Poison's Kiss

by Breeana Shields

If Gita is here, Mani could be too. I race into the dining room, where Iyla, Mani and I would sometimes be allowed to eat together. But large sheets are draped over the tables and chairs, and the moonlight streaming through the windows makes them look like huge, hulking beasts. I let go of Deven and run my hand along the fabric. My fingers come away coated in dust. No one has used this room in a long time—at least months, maybe years.

  I run down the long hallway where my bedroom used to be, flinging doors open as I go. All the rooms are dark, cold and empty. When I get to the room that used to be mine, I pause with my hand on the doorknob. Please let him be here. Please. I open the door and it is cold and dark, just like the others. But not empty. My old bed is still here, draped in a gray sheet that might have been white once. Mani’s bed is here too. And shoved in the corner, bathed in moonlight, is his tiny baby cradle. It’s not covered in anything but dust, as if it wasn’t worth protecting. As if it will never be needed again. I’m overcome with a sudden wave of nostalgia. Mani became my brother in this room. For months I woke several times a night to feed him, change him and sing him back to sleep. It was so much responsibility for a ten-year-old. As I stand here, the full weight of my life with Mani comes rushing in on me. Both the burden and the blessing of it.

  Deven finds me standing in the middle of the room with my hands pressed to my cheeks. He squeezes my shoulder.

  “Mani’s not here, Marinda. Time to go.”

  “Maybe he’s in the other wing?”

  Deven lifts an eyebrow. “What other wing?”

  “On the other side of the dining room. I’ve never been there, but…” And then the realization washes over me. It’s where Gopal said the other girls lived, through the dining-room door, which was always kept locked. I always pictured a hallway full of rooms, full of friends that I would never meet. I hurry to the forbidden door and turn the knob. It’s not another wing—just a bedroom, the only room in the whole building that looks lived in. Another wing exists no more than the other vish kanya do.

  “Forget it,” I say. “Let’s go.” I wipe at my eyes. How will we ever find Mani?

  We leave through the front door. There’s no reason to sneak now, no one to hide from. We cross to the other side of the street and start back the way we came. We’ve gone only a few steps before I stop.

  “Wait,” I say, “we can’t leave yet.”

  “What? But he wasn’t there, Marinda. I checked every room.”

  “Gita will be back.” And as I say it out loud, I’m certain it’s true. Since I was little, Gita has had the same routine: a cup of ginger tea in the evening, followed by a long walk. Then she returns to reheat the pot and have a final cup before bedtime. If she had left for good, she would have washed the teapot, dried it, put it away. Gita can’t bear loose ends. She is walking through the neighborhood right now—I know it like I know the feel of my hand in hers, like I know that her skin smells like jasmine.

  We wait crouched behind a tree for more than an hour. My eyes stay fixed on the girls’ home, but the darkness deepens and there’s no sign of Gita. With every moment my despair grows. I’m about to suggest giving up, when I see a dark shape emerge from the shadows. I would know that gait anywhere.

  Before I can even think about it, I’m racing across the street toward her. She looks up and freezes. “Where is he?” I shout. Her eyes widen and she takes a step back. For a moment I half expect her to turn and run. Instead she fixes me with a steely gaze.

  “I warned you, Marinda,” she says. “I told you not to push Gopal any further.”

  I grab her arm and dig my fingers into her flesh. “Where is he?” Deven comes to my side and puts a hand on my back.

  “I think you’d better answer her question,” Deven says. He says it softly, but there’s an edge to his voice that sends a shiver down my spine.

  Gita looks back and forth between us. “I don’t know.”

  Rage floods through me. I won’t get this close to finding Mani only to have Gita lie to me yet again. I squeeze her arm harder. “If you don’t tell me where he is, I will have Deven hold you down while I plant a loving kiss full on your lips. You’ll be dead within the hour.”

  “Marinda,” she says reproachfully. “Don’t do this. You aren’t this girl.” The maternal quality to her voice makes my stomach turn. She has no right.

  “I am exactly this girl. I became exactly what you raised me to be. And if you don’t tell me where my brother is, I promise I will kill you.”

