I don’t remember when the agni pariksha ended. I only remembered emerging, my ankles encircled with ash. A deafening roar—applause or resentment, fury or joy—as I left. And I remember Amar’s face, one dark eyebrow arched as he surveyed the crowd, a proud smirk on his face as though he expected this all along.
All that time, I thought he was merely pretending.
*
In Naraka, a feast awaited me. Every room dripped silver, glass blooms and petals carpeted the floor. The walls of our kingdom shimmered as if underwater and moonlight glimmered through the lattice windows. Sweet kafir cream and pista cakes in golden bowls lay piled high among the tables. But I would touch none of it.
“Are you disappointed?” I asked coldly.
Amar slipped his arms around my waist. “I always believed in you. It is the world outside who needed convincing.”
“Liar,” I hissed, stepping out of the ring of his arms.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“You humiliated me. You left me to them like carrion before vultures. And like vultures, they devoured me.”
My voice was hoarse and brittle. I hated him. I hated him for abandoning me. I hated him for needing him.
Amar stepped back, his jaw clenched. “I did it to quell dissent. To keep you safe. I was ashamed that I had to ask you to undergo the agni pariksha.”
“So ashamed you distanced yourself from me the moment you demanded that trial?”
Amar looked stunned. “I am the Dharma Raja for a reason. I would not have my own impartiality questioned by favoring you. Surely, you knew this.”
“What would you have done if I failed?”
“You couldn’t fail,” said Amar. “That’s why I did not worry. You were meant to be the queen of these lands. We were meant to rule together. For all of eternity.”
“I would rather die than rule by the side of a coward.”
Shadows curled away from Amar’s body.
“Coward?” he hissed. “Cowardice is running from the difficult choices made by the ones that love you most. If I have been a coward, so have you, jaani. But we may start anew. Let us not speak of this time any longer.”
He tried, once more, to tilt my face into a kiss, but I moved away.
“I saw you spread the rumors yourself in the Otherworld. I watched you take solace in another’s arms. And if surviving the agni pariksha means spending eternity with you, then I would rather live life as a mortal.”
The room became damp and sticky with darkness.
“What lies you hurl at me,” he murmured.
“I don’t trust you.”
He stepped back, wounded. “Has your judgment become so compromised? If you truly do not believe the truth in my words, then you have no place here.”
We stared at one another, fury swelling between us. The silence expanded, solidifying our words like manacles.
“Once, I thought you loved me,” I said in a broken voice. “I refuse to live in your shadow for the rest of eternity.”
His eyes widened, obsidian eyes searching and disbelieving.
“Then leave!” he said, gesturing to the door angrily.
*
So I did.
I stepped into the reincarnation pool, letting the waters tease my life apart, inflicting upon myself the same curse that had forced me to undergo the agni pariksha. In the distance, Amar’s voice roared for me. Pleading. But it was too little. And far too late.
*
I blinked furiously and the images spun away. The two threads lay against my palm, scalding and writhing like twin serpents. My head was full of what I had seen and what I now knew. I had allowed myself to hear lies and never questioned their truth. I had let suspicion rule me at a terrible price.
My grip on the threads tightened. I had to release myself from her hold.
Outside, the sky pulsed yellow and the marble floors of Naraka sweltered with heat. In the distance, I heard the faintest shattering sound and my heart lurched. Nritti had gotten through. Any minute now and she would run into the throne room. She would wield her powers and I—still powerless, still mortal—would fall.
I tugged at the threads. But they wouldn’t budge. My lungs filled with fire. No. No, please … not now. The tapestry was leering and weighing, waiting and wondering. The weight of its magic was a crushing thing and my mind was splintering beneath it. Images skittered across my skin, pushing up beneath my fingernails, prickling against my feet. I heard Nritti’s voice filtered through the threads—“unworthy.” I heard my own thoughts echoing, tilting around my hurt.
And then I stopped. Those moments were mine, but they didn’t define me anymore. I wouldn’t let my doubts cripple me. I had to accept who I was, what I had done and, more important, who I could be. Amar’s voice wrapped around me. Trust yourself. Trust who you are. I hadn’t listened to him then, but I would now. I stared down the tapestry. I knew, now, why it had refused my touch. It didn’t know me because I didn’t know myself. And so I spoke as if in greeting:
“I am Maya and Yamuna and Yamini. I am a frightened girl, a roaring river and night incarnate,” I said. My voice was strong and clear. Around me, the tapestry shrank back, like a scolded animal. “I have been a forgotten princess, a stubborn queen and a false sadhvi. And I will not be tethered.”
Calm spiraled around me. I no longer saw Naraka’s livid sky, nor heard the scrape of glass along the halls. I had slipped into a moment of lost time, a moment for me alone, something sacred and inviolate—as precious as self. I grasped hold of my thread, untwisting it slowly from Nritti’s.
“My life belongs to me,” I said.
And then I pulled.
29
AN END. A BEGINNING.
Light seeped through my skin like water. Light pressed its fingers against the cracks in my being, patched the rifts and ravines with memory until I was drenched in color, in sound, in life. When I stepped away from the tapestry, I felt … heavier. As if all this time, my existence was an ethereal thing spent searching for myself.
It was time. Time to leave this limbo. Time to embrace the light that was neither banished nor tainted, but buried deep within me, waiting until I could claim it once more. The tapestry shivered. I thought I heard a sigh of relief echo in the halls. Before me, the threads convulsed, weaving an entirely different image—Amar. His eyes were still open and unseeing, but I knew he wasn’t lost. The tapestry was trying to tell me something. I thought about his last moments, his last actions … he had called me jaani and tapped his lips twice before his hands fluttered to his heart.
And then I understood. I knew why Nritti couldn’t destroy him.
I was his jaan. His life. Kill me, and he would be rendered useless, an echo of himself.
“I will save you,” I whispered to his image.
The tapestry sank away, shimmering into a mirror-portal where I could see the Otherworld’s reflection glittering in the distance. I could see Amar’s body sprawled out, waiting for me. I was about to push through the portal when the sound of a blade dragging through dust stopped me.
“Found you,” sneered Nritti.
I didn’t turn immediately. Her voice rippled in my head. Despite everything, I mourned her. I mourned us. I mourned for the girls that had crouched beside a riverbank and fished out tortoises and pearls. I gathered all that sorrow … and then I let it go.
“I was not hiding,” I said, turning to face her.
Her face blanched. “You’ve … you’ve changed.”
I looked down. I had changed. But not in looks. I was not splendidly clothed like Nritti and neither bangles adorned my wrists nor did tiaras sparkle at my temples. Instead, inky clouds scooted across my skin before fading softly into rose-gold and plum-velvet. Warm stars dusted my palms and storm clouds danced about my ankles. I was wreathed in light.
“So did you,” I said softly. “Is this what Vanaj wanted? He loved you.”
Nritti stepped back, flinching. “He did. And you wouldn’t save him. You were too weak to do anything for me.”