In the Tapestry, I saw a smile fashioned for me alone. A jewel that is not yours. I saw a man standing in a field, someone’s arms thrown around his neck as if she had created a hidden world just for them. A door you will never open. I saw two people walking with their fingers threaded together, and I felt transfixed by the impossible wonder of a bond so powerful that it was a living thing. A soul you can never claim.
I slammed down my fist. The sound trembled throughout the room, and small fissures netted their way down my onyx throne.
“Enough,” I said harshly.
I abandoned the Tapestry and the door slammed shut. My head throbbed. I knew what I had to do. Stepping into the hall, a familiar door winked in the half-light. Gupta called it my Inspiration Room, which sounded vapid, but I suspected he did this on purpose. The room was so much more. It was my thoughts poured into shape. The moment I stepped inside, a burden lifted from me. Here, I was not the Dharma Raja. Here, I was no destroyer.
Here, I was a creator.
The onyx floor expanded, and the shelves—littered with my old thoughts—bent forward as if in polite acknowledgement. Around me, I saw decisions that had weighed heavily in the past: all conquered, all organized.
In the corner of the room, a pair of heavy wings caught the light. Each feather was a braided bolt of lightning. On another shelf, a ship with an ever-changing prow crafted from an eclipse’s halo glowed. There were jars of materials floating in the air: the velvet-silent tread of panther paws on the forest floor, buttons of lies and garlands of nightmare teeth.
Even looking at them gave me peace. My creations served as reminders that my thoughts could be conquered and tamed. It was a reminder that even with all that I destroyed, I could create too. Even if no one was there to witness it.
I took a deep breath and tasted the crackling of magic on my tongue. I flexed my fingers, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the darkness.
Darkness has a sound if you know how to listen. Around me, darkness sounded like the roaring space between thoughts and the chaos of possibility. Nothing was born of light. Everything was born of shadows. I caught a ribbon of lustrous shadow notes and snatched it from the air. I twisted the dark in my hands, and thought of the Tapestry and the Shadow Wife’s curse. When I opened my eyes, I faced what my thoughts and energy had created: A lustrous horse with milk-pearl eyes. It drew its gums back over its teeth and in the unshaped dark of its mouth, a city glinted—steel spires and iron trees, paved walkways of jasper and agate, squares of amber windows glittering in the makeshift night. A hidden world. The horse snorted, nipping at the charcoal shoulder of my sherwani jacket. The longer I stared, the more I saw it for what it could be. What made a thing a horse? The content or the shape? Was it somehow … both? And maybe that wasn’t so impossible. Maybe I could have a marriage and not a marriage. I could have a bond that looked like marriage, but have none of the inner workings that made its essential marriage-ness. My queen could have everything she wanted. Except my heart. I didn’t need the Tapestry before me to imagine what that future would look like: perfect equality, and perfect balance, with none of the intimacy. None of the risk. I would escape the Shadow Wife’s curse, and still keep Naraka whole.
I smiled to myself before realizing that a critical part was missing from my plan: I needed a queen.
*
Gupta was hanging upside down in his favorite hallway, a bone-white corridor lined ceiling to floor with crackling tomes, glowing branches, and sweet-smelling parchments. He swung back and forth a little when he saw me.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, glaring. “Sometimes I need a new perspective when I’m writing.”
“I was not going to comment. I recognize a hopeless case when I see one.”
Gupta frowned at me upside down. “What do you want?”
“A bride.”
“And I want dinner.”
“I’m serious.” He fell to the floor. I kicked at his foot. “Shocked?”
“Floored,” said Gupta, and then he cackled at his own joke.
“This is no time for humor. I need a queen. Now.”
“What brought this on?” asked Gupta, still not bothering to collect himself from the floor. “I believe I send you a list of prospective brides at least once a year. If memory serves, you burned each of those lists…”
“Not true. With the last couple of lists, I tossed them into the air…”
“You mean that tornado of paper that chased me down the hall?”
“See? I don’t set fire to everything,” I said. “Now to answer your question, it’s become a necessity because I’ve seen it in the Tapestry.”
Gupta paled. In a blink, he was upright, floating with his legs crossed and scribbling on parchment.
“But what about the…” He trailed off, and I knew what word had made him stumble.
“I found a way around the Shadow Wife’s curse.”
“How?”
“Simple,” I said. “I won’t fall in love.”
Gupta raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Now I need to find out what—”
“Not what,” said Gupta. His gaze was unfocused, fixed somewhere on the cut of night sky through one of Naraka’s windows. “Where. And when.”
*
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been dragged to the Night Bazaar. It was the riotous, pulsing center of the Otherworld. Here, merchants peddled all manner of strange wares—bones that told the truth, rare blooms that toyed with memories, harps that sang their players’ emotions, and even edible colors shorn off from a single rainbow. It was a place I avoided as often as I could. Far too noisy. Full of simpering beings eager to pay false homage.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, ducking my chin to avoid making eye contact.
He cut a path through the merchant kiosks. From the corner of my eye, I spied a kinnara woman with bright gold feathers laying out a series of small weapons—bows and arrows that shifted diaphanous and half-invisible in the light; an apsara adjusted her anklets and threw her henna-stained hair over one shoulder; a bhut with its feet pointed backward peddled a cursed cup of alms. After years of walking leisurely—what was the point of running to something or someone when they could never escape you anyway—I found myself walking briskly. Impatiently.
And then, rising out from the crests of the merchant kiosks loomed a strange dais. Small birds carved of amber soared against a silk screen. Lotuses a violent shade of pink and purple released a drowsy perfume. I caught a whiff of it even where we stood and I drew my hood back. Desire. Heat coursed through me. Need gathered low and furious at the base of my skull. But I pushed back. When I chose a consort, those emotions would not drive me. If I had my way, we wouldn’t feel them at all.
“This is where you will find your bride in two months’ time.”
“What’s in two months?”
“Do you never keep track of holidays?”
“No.”
“It’s going to be Teej in two months.”
My eyes must have widened because Gupta’s grin stretched widely.
“Not so brooding and hidden in the dark that you could forget what that means.”