Her sister laughed. “What would you want with a wish? You came to us so young that hardship never had the chance to look your way. There aren’t enough wishes in the world to make you any luckier, Aasha.”
Aasha twisted her silk scarf into a knot. She didn’t want luck. She wanted something she had never been given, not since the day the sisters had bought her from her birth family at four years old. The vishakanyas said they had rescued her. They took her home, opened their veins and poured their bitter blood past her lips until a blue star bloomed on her throat and magic coursed through her. They had taught her their trade: of dancing and music, poetry and philosophy, singing and seduction.
They called their powers—to slay with a touch and feed off desires—the Blessing.
When she was younger, Aasha loved the story of how her sisters inherited the Blessing. They said a warrior queen was called into the fray of battle, but didn’t want to leave her sisters defenseless. So the goddess gave the sisters some of her own blood, and their touch grew venomous and deadly. Every hundred years, the goddess would decide if they were worthy enough to keep the Blessing. For the past three hundred years, they had been worthy.
Most of the sisters joined the vishakanya harem after losing or leaving a husband, running away from cruel families or simply stumbling into the Otherworld and seeking employment and freedom. Aasha was the only one who had never lived outside the harem. She was the only one who never made the choice between the taste of bread and the taste of desire.
The first time she was sent to the bedchamber of a crooked human prince, her sisters had told her of the man’s misdeeds. They told her how he had found a woman of the Otherworld and seduced her only to abandon her when she quickened with child. They told her how he defiled the sacred spaces of the rivers and how all his people wished him dead. They told her how he deserved it.
Not one of her sisters mentioned what she deserved.
The taunt of that unlived human life started as a seedling of curiosity. It grew in the dark of her thoughts, gaining shape and strength when she wasn’t looking—a home somewhere with a thatched roof and no silk in sight, an orchard where the trees groaned with fruit, an expanse of skin free of a blue star. Now, it ate up the space around her heart. A living nightmare that snapped her joy. What was that life she had been denied? Maybe it would have been short, but at least it would be hers. But no one cared that she desperately wanted to touch someone and feel their pulse rising to her fingertips and not their life withering at her touch. And no one noticed when she returned home from that first mission, sick and shivering, the human king’s sticky desires glommed to her skin. Her sisters called that first mission a mark of freedom.
In the end, no one cared that her freedom didn’t look like the freedom of her sisters.
16
THE GATE OF SECRET TRUTHS
GAURI
Even from a distance, the red gate looked wrong. It was dull, with a jagged texture, like uneven chips of garnet that didn’t reflect the light but guzzled it greedily. When we stood before it, I realized what crafted the strange gates of Alaka.
Not gems, the way folklore would have a child believe …
Tongues.
Thousands of tongues. Red and bloated, severed at the root and piled like stones until they towered above us. A metallic tang hung in the air. Like iron. Or blood.
Vikram paled. “That’s not supposed to be there.”
“Where did you read that?” I grimaced.
“Wouldn’t the stories say that the entrance to Alaka is surrounded by … by that?”
I was going to answer him, but the gate lurched to life. A hundred red tongues wagging. Instinctively, I shoved Vikram behind me and brought out the dagger.
“What are you going to do?” asked Vikram lazily, pushing past me. “Threaten to cut out their tongues?”
I glared. All at once, the wagging tongues fell still. The gate grumbled. Shuffled. A deep voice echoed from within: “Stories are slices—”
“—dices—”
“—pretty slivers of—”
“—not so pretty things—”
“—clever prince and—”
“—fierce princess.”
Vikram stood up a little straighter. The tongues had begun to move once more. Speaking to us.
“Have you come to play the Lord of Treasures’ game? Do you wish—”
“—to win a wish? Then give us—”
“—the secret truth lodged in the crease of your first heartbreak—”
“—and we will let you pass.”
“What are you?” Vikram demanded.
Even though the gate was nothing but tongues, I thought I could feel the air tugging into a sly smile.
“We are the toll paid by those who came before and left Alaka—”
“—and those who came before and—”
“—didn’t.”
“You see, a truth parted with has its own way of becoming a tale. It is told so often that it stumbles in the telling, little bits flaking off, little bits sticking on, and then years accrete and they—”
“—tend to warp the truth, press it into something it was not at the beginning—”
“—not a lie, but a—”
“—tale. It’s easier to see the truth when you disguise it.”
Vikram cleared his throat. “I’ll go first.”
I prepared to leave. His secrets were his own business. But the gate huffed.
“You play together. You break—”
“—together. That is the rule.”
I shot Vikram a questioning glance, but he didn’t look at me. He seemed to be looking some distance ahead. He breathed deeply, tapping his fingers together.
“I am not the Emperor’s true son. If I take the throne, it will be in little more than name.”
“That—”
“—is only a part of the truth—”
“Tell us—”
“—what happened to her?”
Vikram’s face paled. “She died. From a rockslide. That’s where the Emperor found me.”
“That—”
“—is not all.”
Vikram’s jaw tightened. And then he said hoarsely, “She was looking for me over that rock edge. I left my sandal there to play a joke on her. I wanted to make her laugh.” He swallowed. “I was going to jump out from behind the trees and surprise her with the flowers. But the moment she stepped onto the rock, she fell.”
The gate stilled, as if letting that secret truth sit on its tongue like a candy.
I didn’t meet Vikram’s eyes, but I felt his burning gaze. My whole body felt numb. It wasn’t a skin-tight feel of disgust, but that plummeting humiliation. I knew what he felt. I knew that loss and guilt, that cold twist where a single moment might have made all the difference.
“Your turn—”
“—Princess.”
My throat felt dry.
“I tried to overthrow my brother. If I return, he will unleash a state of terror in Bharata and kill my best friend.”
I knew what the gate would say even before I heard the wet words on the tongues.
“That—”
“—is not all.”