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 ofindependence.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 affectedmewas decided byyou.”
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.
