“Maybe one day you will?”
“Maybe,” she allowed.
By now, evening touched the sky. Aasha left to be with her sisters and I was no closer to finding any hint for the next trial. Around me, song and dance filled the courtyard. I swept my eyes over Alaka’s landscape. I kept expecting the Nameless to pour out of the shadows, but they had kept to themselves. With nowhere left to search in the courtyards, I headed for the magical orchards.
I’d never gone this deep into the orchards before. Everything was still. Quiet. The trees stood tall and solemn, with no wood for their bark, but ribbons of mirror all silver and tarnished. When I stepped back, the grove looked like the rib cage of some forgotten monster. Nothing left of its terror, but its winter bones and mirror teeth. No reflection shone in the mirror bark. Instead, the trees became something of a lens. They weren’t transparent, but I could see through them to something hazy in the distance: pieces of a pewter sky through a lattice of trees. Energy hummed around the mirror trees, and I wondered whether they functioned like the Serpent King’s portal pool. A bridge from one place to another.
Icy branches snapped behind me. Vikram. My whole body tensed and lightened at once. I … missed him. If this was the only day left, would I squander it on an austere and frigid existence? Or would I snatch it for what it was and figure out what it might become later?
“No beautiful woman should be alone on Jhulan Purnima,” said someone softly.
My heart dropped. Not Vikram. I came face-to-face with a beautiful yaksha. He was dark and broad-shouldered. Amber sap ran through his hair and his eyes were a shifting and hypnotizing color of green and black.
“Who are you?”
He laughed. “The Guardian of the Orchards, both abandoned and tended. The trees told me they heard you. They like you, you know. You remind them of another. Why don’t you let me escort you to the final rites of the evening? The festival is a celebration of so many things,” he said in a voice like dark silk. “Things we do in the dark with only the night as witness. Things that if the day only knew would make the sky blush crimson at the sight.”
“No. I was just leaving.”
The yaksha appeared at my side in an instant.
“Tell me, beauty, are you the human who divested the Serpent King of his venom?”
He caught me around the arm. My hands immediately went to my dagger.
“Get your hand off of me.”
“No reason to become hostile, beauty,” laughed the yaksha. “I think we could make a trade. I want that venom. You can have whatever you like from me. I can be very generous.”
He stroked my cheek. I spat in his face.
“No,” I said sweetly, in case the spit dripping down his cheek was too subtle.
“I don’t like being told no,” said the yaksha.
“I don’t like being touched without permission.”
I spun out of his grasp. Roots spilled out from the yaksha’s tunic, anchoring him to the ground. He laughed. The sound snapped my patience. I lunged, spinning the knives from the concealed belt at my hip, cutting at the roots tethering him in place. He snarled and fell back. Lust dampened his eyes and my whole body shuddered in disgust. I held my ground, not breaking eye contact.
Come closer. I dare you.
He dared.
I reached up to the branches sweeping overhead, pulled a handful back before letting go the moment he rushed toward me. He howled, clawing at his face. I moved forward, tackling him to the ground. I rolled him onto his back, kicking apart his knees and plunging my knife moments away from a place that would instantly kill his lust. For good.
“I didn’t miss,” I said. “Let me go, or risk tempting my aim.”
I turned to go when I heard him growl.
“My turn,” he hissed.
He threw his hands into the air, summoning a rustling cloak of moths. The ground disappeared. Everywhere I looked, moths with muted silver wings stole my vision. I crawled; panic tightened my skin. His laugh filled my ears, and gripped my thoughts. I was out of my head. Out of my abilities. I couldn’t fight his magic with strength.
“The trees want you, Princess,” said his voice from everywhere. “You can grow a beautiful tree from that heart of yours. It’s been so long for them. Not since Queen Tara ripped out a heart and watered it with her tears and sheltered it with her beloved’s bones. I can teach you to live forever. I can teach you how to turn your vengeance into a fruit. I can teach you what it means to be invincible. All you have to do is give me the venom.”
