She tugged at Harun, and they exited the tent together.
Chapter 6
They made it halfway down the mountain before Bhandu even bothered to look at Kunal.
“Your powers?” he asked.
Kunal shook his head slowly. Bhandu’s jaw tightened before he looked away. Kunal’s senses were still failing him right now, flickering in and out like the flame of a temple lamp.
Bhandu slashed away some vines to reveal underbrush just inches from the cliffside. A precarious place to rest but likely the only one for leagues. Bhandu heaved at the vines one final time and they fell at his feet, no match for the size and strength of his arms. The cave inside was dark but Bhandu pointed at it and then them.
“In,” he said.
This was the least amount of words Kunal had ever heard Bhandu say in the span of five minutes. He also wasn’t peppering every other sentence with an emphatic “cat eyes,” which normally would have pleased Kunal. He knew the reason for Bhandu’s frigidity was his own fault, yet he had hoped for better. It was a preview for later, and he didn’t much like it.
Reha looked uncertain, but she walked inside, Kunal close behind.
“My squad will find us soon, but until then we can’t have any large fires,” Bhandu said, looking out of the small dark cave.
Kunal’s eyes quickly began adjusting to the dimness. Reha’s eyes sharpened, turning those russet-gold and blue colors that they did before she shifted, but this time the change seemed under control. Their powers were returning, though apparently very slowly.
“Did the offering work? Is the janma bond saved?” There was a note of hope in his voice. With Bhandu’s face covered in the darkness of the cave, they could see only his silhouette, a guardian against the light.
“Why were you watching us? How long have you been on our trail?” Kunal asked. He could hear his own voice shaking. No response followed. So Kunal finally answered him. “It didn’t work. After everything. It didn’t work. The janma bond is still broken.”
“What? Why?”
“We don’t know,” Reha said. Bhandu tossed a look back at her and narrowed his eyes.
“Your blood wasn’t enough? How is that possible? We’ve been looking for the lost princess, savior of the land, for moons. Years,” he said, almost as if to himself.
Reha stiffened, turning to watch Bhandu. It was clear she wanted to ask more, but she was struggling to find the words. Or to go against the life she had once thought was hers. Kunal understood. It still felt like a betrayal to his uncle to ask or be curious about his powers or his mother and father.
Bhandu’s shoulders slumped, his expression turning bleak.
“Bhandu—” Kunal started.
“No,” he said, cutting him off. “You don’t talk. You don’t talk to me at all, cat eyes. Not until I give you permission to. The girl will speak for both of you.”
“We need to go back to the river on Mount Bangaar, Bhandu,” Kunal said, shaking off Reha. “We have to try again.”
“The girl will speak for both of you,” Bhandu said, his voice becoming dangerous.
Kunal’s brows knitted together, and he reached for Bhandu, but it was Reha who stopped him, pushing his arm back and shaking her head at him. Reha’s grip held firm. There was so much he needed to say to Bhandu. So many questions that lingered on his tongue, waiting to be asked. What had happened? Why hadn’t it worked?
And more he needed to get out, thoughts that swirled in his mind. Was Esha okay? Was she angry? How angry was she?
“All right,” she said. “How did you find us? Why are you here?”
Bhandu finally turned, his silhouette half shrouded in moonlight that licked over his skin like white fire.
“To hunt you down.”
Bhandu moved faster than a blink of an eye, two clicks sounding in the shallow space of the cave.
Kunal looked down to see shackles on his wrists, and similar ones on Reha’s.
He had gotten his answer as to how angry Esha was.
Esha and the others made camp in the rain forest, finding a cleared area. It wasn’t anything like the jungle back home, thicketed and labyrinthian, but it would do for the night.
Yamini should’ve discovered Harun’s disappearance by now. But Esha hadn’t seen any sign of the princess on their trail. That was concerning, but Esha focused instead on the fact that they had Harun—even if it had seemed a bit too easy.
