Poison's Kiss

by Breeana Shields

  “That’s incredible,” I say. A wave of warmth washes over me. Gopal has always said that working for the Raja is an honor, but until this moment the Raja has never seemed like a real person, let alone a kind one. Maybe my work is noble after all. But then I remember that the Raja wants Deven dead, and the feeling drains away.

  “Why are the houses blue?” Mani asks.

  “Living under a blue roof is a symbol of dignity,” Deven explains. “But the Raja didn’t want to settle for just the roof. He wanted the entire house to be blue.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. A solitary blue house might look garish, but all of them together are like a work of art. I can’t tear my gaze away.

  “How did you find this place?” Mani asks.

  A shadow passes over Deven’s face and it takes him a moment to answer. “My grandmother lives here,” he says finally.

  “She does?” Mani claps his hands together. “Can we meet her?”

  Deven laughs. “We’ll have to save that for another day. If we don’t head back soon, we won’t make it before dark.” I glance up and see that he’s right. It must already be late afternoon.

  On the way back Deven slides his hand into mine, and tingles race up my arm. It’s a lie, our palms pressed together, our fingers entwined like we belong to each other. But it’s a lovely lie, and I wish it never had to end.

  By the time we make it back to the flat, the sun is dipping beneath the horizon and the sky is blushing like a new bride. Mani is finally worn out, and he slumps against me as I fish for my key. When I swing the door open, he crawls into bed still fully dressed and pulls the covers over his head.

  Deven leans against the doorframe. “Thank you for today.”

  “So typical,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Thanking me when I’ve done nothing at all.”

  He smiles and tugs gently on my ponytail. “You came,” he said. “I didn’t think you would.”

  “I didn’t think I would either.”

  “So why did you?”

  I’m sleepy and content and it’s working on me like a drug running through my veins, making me loose and fearless. I tell him the truth. “You make me do irresponsible things.”

  He laughs and pulls me against his chest. He wraps his arms around my waist and presses his lips to my forehead. “I hope to make you do more irresponsible things in the future,” he says. I lay my head on his shoulder and relax against him. His fingers move up and down my spine, and my whole body comes to life. It steals my breath away, this sensation of being touched, of feeling alive. Deven’s fingers twine through my hair, stroke the back of my neck. My nerves are singing. I lift my head—just for a moment—and he catches my face in his palms. His thumbs idly stroke my cheeks. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. He’s looking at me like I’m the only person in the world. His eyes are deep brown, pools of melted chocolate, and I could drown in them. Deven leans toward me, lips already parted, and time seems to slow down. I want him to do it. I want him to kiss me more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

  I put a palm on his chest and push him away. Deven’s hands drop to his sides and a look of hurt flashes across his face.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, and I am. So sorry. “I can’t. I…” I’m floundering for an excuse, for a way to erase the wounded expression on his face. I reach for his hand and squeeze his fingers. “It’s just that Mani is here and I’m so tired.”

  “Oh,” he says. “I’ll let you get some rest, then.”

  I nod. “Thanks,” I say, because it’s the only thing I can.

  He turns to leave and then stops. “Wait. I almost forgot.” He pulls something from his pocket and drops it into my palm. “I brought this for you,” he tells me. “It’s a cricket.”

  And it is—a cricket just smaller than the length of my palm carved out of silky, dark wood. Every detail is perfect, from the tiny wings and slender antennae all the way down to the folded legs poised for jumping. This must have taken him hours of work, maybe days. No one has ever given me a gift before, and I can’t stop staring at it.

  “Do you like it?” he asks.

  “I love it.”

  Deven leans forward and brushes my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I couldn’t work out how to carve a sunset, and a star seemed too ordinary.” You like nighttime. On the day I was supposed to kill him, he was memorizing the things that I love.

  “Thank you,” I tell him. My voice is thick with emotion and I feel like something inside me has cracked open and I’ll never be able to close it up again. “I can’t…I don’t know how to repay you.”

