Poison's Kiss

by Breeana Shields

  “What group?” I interrupt. I don’t believe that Iyla was really working with Deven—she was tasked with helping me kill him, after all—but maybe if he keeps talking, I’ll be able to make sense of what she was doing.

  He hesitates. “We’re spies for the Raja,” Deven says. Spies for the Raja. Suddenly all the pieces fall into place—the whispered conversations with Japa, the comments about being loyal to the kingdom, Deven’s knowledge about how the Widows’ Village came to be.

  And my orders to kill him.

  Deven is serving the master I grew up believing I was serving. He searches my face and then continues. “We call ourselves the Pakshi,” he says. Pakshi. Bird.

  “Is that why you like Garuda?” I say, remembering his tattoo. And—my stomach twists—Iyla’s earrings.

  Deven takes a long drink of water before answering. “We don’t just like Garuda. We believe that Garuda is the key to stopping the Naga.” The key to stopping the Naga?

  “You don’t mean that the whole Raksaka lives? That they’re all more than legend?”

  Deven gives me a curious look, and then understanding dawns on his face. “Your handlers didn’t teach you from the histories,” he says. It’s not a question.

  I bite my lip. I hate the sense of powerlessness that comes from ignorance. “No,” I say. “They didn’t.”

  Something shifts in his expression, and for the first time in days he’s not looking at me like I’m a liar. “Okay,” he says. “What do you know?”

  “That there are four members of the Raksaka,” I say. “That they are the protectors of Sundari.”

  “Is that all?”

  I play with the hem of my sleeve. “That they are on our coins and our flags,” I say. “And the uniforms of Sundari’s soldiers.” I try to think if there is anything else I know, but I can’t come up with anything. My cheeks are warm.

  Deven doesn’t speak for a moment. He just watches me, a dozen emotions flickering across his face. Finally he clears his throat. “The Raksaka was composed of four members. The bird, Garuda, to rule the skies, the tiger to rule the land, the crocodile to rule the waters, and the snake to rule the underground. For years they lived in perfect balance, no animal more powerful than the other. But the snake wanted more power. He craved it.” Deven leans against the counter and folds his arms across his chest. “The only way for a member of the Raksaka to gain power was to gain followers, and so the snake began to search for humans who wanted power too—humans who would be willing to follow the snake, and the snake alone. As the snake gained supporters, he grew.”

  I swallow. “His power grew, you mean?”

  Deven nods. “His power, yes. But also his body. As the balance of power shifted, the snake physically grew. He grew massive.”

  Gooseflesh races across my skin. “And the other animals?”

  “Got smaller,” Deven says. “Eventually the snake learned how to transfer some of his power to humans, and they began to kill the followers of the rest of the Raksaka.” I press the back of my hand to my mouth. Humans like me. Humans who killed on command. “Which, of course, only made the snake’s power stronger.

  “When the snake was strong enough,” Deven continues, “he came up from the underground and set fire to the world.” With a lurch I remember the illustration from the ancient book Japa showed me—the villagers running from a snake with fire bursting from its mouth.

  “The Dark Days,” I breathe.

  “Yes,” Deven says. “The Dark Days. The tiger and the crocodile disappeared. Most people assume they were killed off—they had grown small and weak and were easy targets. But Garuda…Garuda could fly.” He unfolds his arms and leans forward. “She had shrunken to the size of a hummingbird, but still the snake couldn’t destroy her. The people of Sundari were desperate for relief, and so Garuda’s followers grew and grew until she was big enough to blot out the sun. Big enough to force the Nagaraja underground again.”

  “So where is she now?” I ask.

  Deven shrugs. “We don’t know. Once Sundari was safe again, most of Garuda’s followers grew complacent and she disappeared. We hope that if her followers grow, she will show herself again. But the Naga are growing far faster than the Pakshi, and the Snake King is becoming more and more powerful.”

