“Why do we need to make this decision now?”
Amar’s hands tightened, but he relaxed them almost immediately. He was quiet for a moment and I colored from his silence.
“The longer you wait, the more the threads unravel,” he said. “See?”
Amar was right. Several of the glittering threads had begun to fray. My fingers hovered over them—the white one gleamed with Vikram’s potential as a leader, the red one shone with Vikram’s potential as a warrior. Both threads held the promise of peace and both came with a different cost. And yet, with either path, it seemed like Bharata would pay the price.
Amar circled me, his hands clasped behind his back. “You have to make this decision.”
I could feel his gaze on me—sharp, unrelenting and also … desperate.
“We must choose the thread that affords the best outcome for the most people, thus maintaining a balance of peace,” he said. “You see, though, how it draws on so many different aspects. It is not just one person. They are all interconnected.”
I stared up at him. For a moment, his eyes searched mine and in the depths of his gaze, I felt a swell of sorrow. He turned sharply from me and I forced myself to summon the most diplomatic tone I could.
“The red thread carries too much risk,” I said. “The peace was accomplished more easily, but who’s to say that the peace will hold long after Vikram dies? The risk is far greater. What is lost is more than just lives. It’s an entire city. I think a peace that is won through words and advocated tirelessly will hold better than an alliance of bloodshed even if … even if it means at the price of more blood.”
Tears burned behind my eyes. How many people had I doomed?
“Then your decision is made. Rip the thread.”
I brought my hands slowly to the tapestry and wound my fingers around the red thread. It pulsed, struggling against me. I searched myself for the nerve to pull, but when I closed my eyes, all I saw were my people burning and bleeding.
I drew my hand away, scalded.
“I can’t.” I dropped the thread, backing away from the tapestry.
Sweat coated my palms. I didn’t feel solid. I felt as limp and soft as a pile of threads. I fixed my eyes on the floor. More than anything, I had wanted to prove that I was more than a sheltered princess of Bharata. I wanted to show that I could handle this enormous task and not fail.
“Weakness is a luxury you can no longer afford,” said Amar.
“Compassion isn’t weakness.”
“It is here.”
“When you took me to the Night Bazaar, you said you wanted my perspective and my honesty,” I said, facing him. “I’ve given both.”
“You knew the decision the moment you saw the outcomes. I know it,” challenged Amar. “Now you have to follow through.”
The accusation in his voice taunted me. Where the throne room had once filled me with possibility, now I felt small.
Amar grasped my hands. “I know you’re not comfortable with this.”
I clenched my jaw. No matter what I said, he would think less of me. And all too often, I found myself caring about what he thought.
“It feels wrong. What if—”
“Never let your doubts cripple you.” He stepped back, his arms raised in a surrender that made me feel anything but victorious. “I leave this to you. I trust your instincts, Maya. As should you. Trust yourself. Trust who you are.”
The door closed with a soft thud and I stood still, letting the silence twist around me. The tapestry hummed. I turned my back to it, letting it guide my hands as my fingers hovered over the thread. The words of my horoscope needled in the back of my conscience. A marriage that only brings death and destruction. Destruction was letting Vikram become a ruthless warrior who would raze villages to the ground and hoard power in the name of “peace.” I wouldn’t let that happen. I gathered my strength and held on to my breath as though it were an anchor linking me to a thousand places at once.
And then … I pulled.
Nothing.
I opened my eyes. The thread wouldn’t budge. Like someone digging his heels into the ground. I focused on the thread and yanked again, trying to wrap around its root, its length—but it would not yield.
My heart slammed. It wasn’t the thread … it was me. I wasn’t strong enough. The tapestry and the palace had judged and deemed me unworthy. Weak.
Amar had said to trust myself. I had, hadn’t I? But other thoughts had crowded my mind. Thoughts of Bharata, thoughts of what I was doing. Where I was … who I was. All my doubts and insecurities. I dropped the thread and it fluttered softly against the others. I spread my fingers across the tapestry, as if I could will it to listen. To give me another chance. Or, barring that, the strength just to move one of its pieces.