Moth wings whipped my face and tangled my hair. Before Alaka, I would have been tempted. Invincibility was all I had wanted when Ujijain had kept me in that cell month after month. But I’d tasted the fruit of vengeance. And it was narrow and sour. Not a story at all, but an ending. I deserved more.
“Never,” I hissed.
The cloak of moths broke. Grabbing my dagger, I jumped to my feet and faced the yaksha. His eyes narrowed.
“You tire me,” he said. “I will have what I want.”
He glanced once at my dagger and it turned from metal to wood. I barely had a toy to protect myself from him. I steadied my breath, focusing on his weaknesses. The roots. Aim for them. Kick, rend, sever them with my hands and teeth if I had to. I was lunging, hands outstretched, when something bright and golden sailed through the air.
The orchard guardian jumped back just in time to avoid it. I thought the golden ball would splatter against the tree, but instead it sailed straight through the mirror bark. In the distance, I heard voices in a different forest. Even the yaksha frowned. The voices seemed to be coming from inside the tree. The small hairs at the back of my neck prickled. The people sounded too familiar.
They sounded just like me and Vikram.
But I didn’t have time to process the eerie voices. Someone was crashing through the trees. I squinted into the dense net of branches. Whatever it was, it sounded like a deranged bull. I looked closer.
Not a deranged bull.
Not at all.
30
UNFASTENED WORLD
VIKRAM
Vikram was no stranger to finding weaknesses. It had been part of his talent as the Fox Prince of Ujijain. He survived by finding the threads that pulled people together, and stringing out their secrets, finding the holes … and pressing.
On one of his last visits home, he had scheduled a meeting with a high-ranking adviser in hopes of assisting on a city-planning project.
“And why would I allow you to participate in such a meeting, Your Highness?” sneered the adviser. “It is unnecessary for you to attend. We will handle those engagements when you sit upon the throne. There are better ways to spend your hours.”
Vikram had walked in front of the adviser and tapped his fingers together.
“Perhaps I’ll be inspired by the way you spend your hours,” he had said. “Maybe I’ll go to the dice tables. Your winnings, I’ve noticed, are controlled by just how little or how much you pay attention to the city representative’s interests.”
“How do you know that?” asked the adviser, paling.
“As it turns out, not everyone knows that I am merely to ‘sit’ upon the throne of Ujijain.”
He let this information linger just to watch the adviser sweat.
“You have far too much time on your hands, Prince Vikramaditya.”
“So change that,” said Vikram. “Include me in the committees. Spend my time, and I may turn a blind eye on yours.”
He was involved in seven committees that season.
But spending much of his time finding weaknesses meant that he could not ignore his own.
Jhulan Purnima threatened to unfasten him. Even the air turned intoxicating and sweet. It almost, thought Vikram, smelled like her. He had noticed that the other day, when he leaned down to murmur a broken song in her ear and plead with her to live. She had that sharp green fragrance that belonged to unopened flower blooms. Sun-warmed beauty on the cusp of bursting.
He hadn’t even realized his weakness until that night, when those heatless flames licked their way through her bloodstream. What if she didn’t live? At first, his mind refused to entertain the possibility of her death. But then he had carried her. He had held her limp, poisoned body against his chest, and felt her life unspooling. And he knew that the Tournament of Wishes had stopped being a game.
Since that night, he needed to tell her … something. But what? “Please don’t die” sounded foolish. “You smell nice” sounded worse. He wasn’t even sure what the right words were, but they sat on his tongue and made it impossible to speak around them. Before Alaka, he would have been content keeping whatever thorny not-feelings had reared up inside him. But Death commanded urgency. Death tore the skin off dreams and showed the bones underneath. And Vikram saw the bones now. When he closed his eyes, he saw Gauri’s long-lashed gaze closing. And staying closed. He saw his own body crumpled by the shores of a pool not unlike the Serpent King’s portal, turning to a skeleton for some ignorant prince to ponder or ignore.
