The Star-Touched Queen

by Roshani Chokshi

  “This is why you couldn’t move the thread,” he said. “You need to believe in it. Believe in you.”

  Amar twisted his fingers and the silk of my sari changed … from yellow to deepest blue, flecked with stars.

  “My star-touched queen,” he said softly, as if he was remembering something from long ago. “I would break the world to give you what you want.”

  I touched my sari and the stars faded.

  “I want you to leave,” I said, not looking at him.

  When I looked up, he was gone.

  * * *

  I stared at the closed door before sinking to my knees. I had been a fool to fall so quickly for Amar’s gift: the most beautiful illusion of independence. It had felt so real that I thought it hummed in my bones. Now it was gone. Even our kisses felt like treachery. All that was left was the unending and infinite niggling of something that didn’t quite fit together—his words, his promises … my powers.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees. If this power was truly something that was in me all along, why would my mind keep it a secret? A familiar pang struck me. The absence of something unnamed fluttered just beneath the surface of my skin, a secret hovering within reach.

  Outside my room, a slamming sound echoed, raising goose bumps along my skin. What door was that?

  I paused. The doors. I remembered them flinging open, all their locks and bindings forgotten. With a lurch, I remembered what lay behind them—swaying bodies, the fug of decay. Fires to drown out worlds.

  They had opened to my power. Responded to it like a song.

  Guilt tugged at me. In the shadows of the Night Bazaar, I had pledged Amar my trust, my patience. But this was not Amar’s secret to keep from me. It was mine. The warning rhyme flashed through my head. Perhaps it was not some aimless trick of the palace. I needed to find the door.

  I just had to figure out how.

  16

  THE MEMORY TREE

  A knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts. I opened it, expecting to see Gupta, but it was Amar. His expression looked carved in stone and his lips were set in a grim line. But the moment we held each other’s gaze, something in him relented. His hands tightened at his side.

  “I would never want to cause you pain.”

  I flinched. “I am not in pain.”

  Lie.

  “I am not some animal you wounded,” I added.

  Truth.

  “It is only a night longer,” he said.

  The warning voice from the halls echoed back to me: You are running out of moon time. Listen to my warning rhyme. What would happen tomorrow?

  Amar hesitated, before reaching out to hold my hand. I stared at the circlet of my hair around his wrist. Bitterness rose in my throat. I glanced from my bracelet to the other one on his wrist—black leather and knotted—dull and malevolent.

  “Do these past days mean nothing?” he asked, so gently that my weak self curled around his words.

  But I would no longer be weak. I tapped into that power in my veins and a shimmering wall of flames sprang up between us. Amar jumped back, shocked and then … amused.

  “A little ruthlessness is to be admired, but it’s cruel to play with a powerless heart.”

  “Crueler still to promise equality and hide a person’s true self.”

  “I thought it was best for you,” he repeated.

  “Strange how something that only affected me was decided by you.”

  Amar’s smile turned cold. “My promises were true. You seek to punish an illusion without fully knowing. What were your kisses, then? Vengeance?”

  The wall of flames shimmered away. Anger still flared inside me, but now it was mixed with something else. Something I couldn’t push away, despite fury. Want.

  “They were nothing,” I lied. “They meant nothing.”

  I didn’t look at him. And then, a bloom of cold erupted beside me and Amar was at my side. His fingers traced a secret calligraphy along my arms.

  “Nothing at all?”

  My heart twisted. I reached forward, my hands tangling in his hair as I kissed him. It was a kiss meant to devour, to summon war. And when I broke it, my voice was harsh:

  “My kisses mean nothing.”

  “Cruel queen,” he murmured, tilting my head back. His lips skimmed down my neck. Amar’s hands gripped my waist, before tracing the outline of my hips. Heat flared through my body. But just as I pulled him closer, a sudden clash echoed in the hallway, and we sprang apart.

  Gupta’s screams thundered through the walls, lingered in the air. In an instant, small lanterns sprung up on the blank walls. Amar took off at a run, following the path of light, and I chased after him.