She glanced back at him, where he lay atop a makeshift cot. He had immediately passed out after they regrouped with Laksh and Aahal. By the sound of his breath, Harun was deep asleep now, still occasionally mumbling her name.
Laksh had raised an eyebrow at that, but Esha didn’t think Harun was acting like a lovesick man. She had the feeling he was trying to tell her something. Once he rested some more, she would determine exactly what was making her prince whisper her name over and over.
A part of her wanted it to be about her, Esha the girl. She hadn’t forgotten what he had said to her in the palace, the love he had finally declared. In fact, it had become all she could think about since the soldier had left, half her heart with him.
Harun had asked her why she had come, but didn’t he understand?
Love didn’t disappear. It faded, ebbed away, but the edges of it would always remain. She would always care for Harun, and when he had been taken from her, she had to go back into those depths, dive past the walls she had put up to prevent herself from getting hurt, and what she found there—it confused her.
Even more so after the soldier had left. Around the others, it was easy to act as if he no longer existed or mattered. But . . .
Esha shut that away. And yet that door kept inching open. The cursed soldier would never give her peace. She should’ve killed him in the forest ages ago.
Maybe she still would.
“I don’t like that smile,” Laksh said.
“Then you’re a smart man.”
Laksh grinned and looked as if he was going to respond, when a tremor shot through the jungle, almost tossing the both of them to the ground.
Esha grabbed hold of a tree as a second tremor hit, shaking the jungle floor so hard that she thought it might cleave itself in two. She braced herself for a third, but nothing came.
What in the Moon Lord’s name was that?
She turned to ask Laksh that very question, but a low growl filled the air around them. They both whipped around, weapons out, before Esha realized it was coming from Harun.
His eyes flashed wide open, and the shift happened too quickly for Esha to react at first. It had been awhile since she’d seen him transform, and it didn’t land easily. Something about his eyes unsettled her, and without notice, he dropped to his knees, his hands to his head.
A faint blue light pulsed from Harun’s skin, as if his body was purging it from his very pores. Harun flickered in the tent, his body shifting rapidly. The only time she had seen this was when Kunal had first discovered his powers, and then all Esha could do was stand back and let him go through it.
“Esha,” he said stiffly, his head hanging. “Move.”
She had barely stepped aside when Harun burst into blinding light, a large royal lion now in his place, shaking his mane. Harun didn’t even look back at Esha before charging off.
Esha stood there for a second, the breeze rippling through her clothes. Laksh shouted at her, but she waved him away as a smile came over her face. She ran off to follow Harun, leaving behind a confused and sputtering Laksh.
Harun was clearly tired and weak, his pace slower than normal. Soon, she caught up.
This wasn’t the first time they had done this. When a younger Harun had been learning his shifts, Esha used to run beside him every night in the jungles nestled into the mountainsides outside of Mathur.
He burst across the plains, and Esha cut a path near him. Harun’s yellow eyes acknowledged Esha, and he slowed his pace to allow her to follow him.
Esha tossed her head back and laughed i
nto the jungle sky, the moist air settling onto her skin like a familiar song. The sun above them was only a sliver of light through the thick jungle canopy. Her feet began to tire, and Harun started to limp, but they kept going.
Eventually she reached out a hand to Harun’s mane as they slowed, her tiredness causing her to trip a bit, her stubbornness preventing her from stopping.
Harun nudged her with his head, trying to catch her as she stumbled over the tangled roots of the jungle, but the stress of the past few weeks caught up with her and Esha fell to the ground, dragging Harun down as well.
He shifted as he fell so that the body that landed on top of her was very human and all Harun. Harun caught her neck in his hand, lowering her head gently to the ground before rolling over and collapsing onto the damp jungle ground.
