Gauri bit her lip. Waiting. He felt the words shuffling impatiently inside him. He tried practicing how to say them while he waited, but now that she was here, the light of her—brilliant and fierce—sent the words scattering as they tripped out of his throat.
“I want time with you,” he blurted out. “I want time where we’re not looking around our shoulders and wondering what’s going to trap us.” Had he taken a step closer, or had she? Or maybe the ground had leapt out of their way. “I want time where we’re not running from or racing to anything but each other. I want time where holding you has nothing to do with trying to deceive anyone around us, celebrating a holiday or fending off the echoes of whatever horror just tried to kill us. Again. All I want is a day where there is nothing in it but you and me, and definitely desserts, but mostly—”
She grabbed him. He was already tilting toward her, and so when she grabbed a fistful of his jacket, he nearly went sprawling. Her lips met his. He lost his balance all over again. This close, she was intoxicating. All honey-spun flames and crackling lightning. He could taste the lingering in her kiss. The reluctance. And he knew, even before she broke away from him, that this was what she offered him. Not time, but a memory.
“Mostly that,” he added with a weak laugh.
She rested her forehead against his chest. “I want that too.”
Vikram waited, worrying the ends of her hair between his fingers. He wouldn’t forget this.
“This place changed me,” she said hoarsely. “I need to figure out who I am after all this. There are people waiting on me to take them out of chaos. I don’t know how long that will take. I don’t know how long it will be before I know who I am and what I need to do and … I need every part of myself for that fight.” She looked up at him. “Especially my heart.”
He knew what she would say, but hearing it didn’t make it any better. Even bruised, he admired her. It was almost more than wanting her. He took in the dark silk of her hair and winter black of her eyes, memorizing her. And then he noticed something at her neck—a small curve of light resting right beneath the sapphire pendant she always wore. He frowned.
“Is that—”
She reached for her necklace, smiling. “I don’t need it.”
A wish. After all this, she didn’t need it.
“I think sometimes the truest wish of all is not needing to make one,” she said. “Besides, I think there’s someone at home who needs it more than I do.”
“What do you plan on doing, Gauri?” he asked, grinning. “Going to stroll through the gates of Bharata with nothing but a dagger?”
She reached into a small bag and pulled out a dagger he’d never seen. It was unnaturally blue, with a shimmering finish as if it were made of water.
“A gift from Lady Kauveri,” she said. Gauri threw it to the ground, where it blossomed into a watery trident. “I think it’s capable of making quite the entrance.”
“You do like dramatic entrances.”
“I can’t help myself.”
“If you need me—”
“I’ll ask,” she said, stowing away the dagger. “Will you do the same?”
He nodded. It took every thread of his discipline to pull away from her. The gates swung open. The moment he walked past them, Alaka would vanish. The empire of Ujijain would unravel before him. A wish could not carve out the future any more than believing in destiny could make you deserve it. He knew that now, and even if Alaka had cut out one belief, it had left him with a hundred new ones, each more powerful than the last.
“Vikram,” called Gauri. He turned to her. “When I figure out … everything … I won’t make you wait.”
He laughed. “You said that last time.”
And then he stepped through the gates.
43
RUSTLING FEATHERS
AASHA
Aasha traced the unmarked skin at her throat where a blue star once stained her neck. Closing her eyes, she searched herself for the memory of venom dancing through her veins, and the blue star bloomed beneath her fingers. She could control it now, and the ability to make that choice left her heady with power. The moment she made her wish, her life cleaved in two: before and after. Strange how it was nothing more than a handful of words that changed her life.
The Lord of Treasures was the one who coaxed the wish out of her. She had been crouching on the ground, her fingers stained with Vikram’s blood, her whole body shivering with helplessness. Why couldn’t she touch him and pull the knife from his back? Why couldn’t she push Gauri out of harm’s way? Her body was a prison.
“I knew it would be harder for you,” the Lord of Treasures said from across the room.
Aasha remembered blinking through her tears and staring at the emptied room. The Otherworld was quick to lose interest. Once the humans slumped to the floor, the entertainment had ended. They had left for the courtyard grounds, goblets of happy memories sloshing onto the floor. Indifference painted the air stiff and brittle. Aasha had hated every moment that they left. She’d hated the moment where she had looked for Gauri and Vikram, only to see the outline of their bodies and not their actual selves. Had Alaka spirited away the dead so as not to ruin the palace decorations?
The Nameless laughed in a corner, blue stars shining on their throats. The knowledge that they were vishakanyas unsettled her. As the Lord of Treasures walked across the emptied floors and made his way to her, the Nameless had twirled in a circle and executed a clumsy bow in his direction.
“Another hundred years of magic are ours,” they sang. “Our vengeance lives on.”
“Yes,” said the Lord of Treasures, and Aasha thought she heard an echo of sadness in his voice. “You’ve passed on your enchantments for another hundred years. Perhaps, one day, your vengeance will give way to freedom. Or perhaps you will always dance out of time, not quite ghosts and not quite beings, shedding a little more of your humanity every time.”
“We do this for her,” the Nameless said, pointing at Aasha and sneering. “We will do it again.” They turned to Aasha. “You see, girl? We are you as you are us. We gave you and your sisters the gift of our blood and our legacy. Because of us, nothing can touch you. You should be thanking us, not mourning those things. They would not mourn you.”
Aasha said nothing, and the Nameless only laughed and disappeared.
“You let them die,” she said.
“I am not so cruel, child,” said the Lord of Treasures, lifting her chin. “I merely let their choices play out as they will.”
“What will happen to them?”
“That is not for either of us to decide,” he said. “Here. Have a wish for yourself.”