“Better. Try one more time,” he insisted. She obliged him, focused on navigating the sticky consonants and lilting vowels. He nodded. “Good enough.”
She wrinkled her nose.Good enough?She made a mental note to recite the prayer to herself later, until it was just as good as his pronunciation.
“Now, take a minute to choose which god or goddess you want to direct your intention to. I would recommend Indara, god of knowledge, and Nathria, the goddess of victory.” He brushed his fingers over the head of each idol. “You can direct your prayer to the gods at large, but I find it’s always nice to name one close to the cause.”
Before she could protest that she didn’t know what a single one of these gods represented, Hasan stepped forward and placed his plate at the foot of the pantheon. Kneeling, he recited the prayer, then lingered a moment before rising.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “How do we know that it worked?”How will you know if I’ve failed?
He chuckled dryly. “What, were you expecting something theatrical? The room to light up? A holy choir?”
Poppy glared at him.
“Sometimes, you feel your skin prickle.” He turned his palms up casually. “There reallyareno theatrics involved.”
She slackened a degree in relief. There would be no visible sign of her failure, no empty silence following her desperate plea.
Then he added, “Most of the time, the only way to tell if your prayer was answered is to summon your daivyakhi.”
Of course.She would have to prove that the gods had answered her with a display of power, on which this entire deal hinged. Her stomach turned over again. For once, she was grateful that it was empty.
Then Hasan spoke the dreaded words. “Okay, your turn. Show me what you’ve got.”
His eyes burned like a lit cigarette against Poppy’s skin as she stepped forward, placing her plate beside his. Saying a mournful goodbye to the stuffed parathas, she stepped back, clearing her mind as she recalled the prayer. “My veins are a vessel for the divine power of the gods,” she recited slowly, putting all her attention on enunciating the unfamiliar words. “If they find my sacrifice worthy, may I be filled with their cosmic energy.”
She held her breath, waiting for something?—skin tingling, hair rising,something?—but nothing happened. No one had listened?—or, worse, someonehadlistened, and then judged her unworthy. Instinctively, she knew it was the latter. Wasn’t that the story of her life? Too foreign for the Imperial Family, too coarse for the Welkish nobility, and now, Poppy was too little for the Virian gods. It didn’t matter what her sin had been?—maybe it was something as simple as the stilted way she’d pronounced the prayer. The answer was still silence.
She exhaled slowly, curling her fingers into fists. Her throat grew tight, but she clenched her jaw in response. Deep down, she’dknownthat the gods wouldn’t heed her plea. Half of her had even hoped for it, so that she wouldn’t have to use the magic her father so despised. So why was she still blinking hot, disappointed tears away?
“Okay,” Hasan said, oblivious to the fact that Poppy was clearly forsaken. “Let’s go upstairs. Harithi should be ready?—”
“No,” she whispered. She didn’t need the rest of the household to witness this. Having Hasan here was humiliating enough.
“What?” he asked. “Why not?”
“I can’t,” she croaked out, looking somewhere over his shoulder, too ashamed to look at his face. “I can’t?—”
Can’t summon daivyakhi.
He misunderstood. “Yes, you can. It’s exactly the same as whatever you did when you burst that pipe?—”
“No,” she said, shifting her eyes to meet his. “The gods didn’t answer me.”
She waited for his reaction. Poppy knew enough of Hasan’s body language by now to know that he stilled whenever confronted with the unexpected, muscles tensed as his fight-or-flight instinct warred within him. But he didn’t freeze, didn’t even blink.
“You can’t know that,” he said. “I told you, there’s no physical reaction when the naumya is made.”
“I do know.” She hated the way the tightness in her throat caused the words to come out creaky.
“How?”
She ground her teeth together. “I just do!”
“You can only know if you try?—”
Poppy spun on her heel, jabbing her finger at cut flowers sitting in a vase of water left at the foot of the pantheon. Curling her fingers into a fist, she jerked her hand upward, flowers spilling out as she lifted the water. The aqueous blob made it three feet in the air before the first wave of nausea hit. Hasan caught her as she doubled over; water splashed over their feet.
“See?” she gasped as he hauled her back upright. “Nothing. Forsaken.”
