The Star-Touched Queen (15 page)

“It gave me hope … that maybe there was some way around the horoscope. It was a lesson in language too, almost like a riddle…”

Amar stared at me and then he laughed.

“Only my queen would find hope in horror.” He took my hand in his and his gaze was burning. “You are my hope and more.”

“What does that make you? My horror?”

“And more,” he said.

All I saw were his eyes. Velvet dark. The kind of umbra that shadows envy. Amar stared at me and his gaze was desperate with hope. Reckless. I should’ve stopped. I should’ve stepped away. But I didn’t. I leaned forward, and a soft growl—like surrender—escaped his throat. He dug his fingers into my back and pulled me into a kiss.

Amar’s kiss was furious. No heat. Just lightning. Or maybe that was what his touch teased out of me—vivid streaks of light, dusk and all her violent glory. I was lost. I leaned into his kiss and the world around us peeled into nothing. I felt like I could stand over chasms empty of time, and this moment, like a chain of soft-blooming stars, would still be
ours
.

We kissed until we couldn’t breathe. And then we kissed until we needed the touch of one another like breath itself.

*   *   *

I never glanced at the moon for the next week. I knew, buried beneath my happiness, that it was temporary and that sooner or later I would have to pull Vikram’s thread, but I ignored it. I was too lost in the magic of Akaran and Amar.

Akaran had no seasons, so we spent our days trying to find them. Amar led me to a summer hall, where the sky was dim and lovely, bleached of its blue by the heat. Squalls gusted in the corners and above us hung lush glass vines where crystal mangoes swayed. In the monsoon room, we fashioned small enamel elephants and sent them trumpeting across the liquid, stormy floors. Amar blew on them and small coronets of clouds hovered above their heads. In the summer hall’s heat I told him stories and in the ruthless rainstorms of the monsoon room, he kissed me. Beside him, the world was a soft, pulsing and bright thing, alive with hidden angles that we could uncover one by one. It was more than magic. It was life turned relentless and astral. And I reveled in it.

But even in this happiness, my bed was always cold. He would leave before dinner and return while I slept. Sometimes his face was more gaunt than lovely, but he smiled anyway each time that he saw me. Sometimes, at night, I heard the echo of hounds baying and my skin would crawl, but I would forget it, choosing bliss over burden. Sometimes, I looked behind me, certain I had seen a glimpse of that charred door wrapped in chains. But it always danced out of sight.

And then one night, Amar appeared for dinner. He sat across from Gupta, not meeting my gaze. Outside, the moon waned to a paring. Just two more days.

“Tomorrow, you must make your decision,” said Amar quietly.

He left abruptly after that, hardly touching his food, hardly saying a word. Worry bit at me. What if I made the wrong choice?

When I walked back to the room, I heard a soft song calling out to me for the first time in days.

You are running out of moon time

Listen to my warning rhyme

I know you hear me in your head

I know the monster in your bed

I shook off the voice and shut the bedroom door behind me. I felt like insects made of ice had crawled under my skin. The palace was filled with riddling voices. It was nothing. It meant nothing. Maybe tomorrow I would find a room playing out a skit where one character said those words to another. My heart calmed, but my mind wasn’t convinced.

That night, I dreamed of locked doors and baying hounds, rooms that were night-dark and a beast-king that smiled and laughed around a mouthful of broken stars to sing one phrase over and over:
I know the monster in your bed
.

15

VEINS OF MAGIC

I stood before the tapestry. Sweat stamped my palms. Even now, the threads dazzled—shifting, coiling, breathing, pulsing. Impossible to tame, like the sea in a storm. Amar faced me. He looked
haunted
. His hair was mussed and when he finally turned to look at me, it was with a mix of hope and fear.

“What have you decided?”

I tried to think about a decision, but each time, I was struck by the memory of the helmets piling up in my father’s inner sanctum. I forced myself to look at the tapestry. I already knew what it would show me. The bodies of my father’s people being dragged through a foreign empire that would herald peace but at a deadly cost. A future of fragile peace won more quickly, with less bloodshed, but with no memory of Bharata’s great legacy. Worse, its people would lose all their sovereignty and identity. Some might even be forced into slavery, but all would be forced to obey a new ruler.

