The Star-Touched Queen (19 page)

An ache gripped me. He had fooled me into thinking I was anything more than a slighted princess of Bharata. For a second, I wished I had swallowed the poison. At least then I could have felt a semblance of control over my own life. Instead, I was left with the sinking knowledge that nothing had fooled me more than myself. I had been so lonely before that I had mistaken our connection for something other than what it was: betrayal. But then … why had he protected me if he loved another?

I yanked my face away from the flame, gasping for air. Resting my forehead against the tree trunk, I breathed in the heady scent of fresh dirt and cloves. I was about to reach for another candle, when I heard a voice below me—

I spun around. There, in the length of obsidian mirror, the image of a girl flickered in and out. I knew her instantly. Nritti. Even in the reflection of the mirror, she was lovely. Her hair fell in black sheets around her, nothing like my own black hair, so erratic the waves looked more like snarls than curls. Her skin was incandescent, a soft shade of honey, the very opposite of my dusky complexion.

“It’s really you,” she breathed, wavering in the reflection.

She was only a flimsy version of herself, but she seemed trapped behind that portal, flung back behind an obsidian veil. Even now, her voice was intensely familiar and warm.

“Nritti?” I ventured.

She nodded and smiled. “Do you remember me?”

“I—” I faltered. I
knew
her. But I didn’t remember her. Not really. I knew her in blips of memory.

“I’ve been waiting,” she said, tears shining in her eyes. “I have been looking for you for centuries. Ever since you were taken and scurried away into that
awful
palace, I knew I would find you. But then all of that”—she stopped, breaking off into a sob—“but then everything changed,” she said through gasps of pain.

“Where are you?” I asked. “How did you even … know … where I was?”

“The mirrors,” said Nritti, tapping the black veil. “I knew there was a portal leading from the Otherworld to
his
palace.” She snarled
his
, refusing to say Amar’s name. “I knew it would be a matter of time and now you’re here! The moment you stepped into the room, I could feel it. My own mirror lit up.”

I said nothing, words failing me. Distantly, I heard Gupta’s voice in the back of my mind, shining like a warning.

There are places behind our doors that must never be opened because of what they hide … They can sense an invitation by something as small as another person’s lungs filling with air in the same room and it’s like a lightning bolt, like a conduit of destruction.

“So you know now … you know what he’s capable of,” said Nritti through the mirror. She pressed her hands against the glass, like she was desperate to be free. “We have to get you out.”

I nodded, still numb. All those threads being pulled from the tapestry. All those people wandering the halls close by where I slept. Oblivious. All those promises and dreams he had kindled in my head.

I looked at Nritti. “Where have you been? Why now?”

She gave me a pitiful expression and I felt chastened beneath her stare. “It’s hard work to get into this part of Naraka. And harder to stay.”

“Tell me everything,” I said. “How do we know each other?”

“We grew up together,” said Nritti. She pointed vaguely at the memories above. “Our story is somewhere in that tree. We were like sisters, you and me.”

I frowned. But what about the memory of Amar and the other woman? That had been his, hadn’t it?

“There was someone else,” I began, “a woman, she—”

“There’s always a woman,” said Nritti, with a flippant wave of her hand. “He traps them here. He finds one girl, lovely or not, it doesn’t matter. And he feeds off of them. He is Death, he can do anything he wants.”

“But why was it in my memory?”

“You must have found out what he was up to,” said Nritti in a rushed voice. There was sweat gleaming on her brow. And a smell, like metal, perfumed the air. “I am sure you figured out in the end what he had planned. Perhaps you found the other girl’s memory tree and that’s why it’s there.”

I felt a leaden pit in my stomach. “There’s more?”

“Oh yes,” said Nritti. “Hundreds of trees, hundreds of girls. Just like you.”

I fell silent. Had I been wrong the whole time? I thought I had seen an expression of love between the woman in the flame and Amar. But he was ancient and deathless. Perhaps he had just learned how to cull a heart, like he had a soul.

“But how do you know?”

Nritti flashed a thin, pitiful smile, like she was explaining a child’s redundant question. “Was your horoscope something horribly grim?” asked Nritti.