  Gita blanches. “Gopal didn’t tell me where they are keeping him,” she says.

  “What did he tell you?” I ask.

  She slides her gaze away and I shake her. “What did he tell you?”

  When she lifts her head again, I can see tears glinting in her eyes. “Gopal thinks you will be able to focus better once Mani is gone,” she says. I suck in a sharp breath.

  “What do you mean when he’s gone?”

  Teardrops tumble from her lashes. “Gopal is planning on taking Mani to the Raja,” Gita says. Anger boils in my stomach that she’s still saying “the Raja,” that she’s still lying even now.

  “You mean the Nagaraja?”

  Gita nods. And then suddenly I remember something Kadru said, and horror wells in my chest.

  “What is Gopal going to do?” I whisper.

  Gita wipes at her eyes. “It will be better for you without him,” she says. “You can fulfill your purpose without distraction.”

  I slap her hard across the face. “What is he going to do?”

  Gita presses her palm against her cheek. “I’m sorry, Marinda. But the Nagaraja must be fed.”

  Deven sweeps his foot under Gita and has her flat on her back in an instant. She lets out a yelp of surprise, which Deven silences with a hand at her throat. “When?” he asks. “When are the Naga planning to feed the Snake King?” Gita struggles, but Deven is too strong for her. When she finally stops moving, he releases the pressure at her neck.

  She gasps for air and then begins coughing. Deven’s face is impassive as he waits for her to catch her breath. “When?” he asks again when she falls silent. She doesn’t answer right away, and so he moves his hand back toward her throat.

  “Wait,” she gasps. His hand freezes inches above her neck. “At the full moon,” she says. “The Nagaraja always eats on the first night of a full moon.”

  I look up at the sky. The moon is a waxing gibbous, well over half full. We have perhaps four days.

  “Where?” I ask.

  Gita’s eyes flick to Deven and then back to me. “The Snake Temple,” she says. I don’t know what she means, but I see a flicker of recognition pass over Deven’s features.

  “Where is it?” I ask. “Where is the Snake Temple?”

  “I don’t know,” Gita whispers. “I swear I don’t.”

  “Go ahead, Marinda,” Deven says.

  At first I’m confused by what he means, but then I understand. He’s holding Gita in place so that I can kiss her. So I can end her life. I look down at Gita, who is watching me in wide-eyed terror, and suddenly my mind flashes through a handful of vivid memories: an image of Gita spreading out a blanket for a picnic, Mani giggling as he tosses a green rubber ball to her, Gita pressing a cold cloth to my head when I was sick with a fever.

  And I can’t do it.

  I bite my bottom lip and shake my head. Gita doesn’t deserve mercy, but I can’t bring myself to mete out justice.

  Deven studies me for a moment. “It’s okay,” he says. “But I can’t let her follow us.” He pulls Gita into a sitting position and then strikes the back of her neck with the flat side of his hand. She slumps over without a sound. I let out a startled cry. “She’s not dead,” Deven says as he climbs to his feet. “She’ll have a terrible headache when she wakes up, but she’ll live.”

  I nod, but as long as I’m not the one to kill her, I’m not sure I care.

  By the time we make it back to the safe house, I am faint with hunger, exhaustion and grief.
I don’t bother to undress before I collapse on one of the beds and pull my knees to my chest, but my mind is too hectic for sleep. The need to find Mani is like a grating noise in my head. I could go to Kadru—she’ll know what the Snake Temple is, where it is. But she’s as likely to turn me over to the Naga as to help me, and I can’t risk being captured, not when I have less than four days to find Mani. I think of Deven’s face when Gita mentioned the Snake Temple. He’s heard of it before, I’m sure of it.

  “Deven?” I whisper into the darkness.

  But his breath is deep and even, and my eyelids are so heavy—I’ll ask him in the morning.

  I wake to the tangy aroma of dosa batter, and before I’m fully awake, I sigh appreciatively. And then reality comes rushing back to me and I feel terrible. It seems wrong to want to eat when Mani is somewhere scared and in danger because of me. But my traitorous stomach doesn’t understand the finer points of loyalty and betrays me by grumbling loudly.

