Her smile widened. Vikram had stepped back, rolling onto his toes and ready to run out of the tent, when Aasha broke through the crowd.
“Aasha!” said the golden-hairedvishakanya.She smiled. “This prince was just asking for your services.”
“She’s dying,” he said hoarsely. “The poison from his waters has gotten to her. I need help.”
Aasha’s sisters murmured into her ear, tugging on her arm. He felt the moment sharpening to a knife’s point. Everything balancing on her next words. She could doom them. But he hoped instead, and his hope roared inside him.
“Why don’t you tell him that he should let this girl go and cure his sorrow in our arms?”
“Tell him the cure for the girl’s poison is farther inside the tent,” whispered another.
“He came here willingly,” hissed a third. “So we may take him. The Lord of Treasures granted no protection to the humans if they came again.”
Aasha bit her lip as she lifted her head. Vikram’s heart sank. Her face was a death sentence.
“Where is she?” asked Aasha softly.
The others stared at her. Some in confusion. Some in shock. Others in hurt. Aasha turned to the golden-haired one and some silent conversation passed between them.
“I’ll take you to her.”
Together, they left thevishakanyas’ tent behind. Only then did Vikram notice that Aasha was limping.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Oh. I… I fell.”
He sensed she was lying, but he refused to press her.
“Why did you stay there for so long?” asked Aasha.
Vikram frowned. “We only left this morning.”
“It is almost full moon,” she said, shocked. “The Jhulan Purnima is the day after tomorrow.”
Vikram’s heart raced. Time ran differently in Alaka, but the Serpent King’s kingdom did not belong to Alaka. Whatever time they had spent there had cost them days. After tomorrow, the second trial would begin. If Gauri wasn’t ready to compete—or, worse, if she wasunableto compete—all of this would have been for nothing. Helplessness gave way to a choked rage.
As gingerly as he could, he rushed Aasha up the steps to the room. Gauri hadn’t moved from her position. But the flames had. They had spiraled from her ankle and now roped their way around the tops of her thighs. No heat burned from the flames, but the air crackled and snapped around Gauri’s body. As if it had claimed her and refused to let her go.
Aasha leaned over her.
“Strange,” she murmured.
Vikram paced over the floor, tugging at his hair. “What’s strange? Can you fix it?”
“The poison in her skin,” said Aasha. She looked up. “It’s the same as mine.”
“How is that possible?”
Aasha stared at the flames, her expression inscrutable. “I… I don’t know. My sisters always said that we got our poison as a blessing from a goddess, but… but that doesn’t seem to make any sense now.”
He stopped walking. “What does that mean for Gauri?”
“It means that I can draw it out.”
Vikram breathed a sigh of relief.
“But it also means that I can’t counteract it. I can’t control whether she will live or die. She’ll have to fight it on her own. And if she lives, I don’t know if the poison will have changed her.”