In response, the tapestry quivered, a glistening ichor seeping through the threads, dampening them. Light wavered from the dangling thread and a high-pitched hum settled over the tapestry. I stepped back, heart racing. What was happening? Had the fact that I couldn’t even move a single thread broken the whole thing?
Light burst through the threads, dazzling me with a thousand streams of color so vivid that I could feel it seeping warmly across my fingers—shards of evening sky, the cool frost of lonely mornings, drenching nectar-sticky heat. I could feel the color as if it were a dimension of time and space, heavy and solid, full of flavor, of life. It snuck under my tongue like a bright candy, and voices—loud and soft, whispers and howls, of passion so grand that it tottered on the edge of mythic and sorrows so plangent they trailed their own shadows. I couldn’t take it. I stumbled backward.
The light draped around me, murmuring, muttering. It pushed against my closed eyes, like it was trying to pry my sight open, to show me something. But I already guessed what it would show and I hated it. No matter how badly I wanted to belong, how dearly I wanted to draw breath beneath split skies leaking magic and pretend like I had some claim to it, it wasn’t for me.
I didn’t belong here.
In a blink, the pull of the tapestry was gone, like it had withheld all of its magic and transformed into an ordinary skein of silk. The threads fell flat, all their enigmatic song sewn silent. I dropped my hands uselessly, watching dull light from the window spill onto the floor. The weight of the decision settled across my shoulders like a thorny mantle. My hands clenched, frustration gathering steam and fury inside me.
What would I tell Amar? That no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t do the one thing he asked? I felt so caged and foolish that I slammed my palms into the tapestry.
A clap of thunder rattled the sky. I jerked my head up. Thunder? It was hardly overcast a moment ago. As if answering my thoughts, the bruise-colored storm clouds melted away.
I stepped back, cold clattering over my skin. The change in the clouds felt … deliberate, as if in response to me. That couldn’t be right. Nature didn’t hear thoughts and adjust itself accordingly. Did it?
Facing the open sky, I thought of rain, and a drizzle started to fall softly. I imagined a blazing hot sun, and rays fractured the sheets of lightning. I gasped, stumbling backward.
What was happening?
The weather was becoming more erratic by the second, fumbling from storm to sunshine, from clear to chaos. Outside, the sky swelled, looming and crackling like some disjointed beast, melding against the palace, spreading blackened veins across the marble in an attempt to reach me.
My skin prickled. The air was clammy and heavy, suffused with magic. Alive. Possessive. I felt like all of the palace’s watchfulness had ended and now it was turning on me, eager to swallow me whole within its walls.
My heartbeat quickened and I ran from the throne room. But the magic followed, unrelenting. The floor gathered around me, shifting beneath my feet into small hillocks, slick puddles. The balustrades of the palace creaked into life, bending and snapping into trees of ivory and alabaster.
All around me, the doors swung open. Doors that had never once budged when
I had tried to open them. Doors that revealed human and animal skins hanging from glinting hooks in the wall. Doors that had nothing behind them but fire unending.
I ran so fast, I almost careened straight into the double doors of the glass garden. Pushing them open, I ran through the crystalline plants until I got to the banyan tree. I tried to clear my head, but my thoughts were no clearer than wisps of smoke.
“Maya—” called a voice in the distance.
The voice was distorted. I flattened myself against the banyan tree. A figure approached me, its edges blurred. I screamed, tripping over a quartet of glass roses, shattering them. Spikes of glass dug into my heels, and a howl ripped from my throat. Hands reached for me, but I fought them off. Desperate. Clawing against the stranger, but the hold was firm. And soon, my vision faded to black.
* * *
Voices broke through my foggy dreams.
“She’s not ready—” came Gupta’s voice from both near and far away.
A crashing sound, of anger and temper, filled the vacuum of silence as I pulled myself out of the fog. I shifted my weight, wincing from a sudden jab of pain. I could still hear Amar and Gupta talking, their words harried and rushed. I lay still, trying to hear more.