  At the end of the row of lanterns, Gupta lay half slumped on the floor. He was shaking violently. His clothes were singed. I looked around, but there was no fire, no scorch marks on the ground or the walls. The only thing that bore signs of damage was Gupta. For all I knew, he might have spontaneously combusted where he stood.

  I moved toward him, but Amar blocked me.

  “He’ll be fine,” he said coolly.

  I stared at him. Danger had unleashed itself from this very spot and we were standing around like nothing was the matter.

  “If there’s danger, I should know,” I protested.

  “Your intentions are admirable, but let me handle this.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” I said in a steely voice.

  Gupta’s gaze never wavered from Amar. “There was an accident.”

  “How?” I nearly yelled, pointing to the emptiness of the room, the vast, leering space of the palace.

  “Maya,” said Amar through clenched teeth. “Return to the room. Immediately. It is not safe.”

  I stepped back, scolded. Here I was, a child playing queen. Anger flashed through me. I turned on my heel, marching down the halls as shame lit up my cheeks. I stood before my bedroom door, but I refused to enter. If the doors responded to power, then power is what I’d use. I concentrated, curling my power in my palms like a handful of dust, and blew, seeking all the time for one thing—the charred door wrapped in chains. The door with the voice.

  * * *

  The door did not take long to find. I felt like it had been waiting for me and had only made itself known when it sensed my power fluttering against it like the lightest of knocks. Despite the chains and charred frame, it looked oddly ordinary. Just a slab of wood, as any other. At first, the chains wouldn’t budge, so I gathered my will and imagined it melting the metal. Like the weather that had bent to my will, the chains wilted beneath my hands. Soon, they were nothing more than a pile at my feet.

  I pushed open the door.

  Inside, a gigantic tree stood in the middle of the empty room. Unlike the slim trees of my father’s court, gnarled trunks and twisted roots swelled this tree to an impossible size. Nestled in its branches and obscuring its leaves were thousands of small candles enclosed in glass cylinders. From a distance, it looked like a tree with stars caught in its limbs.

  I rested my hand on the trunk but immediately yanked it away. The tree had a heartbeat. It should have been impossible. Then again, many things that should have been impossible were possible in Akaran. The pulsing light of the tree beckoned me, singing with familiarity. How would it feel to cup the smooth glass against my palm, bathe my face in the candles’ light? But I couldn’t. This was the first place in Akaran that felt holy. Even the silence was hallowed.

  A length of obsidian mirror shined against the wall. I walked toward it, expecting it to be like the other mirrors of Akaran—windows into different worlds—but this showed nothing but an expanse of black space.

  Turning back to the tree, I walked around it in circles, staring at the limbs that spun out dark and forbidding, sharp as arrows. But also familiar. Like a beast tamed to know my hand. I reached for the trunk, shocked by its warmth. Slowly, I started to scale the trunk, my hands gripping the smooth dark wood until I was balancing on a tree limb. Out of
breath, I leaned against the tree. Below me, the floor gleamed with silver veins.

  Reaching for one of the candles, I took it slowly from its niche. It gave way easily. Only when I brought it to my eyes did I see that it wasn’t even a flame. It was little more than a slice of bright mirror. And there was something inside … an image. A face. Startled, I nearly dropped the candle, but the image had taken hold. It spread over me, slipping behind my eyes. In the candle, I saw a girl whose face glowed with the kind of beauty and slow smile that can make a man believe in magic. She spun happily in a grove of trees, her hands pulling someone along … another girl, whose face was obscured by a curtain of black hair. I leaned closer. And I knew who she was even before the other girl turned around.

  It was me.

  I saw myself laughing, calling to the other girl, “Nritti! Slow down!”

  My mind was grasping, carding through years of memory, trying to sieve through every moment to explain the impossible: I knew that would be her name. And it wasn’t a guess. It was a knee-jerk reaction in my soul.

