The Star-Touched Queen (13 page)

Gupta burst into the room.

“Oh, good!” he breathed, hands pushing against his knees. He looked like he’d just run from one side of a country to the next. Guilt heated my face. He turned to Amar. “I apologize. I lost track with the riddles.”

“You can leave, my friend,” said Amar. “She is safe with me.”

Gupta looked between us, started to say something and thought better of it. There was a touch of pity in his expression as he looked at the winking lights around us. With one last glance at the garden, Gupta left.

Amar loosed a breath. “I understand, you know.”

I looked up.

“The forced silence … the voices of this palace.”

We stood there, not saying anything. I felt too aware of the space between us. Even with Akaran’s secrets spiraling in the shadows of my head, I couldn’t ignore the weightless feeling that had gripped me. Standing beside Amar
did
something to me. Like my center had shifted to make room for him.

“You do not trust me, do you?”

“No,” I said. I had no reason to lie. “I told you in the Night Bazaar that trust is won in actions and time. Not words.”

“I wish you trusted me.”

“I don’t place my faith in wishes,” I said. “How can I? I can’t even—”

I bit back the rest of my words.
I can’t even see your face
. Perhaps Gupta was lying and he really did have a disfiguring scar. Amar moved closer until we were only a hand space apart.

“What?” he coaxed, his voice hovering between a growl and a question.

“I can’t even see your face.”

A strange chill still curled off of him like smoke and even though the glass garden was teeming with little lights, shades veiled him.

“Is that what you want?” he said. “Would it make you trust me?”

“It would be a start.”

“You are impossible to please.”

I said nothing. Amar leaned forward, and I felt the silken trails of his hood brush across my neck. My breath constricted. “Is that what you want? An unguarded gaze can spill a thousand secrets.”

“I would know them anyway,” I said evenly.

I waited for him to dissuade me, but when he remained silent, I reached out. Amar stood still, lean muscles tensed beneath his clothes. I could hear his breathing, see his chest rising and falling, smell that particular scent of mint and smoke that hung around him. Slowly, I untied the ends of the dove-gray hood. Small pearls snagged against the silk of his covering.

Suddenly, his hands reached around my wrist.

“I trust you,” he said.

The hood fell to the ground, a mere rustle of silk against glass. I lifted my gaze, searching Amar’s face. He was young, and yet there was something worn about his features.

I took in the stern line of his nose and the smooth expanse of tawny skin. His features possessed a lethal kind of elegance, like a predator at rest—bronzed jaw tapering to a knife’s point, lips curled in the faintest of grins and heavy brows casting dusky shadows over his eyes.

When I looked at him, something stirred inside me. It felt like recognition sifted through dreams; like the moment before waking—when sleep blurred the true world, when beasts with sharp teeth and beautiful, winged things flew along the edges of your mind.

Amar met my gaze and his eyes were raw. Burning.

“Well?” he asked. There was no rebuke in his voice, only curiosity.

“I see no secrets in your gaze,” I said.
I see only night and smoke, dreams and glass, embers and wings. And I would not have you any other way.

“You have made your request, what about mine?”

“I am not the one withholding secrets.”

He smiled and I stared at him for a moment. When he smiled, his severe face softened into something beautiful. I wanted to see it again.

“On the contrary, I am the one who has no choice. You, on the other hand, do.”

“What do you want from me?”

He reached out, fingers sliding across the length of my hair.

“Some strands of your hair.”

Some of the courtiers in Bharata used to tie their wives’ hair around their wrists when they traveled. It was a sign of love and faith. To remain connected to the person you love, even if it was just by a circlet of hair.

“May I?” asked Amar.

I nodded. With a small knife, Amar deftly clipped a number of strands. Quickly, he twirled them into a bracelet and slipped it onto his wrist. There was another bracelet on his hand that I had not noticed until now. A simple strap of black leather tied into an elegant knot.

“Thank you for this,” he said, pulling his sleeve over the other strap.

