I never wanted to fall in love. To me, love looked like pale light. Not lustrous enough to illuminate the world or dazzle one’s eyes, but bright enough to fool you into thinking it might. In the harem, some of my mothers told me love was a decadent ambrosia, something to be sipped and savored. Others told me it was an open wound. One of the mothers—a slip of a woman who wouldn’t survive her first pregnancy—had pulled me aside and told me something I never forgot: “Love is like Death without the guarantee of its arrival. Love may not come for you, but when it does it will be just as swift and ruthless as Death and just as blind to your protestations. And just as Death will end one life and leave you with another, so will Love.”
Her words terrified me. I would never feel that way about someone. I never wanted to.
Not too far from thevishakanyas’ tent, I found Aasha sitting by a stream. She looked up when she saw me, any expression in her face instantly shuttering.
“May I sit with you?”
She nodded.
“Listen… I got lost in my head back there,” I said. “And somewhere in between being horribly ungrateful and just plain horrible, I never thanked you. I owe you an apology. You have no reason to accept it, but I hope you will.”
Aasha nodded. “I understand. And I forgive you.”
My eyebrows shot up. “That’s it? I was expecting you’d ask me to grovel or chase me away with a touch.” I laughed. “You’re a far better person than I am.”
“Am I?” she asked. “A person, I mean? I started out as one. I started out like you.”
Her question took me by surprise.
“Of course you’re a person, Aasha,” I said. “Humanity has nothing to do with what runs through your veins or shows up on your skin.”
She closed her eyes, as if savoring the words. “Did you know that the Lord of Treasures had this stream commissioned especially forvishakanyas? He did it so that we would have a place to dip our feet into without worrying about killing any mortal thing in its waters. I found out only a day ago.” She kicked her foot in the water, frowning. “I could have been doing this since the day we got here.”
“Better a late discovery than none at all?”
“I suppose so.” She shrugged. “There are some streams that run through our harem back home, but it’s nothing like this… nothing under open skies.”
“Where is home?”
Aasha looked away from me. “We are not permitted to say to those who are notvishakanya.”
“Oh. Have you ever had another home?”
“I suppose I must have,” she said. “But my sisters took me when I was four.”
Anger flared through me. “How could they rip you from your family?”
“Don’t say that,” chastised Aasha gently. “They are my family. And I love them. As they love me. They meant to save me.” My eyes widened. “A soothsayer had come to our village and declared that I would be a young widow. In my village, all widows must commit sati the moment her husband dies. They rescued me from a fate of burning alive with my husband’s body. They even made sure my family would be well compensated. I hope my birth family loved well.”
I watched her moving her foot in the water, something I could do a thousand times and never find reason to give thanks. “Would you leave thevishakanyas,if you could?”
She looked at me sharply. “I wouldn’t be able to survive in your world. It’s impossible. There’s no way to feed on human desires without killing the human.”
I noticed she hadn’t answered me. Having avishakanyamark didn’t make me suddenly able to read desires, but Aasha’s felt powerful enough. She wanted to know the world that had been denied to her. A vision of Nalini, alone in a dark cell in Bharata, bit into my thoughts. All this time, I had only thought about keeping her alive. What about beyond that? What about what shewantedfor her life? Before the rebellion, Nalini had always asked me about returning home to her people. I always told her no because I knew she wasn’t safe in Skanda’s reign. But I wasn’t any different from Aasha’s sisters who had secured her life but given her no choice. Except now I couldn’t even say that I had kept Nalini alive. Shame knotted my heart. When I returned to Bharata, I would make amends.
“You can ask me anything you like?” I said.
Maybe it was a flimsy offering, but it was all I had.
Aasha hesitated for only a moment. “Anything?”
I nodded.
Aasha pressed her brows together. “What does sweet taste like?”
“Uh…”
I stumbled. What was sweet to someone who didn’t know flavor? I searched for the right words, trying to think of it differently.Seeit differently.