  He grins and presses another kiss on my forehead. “You’ll think of something,” he teases. “Good night, Marinda.”

  “Good night,” I say. And it was. It was a perfect night. Yesterday I told Iyla that I wasn’t in love with Deven.

  I think I lied.

  Deven needs one more dose of poison, but I haven’t seen him in two days. Mani and I have searched everywhere—the park, the market, the café where he bought us lunch—but Deven seems to have vanished. I try to tell myself that he’s just busy, that he isn’t lying on the side of the street somewhere writhing in pain from the poison I’ve given him. But red-hot worry snakes through my veins and coils tightly around my middle. I run my thumb along the back of the silky-smooth wooden cricket in my pocket. This may be all I have left of him. Mani and I are running out of places to search.

  Now my final bit of hope bleeds away as Mani and I stare at the CLOSED sign dangling in the window of the bookshop. I hoped that Japa would be able to tell me where to find Deven, where he lives. But the darkened windows feel like a bad omen. “Japa never closes the shop,” I tell Mani. The worry in my stomach rears up and strikes with sharp fangs. What if he’s by Deven’s bedside? Or worse, at his graveside? But Mani’s not paying attention to me. His gaze is fixed on a boy not much older than himself sitting in a booth across the street. A sign hangs above his head that says WISDOM FOR SALE. PRICES VARY.

  “He’s on the wrong street,” I say. “That kind of foolishness only works in the market.”

  Mani looks up at me like I’ve offended him. “Maybe he can help us,” he says. His expression is so earnest. He wants to find Deven as much as I do, but throwing away money will do us no good.

  I soften my tone. “I don’t think so, monkey. You can’t buy wisdom.”

  “Of course you can,” he says. He motions toward the shop. “What about books?”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  I put my arm around his shoulders. “Well, for one thing, most books aren’t written by ten-year-olds.”

  Mani glares at me and moves so that my arm falls away from him. “Children aren’t stupid,” he says.

  “That’s not what I meant…,” but I don’t get to finish because he turns his back on me and marches across the street toward the booth.

  “Mani!” I call, but he doesn’t turn and so I hurry to follow him. I catch up just as he’s dropping a handful of coins into the boy’s palm. The boy counts the money before he places it in a leather pouch fastened to his waist. He looks up at the sky and taps a quill against his cheek. His fingertips are stained with black ink and there’s a dark smudge across his cheek. I open my mouth to speak, but Mani gives me a look so withering that I snap my jaw shut. The boy drops his gaze and levels both Mani and me with a long stare. Then he nods once like he’s satisfied with his assessment of us. He dips his quill in the inkpot beside him and scribbles on a piece of parchment. His tongue pokes out of the side of his mouth as he writes, and it makes him look even younger. He sets the quill down and blows on the ink. Mani is bouncing on his toes, and his hands are laced together in front of him like he’s restraining himself from snatching the wisdom from the boy’s fingers. Finally the boy rolls the parchment into a loose cylinder and hands it to Mani.

  We walk a few steps away before Mani unfurls it. As he reads, his brow furrows and he chews on his bott
om lip. He hands me the parchment. Written in a script that belies the boy’s age is this: Suspicion is the only defense against betrayal. My blood runs cold. I whirl to face Mani.

  “What did you tell that boy?”

  His face is twisted in confusion. “What?”

  “Before I came up behind you, what did you say to him?”

  “Nothing,” Mani says. “I just said I wanted to buy some wisdom.”

  “Why would he write this?” I shake the parchment in front of Mani’s face. He takes a step back and I realize I’m scaring him. I pull in a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, hugging him to my side. “It doesn’t matter.” But the words on the page have rattled me, and I walk back to the stall where the boy is still sitting, a look of absolute calm on his face.

  “We want our money back,” I tell him. The boy studies me for a moment before responding, his eyes roaming over my face as if searching for something.

  “Certainly,” he says finally. “But you will need to return what you’ve purchased.”

