“You exposed me. But every truth comes with a price,” said the Shadow Wife.
I would never call her Mother. I would never call her Lady Chayya. I would never speak her name.
“You don’t frighten me.”
She tilted her head to one side, worrying her lip the way my mother did when she was considering something.
“But love frightens you. Love and the loss of it frightens you, doesn’t it?”
I said nothing.
“You should have learned from the beginning that when someone leaves, it is because nothing was valuable enough to make them stay. You were not enough. For this, boy, I curse you. And with this curse, I bind your heart. Thewoman you give your heart to will leave you just as the Lady of the Wind left your father. And the heartache you feel now will be nothing to the loss of her.”
The Tapestry taunted the words over and over. I reeled back, and the cloth fingers that had carded through my memory like so much silk suddenly crumpled and fell limp. My breath rattled in my lungs like the dead. I left the Tapestry behind me, determined to sort out my thoughts when Gupta appeared carrying a bundle of parchment roses.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting the palace ready, of course!”
“For what?”
“Forher,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It needs to be fitting for a queen. You already made her that garden, but I thought she might like something a little more intellectual. Look!” He tossed one of the parchment roses into the air and it opened into a mouth, shouting out snippets of Gupta’s reports:
It really comes down to opposable thumbs.
And:
There is something rather grotesque about pearls. Why does anyone like them? It is spit. Congealed spit.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “You expect her to walk through a garden of reports?”
“It’s better than what you did! You gave her a garden ofglass.That is actually hazardous to life.”
It struck me then. Gupta was preparing for her to come here. Because he assumed she would become the queen of this kingdom. I turned slowly on the spot, staring at the halls where she might walk down, the mirrors where she might pause to consider a strange reflection. The dining table where she would sit across from me. Thebedroom where I would sleep by her side. And as I imagined these things, the truth of the Shadow Wife’s curse took hold.
If I fell in love with her, I would lose her. Maybe she’d come here and hate this place and leave. Maybe she’d realize that she couldn’t stand the thought of eternity with me after all. The Shadow Wife’s curse was true. I had felt it press itself into my bones the moment she spoke, and there it stayed, biding its time. Waiting until I fell in love.
The only difference was that I could stop this before it ever started. I could spare us all a world of pain. Even if it broke me.
“I’m sorry,” said Gupta. “It’s not a hazard. If she likes your garden, then who cares?”
“She… she can’t come here.”
Gupta stepped back, stunned. “What? Why?”
Because I am dangerously close to falling in love.
“It won’t work.”
“I thought you said that if it couldn’t be her, you’d have no one?”
“I did say that. I choose no one.”
“But you love her…”
“Don’t say that,” I said under my breath. “Don’t say those words. I don’t love her. I can’t love her and I won’t love her.”
Gupta raised an eyebrow. “You do realize you have little choice in the matter.”