Their breaths, the heavy gasps of exertion, filled the air around them. Esha rolled over onto her side. Harun’s eyes were closed, his chest racked with huge pants, his fingers still shifting from claws into the callused fingertips she knew so well. She cupped his jaw, tracing a delicate fingertip over his skin. He grabbed her wrist, bringing it down to his lips and brushing a kiss over it. Esha shivered.
She leaned forward. “Harun?”
His eyes were still closed, his breath still ragged. His runs usually exhausted him, but this seemed different.
“You ran with me,” he whispered.
“Of course.”
Something wasn’t right. Esha grabbed his arm, which had dropped from her face. It was ice-cold, and that same faint blue light began to shine around him. He began to convulse, and terror slipped down Esha’s spine.
“Harun?” she repeated, growing frantic.
His eyes flew open. “Esha,” he panted. “You need to know—”
“Harun, what do I do? I don’t—”
“You need to know—I—”
Esha grabbed his arm and shook him again. His breath slowed, stuttered, then picked up.
“What? Harun?”
But the only noise left in the jungle air was the sound of her repeatedly crying his name.
Bhandu refused to take the shackles off despite Reha’s constant demands. They had been traveling for a week, and Kunal had stayed silent for most of it, even as Bhandu’s squad of Blades met up with them and pushed them farther into the northern towns of Jansa.
The adrenaline from before had faded, and all that was left was the deep, gaping maw of guilt and failure that threatened to swallow Kunal whole.
“We need to go back,” Kunal said, his shackles clanging along after him, as Bhandu knelt to make camp. Reha sent him a warning look from her seat a few spaces over, where she was trying to make a fire. She had resigned herself a few days back, informing Kunal that she knew when to take a punch and when to fight back.
They had failed. It was time to take the punch and make a new plan.
But Kunal had put so much into this. Taken this risk at the expense of losing Esha and everything else he had so recently found.
“If you take off these shackles, Reha and I can fly up there in a day and be back. We have to try again. We need to try again. To save—”
“We don’t need to do anything.” Bhandu spun around, his face murderous and yet also filled with an emotion Kunal couldn’t identify. It was the first time Bhandu had spoken to him in a week. He had dutifully ignored him at every turn, walking around him, passing things across him, talking to Reha instead of him. “We could’ve done so much if you had only told us that you had this harebrained plan to go off to the mountains that night. Do you know what your decisions cost us?”
“No,” Kunal said, throwing up his hands as best as he could with the shackles. “I don’t. You refuse to talk to me. You won’t even tell me how Esha—”
Bhandu was in his face in a second, his scarred hands grabbing Kunal. The fury on his face was a living thing, hot and unforgiving.
“Don’t you dare even say her name. You’ve put her through so much—”
“Has something happened to her?” Kunal froze, his entire heart stopping.
Bhandu blinked. “No. Nothing has happened to her.”
He let go of Kunal, shaking him off like an itchy cloak, but not before staring at him long and hard.
“You have no idea, do you?” Bhandu said finally.
“I know she’s angry. But I can explain, Bhandu. Reha said this was our best option, and we were so close. She would’ve left alone and untrained. I didn’t have a choice.”
Bhandu looked sharply at Reha, who was calmly watching the whole scene.
She shrugged. “It’s true. I threatened to leave and make sure no one would find me. The dramatics really worked on him.”
Kunal frowned at her even as Bhandu snorted. He turned back to face Kunal, cocking his head.
“She’s not just angry, cat eyes.”
Bhandu told them then, the entire story of what had happened. The Scales infiltration, the pile of bodies in the Great Hall, the arrival of Yamini, Vardaan’s escape, and Harun’s capture.
Kunal sagged against the nearest tree.
He hadn’t known. It was the only thing he could keep telling himself.
As if it absolved him.
Even Reha’s face had turned gray, the sticks she had been using having fallen to the side as she stared up at Bhandu in horror.
“The Yavar have my brother?”
Bhandu looked as if he wanted to snap at her, and Kunal could hear the words in his head. If she had cared about her brother, her father, any of them, why had she run off with Kunal? But she hadn’t known either. They had been trying to save them, save the entire country.
