The Star-Touched Queen (33 page)

I stretched out my fingertips, letting their strength leak onto the ground, pooling into golden puddles that sent a force of light between me and Nritti. She screamed, throwing her hands to shield herself. And as she did, Amar’s noose was thrown out of her hands and soared into the air. I reached out—

—and caught it.

I grinned. This time, I didn’t look back to see what I had lost. I felt the mirror-portal against my hands, let hope swell between my ribs, and then I
pushed
.

*   *   *

I stumbled through the portal. The sounds were deafening. Outside the small room where Amar lay, voices hollered for war, for blood. Nritti’s enchantment of hunger hadn’t ceased. If anything, it had only grown. Within seconds, they could storm through the barriers of the Otherworld and sink their teeth into the human realms. I couldn’t let that happen. But I couldn’t stop them alone.

I gathered Amar in my arms. For the first time, there was no nagging absence in the seams of my soul. I was whole. All the frayed patches of my spirit mended. The tapestry’s glittering threads had climbed through the fissures of memory and half-dreams and filled them with color. I looked at him and
love
filled me. I loved him with the force of a thousand lifetimes, made greater by the fact that my love was returned.

I clasped his hands around the noose. A touch of color returned to his cheeks.

“You are my life too,” I said and then I pressed my lips to his.

A burst of heat met my hands before it tempered to something cool and distant. Amar stirred on my lap, solid hands reaching to clasp my fingers. He blinked, shaking his head. Slowly, as if he was approaching something fragile and hallowed, he traced the length of our tangled fingers before his gaze trailed past my arm, my neck, before fixing on my eyes. We were truly,
finally
visible to one another.

Neither the secret whirring song of the stars nor the sonorous canticles of the earth knew the language that sprang up in the space between us. It was a dialect of heartbeats, strung together with the lilt of long suffering and the incandescent hope of an infinite future. Amar searched my face, his fingers hovering over my jawline, lips and collarbones. But he didn’t touch me. Instead, he took in a shuddering breath.

“Are you real?” he managed, his voice a shadow. “Or are you an illusion? Some final punishment for losing my way?”

“I’m no illusion,” I said, staring into his eyes.

The ferocity of his stare laid my soul bare for him to judge.

“I thought I would be lost forever,” he said hoarsely, pulling me to him.

His hands tangled in my hair, the kiss resonating at my core. He pressed his lips to mine with the intensity of lifetimes and when we finally broke apart, his lips curved into a fragile smile.

“You’ve saved me.”

“Did you have any doubts that I could?”

He hesitated. “Your abilities are something I could never doubt. Your
will
, however, I was unsure of. When I could finally bring you back, I thought you would leave again. I’d never have a chance to explain. Forgive me—”

I stopped him. “I will not let us be beings of regret. I know my past. What I want is my future.”

He smiled and moved to kiss me again, when the entire room quivered. The flimsy walls of the room split and tore. The obsidian mirror before us snapped in half and Nritti tumbled out. She stared at us and her mouth curled into a snarl.

“Not again,” she hissed.

Amar tried to protect me, but I slipped out of his arms and rose to my feet. I wasn’t the one in need of protecting. It was Nritti. Amar smiled and joined me. He stamped his foot against the earth and the walls around us fell. The din of the Otherworld rose riotous around us. Nritti’s enchantment nearly claimed my balance, but I held strong.

All that
hunger
. It was plain in the faces of the Otherworldly beings.
Rakshas
the size of elephants had sunk to their knees, filling their mouths with dirt. Even the great
timingala
had begun to keen, slapping its tail into the water and drenching the Otherworld. I watched as a bull-aspect demon slammed his horns into the ground, upheaving dirt. My stomach flipped. If Nritti wouldn’t lead them to the human realm to sate their bloodlust, then they would
dig
their way to the human realm.

In the fray of people, my gaze flew to the only two beings not moving: Gupta and Kamala. The moment he saw me, Gupta dropped his hold on Kamala. He stared at me, a huge smile tugging at his lips. Kamala snorted and stamped the ground before galloping to me. I caught her around the neck, burying my face in her mane.

