“You’resick,” she said.
“Only with longing,” croaked Vikram.
He leaned forward, as if to kiss her. But then his legs crumpled. Gauri caught him around the shoulders.
“How long have you been hiding this?” she demanded.
Perhaps she should have been kinder, more worried. But Gauri only felt fury.
“Not long,” he said. “I woke up feeling rather strange.”
“Strange?” she nearly shouted.
Vikram frowned. “Where is your sense of nurturing? I thought you’re supposed to become my wife tomorrow.”
“And where isyoursense of self-preservation?” she asked. “You shouldn’t even be outdoors, let aloneout of bed.”
“I will”—he coughed—“get to bed with astounding speed if you join—”
He couldn’t finish.
A film of sweat covered his skin. Vikram inhaled deeply, but it shuddered and broke apart in his throat. He hacked again, and then his head fell against her chest.
Gauri shifted him when she felt something wet against her hands.
She knew what was on her skin even before she saw the crimson shine of it:
Blood.
It was a warm shade of red. As red as the ruby that had won them entry into the Tournament of Wishes. As crimson as the roses that he had planted next to swords in a garden made just for her. As scarlet as his royal Ujijain robes when he had asked her to marry him.
Vikram’s pulse leapt against her fingers… straining and furious, as if his blood could barely stand to move through his veins. His shadow wavered behind him. The shadow looked as though it were trying to pull itself from the seam of life tying it to Vikram. She knew. That was all it took. The realization pinned that moment beneath its weight, and time itself could not move forward.
All day Gauri had felt something… something that she recognized, but could not name. When she blinked, she saw a barren landscape running beneath her. She felt the flanks of a skeletal horse and the slow turn of its rictus grin as it dropped her onto the floor of a pale kingdom. She tasted the air of that land here and now, scalding her throat as her fingers tightened around Vikram. Only now could she name what she had sensed:
Death.
A single second stretched into infinity. Gauri knew this feeling. It was the infinity that belonged to those who sense the scope of their grief before it hits. The infinity of waiting for the strike that will come no matter what bargain is made, what tears are shed, what violence is wrought. This was what Gauri knew to be true of Death. It may take one life at a time, but that did not stop it from rendering skeletal the souls of the ones who had loved the departed.
“No, no, no,” murmured Gauri.
She sank to her knees, folding Vikram to her. His sword clattered to the ground. Instinctively, she wanted to pick it up, slide it back into its sheath, to do anything of ritual that might transform this into somethingnormal.She could see normal stretched out, extravagant as a horizon: an endless rotation of meetings, smiles stolen from outside the glances of courtiers and therefore all the sweeter, her spine against his chest and their limbs a labyrinth none could enter but they. Days that blended together, arguments that tilted to a fit of laughing, hands cobwebbing with the blue veins of a long life. No magic compared.
Gauri wanted to snatch back all she had said. Now, Vikram’s words curled her mouth with bitterness.
That’s all that tomorrow means to you?
If tomorrow still had his smile, then it meant all to her.
In her arms, Vikram was strangely light. Gauri gathered him tightly, as though to stop any more of him from escaping. Shock robbed her words.
But though she had lost her sense of time, her guards had not.
Bharata-Ujijain officials flooded the courtyard.
She did not hear the sound of their trumpet sounding alarm. She barely felt the heavy shawl draped around her shoulders, the attendants’ urgent hands forcing her to rise. All she felt was the sudden cold against her skin when Vikram was taken from her.
PRESENT