  I toss the parchment at him and it drifts to a stop near his inkpot. He glances at it but doesn’t pick it up. “That isn’t what I sold you.”

  “Yes,” I say through a clenched jaw, “it is.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Of course I read it.”

  “Do you remember what it said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you still possess the wisdom. If you can return that, then I will happily give you a refund.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” I say.

  He picks up the parchment and holds it out to me. “Then I’m afraid I can’t return your money.” The hairs on the back of my neck prickle to life. This child talks as if he is a hundred years old. It’s just a trick, I remind myself. I have seen it dozens of times at the market. Fortune-tellers, snake charmers, palm readers, each of them playing on the things that all of us have in common—love, loss, heartbreak. Their proclamations are so generalized that they seem personalized. But they are all charlatans who lie for money, and this boy is no different. Still, as I walk back to Mani, I can’t help wondering: Am I the betrayer or am I the betrayed?

  Mani takes my hand and we don’t say anything as we leave Gali Street and cross into the wooded area nearby. We walk under the shade of the devil trees until we get to a small pond occupied by dozens of swans. Mani snatches the parchment from my fingers and drops it into the water. And we watch as the ink bleeds away, leaving just a blank page without any wisdom at all.

  “We could try Iyla’s house,” Mani says after we’ve spent an hour watching the swans swim in circles. The suggestion sends a shock of pain through me—to imagine Iyla and Deven together, to think that she might be the reason that I haven’t seen him. But as unbearable as it is picturing him in Iyla’s arms, it’s better than the alternative, better than finding out I’ve given him too much venom and he’s dead. The thought of killing him by accident is so much worse than the prospect of killing someone else on purpose. And thinking so makes me feel like a horrible person.

  “It’s worth a try,” I say. I try to keep my voice steady, but I don’t fool Mani. He squeezes my fingers.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “Deven likes you better.”

  But that’s not the point. The pang of sadness comes from imagining that he cares for anyone else at all.

  Mani and I don’t speak on the walk to Iyla’s house, and the silence that hangs between us is heavy and anxious. When we get to her neighborhood, my shoulders are tight with dread that we will come upon the same scene as before, that we’ll have to crouch behind a hedge and watch Iyla and Deven embrace. But we don’t see them, and oddly this worries me too. By the time we climb the steep steps to the front door, Mani’s breathing is coming in small gasps. The cords in his neck are bulging and taut. I pat him on the back. “Breathe,” I tell him. He puts his hands on his knees and sucks air slowly through his nose. Before I have a chance to knock, the door swings open to reveal Iyla, her face a mask of rage.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks. Her gaze darts from side to side. “You’re causing a spectacle.”

  Anger flares in my chest. “He can’t breathe, Iyla.” She looks at Mani and her face softens.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Come in.” She ushers us through the door and quickly closes it behind us. I forgot how beautiful Iyla’s home is. Plush white carpet stretches from wall to wall, and all the furniture is oversized and covered in brightly colored luxurious fabrics. A mosaic of the Raksaka made entirely of gemstones hangs on the wall—an amber tiger stalks through a jade meadow, the emerald head of a crocodile peeks from a sea of blue topaz, a sapphire Garuda flies against pearly clouds, and an onyx snake gleams from the ground, a ruby tongue flicking from its mouth.

  Dozens of small candles nestled in glass jars are scattered on tabletops, and I’m forcefully reminded why Iyla lives in more lavish circumstances than Mani and I do. Our flat is meant to be functional. Her home is meant for seduction. A wave of nausea overtakes me as I picture Deven here with Iyla, her face bathed in candlelight.

  She motions toward Mani. “What does he need?” she asks. He needs a breathing treatment, though I have a feeling Gopal will withhold one until either Deven is dead or he’s convinced Deven can’t be killed. Mani’s breathing is calming, although it’s still strained.

  “He’ll be fine,” I tell her. “He just needs a moment.”