“Yes, she is. You’ve seen what’s happening outside.” Amar. His voice was so weary. He nearly croaked out his words. “I am always traveling. Always moving. And even then, even being in a thousand places at once, it’s not enough.”
“She knows,” said Gupta. “I don’t know how, but she’s hunting, like she’s caught a scent.”
Another jab in my side wrenched a gasp from me and I inwardly cursed. If I didn’t wake up now, they’d know I was eavesdropping. Carefully, I opened my eyes to a slit, and the gilded ceiling of the bedroom beamed back. I propped myself up, rubbing at my temples as I looked around and caught sight of Amar. Gupta had disappeared.
From the edges of the bed, Amar turned to me. Despite his exhaustion, a smile creased his face.
“Wonderful performance, though misdirected in the end. What do you remember?”
I strained to remember anything … but all I saw were flashes. Vikram’s dormant red thread, a glint of lightning and the surge of something nameless and powerful snaking through my veins. The tapestry loomed in my mind. A taunt. And then, with the full force of fresh shame, I remembered my failure. The thread wouldn’t move.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Amar sat up and began pacing the room. “Something wonderful.”
He grinned and I flinched. His smile was far too knowing to be mistaken as comforting.
“You’re beginning to show a sense of power and ability that has always been yours,” he said in his silky voice. “It’s why I came to Bharata in the first place. To free you. This awakening is what makes you a true ruler of Akaran, it’s what lets you control the tapestry.”
Nausea roiled in my stomach. The choices I’d made—throwing the wedding garland around his neck, agreeing to flee Bharata—were they ever mine to begin with? In the grand tapestry of Akaran, everything and everyone had a thread. Including me. My stomach turned.
What control did I have? The tapestry had rejected me. Perhaps he knew that and that’s why he chose me. I would be malleable to his will. But I was done. Done being treated like a child, done being left in the dark, done being instructed. Fury rent through me.
“You know just as well as I do that Vikram’s thread never budged,” I said stonily.
Amar bowed his head. Good, I thought. At least he could fake some guilt.
“I know.”
“Why couldn’t I? Why did you made it sound like I could? All this talk about being a true ruler here, this … awakening of power. Or control. I had no control over that thread. I couldn’t even pull it from one side to another.”
“It takes time. But it’s a start. It’s a new beginning,” he said. A chill ran up my spine. “For you and me.”
He braced his elbows against his knees, the sleeves revealing the bracelet of my hair around his wrist. He had tethered a part of me to him, but I had nothing of his. He kept all his secrets from me.
“Trust me,” said Amar. “And tonight, we shall celebrate. Where shall I take you, my queen? Your will is where I lay my head.”
My mind twisted into a snarl.
“How can I trust you?”
Amar’s grin slipped off his face and his eyes narrowed. “Have I not proven myself? I rescued you from death—”
“You don’t know that,” I retorted, my voice raising. “Perhaps I would’ve made a last-minute escape. Perhaps the kingdom would’ve changed its mind.”
“But they didn’t, did they?” said Amar coldly. “I’m the one who took you to safety. I’m the one who made you a queen.”
“Queen? I’m no better than a caged bird,” I bit out. The words tasted like bile.
“What would that make me? An owner? You have free rein, as always, over this kingdom. Much more freedom than any caged bird. Think on that. All I ask, for now, is that you don’t—”
“Walk alone? Question you? Breathe without your permission?” I offered, knowing what he would say. “I have free rein except when I don’t.”
I pushed aside the covers, ready to storm out when the silk sheet in my hand changed. The entire night sky had become our bed, stars glinted in and out, comets zinging across the part where I had clutched a corner of the sheet. I pushed my hands into the fabric, but they seemed to fall through and through, as if this really was the night sky …
The floor had changed too. Deep teal and translucent, the waters of a hundred seas. Beneath the waves, something turned a sightless eye toward me. A makara with a tail gleaming long and emerald. The salt smell of the ocean burned my nose. I felt overwhelmed with awe, fright … envy. Is this what I was capable of? Could I trust the person who could do this?
