I placed the candle back, my heart thrumming as I stared around me. Every single one of these memories wasmine.Why would Amar have all of this locked inside a tree? I pulled my sari closer around me, as if it could ward off the chill under my skin.
Then, I reached for another candle and saw the girl I had called Nritti, but this time… she was screaming. Her roar was a hideous, heartbroken bellow. She was in the orchard of the Night Bazaar, tears coursing down her face and clutching her heart, her legs crossed beneath her as she rocked back and forth. The image filled me with a strange ache…guilt. Like it was my fault Nritti was screaming. The image faded. My hands trembled as I put the candle back in its niche, and fumbled for another candle.
… This time, Nritti was wandering through the Night Bazaar, a sunken look in her eyes. Mud and dust caked her feet. Her beautiful clothes were torn and her gaze was searching. Gupta’s words rippled through my thoughts. I remembered his exchange with Amar, the worried sound in his voice:She knows… I don’t know how, but she’s hunting, like she’s caught a scent. I couldn’t shake the sense that she was looking for me.
A low sound drifted through the room. Up ahead, the ivory door gleamed brightly and Amar’s voice called to me from outside. I froze. I couldn’t let him catch me here. There was still so much I had to understand, so much I needed to know.
“Maya?” called Amar again. He was getting closer.
I rushed through the door, murmuring a plea for silence to mute the jangling of my anklets as I tore down the hallways, nearly skidding into the bedroom. I opened the door just in time to see Amar striding toward me. His jacket flashed a fiery red, the light from lanterns throwing his figure into relief. My heart was beating so loudly, I was convinced he would be able to hear it through the silk of my sari.
“I am glad you stayed here,” he said, taking my hands in his.
There was that same flitting in my stomach. But I couldn’t forget the memories in the tree. I couldn’t forget that it wasAmarwho had kept them from me, who had chained them behind iron and consigned them to silence. Amar who had lied. There was no danger behind the doors, only the danger of knowing myself.
“I will come back later. I only wanted to see that you were safe.”
“Where are you going?”
Amar’s jaw tightened. “I cannot say.”
I was tired of this answer. I couldfeelsomething nameless and evil blooming in every shadow. It wasn’t paranoia. I knew it with the certainty of daytime.
Lightly, Amar traced my jaw, his gaze lingering at my lips. Then, he turned on his heel and disappeared behind the halls. I blinked. For a moment, I thought I had seen the snaky tendrils of a noose unraveling from the second bracelet on his wrist.
Where was he going? And if he thought I would stay behind like some petulant child, he was wrong. I waited a few moments and then slipped down the same hallways Amar had entered. As I crossed the halls, a second shadow nearly crossed mine.
A woman’s shadow.
My heart clenched. Who was she? I’d never seen another soul in the palace aside from Amar and Gupta. Her clothes were tattered and she moved with a strange, labored effort. Like she was in pain. I crept out of the hall, following the woman down the darkened hallway. I followed her around another corner and this time saw an impossible sight—
Hundredsof people were walking through Akaran’s halls.
I flattened myself against the wall, eyeing the crowds who wound through the halls like a great serpent. They were tall, short, fat, skinny, dark, light, young and old. And then I noticed stranger details: a woman with a black and blue neck, a man who looked distinctly gray, a child with something sharp protruding from her side and another man covered in blood. I clapped my hand over my mouth, my throat dry as I sank to my knees.
They were all dead.
***
The dead walked in droves. Crouching in the shadows, I searched their drained expressions. There was no light in their eyes as they queued outside a wall of scarlet and silver flames.
In the distance, four massive hounds—two pairs of eyes on each side of their heads—kept appearing and disappearing. Their mouths were full of something wet and silvery. Each time they snorted and dropped open their jaws, a soul dropped onto the floor. Hellhounds. I shuddered. Their coats of fur were close cropped, brindled like emerald and diamond.
Gupta stood at the front of the line, a heavy bound book in his arms. “Go quickly to the south wing and await judgment from the Dharma Raja.”
The south wing. I paled, turning slowly to a door made of nothing but pale beams of smoke. I recognized the arch beside it—the entrance to the glass garden.
I tried to grab something solid and only vaguely felt a stone pillar against my palm. My knees buckled. I thought of Amar’s promise outside the Night Bazaar… a kingdom of impossible power. A kingdom that all nations feared.
No wonder I’d never heard of Akaran… there was no such thing. I had always been in Naraka—the realm of the dead. Which made Amar the Dharma Raja,the lord of justice in the afterlife. A harsh laugh escaped me.
Partnered with Death.
Death shackled all fates. It was fixed. And all I could do was modify the ambiguities left between. No wonder Amar looked disturbed when I asked whether those who entered the Otherworld died. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. Gupta knew too.
I looked around, disoriented as the shadows of the dead striped the white marble of the floors. I was about to leave when a familiar woman caught my eye. Vikram’s mother. Her brow still gleamed with sweat and in her hands she carried a bundle of wilting flowers. Her neck was bent too sharply and bits of mountain gravel clung to her hair. She must have fallen.
I retched onto the marble, my body shaking. Amar must have pulled the thread. What outcome was there for the boy? I was disgusted with myself. I wanted to fling myself at the woman’s feet, and beg her for forgiveness.