“It’s nothing,” I said, trying for lightness.

“And yet I would trade everything for it,” he said. There was no tease in his voice. Nothing but a strange straightforwardness, like he’d never said anything more honest in his entire life.

“Then you must be relieved I gave it willingly.”

“Astounded,” he murmured, still tracing the circlet. He looked at me and something light fluttered in my stomach. “Not relieved. Relief is when you want something to stop.”

A small light floated between us, only to vanish in an instant.

“What are those?”

Amar followed my gaze. “Wishes.”

My eyes widened. “They
grant
wishes?”

“Sadly, no. They’re wishes already made.”

“Of what?”

“Or who?” countered Amar.

“Is this another secret the moon keeps from me?”

“No,” said Amar with a grin. “It is a secret that
I
choose to keep from you.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because then this would lose all its fun.”

I rolled my eyes and turned away from him when he caught me around the wrist.

“Don’t you want to know what I wished for?” he said, his breath against my neck.

“No,” I said, but my gaze was fixed on all the blinking lights. There were so many. And why did he say
or who?
when it came to his wishes?

“I can’t stand deception.”

“Then stop flattering yourself.”

He laughed and released me. “I’ll tell you what I wished for if you give me a kiss.”

I turned to face him. “Even if I did, you might lie. There’s no way to prove that you wished for what you said you did.”

He smiled. “Clever as ever.”

“Or unwilling to kiss you.”

“Another lie,” he said, grinning.

Amar reached into the air and a handful of lights danced on his palms. “Kiss me and you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

He leaned forward, the small lights illuminating his face. In the light, he looked honey drenched. But I wasn’t going to give him a victory so easily. I quickly pecked his cheek and stepped back. Amar was still tipped toward me, his eyes a little wide before he started laughing.

“Foolish optimism.”

I ignored him. “And those wishes?”

“See for yourself,” he said, opening his palm.

There was nothing in his hands. Around us, a third of the lights had disappeared. I stared into the dark, waiting for them to flare into being. But they were gone.

“Once a wish comes true, it disappears for good.”

“
That’s
what you wished for?” I asked, incredulous. “A peck on the cheek?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“This,” said Amar, gesturing to the space between us, “the chance to be this close to you.”

We looked at one another in silence. There was something new between us. Fragile and thrumming. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing I had learned in Bharata’s sanctum had taught me this. Nothing I had seen in the harem came close to what I felt. There was an undercurrent of depth, of something hard-won and dangerous. I couldn’t treat it with lightness … and I didn’t want to.

“Maya, I—” he started, when another voice cut him off.

Gupta stood in the arch of the doorway, his face twisted in apology. “I tried to contain it as much as I could.”

Amar stepped away from me, his face stony. “I’ll be there in a moment. Take her back to the room.”

Something cold thudded in my stomach. A reminder to rein in how I felt and keep him at a distance.

“I’m sorry,” said Amar.

But he wouldn’t look me in the eye. And before I had a chance to speak, he had left.

*   *   *

That night, I tried to enter a peaceful dream of nothingness, but I kept waking. Each lapse of restful sleep slipped into a gray and distorted vision of the glass garden. In my dream, a monster wearing five blurred faces turned to me:

“Did you notice nothing strange about your garden?”

Separate voices sprang from the mouths. Panic turned my skin cold. I could think of a number of strange things, not the least of which was the animated split personality accosting my dreams, but I kept my mouth shut. The creature leered its split face at me.

“There’s not a living thing in this court, is there?”

13

A ROOM FULL OF STARS

I woke with a start. The nightmare’s words burned in my mind like a flame. Not a single flower or tree filled Akaran’s marble halls. Even its garden was glass. I thought of what I had seen of the Night Bazaar. It was magical, undeniably beautiful. But it was also dangerous. Coaxing. The star-bright loam where jewel fruit swung beneath silver trees hadn’t been the only thing I saw. Something else had moved in that sticky darkness.

