The Star-Touched Queen (20 page)

I inhaled a shuddering breath. I understood now. Amar’s silence about Bharata, the fact that none of the mirror portals looked over my father’s kingdom. Everything was fitting together. Horror—bright and heavy—gripped me. My mind flashed with images dredged up from the depths of my nightmares—

Gauri holding the necklace.

Gauri screaming.

Gauri bleeding to death on the harem floor.

And I knew what I had to do. No matter what it cost me. Tonight, I would steal his noose and deliver it to Nritti. Tonight, I would bring him to his knees and make him pay for all that he had done.

Tonight, I would destroy him.

*   *   *

The whole evening, I paced across the floor. I tried not to look at the bed we shared, but it was impossible. The light kept catching on the gossamer veils, a reminder that some terrors were silk-cloaked and lovely as a dream. I knew Amar would come. I knew what I had to do. The problem was my own weak heart, lulled by his words, his touch, his presence.

For tonight, I had slipped into a black sari
.
I wore no bangles or anklets. My hair was brushed away from my face and a single pearl hung from a silver circlet around my forehead. I slid my hands along the silk and small stars flickered into life against the fabric.

The door creaked open and there he was.

“My star-touched queen,” he said. “I missed you.”

He walked toward me. In the candle-lit glow of our bedroom, every feature was more pronounced. The sweep of his shoulders, the short hair that curled at his neck. The glow of his skin, honey-drenched and russet. My beautiful nightmare.

I caught his hand in mine, my fingers trailing over the band of leather around his wrist. The noose. Against my skin, the noose was a cold pulse. There was a small knot at its base, lazily tied. He probably hadn’t expected it was in any danger.

“We lost an entire day together,” he said.

I loosened the silk around my waist and Amar raised an eyebrow. Around him, the shadows rippled silkily. I met his gaze and he stared at me, his breath shallow and waiting. The silk fell noiselessly to the floor.

“We still have the night.”

*   *   *

The moment he touched me, my universe constricted to the space between our lips. We were a snarl of limbs and bright-burning kisses. Amar held me to him, strong hands burning against my neck and waist. And even though vengeance thrummed in my skin, a part of me drowned in the feel of him. He murmured my name with each kiss until it no longer seemed to belong to me. It was a song, a prayer, a plea.

But when I pulled him to the bed, he paused. His breathing was ragged and when he looked at me his eyes were damp with desire.

“Wait, my queen,” he breathed. “I want you to know me first. I want you to know this place where you are empress.”

He rubbed his thumb along my jaw and the braceleted noose around his wrist glared. Disbelief coiled sharply in my throat. I already knew about this realm. I already knew who he was. But I almost forgot when he reached out to trace my lips.

“Any farther,” he started, his voice hoarse with want, “and I would not know how to stop.”

*   *   *

We spent the evening in each other’s arms. Amar plucked glass blossoms from the air and slid them one by one into a crown around my forehead. He conjured the lightest of snowfalls, each flake teasing out into gleaming feathers before melting into the silk. All through the night, he smiled daggers into my heart.

“I love you,” he murmured into my hair. “You are my night and stars, the fate I would fix myself to in any life.”

I had chosen vengeance and freedom. I would not back down for sweet words, no matter how much I wanted them to be true. No matter how I felt.

“I know,” I said.

*   *   *

While he slept, I betrayed him.

I wove my own magic. A dream of sleep full of silvery spangles that I slipped over his eyes in the same moment that I stole away the noose. The noose fought against me, perhaps aware that I was not its rightful owner. I gathered Gauri’s necklace from its hidden place in the corner of the bedroom and pushed open the door.

I didn’t look back.

*   *   *

Nritti was waiting for me.

“Do you have it, sister?”

I nodded numbly. When I bit my lip, I could still taste him. Smoke and cinnamon.

“Give it to me,” she said, extending a hand through the reflection.

I hesitated. “What will happen to him?”

Nritti arched an eyebrow. “What he deserves. He will be rendered powerless. Don’t tell me you have grown to care for him? After all he’s done? To you and to so many other women?”

Nritti stepped aside and behind her, another image wavered in the obsidian mirror. A hundred trees filled with lights. The trees of other girls. Other victims. My hands clenched around Gauri’s necklace. Wordlessly, I handed over Amar’s noose.