  I stared at myself spinning on a hill. My skin echoed the night sky, velvet black and spangled with diamonds that matched the stars above. Even if we didn’t look the same, I knew it was me. There was something more in the image that I couldn’t ignore. The pulse of friendship, of warmth. Of memory.

  I placed the candle back, my heart thrumming as I stared around me. Every single one of these memories was mine. Why would Amar have all of this locked inside a tree? I pulled my sari closer around me, as if it could ward off the chill under my skin.

  Then, I reached for another candle and saw the girl I had called Nritti, but this time … she was screaming. Her roar was a hideous, heartbroken bellow. She was in the orchard of the Night Bazaar, tears coursing down her face and clutching her heart, her legs crossed beneath her as she rocked back and forth. The image filled me with a strange ache … guilt. Like it was my fault Nritti was screaming. The image faded. My hands trembled as I put the candle back in its niche, and fumbled for another candle.

  … This time, Nritti was wandering through the Night Bazaar, a sunken look in her eyes. Mud and dust caked her feet. Her beautiful clothes were torn and her gaze was searching. Gupta’s words rippled through my thoughts. I remembered his exchange with Amar, the worried sound in his voice: She knows … I don’t know how, but she’s hunting, like she’s caught a scent. I couldn’t shake the sense that she was looking for me.

  A low sound drifted through the room. Up ahead, the ivory door gleamed brightly and Amar’s voice called to me from outside. I froze. I couldn’t let him catch me here. There was still so much I had to understand, so much I needed to know.

  “Maya?” called Amar again. He was getting closer.

  I rushed through the door, murmuring a plea for silence to mute the jangling of my anklets as I tore down the hallways, nearly skidding into the bedroom. I opened the door just in time to see Amar striding toward me. His jacket flashed a fiery red, the light from lanterns throwing his figure into relief. My heart was beating so loudly, I was convinced he would be able to hear it through the silk of my sari.

  “I am glad you stayed here,” he said, taking my hands in his.

  There was that same flitting in my stomach. But I couldn’t forget the memories in the tree. I couldn’t forget that it was Amar who had kept them from me, who had chained them behind iron and consigned them to silence. Amar who had lied. There was no danger behind the doors, only the danger of knowing myself.

  “I will come back later. I only wanted to see that you were safe.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Amar’s jaw tightened. “I cannot say.”

  I was tired of this answer. I could feel something nameless and evil blooming in every shadow. It wasn’t paranoia. I knew it with the certainty of daytime.

  Lightly, Amar traced my jaw, his gaze lingering at my lips. Then, he turned on his heel and disappeared behind the halls. I blinked. For a moment, I thought I had seen the snaky tendrils of a noose unraveling from the second bracelet on his wrist.

  Where was he going? And if he thought I would stay behind like some petulant child, he was wrong. I waited a few moments and then slipped down the same hallways Amar had entered. As I crossed the halls, a second shadow nearly crossed mine.

  A woman’s shadow.

  My heart clenched. Who was she? I’d never seen another soul in the palace aside from Amar and Gupta. Her clothes were tattered and she moved with a strange, labored effort. Like she was in pain. I crept out of the hall, following the woman down the darkened hallway. I followed her around another corner and this time saw an impossible sight—

  Hundreds of people were walking through Akaran’s halls.

  I flattened myself against the wall, eyeing the crowds who wound through the halls like a great serpent. They were tall, short, fat, skinny, dark, light, young and old. And then I noticed stranger details: a woman with a black and blue neck, a man who looked distinctly gray, a child with something sharp protruding from her side and another man covered in blood. I clapped my hand over my mouth, my throat dry as I sank to my knees.

  They were all dead.

  * * *

  The dead walked in droves. Crouching in the shadows, I searched their drained expressions. There was no light in their eyes as they queued outside a wall of scarlet and silver flames.