“Why do we need to make this decision now?”

Amar’s hands tightened, but he relaxed them almost immediately. He was quiet for a moment and I colored from his silence.

“The longer you wait, the more the threads unravel,” he said. “See?”

Amar was right. Several of the glittering threads had begun to fray. My fingers hovered over them—the white one gleamed with Vikram’s potential as a leader, the red one shone with Vikram’s potential as a warrior. Both threads held the promise of peace and both came with a different cost. And yet, with either path, it seemed like Bharata would pay the price.

Amar circled me, his hands clasped behind his back. “You
have
to make this decision.”

I could feel his gaze on me—sharp, unrelenting and also … desperate.

“We must choose the thread that affords the best outcome for the most people, thus maintaining a balance of peace,” he said. “You see, though, how it draws on so many different aspects. It is not just one person. They are all interconnected.”

I stared up at him. For a moment, his eyes searched mine and in the depths of his gaze, I felt a swell of sorrow. He turned sharply from me and I forced myself to summon the most diplomatic tone I could.

“The red thread carries too much risk,” I said. “The peace was accomplished more easily, but who’s to say that the peace will hold long after Vikram dies? The risk is far greater. What is lost is more than just lives. It’s an entire city. I think a peace that is won through words and advocated tirelessly will hold better than an alliance of bloodshed even if … even if it means at the price of more blood.”

Tears burned behind my eyes. How many people had I doomed?

“Then your decision is made. Rip the thread.”

I brought my hands slowly to the tapestry and wound my fingers around the red thread. It pulsed, struggling against me. I searched myself for the nerve to pull, but when I closed my eyes, all I saw were my people burning and bleeding.

I drew my hand away, scalded.

“I can’t.” I dropped the thread, backing away from the tapestry.

Sweat coated my palms. I didn’t feel solid. I felt as limp and soft as a pile of threads. I fixed my eyes on the floor. More than anything, I had wanted to prove that I was more than a sheltered princess of Bharata. I wanted to show that I could handle this enormous task and not fail.

“Weakness is a luxury you can no longer afford,” said Amar.

“Compassion isn’t weakness.”

“It is here.”

“When you took me to the Night Bazaar, you said you wanted my perspective and my honesty,” I said, facing him. “I’ve given both.”

“You knew the decision the moment you saw the outcomes. I know it,” challenged Amar. “Now you have to follow through.”

The accusation in his voice taunted me. Where the throne room had once filled me with possibility, now I felt small.

Amar grasped my hands. “I know you’re not comfortable with this.”

I clenched my jaw. No matter what I said, he would think less of me. And all too often, I found myself caring about what he thought.

“It feels wrong. What if—”

“Never let your doubts cripple you.” He stepped back, his arms raised in a surrender that made me feel anything but victorious. “I leave this to you. I trust your instincts, Maya. As should you. Trust yourself. Trust
who
you are.”

The door closed with a soft thud and I stood still, letting the silence twist around me. The tapestry hummed. I turned my back to it, letting it guide my hands as my fingers hovered over the thread. The words of my horoscope needled in the back of my conscience.
A marriage that only brings death and destruction
. Destruction was letting Vikram become a ruthless warrior who would raze villages to the ground and hoard power in the name of “peace.” I wouldn’t let that happen. I gathered my strength and held on to my breath as though it were an anchor linking me to a thousand places at once.

And then … I pulled.

Nothing.

I opened my eyes. The thread wouldn’t budge. Like someone digging his heels into the ground. I focused on the thread and yanked again, trying to wrap around its root, its length—but it would not yield.

My heart slammed. It wasn’t the thread … it was
me
. I wasn’t strong enough. The tapestry and the palace had judged and deemed me unworthy. Weak.

Amar had said to trust myself. I had, hadn’t I? But other thoughts had crowded my mind. Thoughts of Bharata, thoughts of what I was doing. Where I was … who I was. All my doubts and insecurities. I dropped the thread and it fluttered softly against the others. I spread my fingers across the tapestry, as if I could will it to listen. To give me another chance. Or, barring that, the strength just to move one of its pieces.