The moment I did, something sizzled and snapped through the air. My heart plummeted. Behind us, the great tree full of memories seemed to gasp and twist. The tree—once massive and stretching toward the ceiling—had begun to decay. Thick branches lay around it like bones. Its trunk was rent, entrails of wood and root rising, shattering the marble floor and uncurling toward us. My gaze trailed toward the branches—everything was on fire.

Flickering memories began to drop, falling out of the branches. I stepped back, horrified. The memories fell like a score of dying phoenixes. All around us, the air was suffused with smoke; violet-bruise flames snaked around the edges of the marble, gorging themselves on branch and root.

The blue arch of the door glowed, swinging open. I threw up my arms against the sudden wave of heat. In the doorway, cut like a silhouette of night, stood Amar. He looked between me and Nritti, his gaze fixed on the noose in her hands before he turned to stare at the great tree. Horror was etched into his face. He looked at me and I felt like collapsing. His shoulders sagged and in his expression there was more than heartbreak. It was sorrow given shape.

“No,” he whispered, his face gaunt. “What have you done?”

I flinched, as though slapped.

“You lied to me. About everything.”

I thought of Bharata littered with the refuse of war. I thought of Gauri. “My home … my people were destroyed. You knew, but refused to tell me. Do you deny it?”

My anger was an element. Heat slashed through the air between us, dragging claws of invisible flames. That nameless power growled at my heels, like a beast ready to rend flesh at my word.

I wanted to hurt Amar. I wanted my anger to bruise him, burn him, as if all that heat and fury could weld back my mangled heart. But at the sight of him … I hesitated. In the pale light, Amar’s hands trembled.

“The deaths were fixed. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

Behind me, Nritti let out a deranged laugh. “Lies. Oh, so many lies you spin, oh Dharma Raja
.
Without you, there would be no fixed death. There would be no death at all.”

I shivered at the sound of her words.

He turned from me, hands raking through his hair, pacing across the marble. I shrank back. “Those memories were not to be disturbed until you were deathless! They were to protect you, Maya.”

“I’m protecting her now,” said Nritti.

I turned around. Nritti was no longer in the portal. She had stepped out, and behind her, there was nothing but a broken mirror. Memories exploded around her, and each time they did, I winced. Whatever secrets they held extinguished on the marble.

There was a knife in Nritti’s hand, a manic glint in her eyes. Gone was the soft honey color of her skin. Even her hair seemed to pale and dull, no longer the beautiful, glossy sheets of black that had once hung around her shoulders.

Nritti looked at me, a smile of camaraderie lighting her face. She placed the knife on the floor and kicked it across the tile, where it clattered against my foot.

“Take it, sister,” she crooned. Her voice sounded different. Still familiar, but there was no warmth to it, and I couldn’t remember why. “Plunge it into the tree. Reclaim yourself.”

“Leave us, Nritti,” said Amar. His voice thundered through the room. “I will not let your chaos hurt her or come between us ever again.”

“Or what?” taunted Nritti. She tilted her head to one side, like this was a game. “Will you chase me down like you’ve done my sister? Will you trap my memories in some dingy chamber and lord them over me?”

“That is a lie, and you know it,” he growled.

“You know I tell the truth, sister,” said Nritti, turning to me. “You cannot deny the memory of us in that tree. You cannot deny how familiar I am to you. Familiar as flesh. I would never hurt you. I only want to protect you. I’ve spent years searching for you—”

“Don’t listen to her,” hissed Amar. “You have to trust me, my love. There has only been you. I know who you are. You are my queen. You always have been.”

I couldn’t look at him, but I could feel his gaze on me. So pained and tender that I fought the need to run to him, to comfort him. But I couldn’t push out the image of the woman in the glass garden. I couldn’t forget Gauri’s necklace encrusted with blood. I couldn’t forget how he had hinted at some latent power within me, and yet I couldn’t move a single thread on the tapestry.

I couldn’t forget his lies.

“Go near that tree and I will lose you forever,” he said fiercely. “Your memories won’t keep. Your
powers
will be gone.” Amar staggered toward me, and this time, I couldn’t help but look at him. His eyes held mine in a firm, unyielding gaze. “
Jaani
, I put too much of myself and my own memories into the tree.”

