I woke with a start. The nightmare’s words burned in my mind like a flame. Not a single flower or tree filled Akaran’s marble halls. Even its garden was glass. I thought of what I had seen of the Night Bazaar. It was magical, undeniably beautiful. But it was also dangerous. Coaxing. The star-bright loam where jewel fruit swung beneath silver trees hadn’t been the only thing I saw. Something else had moved in that sticky darkness.
Flurried sounds of movements quickened outside and I closed my eyes, feigning sleep. The bed sank as Amar sat beside me. Warm fingertips trailed across my cheek, brushing the hair from my forehead and sending sparks of light up my spine. His lips grazed my temples.
“Soon, jaani.”
I waited until his footsteps echoed outside before squinting around the room. Without him, it seemed colder. I retraced his touch lightly, careful to avoid smudging the imprint of his lips against my skin. He had called me jaani—“my life.” I stared at the closed door. Where his skin touched mine felt burnished, hallowed by the words he left hanging in the air. Jaani jaani jaani. I wanted him to say it again. I wanted him to say it closer to my ear, my neck … my lips.
But the surge of warmth faded as the memory of my dream prickled behind my eyes.
Magic was not the only coaxing, dangerous thing around me.
Like yesterday, when I returned after washing up, the bed had been made, and a new sari was waiting for me. This time it was a rich amber, studded with topaz stones and small mirrors so that when I wrapped it around me, the colors shimmered as if they had borrowed some of their brilliance from the sun. A similar set of matching jewels lay in piles on the bed.
Something about wearing a necklace other than my mother’s felt wrong. Inevitably, my thoughts turned to Gauri. Who was telling her stories in the dark?
When I stepped outside my room, Gupta was already standing there. The air felt tense. As if someone had smothered the palace into silence so that it could watch … and wait. I paused outside the door. I thought I heard something. A voice? My name?
Shaking my head, I walked down the familiar hall toward the dining room, but my glance kept darting from the walls and doors, ignoring the beautiful sights flashing in the mirrors. What had happened to that door from before? Around me, muddled voices filled the palace.
Sometimes the voices were incoherent, but today, I heard a sound sonorous and riven as an ancient stream: You can have him, but not hold him He gives you gold, but your bed is cold You’ve seen his eyes, but not his spies Who is he?
“Amar,” I breathed.
Gupta looked up. “Did you say something?”
“The riddle you asked,” I said, a little dazed.
“I didn’t say anything.”
A chill shot through me. There was no one in the hall but us. I said nothing, and walked quickly down the halls, trying to shake the doubt and fear that kept creeping up my arms.
When we got to the dining room, it was decorated in a sun-drenched yellow. Carven statues of mynah birds with ruffs of silk around their stone necks dotted the room. Outside, there was no flash of the sun. No hint of clouds.
Gupta pulled out a chair for me.
“I figured out your riddles from yesterday.”
I looked at him, my mind still twisting around the words I heard in the hallway.
“And?”
“Your first one was, ‘I am a nightmare to most, and a dream for the broken; who am I?’ and the answer to that is death.”
“Correct.”
“Your second riddle was, ‘I am your future, who am I?’”
“And?”
“The answer to that is ash.”
“Again, correct. And the last?”
“‘I hide the stars but am frightened by the sun. I am not the night; who am I?’ The answer is darkness.”
I smiled. “All three are correct.”
He stared at me. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked aged in the space of a day. “You ran off last night.”
“I got lost.”
“You’re smarter than that, and so am I,” said Gupta.
I looked away from him, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt.
“If I were you, I’d remember the answers to those riddles when you’re walking around the palace.”
“You yourself said that you held the key to anything dangerous.”
“Even so,” he said, mirroring Amar’s response.
I tried to think of something to say, but Gupta had turned from me and the tight, closed-off expression on his face said that I shouldn’t even bother trying to push the subject.
“You seem quite absorbed in your work,” I said, trying to change the topic as he bent his head toward the endless scrolls.
“If only I wasn’t,” said Gupta.
“Can I help?”
He smiled, but it was a weary thing. “The fact that you are even here is help enough.”
But I wasn’t doing anything. I was wearing clothes set out for me on a bed, wandering allotted spaces of a hall, feeling around for questions they could answer. I was in a limbo of waiting.
“How did you sleep?” asked Gupta, his gaze once more fixed on the parchment.
I thought of the nightmare and masked a shudder.
“Well enough,” I lied.
*
After breakfast, Amar stood waiting for me in the center of a marble vestibule. Around him, the mirror portals flashed through the settings—a fox napping in tall grass, a shining cave strung with ghost-lit threads and a cliff jutting a stony chin to the sea. Amar grinned and once more, I was transfixed by the way a small smile could soften the stern angles of his jaw and the haunted look in his eyes.
“Are we going to the tapestry room?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Those decisions take time. There are other things to see and know here.”
I shivered at the thought of yanking the threads. I was in no rush to condemn someone. Amar stepped toward a door I hadn’t noticed until now, inky black and studded with pearls and moonstone. He pushed it open and a chilly gust kissed my face.
“I promised you the moon for your throne and stars to wear in your hair,” said Amar, gesturing inside. “And I always keep my promises.”
*
Infinite. That’s how it felt to stand there in a realm, a field … a marvel … of stars. Cold light spangled the space around us. Darkness so old that the shadows felt like relics twisted between the lights. The air was scentless, laced with frost. We stood on nothing but air and yet it was solid. In the half-light, Amar’s face glittered and starlight clung to his hair. I stared around me, my heart skidding. The things I had called bright and blind enemies shimmered all around me. How many times had I cursed them? And now I was in their world.
Amar reached for my hand and put something in my palm. I looked down: string.
“For conquering,” he said.
I stretched the string into a taut line.
“Conquering what? Insects?”
“No. Your enemies.”
The stars. Fate.
The string drooped in my fingers.
“Why do you hate them?” he asked.
“If Akaran has its eyes and ears in Bharata, then you already know,” I said darkly, thinking of the horoscope that had shadowed the past seventeen years.
“Do you believe the horoscope?”
“No.”
I meant it. There was no proof. Sometimes, I still thought it was a hateful rumor born of Mother Dhina’s jealousy.
“Then why hate the stars?”
“For what they did. Or, I guess, what they made other people do,” I said softly. “For making me hated without reason and without evidence. Wouldn’t you hate distant jailers?”
“I don’t believe they’re jailers. I believe the stars.”
“Then you’re a fool to marry me.”
He laughed. “I believe them, but I choose to read them differently.”
“I don’t see any happy way to explain death and destruction.”
“Doesn’t death make room for life? Autumn trees die to make room for new shoots. And destruction is part of that cycle. After all, a devastating forest fire lets the ground start anew.”
I stared at him. No one had ever said anything like that in Bharata. No one had ever challenged the stars. And yet, the light contoured him, clung to him, like the stars knew and believed everything he said. Maybe I believed him too. All I had done was curse the stars from a distance. I’d never thought to reinterpret what they meant. I turned around, as if seeing the night sky for the first time.
Gently, Amar placed the string back in my hand. He pointed at three stars: one on my right, one in front and one on my left.