“And say what?”
“That I think she would make an excellent consort. I want a companion. She wants recognition. It’s a victory for us both and sound reasoning too.”
I started walking toward the door when Gupta jogged up to me. “Thatwill be your opening statement? You need to make a good impression. Bees are drawn to flowers, not rocks, for a reason. And that is a ridiculous number of assumptions about someone you don’t even know.”
I stopped short. He was, as much as I hated it, correct.
“I pray that these next words never cross my lips again.”
Gupta cupped his hand to his ear and grinned like a fool. “Do go on.”
“… teach me.”
***
One more example of how to describe someone’s eyes and I would destroy someone.
“You want to give off an air of refined elegance,” said Gupta. He was gliding to and fro across the mirror-paneled hall. I leaned against the wall and tried not to glower. “You want to be coy but not so reclusive. And you want to be inviting without being too available.”
“I hate this.”
“Last time we’ll practice,” said Gupta. For his own sake, he better be right. “Now. Pretend I’m her.”
He disappeared behind a corner. A thick brume of ink rose up from the floor in Gupta’s impersonation of night. Tiny lights poked holes in the mist. Were those supposed to be stars? And then. Singing. Gupta ran into the hall flailing his arms over his head. Then, he twirled in a circle:
“I am a beautiful maiden!” he trilled in a high-pitched voice.
Please stop.
Gupta stopped spiraling in manic circles when he saw me, and clasped a hand to his chest. “Who are you?”
“It is I… the Dharma Raja…”
“And what do you want, handsome man?”
I glared, but Gupta remained in character and blinked furiously. There were times I wondered what dying was like. This was one of those times. Except I wanted to die out of necessity. Not curiosity.
“I was captivated by your beauty,” I deadpanned.
Gupta—curses upon him—ran his hand through a false pile of hair that was more or less a strategically placed ink blot. “What beauty?”
“You look like a”—nightmare,my mind supplied—“dream.”
The shadows and ink vanished and Gupta clapped. “That wasn’t so miserable, was it?”
“You made me resent immortality.”
“Now you have a place to start in your conversation. And you owe it all to me,” he said, grinning. “Now go.”
“You do not need to tell me twice.”
***
When I saw her, the world ceased to exist beyond where she danced. I forgot Gupta’s lessons. I forgot why I stood there. I forgot what I wanted. I even forgot the curse the Shadow Wife had placed on me all those years ago.
Night’s dance thrummed with purpose. Her grace sharpened into a lathe, and with it she sculpted the promise of tomorrow from nothing but shadows. She waspotentialincarnate. When she shaped shadows to every sleep-creased fold in the earth, she was balancing time, wiping slates clean, allowing any beginning to take shape. When she frosted night over the world, dawn whispered the lyrics of every tomorrow:here is a thing not yet started, here is a thing of magic.My own halfhearted attempts of invention paled before her. She was the beginning of all ideas.
And before her, I was humbled.
