“In the trees, in the rivers, in the glens,” murmured Kamala, swaying her head from side to side. “In all the hidey-holes left in the world.”
I remembered the first time I came to the Night Bazaar, how the crowds parted like water before Amar and me, how their gaze was frantic, but always reverent. He had kept them safe. Whatever had happened, they must not have thought he could keep them safe anymore. I couldn’t blame them. The Night Bazaar was in disarray. Lightning hung from the torn seams of the sky, flickering weakly in the air. The shadowy dome above held no signs of the sun, moon or stars. Here, there were chalky square outlines in the floor where towering rakshas wrestled and sparred. In a darkened corner, a horde of footless bhuts swayed in a terrifying dance to the rhythm of their own screams. On the outskirts stretched an expanse of black water. Something skimmed the waves; great fins and a jaw jutted outward—poised for biting and crowded with teeth. A timingala. Its eyes never blinked and I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were fixed on me, shining with hunger.
“I miss my cremation ground,” said Kamala, sniffing disdainfully at the scene before us.
I ignored her, my throat suddenly tight.
I saw Amar. Perched on a towering throne of thorns. There was no compassion in his eyes. Only steel. But there was also a blank look to his expression, as though he couldn’t quite remember how he’d gotten there or what he was supposed to do next. Images rustled beneath my skin, lighting up behind my eyes. I saw us along the ocean at the edge of the world, his hands twisting the black curls of my hair. I saw him standing near the shore, smiling as he placed a wreath of rosemary and honey myrtle around my head like a crown. I saw our fingers interlace, felt the roughness of his hands against my own and heard him speak my name like a prayer.
Beside him, Nritti leaned out on a throne of bleached bones. Her full lips curled in a smile as she lifted one perfectly groomed eyebrow and surveyed the destruction.
A hum gurgled through the air, like a thousand stomachs rumbling. A wrenching pain twisted through my gut and I doubled over. Beside me, Kamala keened. A dakini sank to her knees in front of us, her necklace of animal skulls scraping against the ground and flinging dirt onto my legs. Five peys wailed and clawed at their faces so deeply that blood welled to the surface. They sucked on their fingers greedily.
I fought against the fug of magic—it was an enchantment of hunger. I’d never known an appetite this furious. It was in my skin, under my nails, like grit between my teeth. My throat was parched. The air tasted stale on my tongue, but I lapped at it anyway. I wanted to fill up my emptiness with anything. Everything.
“Do you feel it?” hissed Kamala. Her hoof stamped the ground, like the hunger was just an itch she could get rid of. Even if I could speak, I didn’t have the chance. A sound bellowed at the front of the chamber.
“Too long we have been confined to the rules of the Otherworld … too long we have starved for more than the scraps the universe throws our way,” said a voice. Nritti. “But I ask that you stay hungry just a little longer before we glut ourselves on the world. For our victory, I want you hungry.”
My head snapped up. I clamped down on my lower lip so hard that the rust and salt taste of blood surged in my mouth. I licked it away, focusing all my attention on her. I stepped forward unsteadily, my feet slipping, legs bowing under the weight of unnatural starvation.
“We are! We are!” chanted a thousand voices.
“I want you aching,” she crooned.
One more step. Another. Another. I was dragging my feet through the dirt, fighting my way to the front.
“We do! We do!” rose up the voices.
“Good,” she said. “Tonight, in honor of my pending nuptials”—she stopped to stroke a finger against Amar’s cheek; he shuddered and my heart flipped—“I will let you go anywhere you please.”
Horror surpassed hunger. I pictured all these horrible bodies slinking across the lands I loved, living nightmares with empty stomachs and lips pulled back to reveal teeth made for rending. Gauri’s determined face flashed in my mind. No.
Nritti stood, reaching behind her for the boy I recognized from the glen. He stared up at her and his face was incandescent with joy. He was so distracted that he did not see the blade glinting or notice how Nritti’s smile stretched thin and predatory.
“Let this soul pave our way,” screamed Nritti to the crowd.
They roared with happiness, surging together. Bodies pressed against my back and I reached out blindly for Kamala. Her muzzle pushed against my neck and her jaws snapped when a churel moved too close to me. The churel’s feet were twisted, her toes wrenched in the opposite direction of her face, and when she met my gaze, I saw her longing—hands twitching to feel something more than dust against palms, lolling mouth aching to be slaked with shuddering hearts and slick organs, anything to feel alive.
Amar never once raised his head. Beside Nritti, he was a shadow. I leapt onto Kamala’s back and leaned close to her ear:
“Run.”
And she did.
Nritti raised the knife, her head tilting, voice crooning. Her voice broke my heart, but still we kept moving. Never stopping. Lightning flickered above us. A pey lay trampled in the rush. I never once looked away from Nritti. I didn’t know what had happened to the girl who had been my best friend. Whatever reasons once existed had gathered moss and dust in their edges. All that mattered now was the scene before me—laughter seeping into my ears, the floors thick with spilled blood, hunger that hollowed your innards and coated your tongue with dust.
Kamala reared to a halt, her forelegs clinging for purchase.
I leaned across her back, my hand outstretched—“Stop!”
There was a moment where I didn’t know if anyone had heard. My word felt like little more than a croak. Silence fell around us. Nritti’s blade clattered to the ground and the boy stumbled back, unscathed.
Amar’s head snapped up and for the first time since leaving Naraka, we stared at one another. His expression hadn’t changed since the glen. It was flat, but not unkind, just … out of reach.
He looked as though someone had summoned him from stone. The more I looked at him, the more images prickled behind my eyes—him walking toward me, in one hand carrying a glass rose while his fingers reached for me, eager to close the space between us; his hand slung over my waist while we slept, two bodies curled into the shadow of each other.
But those images were mine alone. Amar blinked, his brows furrowing before he looked away. My heart slammed against my ribs. If I had any doubt about his last words—that he wouldn’t remember me, that I would be lost to him—this moment cured them.
I was a stranger.
26
A DUEL OF RIDDLES
Nritti was staring at us and her face was blank and controlled.
I leapt from Kamala’s back. The gaze of a thousand eyes slapped against my skin. Think, Maya. Anger flared inside me. Anger that she had ousted those who belonged here and ushered in those who did not. Anger that Amar was by her side. Anger that she had lied. But I tamped it down, swallowing my fury like a bitter draught. And then I did what anyone would do before a false sovereign—
I bowed.
Kamala glanced at me sidelong, a ghoulish grin across her face, “I know what she is hungry for and she is starved as the earth. Her teeth are grinding, grinding, churning stars. Do you hear it, false sadhvi?”
“What are you talking about?” I muttered back, my head still bent to the ground. “What is she hungry for?”
Kamala leaned closer. “You.”
A whip cracked through the air and I jerked my head up, only to see Nritti standing right in front of me. She tilted her head to one side and the movement was so slight, so emotionless that I thought she would slide a blade through me just to see what would happen.