  Iyla’s arms are crossed over her stomach. Her face is completely scrubbed clean and her hair is pulled into a messy bun at the back of her head. The bruise on her jaw has turned a sickly green color. She doesn’t look like she’s working today, and it makes me breathe a little easier. Iyla sees me studying her and narrows her eyes.

  “What on earth would possess you to come here?” she asks.

  “I can’t find Deven.” I try to keep my voice steady, but it comes out more like a supplication than a statement.

  Her eyebrows disappear into her hairline. “You came here for that? Do you have any idea how bad it will be if Gopal finds out you’re here?”

  I narrow my eyes and force nails into my voice. “He’ll only know if you tell him.”

  She groans and presses her fingers to her temples. “That’s not true. He could’ve had you followed.” Her gaze slides to Mani and I see the accusation in her eyes—that loving him makes me weak, that I’m less careful because of him.

  “We weren’t followed,” I say. “I’m not stupid. Do you know where Deven is or not?”

  Iyla sits in a chair with thick red and orange stripes. The colors flatter her complexion, and I wonder if they were chosen for that reason. She crosses one leg over the other and studies her fingernails.

  “You won’t find him today.”

  “Why not?”

  She doesn’t look at me. “He’s unavailable.”

  My heart speeds up. “What is that supposed to mean?” I have the horrible thought that by “unavailable” she could mean dead, that my worst fear has been realized, that I’ve killed him in my attempts to save him. Or maybe she means Gopal has already chosen another plan, a different assassin. I sink down into the chair directly across from her. “Is he in danger? Just tell me where he is.” I hate the note of pleading in my voice, hate the smug look it plasters across Iyla’s face.

  She swings her foot and avoids looking at me. “He’s fine,” she says, and the worry in my stomach uncoils, just a little. “But I can’t tell you anything more.”

  Fear has been eating away at me for days, and Iyla is as calm as a sea made of glass. She has all the knowledge, all the power and none of the worry. She can find Deven whenever she wants. I have the sudden urge to flip her over and shake her like a coin bank until her secrets spill out like silver treasure. “Iyla, stop playing games and tell me where he is.”

  She finally meets my gaze and fixes me with an icy stare. “The last few times I’ve shared things with you haven’t gone well for me.”


  My fingers curl into my palms and I have to resist the urge to raise my voice. It’s so unfair of her to blame me for the terrible things Gopal has done. “That’s not how it was,” I say. My voice is choked with emotion, despite my best efforts to stay calm. “I never intentionally betrayed your confidences.” But the bruise is splayed across her face like an accusation.

  “I know,” she says. “Still…you’ll understand if I’m not eager to give you information.”

  I rake my fingers through my hair. “I have to find him, Iyla. He needs one more dose of poison.”

  She shrugs. “Like I said, it won’t be today.” She studies my face. “Look, Marinda, I said I wouldn’t tell Gopal and I won’t, but that’s all I can do. It’s safer for you if you don’t know where Deven is.”

  “If you hurt him—”

  “Stop it,” she says. “You don’t have to threaten me. He’s going to be fine.” She leans forward and puts a hand on top of mine. “I promise.” For just a moment I think I see something hard in her eyes, and a prickle of unease races across my skin. But then I blink and it’s just the Iyla I’ve always known, squeezing my fingers and offering me a weary smile. It’s not until we’re almost to the door that I notice her earrings—delicate golden birds with small diamonds for eyes.

  “Those are pretty,” I say, lifting my chin toward her ears.

  Iyla strokes one of the birds with the tip of her finger, as if she forgot she was wearing jewelry. Her cheeks flush and she looks away. “Thank you,” she says, but she won’t meet my gaze.

  I wait for her to say something more—to tell me how she sweet-talked the jeweler at the market and got them for half price, or how she scored them for free from the little shop on Gali Street—but she doesn’t. Iyla never misses an opportunity to brag. My stomach clenches.

  The earrings must be a gift from Deven.