The attendant didn’t move. I smiled. The attendant moved immediately. Skanda did not miss the exchange. His gaze narrowed.
“You returned despite great risk to life and limb,” he said, his tone artificially admirable. “And with a fascinating trick to add to the country’s arsenal of weapons. I am pleased.”
We both knew that he wasn’t talking about my life and limb. Nalini was the unspoken danger. But Skanda’s words, despite their meaning, carried hope: I wasstillrisking her life. She was alive. My greatest fear went unrealized. I had to fight down the urge to smile. Instead, I bowed my head. His gaze fell to my glass hand. I flexed it. I could already see how he was trying to twist the magic he’d seen:
Demon-touched.
Possessed.
A vector for evil.
But he wasn’t the only one trained in storytelling anymore. I embraced my brother, even though I wanted to rip off my skin at his touch. As I walked along the corridors of Bharata, I kept looking out of the corner of my eye, waiting for someone to pounce out of the shadows. I wouldn’t be able to fight them with a glass hand thatrefusedto pick up a weapon.
I paced in the chambers, Kauveri’s dagger strapped to my leg even as I bathed and changed out of the traveling clothes. After Alaka, every color looked dim.
Skanda refused to place me in the harem, claiming I would upset the women before he had a chance to explain my return. Coward. The last thing he wanted was every woman in the harem armed with the knowledge of magic and prepared to fight him.
Someone knocked at the door. I opened it, expecting to see an attendant. Arjun stared back at me. My throat tightened. Joy, hurt and fury shredded me all at once. This was the man who showed me what a brother was. He had carried me for half the day when I broke my leg. Split his desserts with me. Teased me out of bad moods and sobered me when I needed it. And yet, he’d stood by when Skanda had dragged Nalini to the throne room. He’d known my plans and betrayed me. He clenched his jaw, his gaze turning flinty.
“How could you come back after everything you did?” he demanded.
I felt as if the carpet had been pulled out from beneath me. I stood there, shocked.
“You put my life in danger. You putNalini’slife in danger,” he hissed. Stepping forward. “How could you? And after all this, after we pleaded for Skanda not to kill you,you come back?”
Fury rose inside me.
“What are you talking about, Arjun?” I demanded. “How dare you even talk to me about Nalini’s safety when you betrayed me at the moment when I needed you the most, whenNalinineeded you the most?”
A shadow moved behind him. Useless as it was, I placed my glass hand on the other iron dagger strapped to my left arm. The shadow slipped into the room, and its owner slid into view:
Nalini.
I couldn’t help myself. I tried to throw my arms around her, but she stepped away from me andinto Arjun’s arms.She didn’t look as though she’d spent any time in a prison. I stared at them, my breath catching. What was happening?
“Nalini… it’s me.… I came back for you.”
“To do what? Make sure that she was dead even after we spared you?” returned Arjun.
“Spared me?”
They stepped into the room, closing the door.
“Talk to me, Nalini. Please. You have no idea what I fought through to get to you,” I said, my whole body trembling.
Nalini stared at me as if I really were a stranger. She stared at me as if I were the enemy and not the victim. When I reached for her, she moved back a step. My heart split.
“Before you left, Skanda told me that he knew all about your rebellion,” she said, not looking at me. “He said that it was to make sure that my father’s lands would never pass to me—”
“I would never do that!” I protested.
“I asked you, Gauri,” she said. “Don’t you remember? I came to you and I demanded to know what would happen to me in your scheme of power?”
I remembered.
“Why are you bringing that up?” I said. “You inheriting power only applies if you reach your eighteenth year. You’re hardly in your sixteenth. A thousand and one things could happen between now and then. Focus on what we can control in the present.”
Time froze. That was the same night I had confronted her in the garden. The same night I thought I heard Skanda’s spies moving in the darkness.
