Gupta stood at the front of the line, a heavy bound book in his arms. “Go quickly to the south wing and await judgment from the Dharma Raja.”
The south wing. I paled, turning slowly to a door made of nothing but pale beams of smoke. I recognized the arch beside it—the entrance to the glass garden.
I tried to grab something solid and only vaguely felt a stone pillar against my palm. My knees buckled. I thought of Amar’s promise outside the Night Bazaar … a kingdom of impossible power. A kingdom that all nations feared.
No wonder I’d never heard of Akaran … there was no such thing. I had always been in Naraka—the realm of the dead. Which made Amar the Dharma Raja, the lord of justice in the afterlife. A harsh laugh escaped me.
Partnered with Death.
Death shackled all fates. It was fixed. And all I could do was modify the ambiguities left between. No wonder Amar looked disturbed when I asked whether those who entered the Otherworld died. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. Gupta knew too.
I looked around, disoriented as the shadows of the dead striped the white marble of the floors. I was about to leave when a familiar woman caught my eye. Vikram’s mother. Her brow still gleamed with sweat and in her hands she carried a bundle of wilting flowers. Her neck was bent too sharply and bits of mountain gravel clung to her hair. She must have fallen.
I retched onto the marble, my body shaking. Amar must have pulled the thread. What outcome was there for the boy? I was disgusted with myself. I wanted to fling myself at the woman’s feet, and beg her for forgiveness.
Someone marched beside her. A figure silhouetted in metal, a limp crest of scarlet on its helmet. I remembered the stomping gait, the familiar vermillion sash now tattered and trailing blood. Memory clamped its jaws into my chest: he was a soldier of Bharata. But far, far worse than that—
He was a harem guard.
I remembered taunting him on the day my father told me of his plans. The young guard whom I had never bothered apologizing to. He looked aged. Or perhaps it was the cold lights of Naraka slowly teasing out his youth. My heart slammed against my ribs as I watched the line of the dead. Who had he died protecting? And where was he going? Who else would I recognize in these halls?
I wandered far into the line of the dead, pushing past them, refusing to shudder when my skin came away clammy at the contact. By the time I was sure there was no one else from Bharata, I couldn’t find my way back to the south wing. The halls skipped around me.
I was losing my way through the palace, but there was nothing I could do. The palace thrummed with its own magic, its own plans. Each step was a small battle against the draining energy of the dead. My skin shifted taut and stretched, as though I were turning skeletal with every movement, weighed down by the pull of magic and spent lives. I found myself at the threshold of the throne room. The doors were flung open and as I stumbled past the entrance, I saw Amar bent over the tapestry. A crown of blackbuck horns gleamed on his head, cruel and slick. In the dark, they looked blood-tinged. His hands roamed over the threads, fingers flicking, yanking, snarled in strands that he pulled out in swift, merciless strokes like he was tearing throats instead of threads.
The threads—whole entire lives—fell noiselessly to the ground. It was a slaughter.
I moved faster, heart racing. I couldn’t be caught. Years could have passed by the time I found myself outside the doors of our bedroom. Our bedroom. The weight of it sent a stab of pain inside me. I had slept beside him. I had kissed him. I had even … begun to feel something for him.
I sank to my knees. I had never escaped my horoscope. I had only been blind to its meaning until now. A wave of revulsion rushed over me as I glanced at the bed we had shared. He had concealed the consequences of my judgments and made me an accomplice to death. He had asked me for patience—for trust—but he had betrayed both.
Shadow and light danced across the floor through a sliver in the door frame. What did he want from me? What would happen when the moon had run its course? Outside my window, an ochre glow crept up a nearly dying moon. I shuddered. The warning rhyme flickered in my heart, dredging up old nightmares: I know the monster in your bed.
So did I—
Death.
17
A FINE LEGACY
As dawn crept slowly along the floor, my eyes flew open. The memory of my nightmares clamored for attention—dreams of trees incinerating, of silent chasms deep in palaces, of threads being ripped savagely from their place.
Beside me, the weight of the bed shifted. I squeezed my eyes shut, only to feel the brush of Amar’s lips against my cheek, the rough stroke of his fingers at my forehead. A humming trilled in my body, but I clenched my fists, waiting for him to leave.
Ache and unrest flooded my bones as I pinched myself to alertness. The room was silent. Amar had left. Pinned to the cushion beside me was a note that said I should rest until the evening. I crumpled the letter. I was done doing what Amar wanted. Ignoring the peacock blue sari on the bed, I smoothed down my silk nightclothes, fixed my hair in a braid and crept outside.
A Bharata soldier had walked these halls. And he had disappeared into them too. Even now, I could picture the dead. I could see Amar ripping out the threads in a bloodless slaughter. The images scalded me. Every time I blinked, all I saw was the deceit that I had welcomed so openly, mistaking it for magic, for power … for something deeper.
I willed the shadows to swirl around my feet, mute the jangling of my anklets and conceal me in case the walls were watching. Though the dead had long since passed into the south wing, their echoes lit up the walls, as if the wisps of their lives had stamped burning footprints into the floor.
Slowly, I wound my way through the palace until I stood at the entrance to the glass garden. Behind me, the windows leaked blurry sunlight onto the ground. There was no sign of the smoke and glass door from yesterday. The stonework had swallowed it whole, but even so I could feel it, like a cold shadow. It was hidden somewhere in front of me, wedged between some slice of air. I pressed my hands against the wall, searching inside myself for that spiral of power, that weird sense of calm … of summoning … and the door of the south wing shimmered.
Vast and transient. That is death. I knew because I stood on the other side, peering through a tear in the frame, and all I saw was light. All I heard was my heartbeat’s echo fluttering softly, sleepily against my ribs. All I tasted was smoke on my tongue. A dry wind carried pale ashes across my feet and the particles were so fine, it might have been like stepping over pulverized sugarcane.
I could have turned around, but I didn’t. Guilt stilled me. Who had I left behind when I fled Bharata? What had I done to them?
Life and death surged from behind the smoky portal, calling me from beyond the door.
Breathing deeply, I pushed open the door. Heat seeped through my skin and I shivered. Cold sludge moved through my veins instead of blood. I turned around the room, my ears straining to hear the whisper of a voice, but only silence met me. There were no exits in the south wing and the only entrance had already closed.