I had to stop myself from reaching out to grab her shoulders. She was shaking.
“They’re coming,” she whispered. “I tried my best to protect you from them. But they’re after the poison—”
“What?” I demanded. “Who?”
“The Nameless,” she breathed, her face paling. She stepped back. Her eyes narrowed as she searched the wall behind us. “They know you have the Serpent King’s venom—”
Vikram’s hand tightened on my arm. He held his dagger at the ready, hesitation tightening his face. He tried pulling me down the crowd, signaling for Aasha to join, but I was tired of fighting and being manipulated. Nothing was going to stand between me and that wish anymore. It was done. We had won.
“Let them try and get it,” I said, old bravado sneaking into my voice.
“Just because you wear our mark does not make you invincible to the pain we can cause.”
The Nameless stepped out of the shadows right next to Vikram. One fluid movement. In. Out. Inevitable from the very second I caught the metallic sheen winking in the dark.
“No!” screamed Aasha.
Beside me, I heard a grunt of pain. Vikram’s hand tightened on mine to the point where I lost feeling in my fingers. I turned, catching him before he crumpled to the ground. I clutched his shoulders, trying to raise him up. Ice cut my thoughts. He… he wasn’t supposed to fall. They were supposed to aim at me. Not him. Never him. His eyes went wide, lips paling. A hilt sunk into his back caught the light. My hand came away red. A thick stain… something dark… something that my mind refused to comprehend as blood spread across his shirt. I felt yanked open, hollowed in the space of a blink. Screams and fury and night rushed in to fill me. I fell to my knees.
“We don’t need to touch you to harm you, girl.”
38
DARK AS DUSK
GAURI
I always thought of silence as the absence of sound. But kneeling there—watching Vikram crumple to the ground, blood forming a red shadow beneath him—I thought I felt the world slump, begging silently for reprieve. Or maybe it was just me. This sight couldn’t fit inside me. My heart refused to hold it. It unlocked. Broke. The sound of it made the silence scream.
Sharp gasps and murmurs crawled within reach of my hearing, but I shut out the sounds. The only thing I wanted to hear was Vikram’s voice. Aasha crouched to his side, her fingers hovering over his hair and the growing bloodstain across his back. Tears slid down her cheeks. But she wouldn’t touch him. Couldn’t. Around us, the people of Alaka moved closer. I whirled on them, my dagger raised.
“Help him,” I hissed. Then louder:
“Help him! What are you doing?”
A thousand glittering eyes met mine. No one moved. This was not their game.
The Nameless circled me.
The first sneered. “We tried to appeal to your heart, but you have none.”
The second laughed. “We tried to appeal to your mind, but you have none.”
The third smiled. “So we will take what is ours by force. The venom was our trade first. Our prize first. It is our legacy. Every hundred years, we fight for it. For the years between we sink into the ground, sleeping and waiting, our legacy growing. Did you really think you could take it from us?”
Aasha called my name. I looked over to see her holding the dagger that Vikram had dropped. She wielded it awkwardly, as if it might bite her at any turn. I thought she was going to throw it to me, but instead she walked to my side, her face grim.
The Nameless hissed. “This is the last Tournament, girl. If we don’t take the venom, the poison will fade. You will fight your own? You will take this vengeance from your sisters?”
“No sister of mine would ever do this,” said Aasha quietly. “My sisters don’t call it vengeance. They call it a Blessing.”
“So be it,” said the Nameless as one.
They lunged, slashing the air. I clutched the poison in one hand, jumping out of the way. Aasha was a tiny wind beside me, a whirling living barrier. The crowd of Alaka formed a black crust around us, silent eyes tracking our every movement. Everywhere I turned, the Nameless unraveled from the shadows. I couldn’t tell them apart. Even when my eyes cut away from one face to the next, no detail lingered. This was the price of vengeance, a slow obliteration of self until you were nothing but your hate. I roared, charging forward, swinging my arm to slice and cut. But the blade passed through them as if the knife didn’t exist. They grinned.
One blink later, and the Nameless vanished. Catching my breath, I turned in a slow circle. Alaka stared back. Kubera and Kauveri floated above the crowd. Waiting. Aasha caught my eye, confusion spreading across her features. And then I realized what the Nameless had done. Pushed us to the shadows. They weren’t trading spar for spar or punch for punch; they were trading light for dark.
I saw the shadow on my feet. I leapt out of the way, but a hand darted out, closing around my ankle. In that moment, I thought I could taste death on my tongue, all funerary ash and burning marigolds. I reached down, hacking violently—uselessly—at the wrist. The Nameless rolled out of the shadows. I lifted my blade. But it didn’t matter. The smile on the Nameless was death. A pressure sank into my stomach. A blade. It didn’t feel sharp. Just dull. They slid a hand across my waist.
