I’d never seen a garden like this. Most royal grounds favored sculpted lawns and elegant arrangements. This place felt like … whimsy. Above me, small moonstone thuribles were strung through the trees, an echo of the great banyan tree in Alaka where lights lit up the leaves and frost sleeved the branches. Small silk pennants dangled wind chimes through the thousands of branches. When the wind combed its fingers through the trees, music fell through the air.
I had always loved walking in gardens, but since returning to Bharata, I couldn’t stand how the loneliness bared its teeth and announced itself at every turn. But here … here I felt a comfort rooted not in my senses, but in my soul. It was like recognizing one’s bedroom in the dark. You didn’t need sight to know it was yours.
Roses grew in colors I’d never seen—lush green and deepest blue. The fragrance moved like a song through the air, unhurried and haunting. Small tree saplings carved from mirrors were placed around the garden walkway, drinking in the light and casting its own illusion of reflections. Golden fruit sparkled beneath the branches of a tree. I peered closer, and saw that the golden fruits were ornaments. Not magic. Or maybe it was magic. What was magic anyway, but the world beheld by someone who chose to see it differently?
I walked faster. Sprouting from the dirt, the tops of swords sliced through flowering bushes. My breath caught.
If you could grow anything in your garden, what would it be?
Swords.
And there they were.
I took another step and looked up to see silver bowls hanging from the trees where the scent of syrupy gulab jamun clung to the air.
I just want to pluck it off the trees and eat it on the spot.
I remembered Vikram laughing when he heard that all I wanted to grow were sweets and swords. What had he called me—
“Beastly girl,” he said. I looked up, realizing that the words had been supplied not by my mind but by the person standing a short distance away.
My heart leapt. I knew that if I looked at him immediately, my emotions would be plain on my face. So I looked at him in parts. First, his hands. Still steepled. Not quite as scholarly as they once appeared. A scar ornamented his left hand. Then, his shoulders. Ruling suited him. He held himself differently—his shoulders broad and thrown back, an emerald jacket clinging to his lean body. Biju, the snake, hung around his neck like a necklace. Finally, his face. His Otherworldly features remained the same. Handsome, maybe even unbearably so. There was the same tilt to his mouth, as if he were on the verge of grinning. He stood, half in shade and half in sun, mischief and temptation given form.
It was hard to look at him, as if I couldn’t hold the sight all at once.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Does it look like the garden of your dreams, swords and all?”
“You did this for me?”
He nodded.
“But then why did the delegates tell me that you were—” I faltered, the words catching in my throat.
“Mostly to make you visit. I had to work on the timing too. I didn’t want you to miss the event, but I also didn’t want us stuck in an eternity of ceremonies for Bharata’s first visit to Ujijain,” he said casually. “And I thought about going to Bharata, but I couldn’t bring the garden to you and even if I did, I doubt your guards would have taken kindly to me stabbing swords all over the lawn—”
“You never said anything about the gift I sent you,” I blurted out.
“The wooden crown?” he asked, picking it up from a table beside him. “It’s my favorite toy. I have made good on my word and thrown it at people. Except the leopard seems to think it’s a chew toy and that’s—”
“Why didn’t you say anything about it?”
He stared at me, his brows pressing together. “How was I supposed to know you wanted me to say something?”
“I give a gift. You give a gift back. That’s how gift giving should work.”
“That is not how gift giving works. You give a gift. I accept it.”
“You could have said thank you.”
“You made it very clear to me when I left Alaka that you needed time and space to figure out your reign and yourself,” he said, his voice rising. “I didn’t want to clutter your thoughts by inserting myself into them and reminding you, once more, that I was over here looking out windows and sighing like a heartsick fiend who just discovered tragic poetry.”
I stared at him. “What?”
Vikram crossed his arms. “You think I string desserts and lights through trees because I have nothing better to do? I can’t believe you have the nerve to be mad at me. I was doing what you wanted me to do and giving you space!”
“I didn’t want that much space!”
“How was I supposed to know if you never told me?” he demanded, throwing his arms in the air.
“You would have known if you responded to the fact that I sent you a present.”
“It was a wooden crown.”
“So you don’t like it?”
“I never said that!” he grumbled.
My whole heart felt like a tangled ball of thread. At once, delight danced inside me because he had called himself a “heartsick fiend.”
And yet, he had tricked me.
“You manipulated me here even though you didn’t know how I felt—”
“I would never do that to you,” he cut in fiercely. “I didn’t manipulate. I encouraged. My council does want me to get married. I just thought that we’d grown so used to annoying one another that we might as well do that for the rest of my life and I would have preferred to ask you when you stood in front of me and not through a series of treaties! And I say the rest of my life, not ours, since this just confirms that you will be the death of me. And as for knowing how you felt, I knew because I asked.”
He held up Biju.
“You told me to wait until you were ready. Day and night, I asked Biju. Day and night, she revealed that you weren’t. Then, one day, I asked and she revealed that you were ready. I waited, Gauri.” His eyes cut to mine and there was such fierce longing there that I felt it in my heart. “I waited day and night for you to say something the way I thought you would. You never did. I didn’t want to wait for you anymore, so I asked Biju if you even felt the same way about me.”
Biju flickered, turning from a necklace of jewels to an actual snake. She turned her head to watch me, flicking her forked tongue.
“Watch,” he said, his voice low. “You feel the same way I do.”
Biju didn’t move. Truth.
“You were ready for us to see each other.”
Truth.
“I love you.”
Truth.
At that moment, the rest of the world slipped quietly out of sight. All I felt was the tug of something between us, a thread of a tale not yet finished. A beginning—or maybe it was an ending, or maybe there was no such thing as either—curled its fingers to me. Beckoning. I held out my arms to Biju and she slithered onto my shoulders before hanging from my neck and turning a deep shade of gold. Vikram tracked every movement with his eyes. His jaw clenched, face inscrutable.
“I believe you,” I said.
Biju held still. Truth.
Vikram waited. A small muscle worked in his jaw. He was furious with waiting just as I was. And then I said the words I had known all along, the ones that haunted me as I slept and danced in my dreams as I woke.
“I love you.”