“Aasha saved your life, Gauri,” said Vikram. “You can—”
“Did you save me out of guilt? Because you lied?” I asked, my voice rising. “Did you want the Kapila River hurt too? You knew that we would go down there and assume that he’d done something wrong because of what you told us. Maybe you did it out of spite. Maybe one of your sisters or even you were the Serpent King’s scorned lover. Was that it?”
Vikram stood up abruptly. “You didn’t make that decision by yourself. I believed her too. She gave us the best information she had. We had to make a choice. We did. That decision and responsibility is ours and ours alone.”
“Oh, it’s that easy, is it?”
“It is easy,” said Vikram coolly. “You would see that if you took a moment to unclutter your mind from all your self-pity.”
My cheeks grew hot. They were both standing and staring down at me. I felt caged. Small. Manipulated.
Aasha backed out of the room. “I didn’t save you out of guilt. I … I only tried to help.” She turned to Vikram. “I am glad she is safe. I must go.”
She turned and fled the room, but not before I saw tears forming at the corners of her eyes and her limping gait. Every fight in me deflated. What was wrong with me?
“Are you satisfied?” shouted Vikram. “We were both worried about you. We both waited by your side. Aasha worked all day to try to get the poison out of your veins or manipulate it so that it wouldn’t kill you. People care about you. You could have been grateful. Instead you spent the first moments of consciousness attacking everyone around you. Is this what you meant by surviving? You just blame and slash at everything around you because you can’t control yourself?”
I stood up. The pain in my leg flared and dimmed. Pain or not, I owed Aasha my life. And I repaid her with cruel words. I had owed Nalini my life too and repaid her the same way: letting cold words chase her shadow into the night. My intentions might have been rooted in good, but they always grew thorns in the end.
“We deserved answers.”
“What answer? She heard something. She told us. We acted on it, justifiably so, because we have no experience with Serpent Kings or their consorts who also happen to be actual rivers! Anyone would have done the same. You’re just looking for someone to blame.”
His words cut me. “Stop talking to me as if you could even understand anything I’ve gone through.”
“Do you think you’re the only person suffering?” he demanded. “I know you. I … I saw you in the Undead Grotto. In Bharata, you kept people alive even if it killed you a little every day. You made choices no one should have to make. That is the Gauri I respect.” I flinched. “But this person? Now you’re just looking for an escape.”
The words hung between us. I wanted to yank them out of the air and retreat behind them, but I couldn’t. Those words burrowed into my thoughts, bringing out a past I never wanted to revisit. In Bharata, surviving in Skanda’s court meant knowing all the players and all the pieces and all the information. All that time, I only thought how those pieces affected me. I sank onto the bed, staring at the slightly mussed cushions where Aasha had kept her vigil. Vikram scrubbed a hand through his hair. He sat down at the edge of the bed, his spine straight and chin high. He didn’t reach for me.
“Surviving isn’t just about cutting out your heart and burning every feeling into ash,” he said. “Sometimes it means taking whatever is thrown at you, beautiful or grotesque, poisonous or blissful, and carving out your life with the pieces you’re given.”
“Stop being wise.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then stop demanding wisdom.”
Shame spread through me. I thought back to that last night in Bharata. I would never forget Nalini’s tear-streaked face or the words I hurled at her. I never apologized when I had the chance. I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Leaving Vikram, I slipped out to the baths. As I dressed, I brushed my fingers against the strange blue star on my skin. It was small, almost smudged around the edges. Nothing at all like the ornate stamps branding the vishakanyas’ throats. When I left the baths, Vikram was turning the vial of the Serpent King’s venom in his hands.
“Tomorrow is Jhulan Purnima.”
“What? That fast?”
He grimaced. “We lost time in the Serpent King’s palace.”
“Wonderful. Not even a day of rest before the next trial.”
“It could be worse.”
“Always optimistic,” I said with a small shake of my head.
“Hope shapes the world.”
“Or stains it so you don’t know what it really looks like.”
“Or that,” he allowed.
“Rest,” I said, when I saw him stare longingly at the bed. “I’ll come back later tonight.”
*
Outside, the courtyard had transformed. Delicate silver bells were strung through the trees. Snow dusted the air, and everything was silver and iridescent, pearl white or the barest touch of blush. Swings with braided lotuses for ropes hung from the trees, an homage to the sacred lovers who had spent so many afternoons with their heads bent as they swung side by side, flute music wreathing their limbs and their eyes brimming with the sight of each other’s faces. The swings listed gently in the windless air, an invitation to sit and talk and fall in love.
I never wanted to fall in love. To me, love looked like pale light. Not lustrous enough to illuminate the world or dazzle one’s eyes, but bright enough to fool you into thinking it might. In the harem, some of my mothers told me love was a decadent ambrosia, something to be sipped and savored. Others told me it was an open wound. One of the mothers—a slip of a woman who wouldn’t survive her first pregnancy—had pulled me aside and told me something I never forgot: “Love is like Death without the guarantee of its arrival. Love may not come for you, but when it does it will be just as swift and ruthless as Death and just as blind to your protestations. And just as Death will end one life and leave you with another, so will Love.”
Her words terrified me. I would never feel that way about someone. I never wanted to.
Not too far from the vishakanyas’ tent, I found Aasha sitting by a stream. She looked up when she saw me, any expression in her face instantly shuttering.
“May I sit with you?”
She nodded.
“Listen … I got lost in my head back there,” I said. “And somewhere in between being horribly ungrateful and just plain horrible, I never thanked you. I owe you an apology. You have no reason to accept it, but I hope you will.”
Aasha nodded. “I understand. And I forgive you.”
My eyebrows shot up. “That’s it? I was expecting you’d ask me to grovel or chase me away with a touch.” I laughed. “You’re a far better person than I am.”
“Am I?” she asked. “A person, I mean? I started out as one. I started out like you.”
Her question took me by surprise.