Foolish.
“You expect me to make this momentous decision by chance and simply show up atTeejand let someone choose me? Based on myhand?”
“You could do that.”
I waited, then caught the smug tilt of his grin.
“Or?” I prompted through clenched teeth.
“Oryou could take the two months you have available and find someone. And arrange to meet them atTeej.”
“What if the right one doesn’t come toTeej?”
Gupta scoffed. “Every Otherworld maiden will be atTeej.Trust me.”
2
NIGHT
“You could promise me a palace of spun sugar and I wouldn’t go,” I said.
“What if I—”
“You could hang me upside down and tickle me with lightning and I would not be persuaded.”
“Rather vicious, don’t you think?” asked Nritti. She shook her head, and the small golden ornaments strung through her hair chimed sorrowfully. Three chimes. That never boded well.
I had lost count of how many times I had heard the chiming of Nritti’s golden bells. To everyone else, the bells distinguished her as the chiefapsaraof the heavenly courts. Everyone else heard the bells and saw the cosmetic appeal—the glint of gold against the black fall of her hair, a trill of precious metal to silver her immaculate dance, a glittering crown that belonged to none else in the court of Svargaloka.
To me, the chimes were something to be translated. One chime meant:Here we go again.Two chimes meant:I am questioning our friendship.Three chimes meant:Once more, I must rescue her from the depths of bad choices.
Three chimes.
I shook my head. She sighed, and resumed kicking her feet in the pale blue river before us. At this hour, the river looked like a shard of sky. The reflection of rose-colored clouds floated down the still water. Soon, indigo would stain their edges. Like bruises. For a handful of moments, the sky would turn monstrous, purpled and marbled as if someone had beaten it senseless. One might call it cruel. And yet without it you’d never notice the stars.
Maybe the horror of dusk made the stars beautiful. You had to prize apart and flay the sky just to notice them. And for that cruelty, they bared their cold and unflinching beauty, their fixed and fervid glory. That beauty held truth—destiny and doom listed in the space between those burning silver infernos.
Nritti hugged her knees to her chest and followed my gaze. “You were the first person to tell me there was nothing violent about the night.”
I smiled. “And you believed me because there was nothing violent about me.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Not entirely violent,” I allowed.
“Not entirely scary.”
We turned our gaze to the heavens and waited. There was beauty in the night, if you chose to see it. Some did. Some didn’t. For some, night was the time of dreams and rest, of balance reasserting itself. For others, the hours crowded between dusk and dawn belonged tothe ghosts. I knew what they feared: the uncertainty of nighttime, the lightlessness of those hours that were not the black comfort of sleep but the shadows at the bottom of a monster’s throat. I glanced at my reflection and saw their fear staring right at me. Why could I not be dreams and nightmares both?
Nritti reached for my hand. I looked down to see our knitted fingers. Even though we had known each other all our lives, sometimes I never recognized myself beside her. Her skin—a lustrous gold—paled next to my own violent shades.Almost time,I thought. Vespertine ink bloomed across my skin, spelling the calligraphy of dusk and near-night. Stars winked in the crook of my elbow and a constellation curved around the bend of my thumb.
“Already?” asked Nritti.
“Shorter days.”
“And longer nights.”
“I don’t mind.”