I nodded.

“All of them are,” said Nritti with a sigh. Her words were so casual, but they slid into me, sharp as knives.
He finds one girl, lovely or not, it doesn’t matter.
I didn’t matter. “And then he seduces them, tricks them with power, makes them think that it’s real…”

I remembered how the weather had changed outside the throne room. How the floor had shifted beneath my feet, and at the end of it, I had collapsed in the glass garden, falling straight into his arms. He had planned all of it. My hands curled into fists, and I pressed them against my chest. In Bharata, at least I had the solace of holding my mother’s necklace. But I had nothing to hold on to, nothing but words and thin air and false hope.

“Last time, you got away,” said Nritti, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I don’t know how, but you did it. And I thought,” she stammered, “I thought you were dead. But something led me back to you.” She smiled, but it was a cold thing, feverish and burning.

“What was it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. Another smile. Another burst of cold. “Maybe it was something in the wind or a change in my heart.” She brought her fingers to her heart, her beautiful eyes cast downward. There was so much desperation in her eyes. I felt heartless for not trusting her. “But I knew I only had a number of days before I could get to you.”

“The new moon?” I guessed.

Her head snapped up, and something dark flared in her lovely eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “Why? Has it already happened?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I murmured. “I just remember that that’s when—”

“That’s when he’ll
kill
you,” said Nritti. “You’ve seen him. He cannot stand being crossed. The first time you were here, you got away. Somehow you must have gotten to the reincarnation pool to escape him. It must have taken him years to find you again. But he locked away all those old memories. He would never want you to find out who you had been. His arrogance couldn’t stand that a girl escaped his grasp.”

I thought of those oaths Amar had promised. The beads of blood brimming on his palm. That kiss. Even the memory of him saving me. He was keeping me alive to kill me for later. I scolded myself. My own foolishness was looking for scraps to grasp at, something that would validate all of the poor decisions I had made. How weak I had sounded. I clenched my teeth. I wouldn’t be weak for him.

Something splintered inside me. Nritti had to be right. No wonder Gupta and Amar had warned me away from all the hidden doors in Akaran. No doubt, they didn’t want me to find out. All those voices I had heard. Who did they belong to? Girls trapped inside of trees? Or were they the plaintive voices of the dead, calling to me. Warning me.

“Who was I in my last life, then?”

Nritti smiled. “You were my friend. I am an
apsara
, but I left all of that behind the moment I lost you. I don’t know why you went away with him. But I can see why you were seduced … a powerful kingdom … leaving behind a place of obscurity.”

An
apsara
? That made her a heavenly nymph. I wasn’t surprised. She was easily the most beautiful person I had ever seen. And as for the reason why I would be seduced to follow Amar … even that made sense. It was the same in Bharata. That constant need to leave, to prove myself, to rise above the nameless, dreamless ranks of the harem women.

“You meant so much to me,” said Nritti, tears shining in her eyes. “You still do. I would’ve done anything to keep you safe. I know you would have done the same for me. I just needed you to lead me.”

“Was I, also, an
apsara
?”

I felt stupid asking such a question. Of course I wasn’t. Nritti flashed a sympathetic smile.

“No. You were a forest
yakshini
and you knew those woods so well.”

I nodded, trying to wrap my mind around this version of myself that she was telling me. I sounded like a cowering thing, resigned to silence and shadows. But maybe that was the way it was always supposed to be. Here, I was nothing more than an imposter playing at power and failing miserably.

Nritti placed her hand against the glass. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay at this portal. I’m risking my life for you with every passing minute, but I won’t let you be unsafe. There’s something you need to do. To be free.”

“What?”

“Bring me his noose and destroy the tree. He’ll never find you again after that. And then you and I can escape. We can go back to the Otherworld. We can free all the other girls trapped in this kingdom.”

All the other girls.
My throat tightened and I nodded tersely.

“Where does he keep the noose?”

“It is always on his person. Perhaps not in the same form.”

