Instinct guided me to the second door and to the figure that had to be Vikram, but I hesitated. Instinct had been no friend of mine once magic entered my life. I thought of Vikram in the Crossroads, pleading with me to have a little more faith, to throw out the human reaction. The blood-scrawled words drifted to me tauntingly: I could make a meal of this desire. Couldn’t you?
Meal. I turned to the first door, with the table. One part of me screamed that it felt too easy. And the other part screamed: Who cares? I stood there, caught between my past self and my present. I wanted to be strong, but showing strength wasn’t always about physical valor or even cunning. True strength sometimes demanded unstitching everything you knew. I unstitched myself. I turned myself blind to what I expected, and what I would have done had I never met Vikram or been forced to reckon with magic. I turned my back on the image of him floating facedown in the pool, ignoring how cowardice chased me.
I placed the ruby key into the door showing the dining table, and held my breath as the door absorbed the key and swung open. I stepped inside. The door swung shut behind me, plunging me into a darkness so thick I could feel it pressing against me. Had I chosen right?
Silently, I removed my daggers. Nothing charged at me. Nothing moved. In front of me, twelve starved and naked bodies hunched over a dining table. Each being hid its head beneath a piece of red cloth. The cloths were identical in color: crimson. Crimson as bloodlust in someone’s soul, lustrous and visceral. This shade of red did not exist in the human world.
I took a step closer, but none of the diners moved. Their heads were bent over the table, hands flat against their thighs. They gave away nothing. Not even a tremor. No food appeared on the silver table, and yet I could hear and smell a feast.
A thirteenth diner appeared at the end of the table. He wore no silk to obscure his face. My heart dropped.
“Vikram?” I called softly.
But he didn’t answer. He was staring straight ahead. A lace of frost spidered over his shoulder, as if he were freezing before my eyes. His chest didn’t move. Was he even breathing?
I stepped forward, but a wall of air forced me back. My heart began to pound. Another blood-scrawled message seeped out of the ground like a wound:
We can eat first.
Or you can.
The message distorted and pooled across the floor. My mind started racing. Eat first? I stepped back out of the reach of the blood. Whatever invisible fence had blocked me from getting to Vikram shimmered into visibility: a thick wall of red. Nausea gripped my stomach. The wall repulsed me to the core. It looked … soft. The way rot corrupts a body and turns it into a stew of entrails. Or the way fruit left out too long puckers and collapses in upon itself. The blood on the floor reached my skin. I felt it. Not the texture, but the soul of it.
A vision flashed behind my eyes: bees buzzing near my ear. I swatted at it. I hated bees. I’d been stung once when I was seven and used to have nightmares of a whole hive chasing me deep into the forest where I’d never be able to find my way home. I jumped, moving away from the reach of blood. It seeped, finding my skin once more. This time I felt that I was standing over a tall cliff. A gray sea churned hungrily below me. Once more, I moved away from the blood.
I raised my dagger and plunged it into that soft wall. The wall burst, sending wet chunks of red all over me. I tried to reach through the gap and claw my way out, but the hole closed immediately. I felt a wet piece of the wall on my mouth. Disgusted, I dragged my hand across my face, but the nausea was so overwhelming, I gagged and some of that wall found its way past my teeth. The taste was bitter and metallic. I was clutching my stomach when I noticed something … a bit of the wall opened. And stayed open.
We can eat first.
Or you can.
Once more, the blood crept to my skin. I let it. This time I was prepared for the wave of fear that rushed over me … deeper this time. I saw myself riding triumphantly back to Bharata only to discover Nalini’s funeral ceremony just past the gates. I opened my eyes, finally understanding the trial.
To get to the other side, I had to eat my fears.
Fear was no stranger to me. All my life, fear had been the hand on my back, steering me. Fear had cushioned my mind in wartime, sharpening my senses and keeping me a breath away from death. I narrowed my eyes, grabbing a fistful of the wall. It gave way with a sickening, unclasping sound. I closed my eyes. Chewed. Swallowed.
I wandered through the forest and found Maya’s body. All those stories I had imagined for her, endings dancing out of sight where she wore a crown of stars and forgot how to grieve, shattered.
Another bite.
I fell in love with Vikram only to discover that love was a far better control than fear. His love and control would break me until I could not recognize myself.
The hole in the wall widened. Nearly wide enough to step through. My hands shook.
While I’d been eating fear, it had tasted me too. I felt like a bone licked clean. My memory lost focus.… Why was I raising my hand to this wall of flesh? What was so important on the other side? I didn’t want to fight anymore. I wanted to curl around the cold, close my eyes. Ice knitted over my body. The blood pooled around me. Inescapable. Wave after wave of tiny fears assaulted me: spiders in my throat, holes opening up in the ground, doors that locked me inside where no one would hear me scream.
A final bite.
I bit down. Hard.
I would die here. And all of this—the magic and adventure, the terror and the hope—would be for nothing. I would be forgotten. My name would turn to ash in people’s mouths. My efforts would not scratch a line into history. I would die here, not even remembering what I was chasing after anymore.
The wall opened.
I used to think fear either numbed or nudged. Now I knew fear did neither. Fear was a key that fit every person’s hollow spaces—those things that kept us cold at night and that place where we retreated when no one was looking—and all it could do was unlock what was already there. Fear unlocked flames within me. I stepped through the wall and fear fell from my skin. One by one, the diners’ heads were all facing me. Had they been facing my way before? Or somewhere else? I couldn’t remember.
At the other side of the table, Vikram blinked. But still he said nothing. No warning sparked his eyes. No expression passed over his face. Behind him, a ruby glistened in the dim light. The final half of the key. If I went around the table, one of the six diners might reach out. Or all six. Jumping straight across was the least distance and maybe Vikram would snap out of whatever frozen enchantment had gripped him and be able to fight.
I had swung my legs onto the table, preparing to jump, when Vikram’s head jolted back. His eyes widened in horror:
“No!”