*
The beasts of the Otherworld threw me behind a metal door sunken into the knotted trunk of a banyan tree. Inside, the sounds of the Otherworldly beings outside stuttered into silence. In this shadowed room, softly glowing moths lit up the walls. Fear left me trembling. They were going to kill me.
I turned around, looking for escape. Behind me was a great obsidian mirror, like the one I had once found in the room with the tree full of memories. In its reflection, the stone halls of Naraka glittered.
“You are not a sadhvi,” said a voice.
I looked up, stunned to see Amar standing before me. He helped me to my feet, but I couldn’t look at him. Every time I glanced into his face, that flat look of no recognition slashed through me.
He jerked my chin up. “Do not lie to me. Who are you?”
Tears prickled hot behind my eyes and the answer I gave him was so true, I could feel it echoing through all my hollow spaces: “I don’t know.”
He released his hold on my chin but he didn’t step away. “You asked to see me alone. Why?”
Because I love you. But that didn’t matter. Any moment now, Nritti could rush inside. All she would have to do was hold tightly to that noose and Amar would be powerless against her. Maybe I couldn’t save us or what we once had. But I could save him. I could save Gauri.
“You need your noose back,” I said, my voice low and urgent. I looked to the door, my heart thudding. “Nritti is controlling you. I know you. You would never drag a thousand children to these depths or unleash monsters into the world. Power is about balance, remember?”
He stepped back, his face paling, black eyes narrowing to slits. “I did not ask for your wisdom, false sadhvi. You do not know me.”
My heart was breaking. I thought I knew, finally, what it meant to be a ghost. It meant speaking your words around a mouth full of loss. It meant grasping onto echoes and hoping, praying that the words still meant something.
“I know your soul,” I said, my voice cracking. “Everything else is an ornament.”
“You have a strange effect on me … why is that?” he asked softly. “Beside you, I am reminded of something I have forgotten.”
My hands fell to my sides. There, beneath the rags of my robes, the fabric was raised and bumpy and I knew what lay beneath it—a broken circlet of hair. I fished it out of the pocket. My whole body was trembling, shaking against its restraints of bone.
Amar reached out to cup the back of my neck. I shuddered. I had forgotten how cold his hands were, like the soul of winter had tangled itself in his fingers. He stared at me and his gaze had all the finality of death—it was ferocious and terrible, a ravel of locked horns. He was searching me. I knew exactly what he was looking for—
Himself.
I twined the bracelet together, letting it hover mere inches from his skin. I had no expectation, no method, no strategy. I was blind and clinging to a bruised piece of hope. But it was all I had.
“You once said your soul could never forget mine,” I said, sliding the mended bracelet around his wrist. “Do you remember now?”
He inhaled sharply, like something had rent through him. Around his wrist, the bracelet glowed like a caught star.
“Jaani,” he breathed, staring at me.
He clutched his chest, an amazed smile turning his face incandescent. I grinned so widely that I thought the air would bend around us, pushing us together. His fingers entwined in my hair and he tilted my face up. I was leaning toward him hungrily, but in the next instant, his smile faltered. Amar’s brow crumpled with pain. He stumbled, his knees buckling.
“What’s wrong—” I started, moving to help him.
The door swung open. Nritti stepped in and our eyes met. I knew, then, why she had avoided looking at me. She had known who I was the whole time.
“Let me kill you,” she said soothingly, drawing out the blade. “I’ve already told all the beings outside that you have corrupted the Dharma Raja. They will descend on you like dawn upon the vestiges of night, and I will do nothing to honor your memory.” She paused and spared me a smile that sent icicles blooming across my chest. “I will not wipe up your blood. I will not mourn you. I will not care.
“Trust me,” she said, stroking the edge of the blade. “It is better this way.”
Nritti spared a glance at Amar. He had sunk to his knees, his hands clutching his heart.
“Stop this,” I said through gritted teeth. “Give him back the noose. You’re killing him.”
She tilted her head to one side, staring at the blade.
“I’m not killing him,” she said calmly. “Not yet. The Dharma Raja is weak.” She stretched the noose tight and Amar seized up, his breath coming out in staggering gasps. His face paled.
“Stop!” I cried, lunging toward Nritti, but with a flick of her wrist, I was thrown back against the wall.
My head slammed against the metal with a resounding thud. Nritti laughed and twisted the cord between pale fingers.
“I take no pleasure in squashing an ant. But you are a very peculiar insect. And all because the all-powerful Dharma Raja made a foolish mistake.”
“What mistake?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You once knew me so well. You know how I am. Why would I give up the secret before the game is done?” Nritti took a step toward Amar.
I fought to get to him first, but each step took me farther and farther away from him until my body was pressed against the rickety frames of the room.
“You said I was killing him,” said Nritti, kneeling beside him. She glanced at the dagger then at Amar. “Who am I to make you a liar?”
My body contorted into a scream. But all the sound I might have scraped up from every recess of myself was useless against a sharp blade. I watched, paralyzed, as Nritti sank the blade into his heart. Amar shuddered, his body tense. The muscles of his neck stood out in sharp relief. His eyes rolled back, the whites of his sockets glistening before they focused on me.
“Jaani,” he said, a shaky smile curling his lips.
Amar tapped his lips twice, one hand fluttering to his heart. And then he went still. I blinked back tears, and a scream wrenched from my throat. Grief cut me, separating me like a soul from its body. I was nothing more than a being of fury and heartbreak.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” said Nritti.
She yanked the dagger from Amar’s chest. It came away with a sickening, unclasping sound. Nausea roiled in my gut. Whatever magic Nritti used kept me pinned to the wall, but that didn’t stop my limbs from trembling.
“I won’t let you languish alone. Let me put you out of your mortal misery and finish my efforts,” said Nritti. “It’s an honor, truly. You will be the last person to die. After that, death is nothing.”
27
A TANGLE OF THREAD
Nritti flicked her wrist and this time I fell to the ground, my knees slamming into the packed earth. Blood thrummed in my ears. Pain radiated through my body. I looked at Amar, sprawled across the floor, his wrist flung out. The bracelet gleamed pale as moonstone against his skin. His eyes were fixed on the fathomless ceiling above us. He may have been immortal, but Nritti’s control had rendered him into a mere echo of himself. He was worse than dead.
Nritti’s shadow fell across the floor. She was coming for me. I began to crawl toward Amar, ready to fold him to me in my last moments, but I stopped. That was what she wanted. What she expected. But that was where she was wrong. She had mistaken my strength for weakness. I loved Amar. I loved him enough that it catapulted my fear into frenzy, my hurt into hope.
I didn’t run to him because I had loved and lost.