My heart clenched. The black strip of leather around his wrist. Right next to my own circlet of hair. It had to be the noose. The source of his power. The noose was how the Dharma Raja dragged the souls to his dread kingdom before they were assigned to a new life.

“The tree
needs
to be destroyed. Do you understand?” Her reflection wavered and her voice was strangely harsh. “He will kill you if you give him the chance.”

Before I could say anything, the door glowed blue. Someone was near.

“I have to go.”

“Are you ready for this, sister?” asked Nritti.

I nodded. “I’m ready.”

Footsteps echoed outside the door. I clambered down the tree, throwing one last glance at Nritti’s waning reflection in the obsidian mirror before running out into the hall. The door closed with a soft thud behind me, the glowing blue of its walls fading and melding back into white. I breathed a sigh of relief, my hands still pressed against the wood.

Voices snaked through the halls, hushed and urgent. I was still reeling from Nritti’s words.
He will kill you if you give him the chance.
I knew I had to be on guard. I’d only seen a few of the memories in the tree, but they had all the intimacy of realness. My friendship with Nritti, even the way my instincts told me to trust her. That she wouldn’t hurt me. Even then, I clasped the memory of the days Amar and I had spent together close to my chest. The way he looked at me, an amazed smile turning his face incandescently beautiful. The embraces of fire and starlight when he kissed me. How could they be false?

But then I heard Gupta’s voice in the hallway … his words reached me. Roped around me.

“Tomorrow is the new moon. You need not worry any longer. Everything you’ve done, saving her life and bringing her here … it will all be worth it,” he said. “Now that she’s here, we can get rid of her the way you always wanted. I am confident of it.”

I backed against the wall. In that second, every space was too tight and each light glinted with malice.
Here
was the reason. He had been waiting for the right time to get rid of me, the right way to exact vengeance. Nritti was right.

He would kill me if I gave him the chance.

18

THE TRUTH, AT LAST

I stayed in the shadows, waiting for their footsteps.

“There is still much to do before then,” said Gupta. “You must anticipate her response.”

“She’s ready,” said Amar impatiently. “I have waited long enough and I will not be denied.”

I pressed myself against the wall, praying I wouldn’t be caught. I thought back to Amar’s words in the tapestry room.
Weakness is a luxury you can no longer afford
. How right he had been. Friendship had weakened me. Even Gupta’s friendship had been a ruse, a means of distracting me, a blindfold as they trapped me in the halls of death.

Soon, their voices faded into the distance.

I stepped out, my breath clammy in my lungs. Outside, a hundred mirrors loomed, each displaying a picture of night. Some of these nighttime scenes looked out over lush valleys sprinkled with snow. Others stretched out over huge tracts of sea, reflecting the skies in the water so that the stars seemed endless. At the end of the hall, the door to a new room was cracked open. A strange smell unraveled from the door, heavy with the stench of blood. I felt the hairs at the back of my neck rise. Slowly, I pushed open the door and glanced inside. What I saw nearly froze my heart.

It was filled with all the objects from my father’s palace.

Torn chain mail, scraps of silk, an ink-blotted scroll bearing my father’s sigil. Something sparkling caught my eye and I blinked rapidly, convinced my eyes were playing tricks on me. Even before I reached the object, I knew what it was—my mother’s blue sapphire necklace. The one I gave Gauri.

The invisible prospect of everything that could have—
must have
—gone wrong wrenched inside me as sharp as any dagger. I sank to the ground, refusing to touch the thing. Scuff marks framed the delicate strands of pearl, the dull pendant of sapphire. Someone had tried, and failed, to kick it out of sight.

Someone had not wanted me to see.

I pulled the sapphire necklace from its hiding place. Red and gray spots flecked the seed pearls. I traced the sapphire orb just as something crumbling and brown fell onto my fingertips. Dried blood. The whole necklace was soaked in blood.

A cold veil fell about me. Time leeched, memories heavy with Gauri’s bright smile spilling behind my eyes. My shoulders caved as I clutched the necklace. My lips formed around Gauri’s name, but I wouldn’t speak it aloud. I refused to say a name that pulsed with life while I held this bloody necklace in my hand.