  Deven pokes his head around the corner. “Hungry?”

  “Not really,” I lie. There are no windows in the safe house, so it’s impossible to know what the hour is, but it feels like I slept for a long time.

  “You need to eat something,” he says. “You’ll need your energy.” This seems an acceptable trade-off—to eat so that I have energy to search for Mani, to save him if I can. I sit up and stretch. Deven brings me a plate of folded dosas with a dish of coconut chutney on the side. As soon as I take the first bite, I realize that I am famished, and I have to work to slow down so I don’t make myself sick.

  “Do you know where the Snake Temple is?” I say between bites. “You seemed to recognize it last night when Gita said that’s where the Naga were taking Mani.”

  He sighs and sits on the end of my bed. “I don’t know exactly,” he says. “I’ve just heard it mentioned in meetings.”

  “Mentioned by whom?”

  He swallows and fixes his gaze on his plate. “The Raja’s men.”

  Hope springs up in my chest. “Then that’s where I’ll go next.”

  Deven raises an eyebrow. “To Colapi City?”

  “Can you think of a better plan?”

  “But they aren’t just going to let you walk into the palace and demand an audience with the Raja,” Deven says.

  “Maybe they will if I tell them who I am. Didn’t you say you’ve been gathering information about the Naga for years? I’m sure the Raja would want to hear from someone who’s lived with them as long as I have.”

  “But didn’t you say that you hardly know anything? That the Naga never shared details with you?”

  “Yes, but I still have information. We know they are preparing to make a human sacrifice in a few days. And maybe I know other things that they would find helpful. It can’t hurt to try.”

  Deven doesn’t say anything for a moment. He bites his lip and stares off into the distance, lost in thought. Then he shakes his head and sighs. “It’s not a terrible plan,” he says. “I’ll come with you.”

  It’s exactly what I hoped he’d say—I’ll have a much better chance of speaking with the Raja if one of his spies is with me—but I try to keep the joy from showing on my face. I shrug. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  He holds my gaze a beat longer than necessary and heat creeps into my cheeks. “I’m sure.”

  It will take us at least two full days on foot to get to the Raja’s palace in Colapi City. That will leave us only two days to find Mani—assuming we get the information we need. And I’m not ready to assume anything.

  “If we hired an elephant, we’d get there so much faster,” I say as Deven and I trudge through the back alleys leading away from the safe house. I’m grateful that Deven was able to find me clothing that was more appropriate for our journey—pants and soft leather hiking boots. The boots are slightly too big but far better than my sandals would have been.

  “The Naga are likely searching for you. An elephant is a little conspicuous, don’t you think?”

  “A donkey?” I offer.

  Deven shakes his head. “Sorry. Walking is the only option.” He glances sidelong at me. He must see the disappointment on my face, because he says, “Don’t worry. We’ll get there in time. I promise.”

  I only nod. As we walk, I wonder, not for the first time, about the identities of the rest of the members of the Naga. How many are there? I know of only Gopal, Gita and Kadru, but the way Deven talks about them makes it seem like there must be hundreds. I wonder how many of them know who I am. Would they all make the same choices that Gopal has? Are any of them decent enough to help Mani?

  I’m so lost in thought that I trip over a large rock in the road and almost go down. But Deven catches me around the waist before I fall.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. He’s close enough that his breath dances across my neck. I close my eyes and feel a flood of warmth rush through me. Ever since I found out Deven is immune, I’ve been far too aware of him. The exact distance between his hand and mine as we walk, precisely how far I would have to reach to intertwine my fingers with his. The way he licks his bottom lip right before he’s about to speak. How he taps his middle finger and thumb together when he’s lost in thought. Now having him this close with his arms around my waist is almost too much.

  “I’m fine,” I manage to choke out. “Just clumsy.”

  “Okay.” He lets go of me and I feel the loss like blankets ripped off on a chilly morning. But at least I can breathe again.