  A wave of nausea rolls over me. This is what I’ve spent my life doing. Helping a monster grow large enough, powerful enough, to steal Mani. I rest my forehead in my palms. It’s so much to take in.

  “So Iyla was helping you?” I ask. Did she know all of this? Why didn’t she ever tell me?

  “Yes,” Deven says. “Iyla asked if we would help her leave the Naga in exchange for information, and we agreed. She’s only been pretending to work with you.”

  I feel like I’ve swallowed a brick of ice. “That’s not possible,” I say. “I’ve killed based on her information. Recently.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  I slam my palm against my thigh. “Stop that. Stop telling me what I have and haven’t done. I kissed those boys. I killed them. They’re dead and it’s all my fault.”

  He sighs. “I’m not saying that you didn’t kiss them. Only that they didn’t die.”

  “You don’t understand. Everyone I kiss dies.”

  His gaze is steady. “Not if they’re immune.” My breath sticks in my throat. I didn’t think anyone was immune except Gopal and Kadru. And me.

  “But…” It doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t Iyla tell me? She knew how miserable I was. She knew I would have helped her.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Deven says. “The Pakshi have been trying to infiltrate the Naga for years. Iyla was the perfect way in. She has been feeding them false information and setting up false kills since she’s been with us. The boys you kissed—we made sure they were immune before Iyla set up the meetings. We hoped it would give us a chance to see how the Naga work, without anyone having to die.” If what he’s saying is true, then there was no use being sad about Iyla’s empty house. She left me a long time ago.

  And if Deven knew who Iyla was all along, did he know who I was too? It touches something raw inside me, the thought that he was pretending when he took me on that hike. When he showed me the waterfall and the Widows’ Village. When he held my hand. A yawning emptiness opens up in my chest. At least I haven’t killed in a long time.

  “So none of the boys died? Not for two years?”

  “Well…we’re not entirely sure that none of them died.” My heart sinks—my redemption lasted only a few seconds. Deven rubs his palms against his legs like he’s nervous, like there’s something he doesn’t want to tell me. “Iyla may have been working both sides. It’s possible she set up kills we weren’t aware of.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  He bites his lip. “One of Iyla’s primary missions was to reveal the identities of the vish kanya. We knew there were dozens, but we hadn’t ever been able to locate any of them, and every time we sent spies to witness the false kills, to be there to capture the visha kanya, they ended up dead.”

  My mouth goes dry. He still thinks there are many vish kanya, that Gopal has a network of assassins. Deven doesn’t realize that the people he works for were only trying to capture me. I take slow, deep breaths and try to regain my composure. “What do you mean they ended up dead?”

  He sighs. “We’d find them later at the location of the kill, their throats slit, gone before they’d had a chance to report back to their handlers. The Naga have spies for our spies, and they always seem to be one step ahead.” A chill scurries down my spine. Gopal always warned me I might be followed, but I didn’t know I was being trailed by multiple sides.

  “What about the targets? If they survived, couldn’t they give a description?”

  He rubs a hand over his face. “Not a good enough one—they expected the girls to be followed and captured, and so they didn’t pay attention to details. The descriptions were vague. Always girls between sixteen and twenty. Always alone. It
wasn’t enough.”

  I think of the way Gopal made sure I looked different for every assignment—The boy will prefer the hair down, rajakumari or Today we’ll cover your hair with a scarf, rajakumari. Was he aware I was being watched? Did he want me to look older sometimes and younger others? Was I playing the part of a dozen different vish kanya?

  Deven sighs. “And then there was you.”

  My breath lodges at the base of my throat. “What about me?”

  “You were supposed to kill me, right?”

  I swallow hard. It’s painful to hear him say it out loud. “Yes.”

  “Well, we didn’t know that. When Iyla showed up with a black eye and told me that you’d had her beaten—well, the story didn’t add up. She hadn’t told me that you worked with the Naga before then, and she should have. That’s when I realized she’d been playing us. That maybe we could never discover any of the Naga’s secrets because she didn’t want us to.”

