The grief was corrosive, eating at her, and she wanted to pull her hair and scratch herself raw, bitterly wishing she had never been born.
Let this be the end, Ara.The whisper came as a command from her father’s memories. From anyone else, she could take it to mean “let things be,” but she knew her father. He would hate for her to go down without a fight. It steadied her and snapped her spine straight.
“You are in my kingdom, in my father’s hall. I will kill you all,” she promised, flicking her eyes to the ornately carved ceiling that was still holding, despite the damage to the walls. At her command, a circular design embedded into the carvings broke loose and rained dust and stone debris on them. The design was shaped like a wheel that immediately began rotating.
The devas brought forth a small danava child whose wide, fear-filled eyes swallowed up most of his face. She inhaled sharply, recognizing her nephew, the son of a distant cousin. Her disillusioned gaze went once again to Dhanu, who now held a knife at the child’s throat, his meaning clear.
“So, the devas’ dharma means nothing then?” Her sarcastic words rang through the hall. “You would stoop to threatening children for your purposes?”
A flicker of regret in Dhanu’s eyes was the only satisfaction she got, but apparently it wasn’t enough to change anything.
“Remove your eye and your nephew goes free,” said another from the group.
Ara hesitated, weighing her options, knowing she had none. Her attention went once again to her lover, who stood complicit with everything that was happening. Her mouth twisted. Of course, he wouldn’t do anything. He was one ofthem.
She pulled a wickedly curved dagger from thin air. Her self-loathing gave her the strength to stab unerringly into her own eye. A burst of agony bored through her skull, and she wondered faintly through the pain enveloping every nerve ending, if this was how they had killed her family, each of them powerful in their own right.
Ara fell to her knees, blood pooling on the floor. The devas moved from their position at the periphery of the hall, confident in her helplessness. Varying degrees of a smile painted their faces as they surrounded her. The devas, as a race, were said to be handsome but she detected only a cold sort of beauty in their sharp features, empty eyes, and cruel smiles.
Dhanu remained behind, keeping his knife steady at her nephew’s throat.
“I’ve done as you asked, now let my nephew go,” she choked out, past the scream of agony building in her throat.
One of them pulled her up by her hair and placed a thin file on the bridge of her nose. “My sister died at the hands of a danava. Her mutilated body was dropped on the mountain Sumeru, in the middle of a holy ritual. Why should we spare any of you? Every living creature, beast or man, would rejoice if we were to wipe this earth-bound plane off your race.”
Ara’s fangs protruded past her lips in aggression. A pressure built inside her, seeking release.
“Stop. This has gone far enough.” Dhanu spoke for the first time and his voice carried across the hall, anger and authority swirling together, causing the devas to pause in their spot. “We are not like them, enjoying the cruelty meted out to others. It you must kill her, be quick about it.”
“Are you jesting? You want to show mercy to this?” The deva holding Ara by the hair shook her roughly, causing her to slide in her own blood pooling on the floor. The pain was a continuous beat under her skin, but she had to hold on. It would all end soon, like her father had wished.
A sudden grinding interrupted the argument. Everyone looked up at the source as the wheel on the ceiling began to move again.
“What the…but how? You told us where the power of the danavas is lodged,” one of the soldiers whispered, swinging his head toward Dhanu, who appeared just as confused as the rest. “If she injures her right eye, she is supposed to lose her magic. Did you double-cross us?”
Wild laughter broke out. The soldier glanced down at Ara fearfully and unclenched his hand from her hair as if burned and backed away fast.
Ara stood with difficulty, a mad rictus slashing her face, fluid dripping from her eyes, one clear tears and the other crimson blood. It ran past her chin, staining her teeth with death. “How quickly you accuse your own brothers of treachery. The power of a danava lies in the right eye, true, and the other eye carries immunity against that power. But I was born with an anomaly…it is reversed in my case.”
This was the one thing she hadn’t shared with Dhanu, the one thing that her father insisted she keep secret. He was proven right; it saved her life now. For a short while, at least until she could feed the vengeful beast within her.
The devas ran, but they were halted by an invisible barrier at the edge of the circular hall, unable to get past the reach of the wheel. They cried out as all but Dhanu were enveloped in flames.
“If you are going to lay all the sins of my race at my feet, then I must designate myself as their representative and deliver judgment for all the wrongs done to them,” she said, her voiceamplified by power. Blue bled into her skin as she assumed her true danava form. Fangs, but also tusks erupted from her mouth, a perk of being royalty. Her ivory horns grew rapidly and black tipped her claws, not an extension of her nails but fingers.
With the power came a curious sort of numbness. There was no pain, no reasoning, no happiness, only a complete lack of feeling that felt like relief after all the suffering. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—turn away from the path she had chosen anymore.
Cracks appeared on the wheel embedded in the ceiling as it finally crumbled to dust. Power enveloped Ara, becoming visible in her left eye, which blazed with an unearthly light. The walls rumbled as pressure in the chamber built. The rest of the ceiling was blown away with a great, wrenching sound, opening the chamber to the twilight sky.
* * *
A faint moon and stars were already visible in the darkening sky. Right above their location, several new stars winked into existence, brighter than any other object in the sky.
Dhanu realized suddenly these stars would form a perfect circle when connected.
“Ara, stop. What’re you doing?” shouted Dhanu, panicked, his words stumbling in haste. “You’ll destroy everyone if you activate that weapon. Not just us, but all living creatures of this forest. Stupala will no longer exist. If revenge is what you want, just kill me.”
He knew she couldn’t hear him, being so lost in the power. The wheel in the circular hall had been but a facsimile of the even more powerful weapon hidden in the sky.
