Skanda pressed himself against the cushions, his fat face shining and his eyes widening in shock.
“He… he can’t… I took the only antidote.”
Shoving Skanda aside, I turned back around to Nalini and Arjun. She was crouched over him, her whole body shaking. Arjun lay in her lap, his lips parted and eyes staring blindly at the ceiling.
He was dead.
45
TO ECLIPSE
GAURI
Skanda turned to me. “Why aren’t you dead?”
A vague burning sensation lit up my whole leg. And I knew, even without looking, that the small blue star from the poisoned waters of the Serpent King had saved my life. I thought of the accusation from the Nameless, the way they called me “marked.” I couldn’t kill someone with my touch, but somehow I had been granted immunity from poison.
“You killed him,” whispered Nalini. “How could you?”
The screams had alerted the rest of the guards. One by one they filed into the throne room.
“The Raja Skanda has poisoned General Arjun,” said Nalini, her voice strong but trembling.
“No!” screamed Skanda. “The Princess Gauri was the one behind it! She drank the poison and wasn’t even harmed. It’s unnatural! Seize her! You saw what she did outside the gates. She’s a witch of some kind. It’s not even her—”
“I can vouch for the Princess’s innocence,” said Nalini. Now her voice was pure steel.
I could hear the world holding its breath. The ultimate test of loyalty. Arjun had led the soldiers, given them reason time after time to trust him. Nalini was his wife, beloved by him as much as she was the soldiers. But Skanda was still the king. Then again, what is a king but someone that others say is such? He wore a crown. Just as I once did. But power is something you earn. Seduce. Maybe the circumstances of my birth gave me the skeleton of power, but it was up to me—my story, my voice—to put flesh on those bones and make that power live. Arjun knew that. Every day that I had known Arjun he had made himself worthy of power. Two guards stood behind Skanda. He looked up at them, furious. Expectant. A choice hung in the air: Which power to follow? They chose. Two of the guards pulled Skanda from his nest of cushions.
“Your Highness?” said one of the guards, turning to me.
Out of habit, I looked to my brother. But they weren’t talking to him. They were talking to me.
I was queen.
For so long, the wants I had held in my heart—my kingdom wrested from Skanda’s control, a reign secured with no bloodshed, Nalini alive and well—felt like seedlings of a future out of reach. Now those hopes grew roots inside me. I hadn’t needed an army to reclaim my country. I hadn’t even needed a wish. I had only needed to return and be honest.
I found my voice. “Take him to the prison cells and send a healer.”
Skanda roared. “I am your kin! And you would kill me?”
I tilted my head, staring at this beast I shared blood with. “I’m not going to kill you.”
He relaxed. “Then—”
“I am going to eclipse you,” I said quietly. “I am going to bury your name in the dust, not with your death, but with my might. I am going to give you a fate worse than death, brother. I am going to erase you from memory.”
They left, and Nalini stared at me, tears streaming down her face. “You know he’s dead. Why summon a healer?”
I knelt beside Nalini and reached behind my neck for the clasp to my necklace. When I pulled it out, the unused wish glowed brightly. I closed my eyes, remembering Alaka as the images of the story birds whirled away into darkness.
“So will you make a wish?” asked Kauveri.
Beyond them, a river splashed diamonds into a bright gray sky. There was magic and hope in that space of sky and sea where a new tomorrow would haul itself into the world with the same sun and a changing moon, and all the secrets in its stars. I chose a new kind of bravery. One with a future I chose to earn, rather than demand.
“No.”
Part of me almost uttered the wish I thought Nalini wanted. But I wasn’t going to assume anymore. She deserved that chance and choice. When I looked at Nalini, Aasha’s face loomed in my thoughts. The life she hungered after, the choices that had been denied. I closed my hand over the bright wish, and placed it in Nalini’s palm.