  My heart squeezes at the thought that maybe some of my time with Deven was real. “But wait,” I say, “if Iyla told you I was a visha kanya, why did you seem so surprised when I told you earlier?”

  Deven shakes his head. “See, that’s the thing. She didn’t tell me that. She told me that you worked for the Naga and that you were trying to kill me by poisoning my drinks. She always claimed she needed more time to find the vish kanya. That she had no idea where the Naga were keeping them.”

  I stare at my hands as I try to decide what it means that Iyla gave Deven only a half-truth. What it means that she only partially betrayed me. Was that for my benefit? For hers?

  Deven clears his throat. “Do you know where the others are?” he asks.

  I swallow hard. I should tell him that I’m the only one, but the fact that Iyla didn’t makes me nervous. She must have had some reason to withhold that information. What did she know that I don’t?

  But I owe him some kind of answer. “My handlers never let me meet the others,” I say. “They said it kept us all safer if we didn’t know each other.” It’s the closest thing to the truth I have to offer.

  “Basic tradecraft,” Deven says. “I thought as much, but I had to ask.”

  “I wish I knew more,” I say, grateful he believes me.

  And then a thought occurs to me that sends butterflies dancing in my stomach. “Are you immune?”

  The corner of his mouth ticks up. “Yes.”

  My first thought is that I gave away five years of my life for nothing. And the second is this: I could have kissed him.

  I still could.

  Neither of us speaks for a moment, and I stare at my feet while I wait for my cheeks to cool. It doesn’t matter if Deven is immune or not; he would never want to kiss me. And I have more important things to think about, like helping Mani. But still, my train of thought leads me to one more question.

  “If Iyla was never your girlfriend, then why did you kiss her?”

  He frowns. “Her cover was that I was a mark she was trying to woo. In public places she made sure to be thorough.”

  My head is heavy with new information, but none of it points toward where the Naga might have taken Mani. I stand up and pull on my sandals. They’re still damp from when I rinsed them in the shower. I can’t just sit here. I have to start searching.

  “What are you doing?” Deven asks.

  “I’m going to find my brother.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “I’m going to start with the girls’ home. It’s where I was raised. Where they kept all of the vish kanya and spies.”

  He chews his lip. “I doubt they would keep him somewhere so obvious, but it’s worth a try. We can at least have a look around and see if we find some more clues.”

  “We?” I ask. “You’re coming with me?”

  He reaches out and circles my wrist with his fingers, and my breath catches in my throat. I forgot to replace my bracelets after I showered. Deven’s eyes widen as his thumb brushes against the scars.

  “What did they do to you?” His voice is husky with emotion.

  “They’re snakebites,” I tell him. I can’t bear to see the naked pity on his face, so I drop my gaze.

  He grabs my other wrist and turns both of my hands over in his own, examining them from every angle. “Oh, Marinda,” he breathes. “There are so many.”

  I don’t tell him that these are only half of my scars. That my ankles are just as ravaged, but that no one gets close enough to my feet for me to bother concealing them.

  Instead I swallow the lump in my throat and pull away from him. “We have to go,” I say.

  Deven drops my hands and it takes him a moment to find his voice. “Let’s wait until dark,” he says. “And then I promise I’ll help you find Mani and get him to safety.”

  I shake my head. “No. We have to go now. It’s been hours. He must be terrified.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Deven says. “But we’re not even certain where they’re keeping him, and it won’t do Mani any good for you to get yourself killed.”

  “They won’t kill me,” I say.

  “Won’t they?” he asks softly, his gaze traveling to my wrists and then back to my face. “Isn’t that exactly what they did to Japa? And he didn’t betray them, Marinda. You did.”

  I press a palm to my forehead and squeeze my eyes closed. I don’t want to think about what they did to Japa, what they could be doing to Mani. But I know I can’t sit here and do nothing while we wait for the sun to disappear. I go to the wall where the door is and lean against it.

