“Don’t make me jealous,” he said. Gauri bit back a wince. Here they were, complaining of the thing that the other would far prefer. “Ah well.”
He tossed the sword, catching it in one hand and spinning it effortlessly. Gauri nearly pinched herself. In Alaka, he certainly hadnotbeen able to do that.
“What?” he asked. “Surprised I can lift a sword?”
“No.”
Vaguely.
“You must have developed muscles from some activity,” she reasoned. “Though I can’t imagine which.”
“A bit of running, a lot of reading. Holding up books is difficult. As is turning pages.”
Gauri crossed her arms.
“To be fair, they wereveryheavy books,” added Vikram.
Vikram glanced at her crossed arms, his gaze lingering on the henna designs winding up to her elbows. His grin dimmed, replaced with an inscrutable expression. Gauri would have crossed her arms tighter at this scrutiny, but that would not have helped. If anything, it would only have drawn attention to the designs. Vikram moved closer, tracing the cinnabar designs with a light finger.
“Tomorrow,” he breathed.
She let out a shaky laugh. How did Vikram do it? Bits of wonder and awe always found their way to him as moths drawn to distant light.
“Tomorrow we are chained to each other’s side,” she said. “I do hope you like the tapestries on the throne room walls. We shall be staring at them until the day we die.”
No sooner had she spoken did she realize she had said the entirely wrong thing.
He dropped his hand. “That’s all that tomorrow means to you?”
A better person, akinderperson, would have spoken of the joining of souls and indescribable love. But she did not owe him such declarations. Everything she had done thus far showed that she lovedhim. She had spent her time with the Ujijain delegates, studied the history of his kingdom, ingratiated herself to his people. Those things were not demanded of her, but they were her love manifested. She wanted to love them as he did, not simply because it was diplomatically logical, but because she would vow to take into her heart what he did. Including, though it pained her, dull texts on city planning. Even if it did not light a spark in her heart, she would try. Just as, she thought—glancing at the sword on his hip and the new callouses along his fingers—he did.
“You know what I meant,” she said, her shoulders caving.
“I’m not certain that I do,” said Vikram, his voice a touch colder. “You seem to think that tomorrow is the start of an inevitable drudge toward death.”
“I do not have time for this,” said Gauri, picking up and sheathing her practice sword. “And neither do you.”
“Wait. Time forwhat,exactly?”
“Time to pick apart words as you do. Icannot.I have been doing it for too long, from the council in the daytime to the strange women in my bed…”
His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Can we revisit that last part?”
“One of your dreadful customs,” she snapped. “To preserve my chastity.”
“An alternative,” said Vikram, pulling her back against his chest and speaking low into her ear, “is to be very obvious about possessingnosuch thing. Allow me to be of assistance.”
“You’re terrible.”
“Terribly handsome.”
“That too,” she said, laughing.
He folded her against his chest, and Gauri breathed in the smell of him. These days, he no longer smelled only of parchment. He smelled of the cut grass in Bharata’s palatial arenas, the sandalwood incense carried by Ujijain’s priests, and, as always, ink and parchment. For one stolen moment, the world no longer spun. Homesickness lifted off her heart. She hardly recognized her home with so many unfamiliar faces crowding the halls. Her home had to make room for so many more that her place within it had disappeared beneath the footfall of strangers. But here, in a universe bounded only by his arms, she found it once more.
She had only just begun to breathe easy when Vikram began to cough.
The cough dragged itself up through his body, rattling in his lungs. Gauri stiffened. Slowly, she pulled away, her hand traveling up his chest before stopping at his throat. His skin burned with fever. Gauri drew away her hand as if scalded.