I blinked and the images were gone.
“A strange illusion,” I murmured shakily.
“Not an illusion,” said Amar. His voice was brittle. “Didn’t I promise you the power of a thousand kings?” He crossed the marble floor that had once been an ocean. Water glistened on his feet and a gray fish flopped helplessly in a corner.
He stood in front of me, his eyes hectic and alive. Even through my fury, I couldn’t look away from him.
“You and I are the ground and ceiling of our empire,” he said, his voice harsh and desperate, pleading and ruthless at once. “You and I can carve lines into the universe and claim all that we want. We need only share between ourselves. Don’t you see?”
“All I see is your power,” I said. “None of my own. All I see are my words and expectations thrown up against whatever it is that you choose to tell me—”
“—whatever I can tell you,” finished Amar. “And as for your power, I was hoping you would ask that. It’s time to practice.”
“Leave me alone,” I hissed.
“Your duties in Akaran will pay no heed to the whims of its empress.”
I bared my teeth at Amar and he returned it with a half-grin.
“From now on, whatever concentration you use is yours alone. It is your power. Not mine.”
“How would I know?”
“You’ll feel it in your bones. Like blood singing to marrow.”
I slid off the bed and when my feet hit the floor, something silvery trilled through my body, like light had seeped in and was rediscovering me. It was like being full for the first time. Like being weighed and made whole.
“Power needs balance,” said Amar. “Our game today, as our reign, is simply a matter of reaction. What can we do when chaos is flung into our face?”
A sound sliced through the air. I looked up just in time to see an arrow heading straight for me.
“What will you do?” asked Amar. His voice was everywhere at once.
I felt a tug in my hands, a strange itch and restlessness. Without thinking, I threw up my hands, all my attention focused on the arrow
. It stopped midair. I flicked my hand and it whirled to charge at Amar. He snapped his fingers and the arrow shivered, paled and turned into a blossom of ice.
“I take it you’re angry,” said Amar. The brittleness from his voice wasn’t gone; if anything it seemed more pronounced. “Only two more days until the full moon. Then, if you want, you may certainly fling arrows into my back. Until then, try for more creativity. We cannot just spin problems back. We must do more.”
More, I thought. I could do that.
I don’t know how much time passed while we danced, spinning power between us like it was just another game. He tossed the ball of ice my way and I shattered it.
“What were you thinking when you broke that?” he asked. Even though I saw him across the room, I could feel his voice at my ear, low and burning.
“You.”
He laughed and continued to conjure things out of the air and throw them to me. Amar’s movements were graceful, spinning. All his power seemed concentrated and sinewy as the muscle that corded his arms and shoulders. Mine felt strange. Lumbering. But instinctual all the same. I’d never felt this way before, as if there was an unexplored dimension in my body full of silver light, ready to be devastating. The power in my veins terrified me. Not just because I knew it was real, but because I wanted it. I reveled in it even as I glared at Amar across the room.
He must have known because he grinned each time we sparred. He flung a chakra of flames in my direction and I turned it to a great wave of water to rush at him. Without blinking, he flattened the whole wave to a plane of ice and slid forward, graceful and serpentine.
“You enjoy it, don’t you?”
“You know the answer.”
“I want to hear it from your lips.”
“We don’t always get what we want,” I said. “Tell me, this ability of mine was not something the moon prevented you from revealing, was it?”
This time, he had the grace to look guilty.
“No. But such things need a foundation before they can be known. I thought it was best for you. It was a protective measure too. Untested power is a dangerous thing.”
Another flash of fury shot through me. I thought it was best for you. The light in our room clung to him in silver wisps. Amar pushed his hands through the curls of his hair and in that moment, he looked so … lost. In spite of myself, I wanted to ease that pain from his face. To make him smile. I was weak before him.
The Star-Touched Queen Page 12
