A number of small candles bloomed in front of us, winding their way through the graceful crowd. A guide from Kubera. No one turned to witness the small flames. But perhaps that was because each person was too distracted. We had to push our way through clasped hands, gripped waists, knots of lovers with lips buried into the hollows of necks and fingers skimming bare arms.
Walking on hot flames and polished knifepoints would have been far less uncomfortable than battling our way through enamored limbs. I knocked aside a couple of errant arms and tried to throw daggers from my eyes when a particularly amorous couple blocked a doorway.
“Honestly,” I muttered.
Before long, we stood before the great double doors of a grand hall. Vikram moved to open the door. I steadied his hand. Last night we had talked about what to do with the Serpent King’s vial. Assuming we saw Kubera or Kauveri today, did we hide that we had the venom or tell them immediately in the hopes of bargaining a second exit? We decided not to say anything. No one could begin to guess how the minds of the Otherworldly rulers worked. What if they made the second task that much harder once they found out we had the venom?
“Remember not to say anything,” I murmured.
“I don’t have a death wish.”
We pushed open the doors and found a sparsely polished hall of gray stone. Nothing at all like the usual ornate embellishments. Kubera and Kauveri sat on opposite sides of a great swing that fell from the ceiling. Kubera wore a tailored sherwani of frosted blue and Kauveri wore a sari made of a frozen river where parchment-thin sheaves of ice floated across her garb. Around them, fragrant garlands of moon-bright lotuses, silk birds and shimmering ribbons arrayed the swing.
“Ah, you are alive!” said Kubera warmly. He patted his stomach.
Kauveri eyed us shrewdly.
Her sister’s tearstained face caught hold of my thoughts. Did Kauveri know what we were hiding? What we knew? I looked closely at her. A river goddess had no flaws. At least nothing discernible to the mortal eye. Yet something felt muted about her, the kind of restrained energy of someone who was exhausted.
Beside me, Vikram forced a smile and bowed. “We are full of surprises, Lord Kubera.”
Kubera grinned and bounced a little in his throne. “You certainly astounded me. I dearly wish to know where you disappeared to for a week! A new land, perhaps? Or even—”
Kauveri raised her hand. “Today is not for trials.”
“But tomorrow is!” laughed Kubera.
“My lord, why did you ask to see us?”
“Curiosity, mostly. But also to remind you that the second trial starts tomorrow. You retrieved half the key to immortality after fighting through poisonous desires. What makes us outlast everything? The eternal is not solely a fight through desire. It is a fight through fear. I have never known fear, but I imagine it is like having no tongue to taste victory and filling your stomach with snow.” Kubera shrugged, placed his chin in his hand and looked at us with an expression of pure boredom. “But perhaps the desire to see something through is half the battle.”
I did not like how any of that sounded. A fight through fear? What did he think battling through a horde of poisonous courtesans was? A stroll through a tent? Vikram glared at me, and I tried to school my expression into a blank mask.
“Thank you,” I said, bowing slightly.
Kauveri leaned forward, her eyes locking on to us. “Enjoy yourselves, dear champions. Alaka is yours to roam, yours to conquer. Sink your teeth into our gold. Lay waste to our palace. Perhaps find someone to share your shadow with by the end of the night because then the world is yours for the taking.”
A mist rose out of the ground, washing over the pair. When the mist cleared moments later, they were gone. We were alone. Kauveri’s last words rang starkly through my thoughts: This was a day for lovers and last pleasures before fear threatened to steal away everything. I clenched my jaw. The festival prodded at every thought I had tried to push far away from me. I was balancing on an edge: caught by what I shouldn’t want and what I wanted anyway.
At the door, I turned around to find Vikram standing far closer to me than I imagined. Tall and lean, sly brown eyes shot through with gold. He did something to me.
I know you … I saw you.
In Bharata, I guarded myself. Weakness was a privilege. It divided you, snipped out your secrets and gave every sliver of power over you. I didn’t have parts to spare. Bharata called me their Jewel, and maybe I was like one. Not sparkling or precious. But a cold thing wearing a hundred faces. Like facets on a gem. One for every person.
But Vikram had seen through every facet, holding me against the light as if I truly were translucent, and instead of making me feel as if I had been looked through and found wanting, I felt … seen. My eyes dropped to his hand. Even through the fugue of that poisonous sleep, I remembered his touch. Reverent and dream-soft. I remembered how he looked at me when I woke up, the way you behold the sacred—not with your eyes demure and half lidded, but with wide-open awe, gratitude and even a touch of greed because one sight will never be enough.
It was unburdening and freeing. And distracting. I only had to think of Arjun’s betrayal and Nalini’s imprisonment to remind myself why I was here. And why I wasn’t.
“I plan on searching through Alaka’s gardens and rooms,” I said. “Maybe I’ll find something about how to use the half-key that we have.”
“I’ll do the same,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“I’d prefer to search alone.”
His expression turned a shade colder. “I never said anything about wanting to join you.”
Oh, I thought, feeling irrationally stung.
“In the evening, perhaps we can report back on what we’ve found. Unless, of course, you’re otherwise occupied with the festivities.”
Vikram’s eyes narrowed. “The same goes for you. If I don’t see you, I’ll assume you are otherwise … occupied.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Enjoy your night.”
He smirked. “I will.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon not analyzing what “I will” meant while I walked through Alaka’s palace. If there was a secret arena or space where the next trial would take place, I had no luck finding it. Instead, everywhere I looked, love and companionship stared back at me. Everything had softened. A fine layer of frost iced the banyan tree. Frozen rain droplets clung to its limbs, diamond-bright and glistening. Tiny swings and wind chimes hung from its branches, so that the world was a thing of ice and music. A ghostly tent drifted across the grounds, shedding strange objects—an hourglass filled with pearls that drifted backward, crystal phials that danced over themselves and spilled music, miniature swans the size of thumbnails and horses made of enchanted rose petals that galloped through the trees.