“Now you know the truth,” he said hoarsely. “But know this. Kauveri can banish or imprison me, but it will change nothing. You can tell her that if she cares so much for her sister she will not enjoy watching her waste away before her eyes.”
My vision refused to focus. I set my jaw, my thoughts straining. I came to Alaka to free myself from guilt, not discover more. I would tell Kauveri what I’d seen even as I bartered our way out of here. I would make amends.
“Gauri?” called Vikram. His voice sounded faraway. “Gauri!”
I tried to focus on him, to push words from my mouth. But the pain had begun to eat into my bones. Darkness edged in from the corners of my vision right before it swallowed me whole.
27
A BROKEN SONG
VIKRAM
He had to believe that everything happened for a reason. In the ashram, he had pushed himself to run as fast as he could. The pupils joked that he had tucked a fistful of lightning into his sandals to aid him. Back then, Vikram thought he’d forced himself to run as fast as he could just to prove that he could. He was wrong.
It had all been practice for this moment.
Gauri’s head bumped against his chest as he ran. She felt too light in his arms, as if the essence of her had already begun to slip and unspool. Her lips turned blue, and Vikram’s heart slammed. Not again, he thought. Demanded. Prayed. Not again.
In his hand, the blue vial of the Serpent King’s poison might as well have been a handful of blue flowers. Gauri’s pale lips reminded him of another. Vikram blinked, and felt as if he were seven years old once more, toeing the edge of a rockslide. His mother crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the rocks. For an entire day and night, he had ordered her to wake up. After that, he had hugged his knees to his chest, unable to speak because every word sharpened to a scream in his throat. He remembered the fan of his mother’s hair beneath a boulder. White, writhing insects moving over her cut arms. Her neck bent strange, face angled to the light as if she were simply enjoying the sunshine. Only this time her lips were torn and blue.
Vikram hated fear. He hated how it fed on him and stripped away his comfortable blindness. Fear forced him to hold up the contents of his heart to the light. Once, he stood over a rockslide and beheld that fear: He would be untethered. Back then, his mother’s love was a thread of unbroken light, a seam he coud follow through every moment of his life until he suddenly couldn’t, leaving him to push through the dark, make out the shapes of his future in utter blindness. Now, when he clutched an unresponsive Gauri to his chest, fear forced him to see her. Only her. It felt silly to say that he couldn’t bear to lose her. He never had her. She was not a thing to be possessed. But her entrance in his life had conjured light. And losing the light of her would plunge him into a darkness he’d never find his way out of.
Gauri was pale, damp with feverish sweat. Once the poisoned water had reached her bare skin, it had refused to leave. Heatless blue flames twisted and licked their way up her ankle, threatening to burn her alive without a single plume of smoke. Vikram’s legs burned.
As far as he knew, there were no healers in Alaka. Even if there were, this wound belonged to poisoned magic. There was only one group of people he knew that spent their lives steeped in poison. But would they help them? He considered bringing her straight to the vishakanyas’ tent, but it would be too easy for them to see her as wounded prey.
Instead, Vikram ran up the stairs to the chamber, out of breath and heart pounding. He placed Gauri on the bed. Her lips looked even bluer. Sweat matted her hair. He brushed the strands out of her eyes, pulling a blanket over her body. Then he sprinted out of the room and straight to the tent.
At high noon, the tent hummed with lazy stupor. Some patrons stumbled out of the exit, blinking at the sunshine. No guard patrolled the entrance since there was no line. Vikram took a deep breath. Maybe this was the most foolish thing he’d ever done. There was no guarantee that the poisonous courtesans wouldn’t harm him, especially since he brought himself willingly to their territory. Maybe he’d even die here and get poisoned himself, just as Gauri had. But he had to try.
He marched inside and found several vishakanyas lounging inside the tent. Two patrons sat with their heads lolled back as they stared at their desires twisting above them. One of the courtesans, a stunning woman with golden hair and dark eyes, stood up. Her eyes raked over him, lingering at his ripped pants and the nasty gash on his arm where the shattered glass fragments had cut him. Her pupils darkened in lust. Or maybe hunger. Or quite possibly both.
“I need to speak with one of your sisters immediately. Her name is Aasha. She knows me.”
Her face changed. “Aasha? What do you want with her?”
“My—” He stumbled over the right words. “—partner in the Tournament has been gravely injured. She’s going to die from poisoning if I don’t get help.”
“And you think one of us will part with our arts to care for a human?” she sneered.
More courtesans poured out from unseen parts of the tent until they had formed a small circle around him. At first they looked at him curiously, eyes widened in surprise. But slowly that surprised changed. Their pupils widened. Their lips parted. He was so anxious about getting back to Gauri that he hadn’t even considered how that fierce desire would make him that much more appealing to them. They sniffed the air, cocking their heads sharply to one side as if pondering the fastest way to scrabble at his desires.
“Poison is not such a bad thing, princeling,” she crooned. “Why don’t you let her die? You can have all the glory for yourself. Maybe you can ask for the second wish that would have belonged to your partner? Perhaps you can ask to be immune to us.” She stepped forward, hands outstretched in invitation. “We make excellent company.”
Her smile widened. Vikram had stepped back, rolling onto his toes and ready to run out of the tent, when Aasha broke through the crowd.
“Aasha!” said the golden-haired vishakanya. She smiled. “This prince was just asking for your services.”
“She’s dying,” he said hoarsely. “The poison from his waters has gotten to her. I need help.”
Aasha’s sisters murmured into her ear, tugging on her arm. He felt the moment sharpening to a knife’s point. Everything balancing on her next words. She could doom them. But he hoped instead, and his hope roared inside him.
“Why don’t you tell him that he should let this girl go and cure his sorrow in our arms?”
“Tell him the cure for the girl’s poison is farther inside the tent,” whispered another.
“He came here willingly,” hissed a third. “So we may take him. The Lord of Treasures granted no protection to the humans if they came again.”
Aasha bit her lip as she lifted her head. Vikram’s heart sank. Her face was a death sentence.
“Where is she?” asked Aasha softly.
The others stared at her. Some in confusion. Some in shock. Others in hurt. Aasha turned to the golden-haired one and some silent conversation passed between them.