Flurried sounds of movements quickened outside and I closed my eyes, feigning sleep. The bed sank as Amar sat beside me. Warm fingertips trailed across my cheek, brushing the hair from my forehead and sending sparks of light up my spine. His lips grazed my temples.

“Soon,
jaani
.”

I waited until his footsteps echoed outside before squinting around the room. Without him, it seemed colder. I retraced his touch lightly, careful to avoid smudging the imprint of his lips against my skin. He had called me
jaani
—“my life.” I stared at the closed door. Where his skin touched mine felt burnished, hallowed by the words he left hanging in the air.
Jaani jaani jaani.
I wanted him to say it again. I wanted him to say it closer to my ear, my neck … my lips.

But the surge of warmth faded as the memory of my dream prickled behind my eyes.

Magic was not the only coaxing, dangerous thing around me.

Like yesterday, when I returned after washing up, the bed had been made, and a new sari was waiting for me. This time it was a rich amber, studded with topaz stones and small mirrors so that when I wrapped it around me, the colors shimmered as if they had borrowed some of their brilliance from the sun. A similar set of matching jewels lay in piles on the bed.

Something about wearing a necklace other than my mother’s felt wrong. Inevitably, my thoughts turned to Gauri. Who was telling her stories in the dark?

When I stepped outside my room, Gupta was already standing there. The air felt tense. As if someone had smothered the palace into silence so that it could watch … and wait. I paused outside the door. I thought I heard something. A voice? My name?

Shaking my head, I walked down the familiar hall toward the dining room, but my glance kept darting from the walls and doors, ignoring the beautiful sights flashing in the mirrors. What had happened to that door from before? Around me, muddled voices filled the palace.

Sometimes the voices were incoherent, but today, I heard a sound sonorous and riven as an ancient stream:

You can have him, but not hold him

He gives you gold, but your bed is cold

You’ve seen his eyes, but not his spies

Who is he?

“Amar,” I breathed.

Gupta looked up. “Did you say something?”

“The riddle you asked,” I said, a little dazed.

“I didn’t say anything.”

A chill shot through me. There was no one in the hall but us. I said nothing, and walked quickly down the halls, trying to shake the doubt and fear that kept creeping up my arms.

When we got to the dining room, it was decorated in a sun-drenched yellow. Carven statues of mynah birds with ruffs of silk around their stone necks dotted the room. Outside, there was no flash of the sun. No hint of clouds.

Gupta pulled out a chair for me.

“I figured out your riddles from yesterday.”

I looked at him, my mind still twisting around the words I heard in the hallway.

“And?”

“Your first one was, ‘I am a nightmare to most, and a dream for the broken; who am I?’ and the answer to that is death.”

“Correct.”

“Your second riddle was, ‘I am your future, who am I?’”

“And?”

“The answer to that is ash.”

“Again, correct. And the last?”

“‘I hide the stars but am frightened by the sun. I am not the night; who am I?’ The answer is darkness.”

I smiled. “All three are correct.”

He stared at me. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked aged in the space of a day. “You ran off last night.”

“I got lost.”

“You’re smarter than that, and so am I,” said Gupta.

I looked away from him, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt.

“If I were you, I’d remember the answers to those riddles when you’re walking around the palace.”

“You yourself said that you held the key to anything dangerous.”

“Even so,” he said, mirroring Amar’s response.

I tried to think of something to say, but Gupta had turned from me and the tight, closed-off expression on his face said that I shouldn’t even bother trying to push the subject.

“You seem quite absorbed in your work,” I said, trying to change the topic as he bent his head toward the endless scrolls.

“If only I wasn’t,” said Gupta.

“Can I help?”

He smiled, but it was a weary thing. “The fact that you are even here is help enough.”

But I wasn’t doing anything. I was wearing clothes set out for me on a bed, wandering allotted spaces of a hall, feeling around for questions they could answer. I was in a limbo of waiting.

“How did you sleep?” asked Gupta, his gaze once more fixed on the parchment.

I thought of the nightmare and masked a shudder.