“Certainly a false
sadhvi
, but not a false queen…,” she said, nuzzling me.

Eyes like lamplight turned to us, glances cutting away from the dirt to witness me and Amar. When the Otherworld beings saw us, they paused, brows furrowing as if they had forgotten something important and had only just remembered. I flexed my fingers. Some of the darkness lifted, blotted away like ink on a page. The space around me was a pelt in need of mending. Even now, I could feel through its rifts, sensing all the pieces that had been knocked askew in chaos like broken bones. Somewhere under the muddled air of sweat and dried blood was the bright scent of fairy fruit. Somewhere between those ragged strips of night lay moonbeams tangled with lightning, stars ripped and furious. I could mend it all.

The whole of the Otherworld fell silent. Some of the Otherworldly beings shook their heads and stumbled backward. Others dropped their weapons and prostrated themselves on the ground. But most of them didn’t fall as easily. Instead, they turned their attention toward Nritti, waiting for directions.

“You have gone too far,” said Amar.

Nritti grinned. “You have not even begun to witness the destruction I can wreak.”

“We won’t give you that chance,” I said.

Amar moved to my side. He didn’t crouch behind or run in front. He stood by my side as an equal. He laced his fingers in mine, his expression handsomely severe.

“What should we do,
jaani
?”

“Restore the light,” I said.

Amar grinned. He wrung his hands like he was balancing an invisible sphere, his face drawn in focus. In the space between his fingers, a small pinprick of light began to whirl faster and faster. Nritti roared, flashing her palms up. But I was faster.
Stronger
.

She screeched at the nearby
rakshas
and
bhuts,
pointing wildly at me, but the monsters refused to budge. “What’s wrong with you fools?” she yelled. “Forget it! I’ll do it myself! You’re weak,” she seethed at the shrinking fey, “and when I’m the Rani of these realms, I will find each and every one of you pathetic excuses of monsters and show you the meaning of hell.”

“For that,” I said, “you’ll need some experience.”

Nritti turned her glinting eyes on me, her lips stretching into a sneer. “And you’re going to do that for me, are you? You don’t know the first thing about power.”

“Then let me demonstrate.”

Magic crackled at my palms, twisting serpentine around my legs and arms until my limbs bowed under the weight of it all. I breathed deeply, sensing the movement of life around me as though it were light through prisms. From one angle, Gupta charged toward the crowd, walloping
rakshas
and
asuras
with his scrolls of bone. Kamala pulled her lips back to reveal sharp teeth, laughing to herself as she ripped out the throat of the bull-aspect
raksha
. I felt Amar’s power beside mine, a shadow to my light, a rhythm to match our music. And in that unknown space before me, I sensed Nritti. Her power was a wrenching thing, starless black and sorrow, but my magic was something more … it was
hope
.

A rupturing sound echoed and the Night Bazaar transformed into an unlikely arena.
Rakshas
the size of boulders flung themselves at Gupta and Amar. Gupta danced around their bludgeoning movements. From the palms of his hands, inky tendrils of smoke fell over the
rakshas
and
peys
and they fell backward, their eyes glassy. He jumped forward, spinning in tight circles, drenching enemies in sticky, blinding black.

Gusts of wind knocked back
rakshas
, sending them tumbling like avalanches down the ranks of the uprising beings. Nritti screamed, throwing up pillars of black. She darted through them, her reflection scattering. Shadow arrows sprayed across the ruined Night Bazaar.

Nritti didn’t seem to care who she hit. My eyes widened in horror as the feathers found less likely targets—
peys
who fought at her side, their last expression choked and bewildered; writhing
nagas
with their cobra-hoods flared open, baring fangs the size of scimitars.

Chaos lit up the riot of Otherworldly beings. They flew at each other, all sense of a common enemy gone. Blood sank into the ground of the Night Bazaar and the earth gathered the offering greedily, leaving nothing in return save for damp plots of dirt and ash. The cacophony of grinding hooves and entangled horns joined the din of lightning and thunder above. Steam rose languidly from the ground, burning where demon blood had evanesced.

