He could run very fast.
Time bore down on him. The yaksha stepped closer to Gauri. Running fast wouldn’t make a difference if he couldn’t distract the yaksha. He needed something. Something that would purchase a moment’s distraction. Vikram bent down, sifting through the ash for a rock or a stick, and his hands hit the bark of the bone white tree. The tree quaked. With a lush sigh, the bark unfolded, splitting down the middle to reveal a perfectly golden apple at the center. Vikram didn’t think twice. He reached in, grabbed the fruit, aimed it straight at the yaksha and threw. The fruit sailed through the air, burnished golden rind shining in the dim evening light. His aim, for once, was true. But the yaksha must have detected it. He stepped back, and the apple sailed through the bark as if the tree were made of water.
Not exactly what he expected, but he’d learned to accept stranger things. He didn’t waste a moment. Vikram charged forward. Wind tore at his jacket. The ground blurred. Pale light spangled the mirror trees, but the light was terse and distant, like lightning pulsing behind a veil of clouds. Whatever roots had sewed the yaksha to the ground lifted in his desperation to move. But Vikram was faster. He slammed into him. The yaksha tipped sideways, arms flung back. Quartz-bright cobwebs spun out from his fingers, seeking purchase. Neck arched and eyes wide, the yaksha slipped sideways, crumpling to the ground. Vikram braced himself for a fall, but Gauri grabbed the collar of his jacket and righted him. He panted, his heart still thundering in his chest as the yaksha pushed himself onto his elbows and glared.
“Take her and be damned,” he spat.
Gauri spun her wooden dagger between her fingers before taking aim at the yaksha. Vikram stepped out of her way.
“Take this and be damned,” she said, releasing it. The dagger found its mark and promptly thwacked the yaksha on the head. He disappeared on the spot.
Gauri faced him. Her hair had come undone around her face. Somehow her eyes looked even blacker than normal, as if they’d captured the night sky in their gaze. He felt out of breath. But not from his sprint. Fire burned just beneath his skin. He cursed. What happened to always having a way with words? Words turned to ash in his mouth.
“Did you find anything useful—” he had started to say when she spoke over him:
“I was thinking about Kubera’s warning. About desire. And how it’s dangerous.”
He stopped short.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It is.” And then because he had to, because every splinter of him screamed that this moment could grow wings if his soul steered him true, he said, “To me, there is nothing more dangerous in this palace than you.”
Now she looked at him. She didn’t soften. Or smile. If anything, she had become a little of the ground on which they stood. Cold and lovely. But wonder poured out of her eyes. Wonder and something like … relief. And if he thought there was fire under his skin earlier, it was nothing compared to now. Now he had swallowed the sun. Now the world had stopped lurching forward and begun an impossible dance.
“I thought you were going to stay away from me,” she said.
He looked at her, this princess who seemed so dangerously sharp that he might cut himself just brushing against her shadow.
“I don’t know how.”
He waited. He thought he could trace the space between them. It was delicate. Too delicate. A thing of silk and snow and filigreed gold. And nothing was real except her, and the exquisite brightness of her eyes, and the corner of her lips sweeping into a smile.
“Then don’t.”
31
A MEAL OF DESIRE
GAURI
Vikram’s fingers laced through mine, and my skin flared at the contact. Within moments, we were out of the orchards. In the courtyard, the revels gathered us into the music. Enchantment abraded the dusk until there was only magic left to draw into our lungs. Not air. The music moved us to dance, and sent us spinning around one another as if our gazes were hooks and hinges, and our very dreams hung off of them. When the music relinquished us, we fell against one another. His gaze turned into a question, and mine formed an answer. Our shadows splayed onto the ground before us, guiding us through the revels and the lengthening dark, up the staircase and straight to our room.
I’d like to think I have a number of virtues. But patience has never been one of them. The moment the door closed, I caught his lips against mine. Swift and urgent. Our hands moved hungrily across each other. His fingers dug into my waist, pulling my hips to his.
At once, time was too fast and too slow and distance felt like an illusion we were trying to shatter. I pushed him against the door, tearing off his jacket. Vikram stood there, a tilt to his head as he let himself be appraised. The corded lines of his muscles caught the light, and my eyes roved from his broad shoulders down the lean, carved plane of his torso. I kissed him again. Slowly. As if the trial of tomorrow were an eternity away. We traded heartbeats until we kissed to one cadence, and I didn’t know where we stopped and started. This was the reminder I needed, the hope that made me reject the yaksha’s offer even as the memory of demon fruit sang through my veins. I didn’t want to cut out my heart. I wanted to give it. Freely and without feeling as if it would be turned into a weapon against me. I wanted freedom to thaw me, to let it break the walls Skanda’s rule had forced me to build. I wanted the privilege of weakness.
Vikram cupped the back of my neck, deepening our kiss. And I found … wonder. A new enchantment. This magic wasn’t a flashy, many-splendored illusion. It was the kind of wonder discovered in the space between heartbeats and realized in the silk of fingers threading through hair. It was a magic coaxed and found, a tiny world no one could reach but us, and I wanted to revel in it for as long as I could. I kissed him on his cheeks, his lips, the underside of his chin. When I nipped at his chin, he groaned and I kissed that away too.
“Gauri,” he said, his voice hoarse and wanting.
It was my name on his lips that stopped me. He spoke my name like a plea or a prayer, something to end or begin a life. Maybe he sensed my hesitation, because he lifted my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles and the inside of my wrist. Whatever heat had twisted through my veins tightened to a knot in my belly.
If we lived through tomorrow … if we won the Tournament … what did this mean? If I took away everything we were, it looked like a girl and a boy who had found something and wanted to see what it would grow into with more time. But I couldn’t take away who I was or who he was. He was the Prince of Ujijain. One day, he would be the Emperor. And if we survived, those same hands wrapped tightly around my body would one day wield a great deal of power. Maybe they’d one day want power over me.
I stepped back. Vikram dropped his hands.
“Is something wrong?”
Yes. This. Us.