  In the distance, four massive hounds—two pairs of eyes on each side of their heads—kept appearing and disappearing. Their mouths were full of something wet and silvery. Each time they snorted and dropped open their jaws, a soul dropped onto the floor. Hellhounds. I shuddered. Their coats of fur were close cropped, brindled like emerald and diamond.

  Gupta stood at the front of the line, a heavy bound book in his arms. “Go quickly to the south wing and await judgment from the Dharma Raja.”

  The south wing. I paled, turning slowly to a door made of nothing but pale beams of smoke. I recognized the arch beside it—the entrance to the glass garden.

  I tried to grab something solid and only vaguely felt a stone pillar against my palm. My knees buckled. I thought of Amar’s promise outside the Night Bazaar … a kingdom of impossible power. A kingdom that all nations feared.

  No wonder I’d never heard of Akaran … there was no such thing. I had always been in Naraka—the realm of the dead. Which made Amar the Dharma Raja, the lord of justice in the afterlife. A harsh laugh escaped me.

  Partnered with Death.

  Death shackled all fates. It was fixed. And all I could do was modify the ambiguities left between. No wonder Amar looked disturbed when I asked whether those who entered the Otherworld died. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. Gupta knew too.

  I looked around, disoriented as the shadows of the dead striped the white marble of the floors. I was about to leave when a familiar woman caught my eye. Vikram’s mother. Her brow still gleamed with sweat and in her hands she carried a bundle of wilting flowers. Her neck was bent too sharply and bits of mountain gravel clung to her hair. She must have fallen.

  I retched onto the marble, my body shaking. Amar must have pulled the thread. What outcome was there for the boy? I was disgusted with myself. I wanted to fling myself at the woman’s feet, and beg her for forgiveness.

  Someone marched beside her. A figure silhouetted in metal, a limp crest of scarlet on its helmet. I remembered the stomping gait, the familiar vermillion sash now tattered and trailing blood. Memory clamped its jaws into my chest: he was a soldier of Bharata. But far, far worse than that—

  He was a harem guard.

  I remembered taunting him on the day my father told me of his plans. The young guard whom I had never bothered apologizing to. He looked aged. Or perhaps it was the cold lights of Naraka slowly teasing out his youth. My heart slammed against my ribs as I watched the line of the dead. Who had he died protecting? And where was he going? Who else would I recognize in these halls?

  I wandered far into the line of the dead, pushing past them, re
fusing to shudder when my skin came away clammy at the contact. By the time I was sure there was no one else from Bharata, I couldn’t find my way back to the south wing. The halls skipped around me.

  I was losing my way through the palace, but there was nothing I could do. The palace thrummed with its own magic, its own plans. Each step was a small battle against the draining energy of the dead. My skin shifted taut and stretched, as though I were turning skeletal with every movement, weighed down by the pull of magic and spent lives. I found myself at the threshold of the throne room. The doors were flung open and as I stumbled past the entrance, I saw Amar bent over the tapestry. A crown of blackbuck horns gleamed on his head, cruel and slick. In the dark, they looked blood-tinged. His hands roamed over the threads, fingers flicking, yanking, snarled in strands that he pulled out in swift, merciless strokes like he was tearing throats instead of threads.

  The threads—whole entire lives—fell noiselessly to the ground. It was a slaughter.

  I moved faster, heart racing. I couldn’t be caught. Years could have passed by the time I found myself outside the doors of our bedroom. Our bedroom. The weight of it sent a stab of pain inside me. I had slept beside him. I had kissed him. I had even … begun to feel something for him.

  I sank to my knees. I had never escaped my horoscope. I had only been blind to its meaning until now. A wave of revulsion rushed over me as I glanced at the bed we had shared. He had concealed the consequences of my judgments and made me an accomplice to death. He had asked me for patience—for trust—but he had betrayed both.

  Shadow and light danced across the floor through a sliver in the door frame. What did he want from me? What would happen when the moon had run its course? Outside my window, an ochre glow crept up a nearly dying moon. I shuddered. The warning rhyme flickered in my heart, dredging up old nightmares: I know the monster in your bed.