“Ours now,” they said, tugging the vial of the Serpent King’s poison.
I sank to my knees, black edging my vision. In one fluid movement, the Nameless pulled the stopper from the vial of poison and drank it. Light fizzed across their skin. The blue ribbon each of them wore in tribute to their dead sister glowed and tightened into a knot at the hollow of each throat. My eyes sought Vikram. Someone had moved toward him. A beautiful woman wearing a crown of snow crouched beside his body. I was so cold. So empty. I looked back to the Nameless. The ribbons had transformed. A blue star unraveled at the hollow of each of their throats.
“Finally,” they whispered.
I was weightless and empty.
I was gone.
***
When I opened my eyes, I was thrown over the back of some beast. It smelled of death. Not of rot and blood, but of closed doors and shuttered eyes. The beast whipped its tail, huffed and turned to look at me. A white horse. Almost beautiful, if not for the manic gleam in its eyes. I looked around me, but the landscape cut in and out, as if someone had taken a knife to this world and started hacking. Panic bit into my heart. Where did everyone go? Where was Vikram? And then a terrible thought wrenched through me.
“Am I alive?”
The horse laughed, and I nearly fell off in shock.
“What is alive anyway, but one shape telling another shape that it is there? By that logic, I am alive! And I do not think that I am. But Idothink, so therefore… therefore something. Hm…”
The horse kept running.
“What’s happening? Where am I?” I demanded. “Take me back to Alaka this instant!”
“A mortal thing making demands? Hmpf. The nerve. Must run in the blood.” The horse grumbled. “It is most inconvenient that you are inedible. I do like to play with food.”
The horse, if it could even be called that, stopped running before an ivory door that appeared in the middle of a wasteland. It tossed me off its back and nudged open the door with its nose.
“Where am I?” I said, digging my heels into the ground. I refused to move.
“Everywhere!” laughed the horse. “You’re in the shadow of sleep. You’re at the beginning and the end. You’re treading the spit, sinew and gristle that makes a tale worth telling, girl thing.”
“Who are you?”
The horse snorted. “Selfhood is a pesky thing. I left it ages ago.”
It swung its head toward the door. “She won’t be happy to see you,” it said, with a touch of fondness. “But that is to be expected.”
Not knowing what else to do, I stepped through the door and found myself in the throne room of a vast palace. The palace didn’t feel like Alaka. The windows overlooked nothing but barren scrubland. The tiles beneath my feet pulsed like a heartbeat. I tried to look around me, but I couldn’t even get my bearings. It was as though the room didn’t want to be seen.
The door swung open. Two figures glided inside. I scrambled to my feet, my heart racing. I couldn’t make out their features but I knew they weren’t Kubera and Kauveri. The Raja wore a charcoalsherwanijacket. Dark, lustrous power curled off of him and he moved with an eerie grace. His queen walked beside him; starry wisps and coils of evening sky lit the space around her. And then she turned, and my heart stilled. My gaze traveled from the Queen’s bare feet, where thunderheads danced around her ankles, past her arms, where lightning netted its way across her wrists, and to her eyes. Dark as dusk. I knew that the Queen’s eyes tightened at the corners when she was nervous. I knew she preferred her room cold and her bed without blankets. I knew that her favorite fruit was guava and that she always ate it with salt.
I knew all these things because the Queen was Maya. Her eyes widened, first with shock and then with fury.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
The Raja moved to her side. Maya turned to him. There was no mistaking the glance that passed between them. Love. He looked at my sister as if she were wonders and miracles made flesh. And then he looked at me. I turned my head. The thought of meeting his eyes made me feel as if it were the last thing I’d ever do. He spoke and his voice was lush and dark:
“Forgive my manners, Princess, but I take no pleasure in our acquaintance, and would rather not meet you yet.”
To anyone else, his words would reek of insolence. But I felt as if he had done me a great favor. I fumbled for my voice. “Perhaps another time.”
At this, he smiled. “Inevitably.”
He lifted Maya’s hand to his lips and disappeared. It was just us. I wanted to cry, hug her, laugh. I wanted to tell her I looked for her in every constellation, not just ours. I wanted to tell her I was tired and scared. Maya smiled, holding out her arms to me.
“You’ve worked so hard, my Gauri,” she said. “And I know that it has left your heart wounded and your soul raw. I can take away the hurt. I can erase it from your memory forever. Or you can return and I cannot tell you what will happen. I can only tell you that the choice is yours.
“Do you want to be brave?”