Instead, they had failed miserably.
“Esha has a lead on his location,” Bhandu said. “I haven’t gotten an update in days but . . .” Reha picked up the sticks and started rubbing them together frantically, turning away from Kunal and Bhandu. “Esha has never failed in a rescue before.”
“Bhandu, I—” Kunal started.
Bhandu whirled around and pointed a finger at him.
“Whatever the reason, you chose to leave us behind. You made a decision, alone; you went off to be a hero, alone.” Bhandu took a breath, his hands clenching into fists. “We invited you in. And Esha. She watched over you when you were poisoned, she saved your life, and this is how you repay her? If anything happens to Harun, if even a hair on his head is harmed when we get him back, it will be your fault, cat eyes. Yours alone.”
The young man moved to leave, but Kunal caught his arm.
“I had no choice, Bhandu,” Kunal said.
“You keep telling yourself that.”
“What would you have done in my shoes?” Kunal demanded. “Would you have let our one chance at saving the land slip out of our fingers?”
Bhandu dipped his head. “I don’t know. But if you think that’s going to be the problem when you return, then you have a lot to learn about Esha.”
“What do you mean?”
Bhandu looked at him with pity. “She blames you for everything that happened.”
“But I had no idea—”
“Our Esha, you met her as the Viper. You broke through that mask, and she let you see the real her. She trusted you.” His voice caught, and he coughed it away. But Kunal had seen the flash of pain on his face. “We let you in, and you broke that trust. And it’s clear from your actions that you never trusted us.”
Kunal let Bhandu go, a whirlwind in his heart. He couldn’t even think of Esha now, but the team . . . He hadn’t thought of them. Serious Farhan, laughing Aahal. Arpiya, who had been the first to give him a chance back in Mathur. And Bhandu, who he had grown to see as a comrade in arms, a friend.
Was Bhandu right?
Had Kunal made the wrong choice?
Chapter 7
They had rushed Harun home, after pulling him from the hill camp, almost a day ago. He’d been asleep since he had awakened and run into the jungle as if the gods themselves had possessed him. Even now, his eyes wer
e closed, his skin emitting a faint blue light.
Esha wanted to go into his skin and purge the cursed blue sapphires herself, but all she could do was sit there and wait for him to wake. Helpless.
Farhan had spent all night and morning in the library researching blue sapphires, but there was little about their poisonous effects on royals. Even the scholars were clueless. She’d sent a note to King Mahir, deciding the truth was more important than the worry of frightening him. And she still couldn’t ask Harun what he wanted to tell her.
But what worried her the most was the earthquake they had felt. Esha hadn’t imagined it. By the reports, tremors had torn down the countryside at the same time she and Laksh had felt them. The Rusala region was the worst hit, with a nearby dam cracked and threatening to break. The water there, in the Rusala Dam and the nearby step wells, was some of the only left in the region. Esha had already sent a squad of Blades and Senaps to the Rusala Dam to assess the damage and decide on any next steps needed to prevent catastrophe.
It also didn’t bode well for Bhandu’s mission. She had immediately sent out scouts to the mountains to catch Bhandu and his squad. If they completed the ritual it would be one less thing for them to worry about. Then they could put the country back together and find a proper form of government.
Esha had already started the process of reopening the local tribunals and city councils. They had yet to announce a new government or ruler, so until they did, it had to be done quietly. Once Reha was back, Esha would gladly hand back the reins of the country. Take her prince, go home. Be rid of this cursed palace filled with soldiers.
A cough came from the bed, and Esha lunged forward.
“Harun?” she whispered.
His eyes were milky at first, but then they focused on her. “Where am I?” he croaked.
She moved closer, and he flinched.
Esha waited, fighting back the wave of worry, and moved closer slowly. She would tear Yamini apart if she saw her ever again.
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