“What makes you think that?”
He bites his lip. “One of Iyla’s primary missions was to reveal the identities of the vish kanya. We knew there were dozens, but we hadn’t ever been able to locate any of them, and every time we sent spies to witness the false kills, to be there to capture the visha kanya, they ended up dead.”
My mouth goes dry. He still thinks there are many vish kanya, that Gopal has a network of assassins. Deven doesn’t realize that the people he works for were only trying to capture me. I take slow, deep breaths and try to regain my composure. “What do you mean they ended up dead?”
He sighs. “We’d find them later at the location of the kill, their throats slit, gone before they’d had a chance to report back to their handlers. The Naga have spies for our spies, and they always seem to be one step ahead.” A chill scurries down my spine. Gopal always warned me I might be followed, but I didn’t know I was being trailed by multiple sides.
“What about the targets? If they survived, couldn’t they give a description?”
He rubs a hand over his face. “Not a good enough one—they expected the girls to be followed and captured, and so they didn’t pay attention to details. The descriptions were vague. Always girls between sixteen and twenty. Always alone. It wasn’t enough.”
I think of the way Gopal made sure I looked different for every assignment—The boy will prefer the hair down, rajakumari or Today we’ll cover your hair with a scarf, rajakumari. Was he aware I was being watched? Did he want me to look older sometimes and younger others? Was I playing the part of a dozen different vish kanya?
Deven sighs. “And then there was you.”
My breath lodges at the base of my throat. “What about me?”
“You were supposed to kill me, right?”
I swallow hard. It’s painful to hear him say it out loud. “Yes.”
“Well, we didn’t know that. When Iyla showed up with a black eye and told me that you’d had her beaten—well, the story didn’t add up. She hadn’t told me that you worked with the Naga before then, and she should have. That’s when I realized she’d been playing us. That maybe we could never discover any of the Naga’s secrets because she didn’t want us to.”
My heart squeezes at the thought that maybe some of my time with Deven was real. “But wait,” I say, “if Iyla told you I was a visha kanya, why did you seem so surprised when I told you earlier?”
Deven shakes his head. “See, that’s the thing. She didn’t tell me that. She told me that you worked for the Naga and that you were trying to kill me by poisoning my drinks. She always claimed she needed more time to find the vish kanya. That she had no idea where the Naga were keeping them.”
I stare at my hands as I try to decide what it means that Iyla gave Deven only a half-truth. What it means that she only partially betrayed me. Was that for my benefit? For hers?
Deven clears his throat. “Do you know where the others are?” he asks.
I swallow hard. I should tell him that I’m the only one, but the fact that Iyla didn’t makes me nervous. She must have had some reason to withhold that information. What did she know that I don’t?
But I owe him some kind of answer. “My handlers never let me meet the others,” I say. “They said it kept us all safer if we didn’t know each other.” It’s the closest thing to the truth I have to offer.
“Basic tradecraft,” Deven says. “I thought as much, but I had to ask.”
“I wish I knew more,” I say, grateful he believes me.
And then a thought occurs to me that sends butterflies dancing in my stomach. “Are you immune?”
The corner of his mouth ticks up. “Yes.”
My first thought is that I gave away five years of my life for nothing. And the second is this: I could have kissed him.
I still could.
Neither of us speaks for a moment, and I stare at my feet while I wait for my cheeks to cool. It doesn’t matter if Deven is immune or not; he would never want to kiss me. And I have more important things to think about, like helping Mani. But still, my train of thought leads me to one more question.
“If Iyla was never your girlfriend, then why did you kiss her?”
He frowns. “Her cover was that I was a mark she was trying to woo. In public places she made sure to be thorough.”
My head is heavy with new information, but none of it points toward where the Naga might have taken Mani. I stand up and pull on my sandals. They’re still damp from when I rinsed them in the shower. I can’t just sit here. I have to start searching.
“What are you doing?” Deven asks.
“I’m going to find my brother.”
He raises an eyebrow. “And how do you plan to do that?”
“I’m going to start with the girls’ home. It’s where I was raised. Where they kept all of the vish kanya and spies.”