The Star-Touched Queen (16 page)

“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.

“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.