The Heartless Divine

by Varsha Ravi

  “Idhrishti was a prince of Naja, one of the first,” she started, oddly self-conscious. She could not help but think of the rasp in her voice, the strange, arrhythmic cadence of her words. But Kiran said nothing of it—his eyes remained closed, his breaths coming slowly and softly. “When he was a young man, he fell in love with a star. The star had streaked across the night sky, appearing to him on a failed hunting trip. It was not love at first sight—the star scolded him for lighting a bonfire at night, and discarding things in the lake, and all matters of misdemeanors.

  “The prince thought the star sensitive and fastidious, and the star thought him callous and careless. But that was not the end of it; the star returned to chastise him on the second hunting trip, and the third, and so on. Eventually, the prince grew used to the star, and looked forward to seeing them.” She shifted on the chair, reaching forward to adjust the towel on his forehead. His eyes fluttered open briefly, but he relaxed after realizing what she was doing. “The tragedy of it all, though, was that the star had fallen in love with the prince. They could not have each other—how could they? But for a time, they pushed this out of their minds and danced around each other, courting one another without truly confessing. They sought solace in one another, fully aware that nothing could come of it and yet unable to stop themselves.”

  “And then the war came,” she said, darting a glance at the other boy. He did not say anything, but his hands curled into the blanket, forming loose fists. “The prince’s father died in the war, and so he took up his place. He was afraid—he had always preferred diplomacy to violence, and had only ever continued hunting because of the star. He survived throughout, but the star watched from overhead, torn apart by worry and unable to interfere—for that meant they would fall.”

  “It was the last battle of the war, the final stand. The prince fought bravely, but a well-placed, well timed attack from behind threatened to fell him—and yet he did not die. Without the knowledge of the prince, the troops, or the stars above, the star had fallen and stolen armor to fight in. They took the blow, a fatal one. As the star fell, the prince held their dying body and confessed his love, far too late for it to be of any use. But the star died loved, skin disappearing into sparks and smoke. They died knowing they were loved.”

  There was a beat of silence, Suri’s chest tight from the story and Kiran’s breaths coming softly. After a moment, he asked, “What happened to the prince?”

  She smiled, brittle. “He wept on the battlefield, Kiran. What do you think happened to him? He was killed.”

  He shifted on the settee to look at her sideways. His expression was wry, but he was still so hollowed out, and the ghost of emotion felt incorporeal. “And what is the moral of the story? I would not have expected a patron saint of love.”

  “Lost love,” she corrected, throat tight. She remembered asking that same question of Anyu. Why do we pray for a story of love? “A saint of sacrifice. The moral, as it goes, is that love is dangerous, blinding.”

  “Melancholy,” he noted.

  “But true,” she said. He looked over and held her gaze once more, as if by doing so he would be able to understand some strange, hidden part of her.

  Outside, the sun was rising—a world awoke, gleaming and beautiful and utterly meaningless. Even as Suri rose from the wicker chair, even as she readjusted the towel on his forehead out of some sense of responsibility, though it had gone lukewarm and dry, she felt as though she were walking through amber. As if she had tethered herself in some inexorable way, heartstrings strained and aching.

  Kiran attempted, once again, to pull himself up from the settee. She held out her hands, but still he continued, managing to balance himself against the back. It was an uncomfortable position, but he hung on by sheer willpower, expression faintly listless.

  She turned, got as far as the door before he spoke. “Thank you.”

  Suri knew he had not meant for her to answer, and right then, she did not think she was capable of answering. She drew the latch across and shut the door behind her.

  Viro lay back on his bed, absently pinching the corner of his blanket between his index finger and thumb. He so often fell asleep at his desk, or curled at the foot of Tarak’s bed. It was an unsteadying, unwanted luxury to sleep here.

  The thud of incoming footsteps sounded from the outer corridor. He bit back an amused, fond smile and mused at how long it would take. Perhaps thirty seconds, perhaps less.