  We walk all morning, stopping only long enough to eat the dried fruit and flatbread that we packed in our satchels. My feet ache and I can feel a blister forming on my right heel. I open my mouth several times to complain, but then Mani’s face pops into my mind and I snap it closed again. Any amount of pain is worth it to get to him. I can’t think about Mani too much, though, because if I imagine how scared he must be, the despair makes it impossible to keep moving. Maybe that’s why I keep noticing the shape of Deven’s arms underneath his white shirt.

  We’re between towns when it’s time to eat again. Deven finds us a place to sit in a copse of trees on a hill overlooking a rice field. The setting sun has turned the sky vermilion, and it is startlingly beautiful against the bright green rows of rice. Deven passes me a loaf of flatbread and I eat, but I don’t taste anything. I drain most of the water left in my canteen. I’m so tired that I feel numb.

  “I know another safe house in the next town,” Deven says. “We’ll stop and sleep for a few hours before we go on.” I want to argue with him, insist that we keep moving toward Colapi City, but I don’t think I can go much farther without a break.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “You’re welcome.” He touches the middle of my back for just a moment and then drops his hand like he’s changed his mind.

  By the time we start moving again, I can see the moon. It’s a sliver fuller than last night—one day closer to Mani’s death. It makes me walk a little faster. A few hours later we arrive at the safe house. It is nearly identical to the last one.

  “How many safe houses are there?” I ask as I sit on one of the beds and pull off my boots.

  “Dozens,” he says. “Dotted all across Sundari.”

  “Have you stayed in all of them?”

  He sits in a chair across from me and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. It makes me realize that my eyes feel gritty too.

  “Nearly,” he says. “I haven’t made it to one or two yet.”

  “What made you want to become a spy?” I ask him. It’s a question that’s been itching at the back of my mind since yesterday. Who would choose this kind of life without being forced? Deven looks up then and waits a beat too long to answer. His gaze slides away from me, and I realize I’ve made him uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “You don’t have to—”

  But he surprises me by answering. “I had an older brother,” he says. “He was killed by one of the vish kanya, and so once I was old enough, nothing seemed
more important than destroying the Naga.”

  All the air leaves my lungs and Kadru’s words reverberate in my mind: There are no other vish kanya, Marinda. The Nagaraja chooses only one.

  I killed Deven’s brother.

  My chin is quivering. With shock. With guilt. “I’m so sorry,” I manage to say.

  Deven gives me a sad smile. “It was a long time ago.” He goes in the back to change into sleeping clothes, but I sit motionless, too stunned to move. Each time I think I’ve found a shred of humanity, it is snatched away with more evidence of my atrocities. I don’t want to be this person, this girl who spends time with the brother of someone she once killed. The girl who leaves her brother alone to be kidnapped, to be taken by people who want to hurt him. The kind of girl who gets Japa killed. But the trouble is, it’s the only kind of girl I know how to be.

  Deven returns from the washroom. “All yours,” he says. I smile wanly and head to the back of the flat. My fingers are stiff and it takes me longer than usual to change. My throat aches, but I have no tears. I am hollowed out.

  I return to the main room and climb into one of the empty beds, the one farthest from Deven. “Good night,” I say over my shoulder.

  “Night.”

  I curl up on my side and close my eyes, but it’s a long time before sleep claims me.

  The next day brings more walking. We traipse through bigger cities and smaller towns, and Deven always seems to know which route will give us the most privacy. Silence hangs heavily between us—my worry about Mani is all-encompassing, and if it leaves my mind even for an instant, Deven’s brother is there to make sure I don’t have a moment of peace. I haven’t made eye contact with Deven all day, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s lost in thought too. We walk for hours, and by the time we reach the outskirts of Colapi City, my feet are screaming for relief.

  “Not much farther,” Deven says. He reaches for my hand as we climb a small hill. When we get to the top, the palace comes into view for the first time. I pull in a sharp breath. It’s the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen. Colapi Mahal is vast—at least four stories high and the size of a small village. The facade is smooth gray granite broken up by hundreds of windows. Towers on all sides of the palace soar high into the air and are topped with bulbous red domes and golden finials. The main entrance has a grand arch flanked by two smaller ones. It’s breathtaking. I glance over at Deven and see that he is watching me with a small smile playing on his lips, like he built the palace himself.