“But how do you know?”
Nritti flashed a thin, pitiful smile, like she was explaining a child’s redundant question. “Was your horoscope something horribly grim?” asked Nritti.
I nodded.
“All of them are,” said Nritti with a sigh. Her words were so casual, but they slid into me, sharp as knives. He finds one girl, lovely or not, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t matter. “And then he seduces them, tricks them with power, makes them think that it’s real…”
I remembered how the weather had changed outside the throne room. How the floor had shifted beneath my feet, and at the end of it, I had collapsed in the glass garden, falling straight into his arms. He had planned all of it. My hands curled into fists, and I pressed them against my chest. In Bharata, at least I had the solace of holding my mother’s necklace. But I had nothing to hold on to, nothing but words and thin air and false hope.
“Last time, you got away,” said Nritti, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I don’t know how, but you did it. And I thought,” she stammered, “I thought you were dead. But something led me back to you.” She smiled, but it was a cold thing, feverish and burning.
“What was it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. Another smile. Another burst of cold. “Maybe it was something in the wind or a change in my heart.” She brought her fingers to her heart, her beautiful eyes cast downward. There was so much desperation in her eyes. I felt heartless for not trusting her. “But I knew I only had a number of days before I could get to you.”
“The new moon?” I guessed.
Her head snapped up, and something dark flared in her lovely eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “Why? Has it already happened?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I murmured. “I just remember that that’s when—”
“That’s when he’ll kill you,” said Nritti. “You’ve seen him. He cannot stand being crossed. The first time you were here, you got away. Somehow you must have gotten to the reincarnation pool to escape him. It must have taken him years to find you again. But he locked away all those old memories. He would never want you to find out who you had been. His arrogance couldn’t stand that a girl escaped his grasp.”
I thought of those oaths Amar had promised. The beads of blood brimming on his palm. That kiss. Even the memory of him saving me. He was keeping me alive to kill me for later. I scolded myself. My own foolishness was looking for scraps to grasp at, something that would validate all of the poor decisions I had made. How weak I had sounded. I clenched my teeth. I wouldn’t be weak for him.
Something splintered inside me. Nritti had to be right. No wonder Gupta and Amar had warned me away from all the hidden doors in Akaran. No doubt, they didn’t want me to find out. All those voices I had heard. Who did they belong to? Girls trapped inside of trees? Or were they the plaintive voices of the dead, calling to me. Warning me.
“Who was I in my last life, then?”
Nritti smiled. “You were my friend. I am an apsara, but I left all of that behind the moment I lost you. I don’t know why you went away with him. But I can see why you were seduced … a powerful kingdom … leaving behind a place of obscurity.”
An apsara? That made her a heavenly nymph. I wasn’t surprised. She was easily the most beautiful person I had ever seen. And as for the reason why I would be seduced to follow Amar … even that made sense. It was the same in Bharata. That constant need to leave, to prove myself, to rise above the nameless, dreamless ranks of the harem women.
“You meant so much to me,” said Nritti, tears shining in her eyes. “You still do. I would’ve done anything to keep you safe. I know you would have done the same for me. I just needed you to lead me.”
“Was I, also, an apsara?”
I felt stupid asking such a question. Of course I wasn’t. Nritti flashed a sympathetic smile.
“No. You were a forest yakshini and you knew those woods so well.”
I nodded, trying to wrap my mind around this version of myself that she was telling me. I sounded like a cowering thing, resigned to silence and shadows. But maybe that was the way it was always supposed to be. Here, I was nothing more than an imposter playing at power and failing miserably.
Nritti placed her hand against the glass. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay at this portal. I’m risking my life for you with every passing minute, but I won’t let you be unsafe. There’s something you need to do. To be free.”
“What?”
“Bring me his noose and destroy the tree. He’ll never find you again after that. And then you and I can escape. We can go back to the Otherworld. We can free all the other girls trapped in this kingdom.”
All the other girls. My throat tightened and I nodded tersely.
“Where does he keep the noose?”
“It is always on his person. Perhaps not in the same form.”
My heart clenched. The black strip of leather around his wrist. Right next to my own circlet of hair. It had to be the noose. The source of his power. The noose was how the Dharma Raja dragged the souls to his dread kingdom before they were assigned to a new life.
“The tree needs to be destroyed. Do you understand?” Her reflection wavered and her voice was strangely harsh. “He will kill you if you give him the chance.”
Before I could say anything, the door glowed blue. Someone was near.
“I have to go.”
“Are you ready for this, sister?” asked Nritti.
I nodded. “I’m ready.”
Footsteps echoed outside the door. I clambered down the tree, throwing one last glance at Nritti’s waning reflection in the obsidian mirror before running out into the hall. The door closed with a soft thud behind me, the glowing blue of its walls fading and melding back into white. I breathed a sigh of relief, my hands still pressed against the wood.
Voices snaked through the halls, hushed and urgent. I was still reeling from Nritti’s words. He will kill you if you give him the chance. I knew I had to be on guard. I’d only seen a few of the memories in the tree, but they had all the intimacy of realness. My friendship with Nritti, even the way my instincts told me to trust her. That she wouldn’t hurt me. Even then, I clasped the memory of the days Amar and I had spent together close to my chest. The way he looked at me, an amazed smile turning his face incandescently beautiful. The embraces of fire and starlight when he kissed me. How could they be false?
But then I heard Gupta’s voice in the hallway … his words reached me. Roped around me.
“Tomorrow is the new moon. You need not worry any longer. Everything you’ve done, saving her life and bringing her here … it will all be worth it,” he said. “Now that she’s here, we can get rid of her the way you always wanted. I am confident of it.”
I backed against the wall. In that second, every space was too tight and each light glinted with malice. Here was the reason. He had been waiting for the right time to get rid of me, the right way to exact vengeance. Nritti was right.
He would kill me if I gave him the chance.
18
THE TRUTH, AT LAST
I stayed in the shadows, waiting for their footsteps.
“There is still much to do before then,” said Gupta. “You must anticipate her response.”
“She’s ready,” said Amar impatiently. “I have waited long enough and I will not be denied.”
I pressed myself against the wall, praying I wouldn’t be caught. I thought back to Amar’s words in the tapestry room. Weakness is a luxury you can no longer afford. How right he had been. Friendship had weakened me. Even Gupta’s friendship had been a ruse, a means of distracting me, a blindfold as they trapped me in the halls of death.