  The steps faded to a stop, and then: “Step aside.”

  “His Majesty is resting.”

  A soft, derisive exhale. “I doubt that. I do not know what he has ordered you to do, but please step aside. I must speak with him.”

  Then came a pause—the guard weighing the benefits and possible pitfalls of the situation that lay in front of him. As usual, they were skewed upsettingly in his disfavor; the door opened.

  Tarak dismissed the guard and then shut the door gently behind him. Viro did not have to look up to know he was examining him, reading his mood. He let go of the blanket and said, “I assume you’ve seen the missive, then.”

  “Tell me you won’t let it go,” he said, the words shaped like a plea. “Tell me you will not ignore this.” At the resounding silence, he let out a low, strangled noise. “How is it that you cannot fathom any kind of insult to your nation, and yet the moment you are in danger of harm—is it of no consequence to you whether you live or die?”

  “They want me to react,” he said, pulling himself up from the plush bed. It truly was incredibly uncomfortable; he had not thought it possible, but there was such a thing as too soft. He held up the folded cloth he had found slid under his door in the morning. “What is the nature of a threat? To elicit fear. Ignoring it is all I can do.”

  Tarak’s mouth thinned. At times like this, he reminded Viro of his father, the previous captain—brave and thoughtful and worried, always worried. He scrubbed at his eyes. “So what is it that you propose? That we change nothing? That we do nothing? What if—if these threats are not empty, then—”

  “They are empty,” he said, little more than an exhale. “And I do not need more guards. I have you.”

  Viro could tell that he had truly been shaken by the threats, because he did not make a face as he would’ve normally. The remark sobered him somewhat; there was a raw, afraid gleam to his gaze that Viro knew well, had seen in the mirror for years. He pushed off from the bed, placing his hands lightly on the other boy’s shoulders. He was just tall enough that he had to look up when speaking with him from this close, just tall enough that it was distinctly irritating.

  “What if I am not enough?” Tarak asked, the timbre of his voice hollow and dissonant.

  He allowed himself a brief laugh at that; the other boy glanced down at him, surprise lighting up the planes of his face. But Viro did not look away. “You have always been enough. You cannot doubt yourself now.”

  The skin around Tarak’s eyes tightened, and his lips parted as if he meant to say something. But he pressed them tight once more, silent in the soft, unshakable peace of the unused bedroom. Finally, he said, “Why do you never sleep here?”

  It was an admission cloaked as a question, painstakingly wrapped into something wholly different. But Viro had always dealt in these half-truths, had always loved them in an odd, self-deprecating way.

  He turned away, going to stand by the window. A smile curved his lips, but it was faintly bitter. “I think I am a little terrified of tenderness. And this room, shaped like my old heart, demands it.”

  “And mine doesn’t?” Even without looking back, he could imagine his expression, the wry arch of his brows, the amused slant of his mouth.

  Viro leaned forward, bracing himself on the windowsill so he could look up into the night sky, gleaming with cold, distant light. “You’ve never demanded anything of me that I wouldn’t offer of my own volition. But you still ask.”

  16

  Lyne

  In freshman year, Aza and Dai had starte
d a band with a few of their classmates and named it Cherry Headache by turning to random spots in the dictionary.

  Throughout the years, they had expanded their discography, even getting a consistent amount of gigs. There had even been a brief stint, early in their senior year of high school, when Aza had seriously considered giving up on university in favor of pursuing the band. It was the only time Suri had ever heard Dai angry—he’d spit her name out as a curse, Azami. Even after, neither of them ever explained the depth of the argument, or how they’d resolved it.

  At any rate, Aza’s decision had ended up proving fruitful after Imogen, the lead singer, had to leave second semester to take care of her grandmother. After nearly a year of hiatus, though, the band had gotten back together in October. They were already booked through the rest of the winter.

  Their first gig was in early December, slotted cleverly in between exams. Suri dragged Kiran to the venue—a shitty, hole-in-the-wall bar in southwest Lyne—a little before six so they could watch the band set up. She had slept through the day; staying up to practice fighting was far more exhausting than simply listening to Kiran tell stories. She could still feel the dregs of fatigue on her skin, cold and drying.

  By the time they got there, the band was already arguing on the stage, their voices pitched high over the background noise of one of their recorded songs. Ellis was slumped at a wooden table beside the platform, a glass of ice water drained beside him. Miya was scrolling through her phone; every now and then, she shot an amused glance at the stage when one of the members made a particularly rude comment.

  Dai glanced over and saw them, and pure relief washed over his face. He gathered a stack of papers from the corner of the stage and hopped off, jogging over to them.

  “I owe you,” he said, holding up his papers. A string of doodled baby chicks lined the side of a homework packet. “They haven’t stopped arguing since they got here. Do you want anything to drink?”

  They exchanged glances, and Kiran shrugged. Suri nodded toward the stage. “Not really. Why are they arguing?”

  “First of all, I know you said no, but I’m going to muck around behind the bar to get away from them for longer,” he said solemnly. “Second of all, about everything. I’m not kidding. Imogen wants to change the set list, and Az’s lost her favorite drumstick and—”

  “Fuck you, Chris,” Aza said acidly, cutting through the noise.

  “And Chris,” Dai continued wearily, “Wants to postpone the gig. Which we can’t do, obviously.” He jerked his head at the empty table beside the stage. “You guys just wait there, I’ll go get—something. You don’t have to drink it, just look at it like it’s appetizing.”

  Suri tucked herself into the chair beside the stage and Kiran took the opposite one, and for a moment, they let themselves drink in the noise of the bar, the shouting and the music and the far-off sound of Dai dropping ice cubes into glasses. They met each other’s gaze, blinked, and then fell into laughter.

  “This is a mess,” she managed, wiping her eyes. “I promise the music’s good, though.”

  “Ah, I don’t mind,” he said mildly, leaning back in his chair. He looked tired, but it wasn’t quite as bad as usual. “I like messes. It’s nice.”

  “It’s a good distraction from everything,” she added, and he made a noise of agreement. The usual night at the apartment either involved reality television and takeout, him quizzing her with paper flashcards, working on fighting, or trying to make progress on expanding the poster board. So far, they’d only managed to really succeed at one of those things, and that was because both of them were well versed, in their own ways, in reality television.

  Even with the single-minded focus of an actual god, they hadn’t been able to find anything relevant about the black sigil. Suri was trying not to give up hope—Kiran certainly hadn’t—but sometimes, she felt a little foolish pursuing it after so long. At the end of the day, it was likely she was just a little girl pretending not to be a little girl, obsessed with ideas of revenge and reason, obsessed with explanation.

  Kiran leaned forward, tapping his fingers softly against Suri’s temple. She blinked, stared over at him. He smiled, faintly. “I can see you overthinking. Get out of your head.”

  Her skin burned. Before she could respond, Dai came back with a platter and two iced glasses, filled to the brim with neon fruit smoothie. Suri sniffed hers, a deep red color. Pomegranates. Kiran’s was pastel orange, with a slice hooked on the edge. They both thanked him for the drinks, and he nodded, gracious, but his gaze was traveling back to the stage circuitously, tinged with fear.

  Kiran pulled up a nearby chair and patted it. “Stay for a bit. If they ask, I’ll take the blame. Say I made you recite the ingredient list for this or something.”

  “It’s just orange and ice and milk,” he said, managing a smile.

  “Really?” he asked, examining the drink. “Marvels of modern science, I suppose.”

  Dai slid out a familiar bound book. On the cover, THE LOVERS was stenciled in ink, gray-blue from age. He opened to a half-completed page, the outlines of the panels already defined. Kiran tilted his head. “What’s that?”

  The other boy gestured toward Suri; she raised her eyebrows, but explained, “Dai’s been working on a graphic novel since middle school. It’s about, well, lovers. But he named it after one of Cherry Headache’s songs, which they named after the tarot card.”

  “I want to get it published one day,” he said absently, pulling out a thin black pen. "I’m not optimistic, though. Dreams are meant to be held, not believed.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Kiran replied, but didn’t elaborate. He tapped on the corner of a page in contemplation. “What’s it about?”

  “Lovers,” he repeated, rubbing at old pencil lines with a black eraser. “Star-crossed lovers that can’t be together, for reasons they can’t change. And they try to defy it because, you know. They’re in love, and they’ll do whatever they have to do to stay together. But in the end, they always die.”

  He blew off the eraser dust. “They meet in every lifetime and fall in love, and the reasons why they can’t be together change but their fate doesn’t. I’m still playing around with how I want the story to end, though. I want them to end up together, but Aza thinks it’s too unrealistic. I think I’m a little in love with happy endings, to be honest.”

  Kiran was quiet for a moment, taken with a still, cold silence that unsettled Suri. Finally, he said, as upbeat as he’d been when the conversation began, “There are worse things to love.”

  Dai hummed in agreement, and leaned over the paper. After a while, Aza stomped over, mouth set in a straight, smooth line that meant she was still pissed off about what had happened earlier, and informed him that they were setting up. They managed to get through that fine, with minimal shouting, and then before they could launch into an entirely different argument, the evening took a dip for the worse. People showed up.

  The dissonant, warm noise of the early evening was nothing compared to the cacophony of the place filled to capacity. And that was on top of the fact that people were getting drinks from the bar—though a few of them actually drank, the majority proceeded to spill them on the floor. The air was sickly sweet with artificial flavoring and the sharp, piercing smell of alcohol.

  Where they were sitting, tucked into the alcove beside the stage, they were shielded from the majority of the chaos—but it also meant that every few minutes, someone stumbled into their corner, drunk or worse, and they had to gently spin them outward back into the crowd.

  A loud squeal of noise filled the air. They glanced toward the stage. Aza’s hair was tied up in an electric blue bandana, and matching highlighter marked her cheeks like war paint. They ran through the setlist for the night and then Aza cracked her drumsticks against each other and the room drowned in sound.

  They all sang along with Imogen, cheering at the brief solos. Miya was a creature of fire and fondness, and she danced around their corner in fu
ll visibility of Aza, bringing every single lyric to life. Ellis was more reserved, but still he sang along softly, smiling at Miya’s antics.

  Kiran didn’t know the songs so he simply watched, a strange look on his face. It was almost the expression of an interloper, of wanderlust reversed. And there was pain in it, but there was softness too. Nostalgia, cracked and shattered and then pieced back together with longing.

  Halfway through the set, Miya peeled away from them to go dance in the crowd. Once in a while, they would see her dark hair pop up, glittering with colorful plastic jewels.

  A little while after, Ellis’s phone buzzed, light cracking the darkness of the bar. He raised his hand in farewell and they smiled back, and then they were alone. On the stage, one song ended and another began, sharp and sweet.

  In the shadows of the bar, they were forgotten to all but each other. And Suri saw the knowledge of it etched on his face, knife into stone. They were alone, but he’d been alone for far longer.

  His gaze slid away from the stage, as if he’d sensed her watching him.

  For a long time, she would think of this—the rest of the night twisted into a manic blur, but she remembered this moment as she would a brand, a nightmare. Summer-grass eyes fell on hers, and he smiled, boyish and lovely.

  It was strange; she had seen his beauty when he’d first arrived, soaked by the blood of men and burned by the blood of gods. She hadn’t thought it possible to fall in love with someone like him then—her eyes caught only on the preternatural glow of his blood, the way his toes curled around the edges of roofs, poised to fall. How arrogant she had been, to think herself immune to divinity.

  He’s going to leave, she thought, braced against the needle-sharp pain of truth. Don’t do this to yourself.