  “How do I get out of here?”

  “We have a better chance of saving him if we wait,” Deven says. “I care about him too.”

  My stomach clenches and I fall heavily into a chair. “You don’t know Gopal like I do. You don’t know what he’s capable of. If we go now, I can promise to stay with him in exchange for Mani. That’s a trade I know Gopal will make. He doesn’t care about Mani—I’m what he wants. And then you can take Mani and get him far away from here.”

  “No. I’m not willing to do that.”

  “But you said you cared about him.”

  “And I do,” Deven says. “But I’m not exchanging you for him.”

  “Why not? You hate me and you care about Mani, so it seems like an easy decision.”

  “I don’t hate you.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “My feelings about you are complicated. I’m angry with you—but I’m not angry enough to leave you with a monster.”

  “I deserve to be with a monster,” I say. “Mani doesn’t.”

  Deven shakes his head. “No one deserves that, Marinda. Not even you.”

  “It doesn’t look much like a home,” Deven says. We’ve been creeping through dark alleys for over an hour, and finally we’re standing in front of a charmless box of a building. The windows are dark and the front yard is a wild tangle—the weeds have choked the life from every other plant.

  But until a few years ago, it was the only home I’d ever known, and I still feel a pull toward it, like if I just stare hard enough, I might see something different.

  It doesn’t look like anyone is staying here, and yet I’m still praying to the ancestors that Mani is inside. And if he is—I don’t care what Deven says—I will offer to stay in his place. Even if I never see either of them again, it will be worth it to know that Mani is safe.

  We try the front door first, but it’s locked. I reach toward my head for a pin but realize that I left my hair down and I don’t have one. “Is there another way in?” Deven asks. I look at him in confusion. “A side entrance? A loose window?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  He sighs. “Didn’t you spend most of your life here?”

  I swallow. “Yes, but I was only ever allowed in a few of the rooms and almost never outside.”

  A long silence stretches between us. It’s so dark that I can’t clearly make out his expression, but I feel like I’ve disappointed him. “I’m s
orry,” I say. “If you have something to pick the lock, I can try that.”

  “I don’t,” he says. He shrugs and his shoulder brushes against mine. “We’ll find a way.”

  We steal around the side of the building, and Deven pulls on each window, looking for one that is loose or open, but all of them are sealed tight. The night is inky black and I brush my hand against the side of the wall to keep my footing. Deven is nothing more than a dark shape in front of me. I follow him around the corner to the back of the building.

  “Found a way in,” he says softly. I hurry to catch up and nearly run into him. He’s standing next to a door with a glass window in the top half. Steel rods crisscross the window, forming dozens of diamond shapes.

  “Is it unlocked?”

  “No,” he says. “But I can get it open.” He pulls a blanket from his bag and wraps it several times around his fist. Then he punches through the glass diamond in the bottom left corner. The sound of breaking glass shatters the silence. I flinch, but no lights go on and no one comes running. Deven tosses the blanket to me and then reaches his hand through the opening and unlocks the door. We step into the kitchen.

  The smell of ginger tea envelops me and I’m suddenly five years old again, curled on Gita’s lap listening to her whisper folktales against my ear. Deven lights a candle, but I already know what I’ll see in the flickering light. A yellow teapot painted with red elephants, a single matching teacup with a chip in the handle and the dregs of the pale tea Gita favors glued to the bottom. Gita has been here. Recently. My throat is thick with the memories I can’t swallow.

  “Marinda?”

  “She was here,” I say.

  “Who?” Deven swings the candle so that the light dances between us.

  “Gita,” I say. “She’s…” Suddenly I realize I don’t know what to call her. My fill-in mother? One of my handlers? The woman who dried my tears when Gopal beat me, but never stopped him from hurting me in the first place? “She’s one of them.”