”
Kaliya stroked the variegated petals. Her thumb smudged the colors into a wilted blend as the plant struggled under her touch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her sister’s peach-colored lips tremble.
“What do you want?”
Kaliya plucked a petal from its stem and lifted it to her mouth. She brushed the creamy velvet against her lips. Its heavy scent made her mouth water with its notes of liquid sunshine and honeyed musk. The damp decay of the turned soil in front of Beatrice tempted the golden seeds lodged in her throat. She suppressed the desire to give them life. Not yet.
“You’ve been gone a long time, sister.” Kaliya placed the rose petal on her tongue and carefully crushed its delicate beauty between her teeth. “You’re not his favorite anymore.”
Beatrice looked at her then. Her eyes were the same vivid blue as their father’s. “I was never his favorite.”
“You were his first.” Kaliya plucked another petal from the rose and popped it in her mouth. Its softness only sharpened her hunger. “He protected you.”
“I might have been the first of us to be born, but you are and always have been his last hope.”
Kaliya moved closer. “What do you mean?”
Beatrice appeared to wilt before her. Unlike Kaliya, Beatrice had been created for beauty. Her only claim to being one of Dr. Hawthorn’s vishkanya was in the subtle effects she had on men’s desire. Her poison had a light touch. It thinned the blood, made the heart race. Beatrice had no resistance to her youngest sister’s deadly nature. The faded burn scars on her arms proved it.
“There is a story about Father,” Beatrice said, appearing calm despite the surge of perfumed fear emanating from her pores. “They say he found a way to Ketu, that he stole riches from the ruler.”
“Everyone knows that.” Kaliya reached out and trailed a finger across her sister’s dirt-covered knuckles. Beatrice flinched, but didn’t scream, not even when her skin began to darken to a dirty gold. “They are evil creatures, those who live in that shadow world,” she continued. “They must be stopped.”
“There is evil in both worlds.” Beatrice took a deep breath as her skin smoldered under the press of Kaliya’s fingers. “Iolanthe is dead.”
The golden seeds rooted in Kaliya’s throat twisted at the sound of her favorite sister’s name. Iolanthe had been the last of them to leave the Aconitum before her. She hadn’t been gone long enough to know whether or not she’d ever return. The cloying taste of violets flooded her mouth. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” Beatrice said. “I do.”
Beatrice turned to fully face her sister, knee to knee, nose to nose. “Listen to me, Kaliya. Our father stole more than gold from Ketu.” She grasped her sister’s hands, creamy yellow enfolding pale green. “He stole us. He stole the golden eggs from which we were born.” Kaliya tried to pull away as Beatrice’s subtle hues blackened under her deadly touch. “And then he turned us into weapons.”
“That’s not true,” Kaliya said. “He created us to save the world, but you thought you were better than everyone else. You left us there alone even though you knew what he was doing to us.”
Beatrice shook her head even as she continued to fade like a photograph left to long in the sun. She almost looked human in her frailty. The resemblance to their aging, blue-eyed father enraged her.
Kaliya’s voice rose and her grip tightened. “He cut my ribs out and you didn’t stop him. You could have stopped him.”
“I’m sorry.” Beatrice leaned forward and pressed a peach-colored kiss on Kaliya’s dark green lips. “You’re the only one strong enough to defeat them both.” Her breath stuttered. “That’s why he saved you for last.”
Her last words whispered their way past a swollen tongue.
“Both? What do you mean?”
Beatrice’s lifeless hands fell free and she slumped into the bed of roses she’d been so lovingly tended. Her apricot-colored hair had turned brittle and her skin had lost its lustrous sheen—a dead rose resting in a thicket of thorns. Kaliya pressed her fingers to her lips where the scent of crushed roses lingered.
KALIYA LEFT BEATRICE LYING IN the dirt and made her way into her brother-in-law’s study. She sorted through the classified files, following the trail from one source document to another, until she was finally able to narrow down the most probable location for the next event.
It seemed unlikely that it would occur so close to the last sighting, but the seeds she’d swallowed confirmed the direction she needed to go. She could feel their potential spiraling through her veins. The seeds acknowledged her as one of their own, a safe place to hide until they were needed. They would take her to the ruler in the sky, the king who had once wielded Caliburn in its true form. She had questions only he could answer.
Then, she would kill him with a kiss one hundred times deadlier than any toxin known to man. After all, she’d been created for the sole purpose of assassination. The conqueror living in that floating fairy castle was her first priority. Acquisition of the fabled harp and the destruction of the Watcher was the second.
By the time she reached her destination, the golden seeds had taken root deep in her chest. With each breath, they pumped their toxic mix into her bloodstream. She felt different, alive, and more powerful than ever.
She glanced up, gauging the reach of the coalescing clouds. The towering formation was identical to the one photographed during the last event. Crops stretched out in plowed symmetry around her. Kaliya breathed deep, searching for kinship to the land, but underneath the scent of growth she detected the stench of chemicals designed to kill.
Kaliya bent at the waist and began to cough, a harsh and brutal sound that intruded on the deathly silence surrounding her. The three seeds released their hold on her, working their way back up her throat until she was able to spit them into a cupped palm. The sunlight broke through the clouds’ hold on the sky and shone down to illuminate the golden orbs she cradled so gently. She crouched and scooped out a hollow in the fertile soil where she deposited her charges.
And then, she began to sing.
After a few bars,
the vines broke through the thin crust. They twined around each other as they thickened and lengthened, climbing towards the clouds. When they had reached a height and breadth sturdy enough to bear her weight, Kaliya embraced the braided ropes and let them lift her skywards. The burnt sugary smell of violets exploded into the air as tiny purple flowers budded and opened along the green length of the vine. Iolanthe.
She continued to sing, her voice carrying the notes of a song that reached deep into the material plane, plucking the strings that pulled the worlds together. She sang about the green and the sun and the water. She sang about disease and darkness and death. She sang about hope and despair. She sang a lament for her six dead sisters, flowers bloomed and buried before their time. As the vines broke through the clouds, the portal opened. Through that window, a city from the shadow world came into view.
Kaliya’s breath caught in her throat. The notes stumbled and then fell silent as she watched the rip in the sky spread until it came to a halt, just a step away from where she clung to the towering vines. The previous event had lasted just a few minutes, but there was no guarantee that this portal would remain open as long. Kaliya looked down at the fields spread out below and wondered if she’d ever return. She had no reinforcements, no back-up plan, no escape route.
She couldn’t go back, not now. She released her hold on the vines and jumped.
Even though she’d hoped she would land on the wedge of visible ground in Ketu, a part of her was surprised that she didn’t plummet through the clouds to the fields she’d left behind. Thick mist coiled around her legs. Dark shapes hunched in the shadows. She paused and grounded herself on her heels, preparing for an attack. Nothing moved.
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