“Who cares if a story is true or not so long as it is told? Either way, your vanaras will not accept the fruit that damned and stole their queen.”
What a ridiculous curse. If I could have taken down kingdoms with demon fruit, I would’ve grown it too. The vetala fixed its hollow eyes on me. “Careful, girl. The Queen wanted too much too. Her story was vengeance. Do that, and your life’s tale will be nothing but another’s ending.”
That still didn’t answer the question. Had Queen Tara’s crime only been to lead an army of women? What was the crime in making yourself invincible? Skanda’s grinning face flashed in my memory. If I had the choice of invincibility, I would’ve taken it too.
“So, let’s assume that you eat this fruit and don’t eat everyone around you,” Vikram said. “Could you smash through the walls of this place and free us?”
“You could do that,” said the vetala, butting into our conversation once more. “But how will you get out?”
“The way we came,” I said.
“And then what?” said Vikram. “That doesn’t leave us with many clues. And we only have two days before—”
“Don’t!” I shouted.
“—Kubera’s tournament,” finished Vikram.
Panic thrummed through my chest.
“What did you say?” said the vetala. His voice was deathly quiet. I pushed myself off the wall despite the impossible pain and hunger setting me on fire.
“Maybe I should follow my instincts and eat you just for being plain stupid,” I snarled.
Vikram stepped backward, his eyes widening.
“It astounds me that Ujijain has any plans to make you ruler. Did they teach you nothing?” I gritted out, just out of earshot from the vetala. “Never reveal where you are going. Never reveal what you need. You just gave away two of those things by, once more, loudly observing all the ways in which we are in dire need of help.”
“I didn’t mean—” started Vikram.
“I don’t care what you mean. I care about what you’ve done. That thing—” I said, flailing an arm in the vetala’s direction. “—will sweet-talk you into giving away your own soul just to get to where you want to go.”
“What if it is telling us the truth?” he countered. “Are you the only person capable of being correct? What is so impossible about taking a leap of faith and trying? Besides, it wants something from us. And until it helps us, it won’t get it.”
“You’re assuming I’ll even follow you to this Tournament. I might as well hide out in the Otherworld until a cycle of the moon passes and go back to the human world.”
“Are you that frightened of magic?”
I narrowed my eyes. “If you were half as clever as they say, you would be frightened too.”
“So you’ll waste a month of your life instead of grabbing the best opportunity?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Doubt dug into my thoughts. Before, I didn’t want any part of magic. But if we survived, I couldn’t waste a month of my life. Where would I go? What would I do? I remembered the promise tucked inside the enchanted ruby … the lull and temptation of everything I wanted folded neatly into a wish.
“I know how to get out and I know how to get to the Tournament of Wishes,” trilled the vetala. “Did you know they call Alaka the Kingdom of Desire? It is just north of Naraka. So quaint, is it not? Death and desire are almost always hand in hand. You will not even leave this kingdom without me. This is the kingdom of the vanaras, you short-lived fools. They are wiser, stronger. Their tunnels and insies and outsies are not like your straightforward forts with their hidden passageways. But I can’t break the walls. The girl would have to do that.”
“What do you want, vetala?” I asked.
“I want a body.”
“We will not give you ours.”
“How about only one of you dies?”
“No.”
“Well, if you shall not part with your bodies, then I suppose I must settle for your shoulders,” said the vetala. “I cannot walk. Or fly. I wish for the crematory grounds, and not this damn solitary confinement with a single stinking iron tree and not a dead body around me for miles.”
Vikram turned to me. “So will you try it or not? That demon fruit is all we have. I can distract them with a tale, but that won’t be enough to get us out. I need you. Not just to get out, but for this Tournament. Think about what you could do with a little bit of magic.”
The choice knotted my stomach. Vikram reached out for my hand, cradling it with a strange tenderness that for a moment drowned out the loud call of the demon fruit. I didn’t jerk it away.
“This is our life,” he said. “Our wish is on that line. We can’t lose it.”
I pulled back my hand. “And I won’t lose myself. What skin are you putting into this game, fox? Your eloquence? What a sacrifice.”
“It’s my life too,” he said tightly.
“Your life makes no difference to that girl,” laughed the vetala. “Maybe someday. But today is not that day. Beast of a girl, I think in another life you would eat it. But bravery needs a bite. And you have lost it somewhere. Broken heart, perhaps?”
Vikram looked at me sharply.
“Know this,” he said. “I will not die with you. I will compete in the Tournament.”
The vetala laughed. “Compete? Dear boy, the game does not start when Kubera’s players arrive in his kingdom. It begins as soon as he chooses the players.”
8
DEEPEST, DARKEST SELVES
GAURI
In the months after I pulled Nalini from the water, the city and villages had rejoiced so much that Skanda allowed me to become a representative of sorts. I was allowed to attend council meetings. Sometimes, Nalini and I played alongside the sons and daughters of village leaders. Bharata began to know my name and slowly I began to love my country and its people, its customs and its history. I thought I was lucky. I thought my brother’s heart had changed. But when I was fourteen, I realized why he had let my face and name become so closely entwined with Bharata.
Skanda called me inside the throne room. I suspected he was angry with me. Yesterday I had disagreed with him in front of the council on whether or not to build a temple in a drought-ravaged village.
“Prayers are good, but what sustenance are words compared to water?” I had said. Nalini had thought of that line, and I smiled after catching looks of both admiration and shock on the council members’ faces. When I entered Skanda’s throne room, he was grinning broadly. Half the council stood in the shadows, watching our exchange.
Skanda lifted an ornate box that I had never seen.
“Thank you for this generous gift, dear sister.”
I frowned. “What gift?”
Skanda opened the box: milky white snakes twisted and writhed. The council gasped, but Skanda merely raised his hand and laughed. “Water snakes? Don’t worry, councilors. It is a private joke between my sister and me.”
With one hand, he dismissed them. The room emptied within seconds, but not before I’d caught several suspicious and disgusted glances.