Irritated, Vikram stalked through the revels and swiped a jeweled goblet from one of the floating crystal trays. He swirled the goblet, watching as the pale pink drink deepened from rose to garnet to winter black. The same shade as her eyes. He spilled the drink onto the ground.
Vikram stood far from the revels now, at the edge of the orchards. A low laugh resonated through the silent trees. It wasn’t a laugh of camaraderie or love. It was a laugh of control.
Chasing the sound, he stepped into an orchard full of needle-thin bone white trees. Here, the snow and ice faded into soft ash. The grove possessed the undisturbed quality of cremation grounds. Grief dented the air, turning it so heavy and thick that he thought he could cut through it. His breath feathered into cold plumes as he crept forward, mindful of the strange trees.
Through a net of branches, he saw Gauri crawling along the orchard floor. Some distance before her stood a yaksha with amber hair. He held himself strangely, his legs ankle-deep in the ground, his face harsh and twisted. Vikram froze, mesmerized by the black blooming across the yaksha’s face, oil and fungus, roots dripping and dangling from nose and chin.
Something snapped. A howl from the yaksha. Gauri rising victorious. It wasn’t until he saw that her hand gripped a wooden dagger that panic grabbed his heart in a fist. If she had her true dagger, she might turn them on him for daring to interrupt her victory. But this was not her usual flesh-and-blood opponent. Vikram glanced down and cursed. In Ujijain, he’d never had reason to carry weapons and so he never developed the habit. He was muscular, but that didn’t matter in the face of magic.
However, he could run.
He could run very fast.
Time bore down on him. The yaksha stepped closer to Gauri. Running fast wouldn’t make a difference if he couldn’t distract the yaksha. He needed something. Something that would purchase a moment’s distraction. Vikram bent down, sifting through the ash for a rock or a stick, and his hands hit the bark of the bone white tree. The tree quaked. With a lush sigh, the bark unfolded, splitting down the middle to reveal a perfectly golden apple at the center. Vikram didn’t think twice. He reached in, grabbed the fruit, aimed it straight at the yaksha and threw. The fruit sailed through the air, burnished golden rind shining in the dim evening light. His aim, for once, was true. But the yaksha must have detected it. He stepped back, and the apple sailed through the bark as if the tree were made of water.
Not exactly what he expected, but he’d learned to accept stranger things. He didn’t waste a moment. Vikram charged forward. Wind tore at his jacket. The ground blurred. Pale light spangled the mirror trees, but the light was terse and distant, like lightning pulsing behind a veil of clouds. Whatever roots had sewed the yaksha to the ground lifted in his desperation to move. But Vikram was faster. He slammed into him. The yaksha tipped sideways, arms flung back. Quartz-bright cobwebs spun out from his fingers, seeking purchase. Neck arched and eyes wide, the yaksha slipped sideways, crumpling to the ground. Vikram braced himself for a fall, but Gauri grabbed the collar of his jacket and righted him. He panted, his heart still thundering in his chest as the yaksha pushed himself onto his elbows and glared.
“Take her and be damned,” he spat.
Gauri spun her wooden dagger between her fingers before taking aim at the yaksha. Vikram stepped out of her way.
“Take this and be damned,” she said, releasing it. The dagger found its mark and promptly thwacked the yaksha on the head. He disappeared on the spot.
Gauri faced him. Her hair had come undone around her face. Somehow her eyes looked even blacker than normal, as if they’d captured the night sky in their gaze. He felt out of breath. But not from his sprint. Fire burned just beneath his skin. He cursed. What happened to always having a way with words? Words turned to ash in his mouth.
“Did you find anything useful—” he had started to say when she spoke over him:
“I was thinking about Kubera’s warning. About desire. And how it’s dangerous.”
He stopped short.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It is.” And then because he had to, because every splinter of him screamed that this moment could grow wings if his soul steered him true, he said, “To me, there is nothing more dangerous in this palace than you.”
