More, I thought. I could do that.
I don’t know how much time passed while we danced, spinning power between us like it was just another game. He tossed the ball of ice my way and I shattered it.
“What were you thinking when you broke that?” he asked. Even though I saw him across the room, I could feel his voice at my ear, low and burning.
“You.”
He laughed and continued to conjure things out of the air and throw them to me. Amar’s movements were graceful, spinning. All his power seemed concentrated and sinewy as the muscle that corded his arms and shoulders. Mine felt strange. Lumbering. But instinctual all the same. I’d never felt this way before, as if there was an unexplored dimension in my body full of silver light, ready to be devastating. The power in my veins terrified me. Not just because I knew it was real, but because I wanted it. I reveled in it even as I glared at Amar across the room.
He must have known because he grinned each time we sparred. He flung a chakra of flames in my direction and I turned it to a great wave of water to rush at him. Without blinking, he flattened the whole wave to a plane of ice and slid forward, graceful and serpentine.
“You enjoy it, don’t you?”
“You know the answer.”
“I want to hear it from your lips.”
“We don’t always get what we want,” I said. “Tell me, this ability of mine was not something the moon prevented you from revealing, was it?”
This time, he had the grace to look guilty.
“No. But such things need a foundation before they can be known. I thought it was best for you. It was a protective measure too. Untested power is a dangerous thing.”
Another flash of fury shot through me. I thought it was best for you. The light in our room clung to him in silver wisps. Amar pushed his hands through the curls of his hair and in that moment, he looked so … lost. In spite of myself, I wanted to ease that pain from his face. To make him smile. I was weak before him.
“This is why you couldn’t move the thread,” he said. “You need to believe in it. Believe in you.”
Amar twisted his fingers and the silk of my sari changed … from yellow to deepest blue, flecked with stars.
“My star-touched queen,” he said softly, as if he was remembering something from long ago. “I would break the world to give you what you want.”
I touched my sari and the stars faded.
“I want you to leave,” I said, not looking at him.
When I looked up, he was gone.
*
I stared at the closed door before sinking to my knees. I had been a fool to fall so quickly for Amar’s gift: the most beautiful illusion of independence. It had felt so real that I thought it hummed in my bones. Now it was gone. Even our kisses felt like treachery. All that was left was the unending and infinite niggling of something that didn’t quite fit together—his words, his promises … my powers.
I wrapped my arms around my knees. If this power was truly something that was in me all along, why would my mind keep it a secret? A familiar pang struck me. The absence of something unnamed fluttered just beneath the surface of my skin, a secret hovering within reach.
Outside my room, a slamming sound echoed, raising goose bumps along my skin. What door was that?
I paused. The doors. I remembered them flinging open, all their locks and bindings forgotten. With a lurch, I remembered what lay behind them—swaying bodies, the fug of decay. Fires to drown out worlds.
They had opened to my power. Responded to it like a song.
Guilt tugged at me. In the shadows of the Night Bazaar, I had pledged Amar my trust, my patience. But this was not Amar’s secret to keep from me. It was mine. The warning rhyme flashed through my head. Perhaps it was not some aimless trick of the palace. I needed to find the door.
I just had to figure out how.
16
THE MEMORY TREE
A knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts. I opened it, expecting to see Gupta, but it was Amar. His expression looked carved in stone and his lips were set in a grim line. But the moment we held each other’s gaze, something in him relented. His hands tightened at his side.
“I would never want to cause you pain.”
I flinched. “I am not in pain.”
Lie.
“I am not some animal you wounded,” I added.
Truth.
“It is only a night longer,” he said.
The warning voice from the halls echoed back to me: You are running out of moon time. Listen to my warning rhyme. What would happen tomorrow?
Amar hesitated, before reaching out to hold my hand. I stared at the circlet of my hair around his wrist. Bitterness rose in my throat. I glanced from my bracelet to the other one on his wrist—black leather and knotted—dull and malevolent.
“Do these past days mean nothing?” he asked, so gently that my weak self curled around his words.
But I would no longer be weak. I tapped into that power in my veins and a shimmering wall of flames sprang up between us. Amar jumped back, shocked and then … amused.
“A little ruthlessness is to be admired, but it’s cruel to play with a powerless heart.”
“Crueler still to promise equality and hide a person’s true self.”
“I thought it was best for you,” he repeated.
“Strange how something that only affected me was decided by you.”
Amar’s smile turned cold. “My promises were true. You seek to punish an illusion without fully knowing. What were your kisses, then? Vengeance?”
The wall of flames shimmered away. Anger still flared inside me, but now it was mixed with something else. Something I couldn’t push away, despite fury. Want.
“They were nothing,” I lied. “They meant nothing.”
I didn’t look at him. And then, a bloom of cold erupted beside me and Amar was at my side. His fingers traced a secret calligraphy along my arms.
“Nothing at all?”
My heart twisted. I reached forward, my hands tangling in his hair as I kissed him. It was a kiss meant to devour, to summon war. And when I broke it, my voice was harsh:
“My kisses mean nothing.”
“Cruel queen,” he murmured, tilting my head back. His lips skimmed down my neck. Amar’s hands gripped my waist, before tracing the outline of my hips. Heat flared through my body. But just as I pulled him closer, a sudden clash echoed in the hallway, and we sprang apart.
Gupta’s screams thundered through the walls, lingered in the air. In an instant, small lanterns sprung up on the blank walls. Amar took off at a run, following the path of light, and I chased after him.
At the end of the row of lanterns, Gupta lay half slumped on the floor. He was shaking violently. His clothes were singed. I looked around, but there was no fire, no scorch marks on the ground or the walls. The only thing that bore signs of damage was Gupta. For all I knew, he might have spontaneously combusted where he stood.
I moved toward him, but Amar blocked me.
“He’ll be fine,” he said coolly.
I stared at him. Danger had unleashed itself from this very spot and we were standing around like nothing was the matter.
“If there’s danger, I should know,” I protested.
“Your intentions are admirable, but let me handle this.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said in a steely voice.
Gupta’s gaze never wavered from Amar. “There was an accident.”
“How?” I nearly yelled, pointing to the emptiness of the room, the vast, leering space of the palace.
“Maya,” said Amar through clenched teeth. “Return to the room. Immediately. It is not safe.”
I stepped back, scolded. Here I was, a child playing queen. Anger flashed through me. I turned on my heel, marching down the halls as shame lit up my cheeks. I stood before my bedroom door, but I refused to enter. If the doors responded to power, then power is what I’d use. I concentrated, curling my power in my palms like a handful of dust, and blew, seeking all the time for one thing—the charred door wrapped in chains. The door with the voice.