“I haven’t gotten this far into existence on stupidity.”
He nodded and flashed a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t start now.”
I smirked, waved him off and stalked back in the direction of the groves. I had no intention of going to the pool, but I wanted to think alone, far away from where he could distract me. I couldn’t shake the sound of my name on his lips. It slinked through my thoughts, spreading roots and thorns. Even though all he said was my name, a question had gathered form in his voice. As if … as if he was asking whether I would let him worry about me, and let him rest his fingers at the nape of my neck, and let him memorize my unimportant secrets that would never bring kingdoms to their knees but still pinned my soul in place. Away from him, I knew the right answer: No.
Our situation was strange. We’d been thrown together in a competition for something we both desperately wanted. Needed. If we didn’t win, what home would have us? I said I wanted to return to Bharata, but the Bharata I wanted—one with Nalini safe and my freedom secured—didn’t exist without a victory. There was no future without victory. If we didn’t win, we would be like ghosts: our forms held together by the sheer force of our unfulfilled wants, with nothing left of our lives but what had been and what could never be. In the face of that fear, maybe the mind couldn’t help but scrape together feelings toward the only person we had a connection to. That was all it was. A consequence of survival.
I repeated this to myself as I marched toward the grove of magical trees. Every time I heard a sound behind me, I would turn, expecting Vikram. After the first couple of times, I realized I wasn’t expecting him. I was looking for him. I shook my head and concentrated on the riddle.
To one it is invisible
Yet be careful if you lose much
To some it is everything
A history to clutch
Though it is life, it cannot buy time Speak wrong, and I will take it as mine My first guess was memory. But memory wasn’t life. And my second thought was breath. But breath has nothing to do with history. I was so deep in my thoughts, turning the riddle over and pushing out the memory of Vikram’s smile, that I almost didn’t see the three people standing before me: The Nameless.
24
A PLANTED HEART
GAURI
“You should not be here,” they said.
I dug my heels into the ground. “Why not? Lord Kubera has not forbidden the contestants from entering this part of Alaka.”
“We are honoring our lost sister,” said the first, turning her gaze on me. She may have looked young—lovely, even—but her gaze held that flat heaviness of someone whose spirit was ancient. As one, the Nameless reached for the blue ribbons around their throats. Maya’s necklace pressed against my skin. I tried to honor her, to live up to the stories she told me. But I’d failed.
“I’m not preventing you from honoring her. I was just walking around the groves.”
“This grove is for her. Because of her. Because of us. Choose another.”
I looked behind them to the bone white trees. When we walked past the grove earlier, I had dug my nails into my palm, fighting the urge to wander through this haunted grove. Something about it called to me. But what? No leaves sprouted from their ivory branches and no fruit graced their boughs. No earth covered the small grove; it was as if someone had shoved slivers of bone into ashes and called them trees, and the bones had forgotten how to be anything else.
“Queen Tara never liked visitors to her orchards anyway.”
“Queen Tara?” I repeated incredulously. I knew that name. She was the missing queen of the vanaras, the one who had planted demon fruit and been cursed as a result.
“This is her grove.”
Without warning, hunger coursed through my veins. I might not know what the tree of demon fruit looked like. But my blood recognized this place. The Nameless stepped backward, and one broke from the trio to place her hand against the bone white tree and rest her forehead to its bark.
“Planted of a sister’s heart, unwillingly given,” said the first.
“Fixed to the ground of a beloved’s bone, unwillingly given,” said the second.
“Watered by tears, unwillingly given,” said the third.
Their words chilled me.
“And what of the demon fruit?” I asked.
The first, who had not removed her hand from the bark, stroked the tree. “The fruit lies in the heart of the tree. But it can only be taken by a man who has given away his heart. None else can take the fruit. And yet no man may eat of it.”
“Why would you ever honor your sister’s memory in a place like this?”
The Nameless smiled. “It is her heart that the Queen took. This is our sister’s legacy. Our vengeance. This is the last Tournament. When we win, our sister will be honored forever.”
*
I got away from them as fast as I could. I muttered something vaguely polite right before running to Vikram. I didn’t care that it wasn’t even nightfall yet. The words of the Nameless rang through my thoughts. My tongue felt thick and my mouth turned dry. I had eaten that fruit. I had eaten something grown from bones, heart and tears. Worse … I craved it. That bite of power. Of invincibility. Maybe the demon fruit brought a curse with it, but to me it felt like safety.
Vikram hadn’t moved from the spot where I’d left him. Only now, his face was pale. And his hair was tousled, as if he had tugged at the strands one time too many.
“I figured out the riddle,” he said. “The answer is blood.”
It made sense. You could not see your own blood. If you lost too much, you died. Some people swore by their lineage. And blood was life, although having more of it wouldn’t change the time of your death.
“I think he wants us to place some of our blood in the pool before he will let us enter.”
My fingers trembled from my meeting with the Nameless. I clasped them together. I didn’t want to die here. I didn’t want to become like them, wandering through this palace and playing a game over and over, hoping for a different outcome. But I needed strength if I was going to win.
“I’ll meet you by the pool at first light,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
“To steal sleep and hope I don’t remember the nightmares.”
“On the night before possible death with all the food and festivities and dancing all around us, you want to go to sleep?”
“Celebrating as if it’s your last night on earth generally makes for reckless mistakes the next day,” I said, folding my arms.
“I solved the riddle. I demand a reward.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you want?”
Vikram nodded to the revels taking place beneath the banyan tree. The music already made me feel heady with the frenzied drums and the musicians’ lilting song of yearning and claiming. He stepped closer, to the point where I had to look up to meet his eyes. A vulpine grin crept onto his face. In that moment, he looked like mischief and midnight, like a temptation that always slipped away too fast and left you at once relieved and disappointed.
“I want one dance with you.”