He ran, icy wind tearing at his skin. His mother’s body rose up, bent and twisting as she screamed:
“—I died for you and you became nothing but a human pet supping at the table of your betters, eager for scraps and trying to rut with an enemy princess who’d no sooner smile at you than she would snap your heart between her teeth.” She lurched after him. “I didn’t die for this. I want my life back. Speak, you dog. Show me my death was worth something or I’ll take your life to get mine back.”
Vikram ran.
His fears followed.
They walked with light steps, heavy gaits, swift and sly, pouring out of the shadows and unwinding from the cobwebs above him. They brushed his arm, tickled his throat, laughed at his bewilderment and pulled the ground beneath him. Vikram ran until he’d reached the end of the hall. His eyes scanned the end frantically. Looking for a door, a hole. Something. Anything.
He turned around to see the pupils and sages of the ashram, Gauri, his mother, his father, the council, Kubera, even himself, lowering their brows and staring down at him. Their eyes burned. Their mouths worked furiously. There was no escape from them. They took a step forward. Shadows spilled over the ground, reaching over him. A wall of inescapable fear hemmed him on all sides. This was it. He wanted to laugh. All this time, he had hoped that he was meant for more. He had fiercely believed it. And now he was staring at the truth, and the truth bore scimitars in its grin and flashed its eyes hungrily. Space squeezed out of the shadows. Vikram quieted his mind, concentrating. There was no direction to move except one:
Forward.
Through them.
He stood up. In his own mind, he stepped sideways. Shifting his thoughts. His fears were his own, weren’t they? He’d spun them out from himself. He’d forged them from every hurt and fury. Fear was a reminder that even the insubstantial could kill. But insubstantial meant it had no shape. It couldn’t be conquered or tamed or avoided. Only moved through, with force and will. Vikram crouched, his fingers splayed on the ground, his breath forming icicles in the air.
His fears bore down. Sharp. Hungry. He grinned.
I made you.
I own you.
He repeated the words like a mantra, until he found the strength to stand …
And run.
33
A FEAST OF FEAR
GAURI
Panic opened up like an ocean beneath me, but I wouldn’t step over the edge. I wouldn’t drown. This was magic. I should have known that when it was most beautiful, it was only silencing its blade. What I didn’t know was that Kubera would have us fight the second trial without each other.
I focused on the dark between each of my racing heartbeats, finding that elusive calm and not letting go. This was war. Treat it as such.
The second trial was for the second half of the key of immortality. I didn’t know whether the ruby was its own weapon, but I ran to the drawers, pulling it out anyway. Next, I circled the message on the floor. Vikram was no warrior, but he was far from weak. He should have been able to fight back. Or scream.
The fact that he’d done neither sat inside me like a cold stone.
I pushed open the door, half hoping for and half dreading a footprint or spot of blood. I found nothing. Downstairs, everything was still. Nothing but silence and stone met my eye. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run into that demon grove, hack a fruit out of its tree and tear up the foundations of Alaka if that’s what it would take to find Vikram.
I breathed deeply, stilling my heart. If I approached this like a heartsick fool, I would fail. Emotions could be sylphs lulling you to smash your head on the rocks. I closed my heart to every emotion except one: rage. Rage spiraled inside me, honing my thoughts. I bit down on my cheeks just as dawn sneered through the cut windows studding Alaka’s halls. The air felt as sharp as a rebuke that taunted one thing over and over: Time to play.
I patted the daggers at my side.
Ready when you are.
A scraping, scuffling sound came from one of the chambers on the other side of the hall. I followed the sound, keeping close to the walls. We had explored this part of Alaka the other day and found nothing but a glass garden and a hall of stories. But Alaka was a riddle of whim and horror. It could do whatever it pleased.
A dim light shone at the end of the hall, casting waxen brightness over three glass doors. Light had never seemed threatening until now. This light didn’t illuminate the other side, but it spared just enough glow to show me what covered the floor: blood.
In the middle of war, the mind and body either fused or fractured. I’d seen men fracture right before my eyes as some final horror—sometimes a delicate thing, like a wedding bangle trampled in waste, or sometimes a terrible thing, like a body at the mercy of carrion birds—broke them. I survived by forcing every emotion so far down that there were days afterward where I had to dig my nails into my palm and draw blood just to know I was there. In war, I knew only movement and stillness. Life and death.
As I walked, blood soaked my ankles, thick and warm. Rust and salt studded the air. Clenching my jaw, I walked forward. The blood didn’t give like water. It clung. Every emotion that I had shoved deep inside me bubbled furiously to the surface. I closed my eyes, imagining the victory that I had to believe was waiting for me at the end of the hall.
One step.
When I closed my eyes, I didn’t just see the throne of Bharata waiting for me or Nalini standing tall and free. I saw fingers tangled in my hair and a mouth made for grinning lowered to my skin.
Another step.
I felt a light within me that dimmed the world in comparison. That feeling pushed me forward—the hope for more, the promise of something better. Not just the quest for power, but the quest for hope.
I pressed my nose to the glass doors, trying to decipher the shapes behind them. In the middle of each door was a hollow where the ruby key would fit inside perfectly.
In the first: a table surrounded by a haze of figures. I pushed myself closer to the glass, but it was impossible to tell whether the figures at the table were even people.
In the second: a pool of murky water. I breathed in sharply. Floating across the surface, arms flung out and face down, was the figure of a man the same size and shape as Vikram.
In the third: my bedroom in Bharata. I could even smell the musk of my favorite perfume, sandalwood and sweet almond.