By summer, she had nearly forgotten about the bird.
Then came the afternoon where she had been walking outside, having just left one of Gauri’s meetings.
She had been deep in thought, turning over a point in the meeting. One man had smiled at her. But his desire… his desire spokeof revulsion. Forher.Had she done something? Did she wear her differences so obviously? What else could she do to try and be human?
At that moment, something warm knifed against her cheek. Aasha didn’t think. She only reacted.
A shudder ran through her.
She didn’t even have to raise her hand. She felt the star prickle to life on her skin at the same instant that she heard a lowcheepof surprise. When she turned around, the mynah bird that she had loved and nursed back to health was dead at her feet.
From then on, she had kept at a distance from the others. When there were invitations for festivals, she had stayed behind. What would startle her next? Unannounced fireworks? The belly of a thunderstorm skimming over the city? She wanted to go. Every part of her yearned. This was why she had come to the human realm in the first place… to see and live and dance. To slake her wonder in sips of a life that had long been denied.
But she couldn’t.
Every time she heard laughter outside her suites, she thought of the mynah bird at her feet. She heard its hurt cry of surprise replaying over and over in her head. The mynah bird became the citizens of Bharata, fanned out in a circle around her, struck dead all because she had been…surprised.
Just last week, she’d nearly killed a child. The little girl had accidentally tripped her. Aasha, caught off guard, had reached out her hand to steady herself. The child, thinking to steady her, had tried to grab her hand.
In the last second, she’d gripped a marble column. The blue star flickered and faded in a blink. But a blink was all it took to kill.
Now, Aasha looked around the room.
It would be so easy to pack her belongings and leave in the middle of the night. Aasha slid out of bed, her heart racing and breaking at once. But then she stopped. She couldn’t leave her friends. And even if she did, who was to say that she would be able to control her powers if she returned to her sisters? What was to prevent her from being startled and suddenly turning mortal? What if one of her own sisters, thinking to help her, reached out and killed her with one touch?
Tears sprang to her eyes.
No matter how she looked at this world, she was trapped.
She had traded one prison for another. By tomorrow morning she’d be leaving for the home of the Spy Mistress. She closed her eyes, feeling as though every undeserved hope Gauri and Vikram had placed in her had suddenly sprouted thorns. If they knew what was wrong with her, they would have never given her this honor. Or believed in her. They might have even banished her. She deserved as much.
Outside, the moon was a rind of silver growing on top of the mountains. Aasha leaned back against the cushions, staring at the empty space beside her. A strange ache dug into her bones. Even the shadows had found stillness. Peace.
Of all the human desires and emotions that fascinated her, love was the most mysterious of them all. The texture of that desire manifested differently in every individual. She had sensed the desire between two people and found it scorching to the touch, or desperately entangled with emotions of grief or envy, or desire so light and delicate that it seemed as if it were wrought from strands of daydreams.
In her wish to live a human life, she had discovered so manyhuman emotions. She had felt envy quite sharply when Gauri had asked to spend time alone with Nalini and she had not been invited. She had felt a flicker of desire when a young man or young woman held her gaze and flashed a smile full of invitation. Though she knew sorrow best of all these days… not once had she felt love. Romantic love. She knew full well that both Gauri and Vikram held part of her heart. But if she could hold so much in her heart, could she not give it to someone as well?
She knew what love was supposed to look like. She saw it every day with Gauri and Vikram. The moment they beheld each other, it was as if a trail of light had been instantly forged between them.
She would never forget the first time that realization had struck her. Aasha had been leaving the kitchens, her favorite haunt when no official duties pulled her to Gauri’s side. There was a shaded path that wound through the orchards of Bharata. That was where she had spied Gauri and Vikram through a gap in the trees.
A swing hung from the sweet-scented branches of the gulmohar tree. The blooms were plump and garnet red. A crimson so striking that Aasha had once expected the petals to scald her like a flame. Vikram was pushing Gauri, laughing. She smiled up at him, her chin perched over her shoulder. Vikram had cupped her upturned face and kissed her smile until their expressions twinned the other.
The memory made Aasha want to curl around her shadow. She couldn’t possess such a thing. She dreamed, sometimes, of a smile fashioned for her alone. A smile that only she summoned. That only she knew the secret contours of. That only she could find in the dark with neither candle nor moonlight but only the illumination provided by a beloved memory.
Beneath her arm, the blackened rose petals fell apart. It was as much a reminder as it was a warning. She should not want such things.
She’d only char them and be left with nothing but ashes.
4
“Do you have everything you need?”
“Yes.”
“Did they pack enough food and water, you think?”
“Gauri…” said Vikram softly.
