A cold wind shuddered through me. I felt my mind unspooling, my body shrinking. Those powerful demoness muscles were now draped onto a smaller set of shoulders, a thinner set of bones. The world dimmed and receded.
Oh, I thought, at the same time I heard my voice rasp:
“Oh.”
And then:
“Oh no.”
The only thing that had stayed on my skin since the moment I turned was Maya’s necklace and my sandals. My tunic hung off me in strips. At this moment, Vikram was pretending that there was a spot of great interest just beyond my shoulder. The vetala had squeaked and drawn up his tattered wings over his face.
“Give me your jacket,” I demanded.
Vikram—who was now pretending that his life depended on looking at the spot right beyond my shoulder—grumbled, “When you ask so kindly, you’re impossible to resist.”
He threw the jacket to me. Shrugging out of my tunic, I kept my eyes trained on his face. Gratefulness flooded through me. Most men wouldn’t have thought twice about looking. Some would have pressed it further than a look. To so many men in Bharata, your body wasn’t yours. It infuriated me. But the one time I tried to do anything about it, I only hurt someone. Once, I had a soldier whipped for what he tried to do after cornering a serving girl. Luckily, Arjun had gotten there in time to pull the man off and let the girl escape.
The whole time he was whipped, the soldier had screamed in defense: “The Raja Skanda doesn’t care!”
“Do I look like my brother?” I had sneered.
That day, I felt proud. As if I could protect people. Skanda found out what I said and had the girl brought to his chambers that night. I only found out the next morning, when the girl stopped me on my way to the barracks. Her eyes glistened with tears: “Spare me your mercy next time, Princess.”
It haunted me thinking about how many people I had harmed just for trying to protect them. For one moment, I squeezed my eyes shut. Then I tightened the jacket.
“How’s the view?” I asked, turning.
Vikram blinked, not looking at me. “Excellent. Best I’ve ever had.”
“Good for you, Vikram. Because it might be your last.”
I picked up the blunt dagger and walked past him to where the vetala hummed and drew circles and stars into the dirt.
“Keep your word, creature. Get us to Alaka.”
“There now,” said the vetala, crawling toward us. “Did I not say that it is a matter of perspective? And am I not an honorable corpse thing? Lean close. Lean close. I shall tell you things.”
Vikram’s shadow fell over me as we both crouched before the vetala. The creature drew up its ragged knees. It opened its mouth as if to speak. And then … it spat into our eyes.
I jerked back, dragging my arm across my stinging eye.
“I don’t need my knives to kill you, vetala,” I bit out.
“I better not go blind,” groaned Vikram, rubbing his fist into his eye.
I tried to jab him with my elbow, missed and lost my balance.
“You are most welcome,” said the vetala silkily.
I touched my left eye—the one he had spat into—and found it strangely cool to the touch. Vikram met my gaze.
Where both of his eyes had once been brown, one of them was now bright green. I glanced over the rest of his face, noticing things that had been invisible mere moments ago. The dying light tugged his sharp chin, cut jaw and hooded gaze from Otherworldly to beautiful. When I looked into his eyes, my breath caught. I saw things and people swimming in his sight—a woman with gray streaked in her temples, a fistful of blue flowers, a stout king with a one-winged bird on his shoulder. Empty cradles and darkened halls. And a boy. A boy who held himself as if there were a storm gathering bolts of light within him. Vikram, too, looked disturbed. His brows were pressed together, and when his gaze fell to Maya’s necklace, his lips parted in wonder.
What had my eyes betrayed?
He turned suddenly, and his eyes widened.
“Gods,” he breathed.
I followed his line of sight and horror gripped me.
Before, the Grotto had seemed a lifeless, barren thing. Now shapes twisted before us. Creatures clung to the bone white trees. Creatures who were not resting in the branches or frozen in death, but awake and skittering.
And staring straight at us.
“Hurry, hurry,” whined the vetala. “This isn’t just about the two of you fools, you know.”
I covered the eye the vetala had spat into and looked out onto the Grotto. Nothing but bone white trees met my eye. But when I covered the other eye and looked out, bodies teemed and writhed, gnashing their teeth.
“One eye to see the illusion … another to see through it…” said Vikram softly.
“But then why were we able to—” I stopped.
Vikram caught my gaze and quickly looked away. Why had we been able to see through one another, as if we were nothing more than panes of colored glass?
“The body is its own illusion. Now you can see through it,” said the vetala. “Rather like fleshy thuribles. They’re just keepers of things. What’s inside you is the thing those beasties like the most. You are, basically, a bowl full of lush memories. They want to scoop them out, sink their teeth into them, drown themselves in the imprints of living moments.”
“How do those monsters tease out our memories?” asked Vikram.
The vetala smiled and ice poured down my spine.
“They can sniff the shapes of memories rising off your skin like steam. They will tug on them. And you, like a drowsy fat bumblebee lulled by the blue throat of an intoxicating blossom, will fall into the arms of whatever illusion they craft.”
I sucked in my cheeks and patted the jacket. I was ready. Vikram looked more hesitant. The color had drained from his face and he was staring at the Grotto as if he knew exactly which nightmare was waiting for him.
“If you die, you die. Do not feel bad. I died. And I am quite fine,” said the vetala. “If you do, however, manage to be killed—and by the looks of you, I would not be surprised so much as irritated—please try to keep your heads. You’re no use to me decapitated.”
Since I’d already transported us to the Grotto, Vikram agreed to let the vetala climb onto his back. The vetala smoothed Vikram’s hair, crooning: “Nice donkey.” At the end of the sloping cliff, I checked once more to make sure that the enchanted eye worked. Vikram let out his breath to speak, and I prepared to hear formal, solemn words like “death comes for all of us anyway.” What I heard, instead, was:
“Race you to the end?”
It was such a bizarre thing to say that I … started laughing. I was shocked that I had a laugh left inside me and even more startled that it chose to announce itself moments before a battle where death had victory pinched between its thumb and forefinger. Once freed from my belly, the laugh warmed my bones. Maybe that’s why the best laughs tend to break free on the edge of lightless horror. Only then can they give wings to a drooping spirit. I needed that. And whether or not Vikram knew what he had done, I felt grateful.