“Only a night?”
Vikram reached behind him for a slip of parchment that was embossed with golden ink and handed it to me: Weary traveler, take your heart’s delight
You have come to the final crossroads of fate Thank the Ushas for the truth of first light
Until then, feast and drink for your heart to sate But know these walls will forever bend
And when they are through, no bones can you mend Take care of the direction you choose
Thousands will come here and thousands will lose I read the words slowly. Trapped until first light. Only at first light could we choose which direction to travel in? But how would we know which was true? I glanced up at the palace of night so out of reach. Thank the Ushas for the truth of first light. The Ushas was the goddess of dawn.
“Is there a reason you didn’t share this with me until now?”
“And miss the opportunity to see you fly into a rage?” he asked. “There is plenty of time to contemplate our inevitable doom. We have much less time to sate our stomachs. Besides, I wanted to ensure I’d have a head start on eating the desserts.”
“Ever the optimist.”
“I am optimistic,” said Vikram, waving around a plate of food, “about not starving.”
My stomach growled. Vikram didn’t seem any different from eating the food, so it was likely safe. I crouched beside him, taking the halwa for myself, and then sat facing the corner of the square room that resembled the view outside my bedroom window.
“Your home?” asked Vikram.
I nodded. “And the corner with the view of Ujijain … is it yours?”
“Yes.”
It was a strange view. Vikram’s view of Ujijain was the realm itself. It was cold. Proprietary.
“You love Bharata,” said Vikram. A statement of fact.
“I do.”
“What made you decide to play in the Tournament? You could’ve just waited for one cycle of the moon and rushed back to your beloved Bharata.”
I bit my lip. If I waited that long without a hope of a plan, Nalini was as good as dead. It wasn’t as if I could stroll into Bharata at the end of the moon cycle. If I set one foot on Bharata’s soil, Skanda would execute Nalini and then pin the blame on me. All the games, manipulation, losses and secrets would be for nothing. Worse, it would plunge Bharata into warfare if we lost the support of Nalini’s tribal home.
“Circumstances,” I said tightly.
Vikram watched me. “What did you do to make your own kingdom want you dead?”
I clenched my hand. “Let’s just say that politics in Bharata forced me to play a game of power I thought I could win. I did not win. Hence the death order.”
Vikram rolled his eyes and clapped slowly. “Did princess study include theatrics? Do you also run around the city as a hooded vigilante?”
“You don’t know anything about my life or what it was like for me,” I said angrily. “All you princes are the same. You’ve never worked for anything so you wouldn’t know the first thing about another person’s struggle.”
His gaze sharpened. “In that, Princess, you are mistaken.”
I let out a breath and pressed my temples. “Now that we’ve eaten and argued, what about the riddle?”
“We know the way to Alaka is to follow true north. The statue bearing Kubera’s image says as much. But the statues are set on a spinning wheel—”
“And they may not be accurate directions when they settle.”
Vikram drew his brows together. Setting down his goblet, he drew an image in the dirt: a dais and eight doors. He studied it, steepling his long fingers. I groaned. Enough was enough.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“That.” I mimicked his hands, flattened my brows and tried to make my eyes look somewhat insane.
“I will have you know that it is my meditative pose.”
“I will have you know that you look ridiculous.”
“What about you?” he asked. He sucked in his cheeks and glowered, pointing at his face and then pointing at me. “What kind of meditative pose is that?”
“It’s not a meditative pose at all,” I shot back.
“My apologies. Is it your bellicose-let-me-drain-your-blood face? Could you not master an expression that looked less like an outraged cat?”
“Better than steepling my hands and looking like an overgrown spider.”
“An overgrown spider who is rarely wrong.”
“My bellicose-let-me-drain-your-blood face has saved your life.”
“And this overgrown-spider pose is about to save yours.”
He rested his chin on the edge of his palm, his head tilted just so. Pale light slid over the carved planes of his face, from his narrow nose and sharp jaw to infernal lips that always danced on the edge of a laugh. Vikram caught me looking at his lips and smirked. I bit back some choice curses.
“When the Ushas leave their home, that would be the equivalent of dawn. So it would be first light. I think the spinning wheel of statues will freeze,” he said. “I think it will come down to where we can cross the dais and access those eight doors. We should monitor it throughout the night and see if it begins to fall.”
“If that happens, we only have until first light to choose which statue to follow through which door,” I said. “We don’t know how long the dais will remain in place. Any idea?”
He tapped his fingers together. “I believe we should follow Kubera’s statue in the direction of true north.”
“That’s far too simple.” I held up the invitation of the Crossroads and read aloud: “‘Thousands will come here and thousands will lose.’ I am sure many of those thousands tried the simplest route.”
“It’s not about the simplest or most direct path though,” said Vikram. “Magic is a test of faith … why else would we have escaped Ujijain, eaten a demon fruit and allowed ourselves to be tortured by our pasts if we didn’t believe in what the Tournament offered?”
It was the first time he had mentioned what he had seen in the Undead Grotto. Pain flashed in his eyes, so brief it might have been mistaken for the light glimmering above us. But I caught it.
“You speak with conviction that relies on feelings, not facts,” I said. “Following true north is too easy. It sounds like a trap.”
“But that’s half the guile of this place. How many times have answers been so simple and yet someone is determined to take the path of thorns instead of roses?”
“It’s not earned.”
“That’s a very human thing to say.”
“An inclination I can’t help.”
“It’s not about things that are earned, but just things as they are. Magic chose us for a reason. Did you believe in the Otherworld before you saw it with your own eyes?”
I nodded.
“Magic is like that,” he said. “It’s like faith.”
He spoke so earnestly I almost believed him. But Vikram had something I didn’t. Innocence. Maybe the world would break for him because he believed it would. But it wouldn’t do the same for me. To me, the Otherworld and the human world were the same because of one thing: Neither world coddled or cared.