“This is quite possibly the most exciting meeting I’ve ever had. Do continue.”
My shoulders dropped. “What?”
“You have demands, I imagine. Let’s hear them. I entered the room resigned, and now I stand intrigued.”
“You’re sitting.”
Brilliant observation, Gauri.
He glanced down. “Too true. My intrigue is entirely supine. But I’d hate to make a liar of you. May I stand?”
I lowered the broken chair leg to his throat. “Go ahead. But if you try to scream, I promise it won’t even leave your throat.”
He stood. To his credit, he didn’t blink or tremble. Maybe he was brave. Or criminally stupid. He angled his body to the light and I studied his features. He couldn’t be much older than me. Dark hair fell over his brow. Golden brown eyes latched on to mine. He was handsome in a way that made me want to kick him on principle. And then he tilted his head. Fox-like. There was something of the trickster in his expression—wry mouth, pensive eyes.
“Thank you, Princess.” He bowed gingerly, mindful of the chair leg. “Obviously you want something or you would have killed me on the spot. Or perhaps you couldn’t. I heard rumors that you’re a rather accomplished soldier, but between you and me, we both know that the reputations of royals are largely falsehoods.”
Annoyance prickled across my skin. My life was filled with princes like him. Sometimes I’d even dispatched their marriage proposals with a single glare. I forgot how long it had been since I’d had a formal meeting. When they kept me prisoner, all I could do was shout my demands—water, clean linens, more food—and now I’d practically forgotten this dance of veiled threats and gilded words.
“I want to get out of Ujijain,” I blurted.
Subtle.
He should have balked and flatly refused. Instead, he lifted one eyebrow as if to say: Is that all?
“How uninspired. You were supposed to be the heir to the throne of Bharata,” he mused, “and now you have nothing. Yet all you ask from me is safe passage? Don’t you want more?”
Of course I wanted more. I wanted my throne and my people’s safety. I wanted freedom from Skanda.
“They sent me here to tell you that you will be executed,” he said quietly.
I wasn’t shocked. Skanda had told me as much when he caught me: “Think of it this way, sister. Your death might even be useful. We may have a new ally if they do as I demand.” And then they had me gagged, bound, tossed into the back of a chariot and dumped over the border, where an Ujijain search party found me at dawn.
The Prince was staring at me strangely. No man had looked at me that way. Men had looked at me in admiration, in fear, in lust. They’d looked at me with disbelief at who I was. He looked at me with disbelief at who I could be.
“I want you—” he started.
I glowered, pressing the chair leg into his neck. “I would die before I let you touch me.”
“What an improvement. First it was me who would die. Now it is you who offers to die before touching me,” he said. “Another man might be insulted. Now, if you would allow me to finish—”
I glared.
“—I will give you your freedom and more in exchange for your aid as partner … in a game.”
Molten longing lit up his gaze. I could see straight down to the scrabbling, hungry wish in his eyes. It ignited me. Because I saw it in myself.
“What kind of game?”
He hesitated. He turned something in his fingers, a rather large ruby that shone with its own light.
“A magical game.” He tossed the ruby into the air and I caught it.
“What is it?”
“Proof. Of magic. If you’re convinced by it, then I hope you will join me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Like you, I have everything to gain and nothing left to lose.”
Madman.
This was foolish. I had half a mind to knock him over the head with the chair leg and escape while I could. The ruby in my palm quivered, casting a scarlet light that swallowed my gaze. It was as if someone had hooked a thread through my spine and pulled up. I was out of myself. Out of this room. Out of, it seemed, time itself.
The ruby held a promise. I saw myself on the throne, Nalini standing beside me with her head held high. I saw a world without my brother and traitorous Arjun. This magic felt like I had glanced at my destiny sideways, as if I had never seen it for what it was and now the hope of what I wanted most loomed bright and lurid in the corners of my heart. I had glimpsed enough of magic when Maya disappeared to know what it should feel like—a whisper and a roar, a wonder fusing into the bones, forcing you to believe that you could never live without it. When the light released me, I felt boneless with want.
Prince Vikram plucked the ruby from my hand, eyeing me wordlessly. I dropped the chair leg. My breath was thin and cold, rattling in my chest. I had believed in magic ever since I saw the impossible: my sister returning from the graveyard of Bharata’s memories and disappearing into the Chakara Forest. But recognizing enchantment and feeling it surge within me was different. The ruby felt like a summoning. A seam twisting open inside my heart, taunting me with all that could happen if I only dared to seize it. And yet … terror cut through those imaginings. That … that thing had reached into my heart and held up my hopes to the light as if they were nothing more than pieces of colored glass.
Ever since I lost Maya in the forest, I hated magic. It swallowed people whole the way it swallowed my sister. Instead of leaving me a body to mourn, the Otherworld had left me with a chest full of caution and a string of nightmares.
Even if enchantment could help me, I wanted nothing to do with it. I would forge my own victory. No magic necessary.
“Well?” asked the Prince.
I eyed the large ruby. I could sell it for gold to buy an entire crew of mercenaries. And if I killed the heir of Ujijain, our two countries would enter enough turmoil that I could slip into Bharata unnoticed, free Nalini and leverage the chaos. Skanda wouldn’t know the first thing about warfare. Only I would be able to keep them safe. But first I had to get out, which meant that I needed this fool of a prince to free me under whatever pretense was necessary.
“Tell me about this game.”
He smirked, thinking he had won.
“It’s called the Tournament of Wishes. The winners get a wish. Isn’t that more tempting than just freedom from Ujijain? If I freed you, you’d have as much luck as a beggar during a famine. But imagine what you could do with a wish? You could have your throne back, Princess. I am guessing you lost it since your own people want you dead.”
My throat felt dry. A wish. In that second, I felt my sister’s hand reach through time to grasp my fingers. Her storytelling voice, like dusk and honey, poured through my thoughts: