The Heartless Divine

by Varsha Ravi

  “Really?” she asked, picking up the threads and running a thumb over where they still twisted together. “Even after seventeen hundred years?”

  “Even now,” he said, wry. “My job doesn’t lend itself to romantic escapades, or observing those on them.”

  Suri dropped the threads, and he picked them up, untangling them and wrapping them back into their respective skeins. She toyed with the ends of the cut pieces of yarn, still twisted around one another, and tied one around her wrist on a whim. His eyes tracked the movement, but he didn’t say anything.

  When he returned, she meant to ask him where the remote had gone. Instead, she said, “What’s the word?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “The word,” she repeated; he took a seat beside her and procured the remote from the cushions, resuming the movie. The characters continued to stare into each other’s eyes lovingly, confessing their undying affection as the world washed itself away. “You said there was a word for how it all works, in a language I don’t know.”

  The tips of his ears flushed gold. “There’s no practical use for it anymore. It’s a dead language.”

  “I don’t want to use it,” she said, and it felt a little like an admission. Against her will, she could feel her cheeks pinking. “I just want to know, for the sake of knowing.”

  It was the truth, but not all of it. She wanted to know something that only he knew, some small, wondrous secret long forgotten by the dead and long forgotten by death. The mere thought of voicing this made the flush creep over her face. She could only hope he wasn’t paying a great deal of attention.

  Kiran had not looked away from her since she had first spoken—his gaze swept over her expression, scrutinizing and a little self-conscious. Eventually, he mumbled something, too quietly to properly hear.

  “What?” she asked, leaning in closer. On screen, the rain stopped, and the clouds parted—the sky was glorious with color.

  “Uttriyasi,” he repeated, so softly she could barely hear him. He’d looked up; if she tilted to the right, their noses would touch. Realization rolled through them at the exact same moment and they drew back, too quickly for it to look smooth.

  Suri rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly and forced herself to look over at the screen. She tasted the word in her mouth, tried to wrap her lips around it. It stumbled through her unevenly. “Uttriyasi?”

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling a little too much for it to be the truth. She glared, and he corrected, “A little heavier on the vowels. Uttriyasi.”

  “Uttriyasi,” she said again, and it came easier this time, and she said it twice more. It felt like the word held a kind of power in it, a power separate from its identity as a secret, love-stained and deathless. It tasted euphoric and rain-sweet. “What does it mean?”

  Kiran made a face like he’d tasted something sour, but said, “There are multiple translations. The direct translation is forever love. But my favorite, personally, is eternal heart.”

  She laughed a little, and he glared at her, nearly hurt. She reached forward and took his hand in hers; it seared her, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Suri spoke without looking up, making a game out of playing with his fingers. She traced every individual scar with the pad of her thumb, trying her very best to be gentle. “It’s just fitting. It feels like the sort of thing you would like.” She paused, passing her thumb over one that arced across the palm of his hand, and then added, “I like it too. It’s pretty.”

  He smiled in her periphery, and her chest tightened once; she dropped his hand, turning back to the still playing movie. But they were still close enough that they kept their meaningless connections, their ruinous touches. His toe brushed against her knee and it was all she thought of for the rest of the movie.

  The next movie took them to the edge of midnight, and she managed to follow the plot a little more. After that, she wrapped herself in the dull blanket of her mild interest in the next movie, used it to fend off thoughts about using the boy like a pillow. Eighty percent of her was strongly in favor of the idea. Ninety percent.

  Halfway through, he beat her to it. She didn’t notice for a few moments, even though she’d registered the physical sensation of his head on her shoulder—strange, overwarm, but not unpleasant. She just stared at him, unthinking. Her head felt like someone had smashed it open with a sledgehammer and mucked around in the red gooey parts.

  She could feel her heartbeat in her bones, could feel his, too. She wasn’t even sure which one was which—neither of them sounded like a song anymore. Or maybe they both did. Maybe they’d twined, and now it was the same song, a melody that carried in the soft, sweet night air. There was no way to know.

  Wake him, she thought, and immediately felt cruel for thinking it. Of course she couldn’t wake him. It was a sobering realization, if only because it meant the inverse was true—she couldn’t wake him, so for a little bit, they would have to stay like this. Already, it was unbearable—already, she was consumed by the knowledge that this was something she could not hold onto.

  He twisted to the side in his sleep, curling into her. A tremor ran through him, once, twice, and then faded. A hundred silent earthquakes, unsteadying him momentarily. But none of them would break him, she knew. None would crack, and none would shatter. He was solid as stone.

  We can stay like this for a little bit, she thought, the words sleepy and untrustworthy even as they floated through her mind. But she was too tired to move. After a few minutes, I’ll get up. After this scene, after this movie.

  The remaining two movies slid past. She stared at the screen, scraping her gaze across the characters as they lived and loved and lost. It blew over her, just like dust. Just like ash. Sensation was a grain of sand, infinite. She did not move her shoulders, not once.

  Uttriyasi, he’d said. Suri watched the end credits of the last movie play, watched fluorescent light blur and sing right in front of her, and hoped helplessly, stubbornly, that he had one of his own.

  The next day, Ellis called her on the landline, and the entire world listed to the side.

  23

  Enesmat

  Viro did not cry. He made no sound—in fact, he did not turn back at all. From the moment he had entered the room, it was as if his world had narrowed to himself and to the body on the bed. Further even, simply to that body, as it consumed him and hollowed him.

  Hours passed, and still he stood there. Kiran watched him sway on his feet, from fatigue and strain and perhaps, a distant grief. After an hour more, he sank to his knees, and then remained there, expression shadowed by the bent angle of his head and the paralyzing weight of loss.

  When he finally spoke, Kiran nearly didn’t register the sound of it. It was too low, too coarse. “I wish to be alone.”

  Alarm bells went off in his head. “I do not think that is a good idea—”

  “Kiran,” he whispered. It was an exhale more than it was a word, a thought formed into reality. “Please.”

  And so he left.

  It had all fallen into place perfectly, a sickening execution of the vision from days ago. He had been at the temple when it happened, helping Kita clean up in the wake of Avyakanth. They had been talking, laughing, lost in their own thoughts. Death had not seemed like something real then. How quickly things had changed—how cruelly fate worked.

  There was frustratingly little information about it, too—the murder had been executed within the confines of the captain’s rooms, a clean knife to the heart. He had been found crumpled, with a piece of cloth on his chest that held only the Najan crest—that taunting, familiar symbol of braided flowers and a crown.

  The general consensus was that it had been the handiwork of the Najan spy—the same one who had leaked information to the Najan Army, and the same one, Kiran now suspected, who had fabricated the message of an invasion from the west. It would have been impossible to execute the murder if Viro had been within the span of the mountains—from peak to peak, he would’ve felt
it. Kiran did not doubt he had felt it in the borderlands. He would’ve felt it at the bottom of the ocean.

  Kiran had learned loss young, but that changed nothing of what it felt like—grief was something sharp-toothed and vitriolic under his skin, and it clung to him with the intensity of rage, of fear.

  He found Suri in her rooms, gazing out at the night. She was dressed in a thin nightgown and robe, and folded on the bed, she looked surprisingly young, oddly small. And then she turned to face him, and the weariness, the familiar anger, in her expression aged her.

  “Do you know who it is?” he asked.

  The corners of her mouth twisted down in a self-deprecating, pained smirk. “No. I have my suspicions, but none seem likely. Those that have the means do not have the motives, and those that have the motives do not have the means, and those that have both have firm, true alibis that place them far away from the murder. And yet—” she broke off, frowning. “I cannot help but feel as though I know who it is. There is something… strange about the crime, but I cannot place it, not fully.”

  Her jaw was set, that rebellious determination hardening her expression. But Kiran saw further, to the bruises under her eyes and the gaunt, bony angles of her face. She was working herself to death, and gods knew what lengths she’d had to go to gather information when she was a prime suspect.

  He opened his mouth to tell her so—she wouldn’t listen, but perhaps if he reasoned that she needed the energy to continue investigating, she might—but she spoke first. “I know why you are here.”

  Kiran tilted his head, nausea emptying him. “You do?”

  The princess turned from her post at the window, fiddling with the thin fabric of her nightgown before looking up to meet his gaze. There was something sad, but faintly resigned about it. “You came to tell me you cannot leave.”

  He leaned back against the door, curling his fingers into the engraved wood. “I cannot leave Viro, not now. On top of this—it would break him. Even if it is only for a few more days, for the semblance of prosperity more than the reality of it, I must stay behind. And besides,” he said, a crooked, humorless smile flickering to life, “Someone must convince him you are innocent after you leave. It would be far too easy for him to come to the wrong conclusion if you flee without context.”

  “Will you tell him the truth?” Suri asked, an odd, curious light in her eyes.

  He shook his head. “It’s too convoluted. He will assume it’s fiction. No, I will simply…” he lifted his shoulders in a shrug, spreading his hands. “Misdirect his attention. Bring up the more likely candidates. I will speak to Kita about it as well, so she can take over once I am… gone.” He shot a glance at the adjoined rooms. “Have you spoken to your handmaiden about your… trip?”

  Suri frowned, looking away. “I don’t think I will. I think she has found something here, in this city—with your friend. A kind of home she never could have had in Naja. I would not want to take her from that. It is better for her to think me dead and a traitor than to let go of this.”

  He hesitated, then wrapped his arms around himself. “Promise me you won’t come back.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but there was an edge of tension to her voice when she spoke. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “If you know me, then I know you,” he said, pushing off from the door. “You will leave, and then you will return and fight for the city. Regardless of whether you die, of how you die, you will return. And I understand why—even with Avya’s blessing, even if Viro did not need counsel, I think I would struggle to leave as well. And I know it is selfish to ask this, but I must. Promise me you will leave, and that you will never return to Marai. Promise me you will save yourself.”

  Suri did not answer for a long moment; a muscle jumped in her jaw, strained from displeasure. He had hit at the heart of the matter, he knew. She had only planned to leave the city as long as she could return after his death.

  If she returned, Viro would not care why she’d left. His capacity for such insignificant affairs had been exhausted. There would be nothing he could do for her.

  Finally, she swallowed hard. “Okay. I promise.”

  “On Idhrishti’s grave,” he pressed, the name of the foreign saint sour in his mouth. To die for love, to die for a star— “Promise me.”

  “I swear a holy oath on Idhrishti’s grave,” she gritted out, defiant. She glared up at him. “Are you sated?”

  She cannot die if she is not here. He tried his best not to let any of his relief into his expression, though it was a close thing. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Her brows drew together as she examined him. Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask— “How is Viro?”

  It was the first time she had called him by name, and yet Kiran could not feel surprise at that—only chilling, honey-sweet relief that she had not asked why he was so insistent. He had an inkling she already held a measure of suspicion regarding his desperation, but still, he knew if she asked, he would not be able to lie.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I have only ever seen him like this once, nine years ago. And even then, it was not quite as bad—he had allowed Tarak to stay beside him, even after he cast me out. Now, he is alone. He refuses to let anyone in to examine the—the body. He simply sits there beside him, serving some kind of silent vigil.”

  Suri pursed her lips, almost as if she was concerned. “How will he fight a war? My parents will not wait for him to finish mourning.”

  But Kiran could recall how quickly the numbness of the first war had sharpened into that jagged, indiscriminate fury, that caustic determination. “I do not doubt he will fight the war. But I cannot help but fear that he will not care about surviving it.”

  It was startling how quickly that spark of flame grew.

  The simple act of physical touch—of cold, emptying sensation—had extinguished the hope and ignited something sharper, darker in the same instant.

  Kiran had not returned to the room, but Viro could feel his presence like a tether, a hook in his chest where a heart had once hung. He wanted to return, and yet he did not want to push too far. There was a time where he would have felt grateful for that kindness. Now, he was not wholly sure whether he still held the capacity to be grateful.

  More than anything, he felt unmoored. Tarak had always been a pillar in the endless tempest of his anger, a north star he had followed thoughtlessly. The world could have died, and still he would’ve stood waiting, and all Viro would have cared for was that he continued to stand—that he continued to live. And now he was gone, and the world was still alive—what was the purpose of it? What meaning could he possibly find in the light of the early morning, in birdsong, in that distant, nebulously shaped knife that they called love?

  There was nothing left. Nothing of meaning, nothing of matter. Only the emptiness, and that single flame, an arrow of flickering retribution.

  But there was a war on the horizon, and he would confront it alone. What would Tarak do? he thought before glancing up, gaze alighting on the flat, cold angles of the boy’s lifeless face. Despair was something corrosive, wrath given form and intent and turned inward toward the numbness that remained. A slow burn spread outward, warming him. It took the cold away, slow but sure, and left something dark and oily in its place.

  Tarak is dead, he thought, over and over. He had sunk into the River Asakhi, the realm of ghosts, of gods. His counsel was an illusion. All he had left was a body and the suggestion of warmth. But that warmth was no longer there.

  His chest felt tight—with tears, with wracking, trembling sobs that could not come. He was swollen with them, the hollows in his chest glutted with sorrow that could not leave, could only scream into something nascent and vitriolic.

  Blood could only fall for so long—vengeance was an imperfect, dissatisfying desire, and yet it was all he had left.

  Nine years prior, Viro had learned agony, and it had swallowed him, and so he had awoken in a desert of rage, a thorn sharpened by loss. And i
n that oily, infinite night sky, there had always been a single star, the last remnant of light in a world of ink and shadow. And he had followed that star to the edges of the desert, to the ragged depths of his heart. He had followed that star, and he had learned it, and he had loved it.

  But the star was dead. The sky, hollow and desolate, threatened to swallow him again, shatter all that remained of his soul into bone ash and shadows. The star was dead, and he was lost.

  Since Tarak’s death, sleep had eluded Suri entirely, a blank ecstasy that never quite panned out into something tangible. And truly, she did not mind it—it gave her more time to look for the true culprit. But it had been three days and nearly three nights since his death—she was running out of time. She had held off on Isa’s kind offers of comfort for long enough—eventually, the mourning period would end. She would have to leave—Kiran would have to die.

  The most frustrating part of it all was that she knew who had done it. There was no clear, concise evidence trail, no suggestion of reasoning. It was simply this intuitive knowledge, this raw, searing truth that held no identity. Like a name on the tip of her tongue, fates held in two trembling hands.

  Kiran nagged for her to rest like a cranky grandmother. It would have been irritating if she did not find it so endearing. But there was a kernel of truth in his insistent demands for her to get some sleep. Perhaps she would wake up more refreshed for once.

  She laid down gingerly on the mattress, and could not help but wonder if Tarak had died like this—whether it had been swift, kind. Or whether he had died on his feet, the twist of the knife cruel and heedless.

  Suri shut her eyes, and the world fell away around her.

  A riverbank replaced the darkness, the one from her nightmare so many weeks ago. From the story of Nila, long before she had ever heard it.

  But her hands were clean—she was dressed not in that unfamiliar chemise, but in the maroon wrap she had worn on the night of Avyakanth. The fabric stuck to her skin, damp from river water. And yet she was not shivering.