I summoned magic to my fingertips until it gathered like a cloud around us. And then … I released it, letting it ribbon around the ruined Night Bazaar, bolstering shattered beams, siphoning away its cloak of broken gloom. Beside me, Amar dropped the diamond of light between his hands. It hit the ground and then the air stood still. Pinpoints of light burst in the air. Explosions erupting with heat, with screams …

Through the din, Amar’s gaze sought mine. Around us, the walls converged, shattering to the ground in thunderous claps. Light sang as it spread across the floor. Above, a great ripping sound echoed through the Night Bazaar. Nritti’s sneer faded, pale skin draining to an absolute white. She froze in mid-scream, wild eyes flashing between vacant and livid.

The magic at my fingertips shuddered with ferocity. I spun it in my hands, and then opened my palms, letting my own enchantment of binding wrap around Nritti, folding to encase her and preserve her in a translucent shell of ash and silt.

Not gone, not defeated … but contained.

She would never hurt anyone again.

With Nritti’s spell broken, the Otherworldly beings collapsed. The dark ones screamed, but the glittering light roared back, engulfing their sounds and bodies. Light washed over us and I felt a tug at my core even as my feet remained on the ground. Above, the sky of the Night Bazaar returned, one side gleaming with the sun and the other shining with the moon. Gupta flew to us, holding up his writing board as though it were a sword. I pulled him into a hug and when I drew away, tears shined in his eyes.

“I missed you, my friend,” he said, dabbing his eyes with one dirtied end of his torn coat.

I squeezed his shoulder. “And I missed you.”

Kamala trotted beside me, her lips a ghastly shade of red.

I bowed to her. “You can have a bite of my arm now if you’d like.”

She tossed her head, gesturing at the fallen demons around us. “I am quite sated. I would, however, ask another thing…”

“What is that?”

Kamala bent her head to the ground, her voice low and shy. “… I could stay with you. If you’ll have me. And I wouldn’t eat anyone. That is a promise. Unless you asked me to eat someone. In which case, I would be easily persuaded.”

I drew her to a hug. “You may stay.”

When we had shaken enough hands and embraced enough people, Amar pulled me away from the sounds, back through the room with flimsy walls where the torn obsidian mirror-portal glowed blearily. There was only a handful of air between us, but it was all illusion. We were closer than that, two souls sewn together with light.

His palm slid to my cheek and my skin sang. I loved him with two loves. One, a relic of another era. Another, unformed and hot, a freshly wrought star. All enigma and song. I think he felt the same way because his next words were almost resentful:

“You are quite deceptive, my queen. Like a handful of light one moment and then winged night the next.” He smiled. “I would know all your mysteries if you would let me.”

“You can try, but you’ll never know them,” I said. “I have a thousand smiles, a hundred forms. Not to mention all my names.”

He closed the space between us, lips skimming hungrily across mine.

“Then I am pleased we have eternity,” he said, pulling me into a kiss.

When we broke apart, I leaned against Amar’s chest and I listened. I listened to his heart, to the world outside folding away the shadows. I listened to the absence of my mother’s necklace from my throat, wondering whether the sapphire was now cool against Gauri’s neck. I listened as the seams of the earth absorbed its wounds, to the light falling thickly over the ruined Night Bazaar. I knew there were a thousand tasks left to complete. Markets to rebuild, a tapestry in need of tending … but for a moment, I concentrated on the sound of Amar’s heart and the feel of our fingers entwined.

I was free.

I was whole.

I was Queen of Naraka.

GLOSSARY

APSARA:
A celestial nymph known for dancing and associated with the water and clouds.

BHUTS:
A restless ghost sometimes created from improperly performing a deceased’s funerary rites.

GANDHARVAS:
Male nature spirits, often depicted as celestial musicians in the court of the gods.

PISHACHA:
A flesh-eating demon known to haunt cremation grounds.

RAJA:
A title for an Indian monarch.

RAKSHA:
A demonic being, though not always malevolent.

SOMA:
A golden nectar which first gave the gods their immortality.

SWAYAMVARA:
An ancient Indian practice where women chose their husbands from among a list or lineup of suitors.

YAKSHINI:
Female mythological creatures who guarded earth’s treasures and are often considered the equivalent of “fairies.”