Around us, the candles sputtered, their mirror shards brightening like miniscule comets before extinguishing into smoke and ash. Each time a light went out, Amar clutched at his rib cage, as if something was tearing at his heart. By now the flames had reached the middle of the trunk, writhing golden and serpentine, spitting out ash and memory.

“You must destroy the tree now!” roared Nritti. “He lied to you. I would never lie to you. Don’t let yourself be one of the many women who was fooled by him. Do not look at him, sister. Look at
me
. I am the one who came here to protect you.”

Each memory roared. I could hear the fire warping the voice of my past life, turning it into shrills and bellows. Voices burst from the trunk, echoing in the room. It was fire and chaos and sound. I backed against the tree trunk, the knife gleaming with sweat in my hands.

Amar’s eyes darted between me and the tree, but I refused to move. I tried to summon the tingling sensation of power, but it only buzzed weakly at my fingertips before abandoning me. The tree was beyond my control.

Amar shut his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was haggard, sweat shining on his neck. “Destroy that tree and I will be stripped of my memories. No one will remember who you are or what you mean to me,” he said, his voice rasping.

“He’s lying to you!” screeched Nritti. “You will not remember
yourself
if you do not destroy the tree while you have the chance. Whatever you do, do not look at him.”

The tree’s shadow lengthened, its limbs stretched forward in glaring whorls of branches. Everything loosened. Whole branches the size of full-grown men spluttered to the floor, splintering like glass. The room was spinning. All the smoke from the extinguishing memories wreathed my hair and filled my lungs. I tried to fight the dizziness, to focus on Amar’s and Nritti’s faces, but they seemed far away.

I couldn’t fade away. I couldn’t let myself be lulled to weakness out of false love. Tears streamed down my face, pooling on my neck. My lips were full of salt. No matter how I felt about Amar, one thing was true—

I didn’t trust him.

I plunged the knife into the tree, pushing all my force, my heartbreak, my broken dreams, into the tree’s thick bark. Shrieks tore through the room. I heard Nritti yelling, laughing, and it felt
wrong
. Her laugh … it was identical to that of the intruder in my room. Had it been
her
?

I need you to lead me …

Instinctively, my eyes clasped on Amar’s. He was shocked, his face pale. He grabbed me; his hands entangled in my hair even as my fingers were wrapped around the hilt that destroyed him.

“I love you,
jaani
. My soul could never forget you. It would retrace every step until it found you
.
” He looked at me, his dark eyes dulling, as if all the love that had once lit them to black mirrors was slowly disappearing. “Save me.”

The glow of the candles cast pools of light onto the ground, illuminating his profile. I knew, now, why Nritti begged me not to look at him. His gaze unlocked something in me. It was both visceral and ephemeral, like heavy light. The eyes of death revealed every recess of the soul and every locked-away memory of my past and present life converged into one gaze …

I was weightless, my vision unfocused and hazy until the memory of the woman in the glass garden engulfed me. Slowly, the woman turned and a wave of shock shot through me—I was staring at myself.

I remembered another life …

Once, my skin wasn’t covered in smooth snake scales like the
naga
women or striped in hide like the shape-shifting maidens. Once, my skin bled from one hue to the next, shifting to reflect the transition from evening to night. Before, I never left the riverbanks unless my skin was the cream and pink of a newborn sunset.

But something had changed … I had met someone. Someone who had seen me the way I was and had not sneered. He had
seen
me, reached for me when my skin was velvet black and star-speckled. I could still feel his stare—lush as obsidian, star-bright and pouring into the crevices of my dreams.

*   *   *

I remembered meeting the Dharma Raja’s gaze and wreathing his neck with a wedding garland of sweet marigold and blood red roses. Death clung to him subtly, robbing the warmth of his eyes and silvering his beauty with a wintry touch. And yet, I saw how he was beautiful. It was his presence that conjured the brilliant peacock shades of the late-season monsoon sky. It was his aura that withered sun-ripe mangos and ushered in the lush winter fruits of custard apple and
singhora
chestnuts. And it was his stride that adorned the Kalidas Mountains with coronets of snow clouds.