Vikram turned to me. “So will you try it or not? That demon fruit is all we have. I can distract them with a tale, but that won’t be enough to get us out. I need you. Not just to get out, but for this Tournament. Think about what you could do with a little bit of magic.”
The choice knotted my stomach. Vikram reached out for my hand, cradling it with a strange tenderness that for a moment drowned out the loud call of the demon fruit. I didn’t jerk it away.
“This is ourlife,” he said. “Our wish is on that line. We can’t lose it.”
I pulled back my hand. “And I won’t lose myself. What skin are you putting into this game, fox? Your eloquence? What a sacrifice.”
“It’s my life too,” he said tightly.
“Your life makes no difference to that girl,” laughed thevetala.“Maybe someday. But today is not that day. Beast of a girl, I think in another life you would eat it. But bravery needs a bite. And you have lost it somewhere. Broken heart, perhaps?”
Vikram looked at me sharply.
“Know this,” he said. “I will not die with you. I will compete in the Tournament.”
Thevetalalaughed. “Compete? Dear boy, the game does not start when Kubera’s players arrive in his kingdom. It begins as soon as he chooses the players.”
8
DEEPEST, DARKEST SELVES
GAURI
In the months after I pulled Nalini from the water, the city and villages had rejoiced so much that Skanda allowed me to become a representative of sorts. I was allowed to attend council meetings. Sometimes, Nalini and I played alongside the sons and daughters of village leaders. Bharata began to know my name and slowly I began to love my country and its people, its customs and its history. I thought I was lucky. I thought my brother’s heart had changed. But when I was fourteen, I realized why he had let my face and name become so closely entwined with Bharata.
Skanda called me inside the throne room. I suspected he was angry with me. Yesterday I had disagreed with him in front of the council on whether or not to build a temple in a drought-ravaged village.
“Prayers are good, but what sustenance are words compared to water?” I had said. Nalini had thought of that line, and I smiled after catching looks of both admiration and shock on the council members’ faces. When I entered Skanda’s throne room, he was grinning broadly. Half the council stood in the shadows, watching our exchange.
Skanda lifted an ornate box that I had never seen.
“Thank you for this generous gift, dear sister.”
I frowned. “What gift?”
Skanda opened the box: milky white snakes twisted and writhed. The council gasped, but Skanda merely raised his hand and laughed. “Water snakes? Don’t worry, councilors. It is a private joke between my sister and me.”
With one hand, he dismissed them. The room emptied within seconds, but not before I’d caught several suspicious and disgusted glances.
“I never gave you that,” I said, horrified. “Why would I ever give you poisonous snakes?”
“So innocent, little sister,” he said, laughing. “And you’re wrong. It’s not their bite that’s venomous. It’s their touch. If they fall into a well of drinking water, they can wipe out a village in a day.”
The threat took shape between his words. The drinking well that I had advocated for before the council could become a death trap. And the poison could be linked back to me all because he had said before a group of people that the snakes were from me.
“You lied.”
He laughed. “Lies! Everyone tells tales, sister. I may not have the public’s ardor and attention the way you do, but I do have the ear of very convincing people.”
“What do you want, Skanda?”
“I’m glad you asked,” he said. “I’ll allow this drinking well to be built. But in return, I want you to convince half of the village’s militia to join Bharata’s forces.”
“That village has suffered enough unrest. They need a strong militia to keep their own people in check. Bharata’s forces are well trained.”
Skanda kicked the closed box of snakes and a furious hissing welled from inside the wood.
“They need what I say they need. And I need our eastern territory secured.”
