He chews his lip. “I doubt they would keep him somewhere so obvious, but it’s worth a try. We can at least have a look around and see if we find some more clues.”
“We?” I ask. “You’re coming with me?”
He reaches out and circles my wrist with his fingers, and my breath catches in my throat. I forgot to replace my bracelets after I showered. Deven’s eyes widen as his thumb brushes against the scars.
“What did they do to you?” His voice is husky with emotion.
“They’re snakebites,” I tell him. I can’t bear to see the naked pity on his face, so I drop my gaze.
He grabs my other wrist and turns both of my hands over in his own, examining them from every angle. “Oh, Marinda,” he breathes. “There are so many.”
I don’t tell him that these are only half of my scars. That my ankles are just as ravaged, but that no one gets close enough to my feet for me to bother concealing them.
Instead I swallow the lump in my throat and pull away from him. “We have to go,” I say.
Deven drops my hands and it takes him a moment to find his voice. “Let’s wait until dark,” he says. “And then I promise I’ll help you find Mani and get him to safety.”
I shake my head. “No. We have to go now. It’s been hours. He must be terrified.”
“I’m sure he is,” Deven says. “But we’re not even certain where they’re keeping him, and it won’t do Mani any good for you to get yourself killed.”
“They won’t kill me,” I say.
“Won’t they?” he asks softly, his gaze traveling to my wrists and then back to my face. “Isn’t that exactly what they did to Japa? And he didn’t betray them, Marinda. You did.”
I press a palm to my forehead and squeeze my eyes closed. I don’t want to think about what they did to Japa, what they could be doing to Mani. But I know I can’t sit here and do nothing while we wait for the sun to disappear. I go to the wall where the door is and lean against it.
“How do I get out of here?”
“We have a better chance of saving him if we wait,” Deven says. “I care about him too.”
My stomach clenches and I fall heavily into a chair. “You don’t know Gopal like I do. You don’t know what he’s capable of. If we go now, I can promise to stay with him in exchange for Mani. That’s a trade I know Gopal will make. He doesn’t care about Mani—I’m what he wants. And then you can take Mani and get him far away from here.”
“No. I’m not willing to do that.”
“But you said you cared about him.”
“And I do,” Deven says. “But I’m not exchanging you for him.”
“Why not? You hate me and you care about Mani, so it seems like an easy decision.”
“I don’t hate you.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “My feelings about you are complicated. I’m angry with you—but I’m not angry enough to leave you with a monster.”
“I deserve to be with a monster,” I say. “Mani doesn’t.”
Deven shakes his head. “No one deserves that, Marinda. Not even you.”
“It doesn’t look much like a home,” Deven says. We’ve been creeping through dark alleys for over an hour, and finally we’re standing in front of a charmless box of a building. The windows are dark and the front yard is a wild tangle—the weeds have choked the life from every other plant.
But until a few years ago, it was the only home I’d ever known, and I still feel a pull toward it, like if I just stare hard enough, I might see something different.
It doesn’t look like anyone is staying here, and yet I’m still praying to the ancestors that Mani is inside. And if he is—I don’t care what Deven says—I will offer to stay in his place. Even if I never see either of them again, it will be worth it to know that Mani is safe.
We try the front door first, but it’s locked. I reach toward my head for a pin but realize that I left my hair down and I don’t have one. “Is there another way in?” Deven asks. I look at him in confusion. “A side entrance? A loose window?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
He sighs. “Didn’t you spend most of your life here?”
I swallow. “Yes, but I was only ever allowed in a few of the rooms and almost never outside.”
A long silence stretches between us. It’s so dark that I can’t clearly make out his expression, but I feel like I’ve disappointed him. “I’m sorry,” I say. “If you have something to pick the lock, I can try that.”
“I don’t,” he says. He shrugs and his shoulder brushes against mine. “We’ll find a way.”
We steal around the side of the building, and Deven pulls on each window, looking for one that is loose or open, but all of them are sealed tight. The night is inky black and I brush my hand against the side of the wall to keep my footing. Deven is nothing more than a dark shape in front of me. I follow him around the corner to the back of the building.
“Found a way in,” he says softly. I hurry to catch up and nearly run into him. He’s standing next to a door with a glass window in the top half. Steel rods crisscross the window, forming dozens of diamond shapes.