Now she looked at him. She didn’t soften. Or smile. If anything, she had become a little of the ground on which they stood. Cold and lovely. But wonder poured out of her eyes. Wonder and something like … relief. And if he thought there was fire under his skin earlier, it was nothing compared to now. Now he had swallowed the sun. Now the world had stopped lurching forward and begun an impossible dance.
“I thought you were going to stay away from me,” she said.
He looked at her, this princess who seemed so dangerously sharp that he might cut himself just brushing against her shadow.
“I don’t know how.”
He waited. He thought he could trace the space between them. It was delicate. Too delicate. A thing of silk and snow and filigreed gold. And nothing was real except her, and the exquisite brightness of her eyes, and the corner of her lips sweeping into a smile.
“Then don’t.”
31
A MEAL OF DESIRE
GAURI
Vikram’s fingers laced through mine, and my skin flared at the contact. Within moments, we were out of the orchards. In the courtyard, the revels gathered us into the music. Enchantment abraded the dusk until there was only magic left to draw into our lungs. Not air. The music moved us to dance, and sent us spinning around one another as if our gazes were hooks and hinges, and our very dreams hung off of them. When the music relinquished us, we fell against one another. His gaze turned into a question, and mine formed an answer. Our shadows splayed onto the ground before us, guiding us through the revels and the lengthening dark, up the staircase and straight to our room.
I’d like to think I have a number of virtues. But patience has never been one of them. The moment the door closed, I caught his lips against mine. Swift and urgent. Our hands moved hungrily across each other. His fingers dug into my waist, pulling my hips to his.
At once, time was too fast and too slow and distance felt like an illusion we were trying to shatter. I pushed him against the door, tearing off his jacket. Vikram stood there, a tilt to his head as he let himself be appraised. The corded lines of his muscles caught the light, and my eyes roved from his broad shoulders down the lean, carved plane of his torso. I kissed him again. Slowly. As if the trial of tomorrow were an eternity away. We traded heartbeats until we kissed to one cadence, and I didn’t know where we stopped and started. This was the reminder I needed, the hope that made me reject the yaksha’s offer even as the memory of demon fruit sang through my veins. I didn’t want to cut out my heart. I wanted to give it. Freely and without feeling as if it would be turned into a weapon against me. I wanted freedom to thaw me, to let it break the walls Skanda’s rule had forced me to build.
I wanted the privilege of weakness.
Vikram cupped the back of my neck, deepening our kiss. And I found … wonder. A new enchantment. This magic wasn’t a flashy, many-splendored illusion. It was the kind of wonder discovered in the space between heartbeats and realized in the silk of fingers threading through hair. It was a magic coaxed and found, a tiny world no one could reach but us, and I wanted to revel in it for as long as I could. I kissed him on his cheeks, his lips, the underside of his chin. When I nipped at his chin, he groaned and I kissed that away too.
“Gauri,” he said, his voice hoarse and wanting.
It was my name on his lips that stopped me. He spoke my name like a plea or a prayer, something to end or begin a life. Maybe he sensed my hesitation, because he lifted my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles and the inside of my wrist. Whatever heat had twisted through my veins tightened to a knot in my belly.
If we lived through tomorrow … if we won the Tournament … what did this mean? If I took away everything we were, it looked like a girl and a boy who had found something and wanted to see what it would grow into with more time. But I couldn’t take away who I was or who he was. He was the Prince of Ujijain. One day, he would be the Emperor. And if we survived, those same hands wrapped tightly around my body would one day wield a great deal of power. Maybe they’d one day want power over me.
I stepped back. Vikram dropped his hands.
“Is something wrong?”
Yes. This. Us.
“No. I just … I need a moment,” I said tightly.
I moved away from him and he caught my wrist.
“I’ll wait for you here,” he said softly. He looked at me intently. It was too dark to see the lines of gold threaded through his eyes, but I felt that I could see them anyway.
“I’ll wait as long as I have to.”
I leaned forward and kissed him. “I won’t make you wait long.”
“Have I inspired your rare and elusive mercy?”
“Something like that.”
A Crown of Wishes Page 20
