The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(12)

“I’d rather spread ideas than legs,” I hissed back. “But I doubt you would agree—”

“Silence, you mongrel,” said Mother Dhina. “All your life, all I have done is try to be merciful to you and bring you stability. To give you a home.”

“You hid me away and shunned me from anyone who might get to know me. You call this mercy?”

“I do. I spared anyone the shame of being in your presence,” she said. “The least you could have done was die. But you kept selfishly clinging to life.”

“Do you expect me to apologize?”

Mother Dhina laughed and it was a cold, cruel thing.

“When the sickness claimed eight of the wives, I prayed you were next.”

She fell quiet and her next words were soft, but no less fierce. “Do you know how many children I have buried because of you? Strong, healthy babies. Ten fingers, ten toes. A full head of hair. They just wouldn’t breathe. Because of you.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Your shadow touched mine. You poisoned me. You killed them. Your horoscope has only attracted darkness to our court. It’s your fault.”

“You’re—”

“Enough,” cut in Mother Dhina. “You have no place here. Your mother didn’t either. At least she had the good sense to die young.”

Mother Dhina cleared her throat and this time when she spoke, it was in the cool and practiced monotone of someone who could watch you burn alive and not blink. “In keeping with Bharata’s bridal traditions, you will be isolated to maintain the utmost purity.”

“You can’t do that!” I screamed, slamming my fists against the door. “I am telling you someone was in here. If you’re truly merciful, let me out, let me speak to the Raja.”

Footsteps resounded in the distance. I screamed after her, but my sounds chased nothing but echoes. Mother Dhina had left. The panels of wood chaffed, scuffed and scratched beneath my fists, but they never budged. Again and again, I threw myself against the door. I screamed until voice was an echo of something I once knew. I yelled until I felt unspooled and even whispering made me wince. I slid against the door, cradling my bloodied knuckles to my chest.

Perhaps this was a dream, some horrible illusion that would soon collapse into shards of nightmare. I had heard of something like this once. When my father swore to the envoys of the rebel kingdoms that not a single hand would be laid upon the prisoners of war, he had found other means to torture them. Sleep deprivation. But he kept his word. No one touched them. No one needed to. I had listened in the rafters to their horrible testimony, to the nightmare of ears forever ringing, eyes hollow with sleeplessness. The mind was its own escape artist, and who knew what it would concoct in the absence of rest.

That had to be what I was seeing. I was tired, I whispered to myself. That was all. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. I rocked myself back and forth, muttering the words into the cupped hollow of my palms like they were sacred. I closed my eyes and let my body curl around my hurt until eventually, sleep claimed me.





5

A GIFT TO FREE

The next morning, I woke to the other wives assembling in the halls. I stared at my hands, saw the scabs and scrapes, felt the crust of tears along my jaw and knew this had been no dream. Even then, my reality was a muddled thing. In the space of a day my room had become alien and unfamiliar. The voice of my intruder roped around me, tight as a noose. Had she even been there? I didn’t know. Or was it like the tutor from yesterday whose stretched form had been nothing more than shadow play?

I pulled my hands through my hair, shivering in my empty room. The air was watery and thin with pale morning light. No matter where I looked, everything bore the telltale signs of a trap. If the sky had ever hinted its secrets in the past, it yielded none now. Twice, I had tried to lift the bars from my windows. I had sawed at them with a rock and dug at their foundations until my fingers were bloody. But there was no escape.

Outside, the wives lined up in front of my door, preparing to recite the wedded tales of their mothers and sisters and selves. The tradition was meant to be joyful, but they would give me no such false hopes. I wasn’t sure whether I should be grateful or horrified. I couldn’t separate one voice from the other, each one melded into the other, until it swelled into a chorus of pain. The wives told me of sisters murdered by vengeful husbands to safeguard their honor, of wives sewn up to guard their virtue when their husbands left for battle, of the torrent of blood on the first night of marriage. They told me of bruises covered beneath golden bangles, veils meant to hide dislocated jaws, the fear of raised voices. I tried to shut them out. I tried to convince myself that their stories were only meant to scare me. But each time I closed my eyes, all I saw was a menacing man with unforgiving eyes and a cruel mouth.

*

Night tugged a starless blanket over the palace. I had hardly moved all day. Even when the harem wives’ stories burned, even when Gauri slipped drawings under the door, nothing moved me. I tried to imagine the whole of the universe leaning forward to test me. Was this what it wanted? I could conjure fearlessness like a veil. Maybe if I just kept at the illusion, I would fool myself too.

When the kingdom fell silent, I finally moved to light the diyas in my room. Near the corner of my room, a pillar carved in the shape of the lion-headed Narasimha grinned wickedly. It was a gruesome tale, of blood and angry gods, but for some reason it gave me hope. The flames flickered bright in the lion-headed statue’s eyes, but they yielded no warmth. Everything was a spell of cold. To make matters worse, I had no way of knowing whether my assailant would return. I had gone over her words, but none of it made sense. I need you to lead me. Lead where? For all I knew, she was nothing more than a nightmare conjured from stress.