In response, the tapestry quivered, a glistening ichor seeping through the threads, dampening them. Light wavered from the dangling thread and a high-pitched hum settled over the tapestry. I stepped back, heart racing. What was happening? Had the fact that I couldn’t even move a single thread broken the whole thing?

Light burst through the threads, dazzling me with a thousand streams of color so vivid that I could feel it seeping warmly across my fingers—shards of evening sky, the cool frost of lonely mornings, drenching nectar-sticky heat. I could feel the color as if it were a dimension of time and space, heavy and solid, full of flavor, of
life
. It snuck under my tongue like a bright candy, and voices—loud and soft, whispers and howls, of passion so grand that it tottered on the edge of mythic and sorrows so plangent they trailed their own shadows. I couldn’t take it. I stumbled backward.

The light draped around me, murmuring, muttering. It pushed against my closed eyes, like it was trying to pry my sight open, to show me something. But I already guessed what it would show and I hated it. No matter how badly I wanted to belong, how dearly I wanted to draw breath beneath split skies leaking magic and pretend like I had some claim to it, it wasn’t for me.

I didn’t belong here.

In a blink, the pull of the tapestry was gone, like it had withheld all of its magic and transformed into an ordinary skein of silk. The threads fell flat, all their enigmatic song sewn silent. I dropped my hands uselessly, watching dull light from the window spill onto the floor. The weight of the decision settled across my shoulders like a thorny mantle. My hands clenched, frustration gathering steam and fury inside me.

What would I tell Amar? That no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t do the one thing he asked? I felt so caged and foolish that I slammed my palms into the tapestry.

A clap of thunder rattled the sky. I jerked my head up. Thunder? It was hardly overcast a moment ago. As if answering my thoughts, the bruise-colored storm clouds melted away.

I stepped back, cold clattering over my skin. The change in the clouds felt …
deliberate
, as if in response to me. That couldn’t be right. Nature didn’t hear thoughts and adjust itself accordingly. Did it?

Facing the open sky, I thought of rain, and a drizzle started to fall softly. I imagined a blazing hot sun, and rays fractured the sheets of lightning. I gasped, stumbling backward.

What was happening?

The weather was becoming more erratic by the second, fumbling from storm to sunshine, from clear to chaos. Outside, the sky swelled, looming and crackling like some disjointed beast, melding against the palace, spreading blackened veins across the marble in an attempt to reach
me
.

My skin prickled. The air was clammy and heavy, suffused with magic. Alive. Possessive. I felt like all of the palace’s watchfulness had ended and now it was turning on me, eager to swallow me whole within its walls.

My heartbeat quickened and I ran from the throne room. But the magic followed, unrelenting. The floor gathered around me, shifting beneath my feet into small hillocks, slick puddles. The balustrades of the palace creaked into life, bending and snapping into trees of ivory and alabaster.

All around me, the doors swung open. Doors that had never once budged when I had tried to open them. Doors that revealed human and animal skins hanging from glinting hooks in the wall. Doors that had nothing behind them but fire unending.

I ran so fast, I almost careened straight into the double doors of the glass garden. Pushing them open, I ran through the crystalline plants until I got to the banyan tree. I tried to clear my head, but my thoughts were no clearer than wisps of smoke.

“Maya—” called a voice in the distance.

The voice was distorted. I flattened myself against the banyan tree. A figure approached me, its edges blurred. I screamed, tripping over a quartet of glass roses, shattering them. Spikes of glass dug into my heels, and a howl ripped from my throat. Hands reached for me, but I fought them off. Desperate. Clawing against the stranger, but the hold was firm. And soon, my vision faded to black.

*   *   *

Voices broke through my foggy dreams.

“She’s not ready—” came Gupta’s voice from both near and far away.

A crashing sound, of anger and temper, filled the vacuum of silence as I pulled myself out of the fog. I shifted my weight, wincing from a sudden jab of pain. I could still hear Amar and Gupta talking, their words harried and rushed. I lay still, trying to hear more.