The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(29)

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Why?”

He paused and took a step to me. Darkness, soft-edged and heavy, clung to the room. In the shadows, his smile held all the lazy grace of a cat.

“Would you miss me?”

“Curiosity inspired my question. Nothing more,” I said, but even my voice was unconvinced.

“Even so, there’s no greater temptation than to stay by your side.”

The door swung open and a chorus of voices trickled into the room—silvery and indistinct, like whispers released through clenched teeth. Amar lingered for a moment, his lips tight as though he wanted to say something.

Then, he cupped his palms together and blew into them. When he opened his hands, a bloom of light shaped like an unopened flower bud lifted off his palm and floated into the room. Brightness drenched away the shadows.

“I will never leave you in the dark.”

And with that, he left.

*

I waited for the door to shut before I sank against the throne. I buried my face in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut. When Amar promised me the power of a hundred kings, this wasn’t what I had in mind. It felt wrong. My duty was to tweak people’s fortunes like they were designs gone awry instead of lives filled with dreams, quirks and ambitions. A knock at the door pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Are you ready to change for dinner?” asked Gupta.

I frowned, turning to the windows of the throne room. When I had stepped inside, I was sure it had been broad daylight. Now, wispy clouds like ghost skins streaked a crimson sky.

“Yes,” I called back, still trying to work out the time I had lost.

Gupta said nothing as he led me from the throne room back to the bedroom, but there was nothing stiff or awkward in his silence. He was grinning to himself and every now and then when he caught my eye, he beamed.

“I will wait for you out here.”

“There’s no need, I remember my way back to the dining room.”

Gupta shook his head. “I insist.”

“If you insist,” I said stiffly, annoyance prickling inside.

I entered the room and immediately noticed a new sari folded delicately on the bed—yards of dove-gray silk strewn with pearls. I dressed quickly before meeting Gupta outside and we walked through the halls. The mirror portals paneling the walls glittered strange reflections. Lush hills carpeted in small blue flowers, a forest tangled with lights and a bone white temple balanced between the tips of a craggy mountainside flashed past me. But something else caught my eye, tucked away in a corner of the hall that I hadn’t seen before: a door, charred at the edges, lengths of iron wrapping it round and round.

Something about the door twisted my heart. A voice, a mere scratch in the silence, began to sing:

I’ve never tasted dreams so sweet

Such pearly flesh and tender meat

Oh queen, if you only knew

You’d gladly rip your heart in two

I stopped. “Gupta, what door is that?”

He frowned. “Door? What door?” He turned around and then asked sharply, “What did it look like?”

I hesitated. Mother Dhina’s words echoed … keep some secrets for yourself. The words caught in my throat. This secret, just this one, I would keep to myself until I understood it. I had barely been in Akaran for a day. I couldn’t let my guard down entirely. And that voice … it felt like it had been sung to me alone.

“I can’t remember,” I lied.

Gupta shrugged. As we walked, I kept turning around, half expecting a door strung with chains to glitter just out of sight. But it never appeared.

The dining room had changed since yesterday. Today its rug showed a herd of elephants moving through the jungle. And instead of golden platters piled high with food and saffron cushions placed around the table, there were silver platters and mother-of-pearl cushions. Akaran’s riches lay unfurled at my feet. But even with all that wonder, I sensed a chill in the room. I pulled my sari closer. There was something else here. I could feel it like breath against my neck.

Amar was nowhere in sight. Instead, Gupta pulled out a chair for me.

“Please, have a seat,” he said. “Amar won’t be able to dine with you this evening.”

“Oh.” A twinge of disappointment ran through me. “Why not?”

“He had to attend to an urgent matter of retrieval.”

“Retrieval of what?”

Gupta stiffened and his voice came out in a wheeze. When he caught his breath, he merely pointed to the night sky, where the moon was a ghostly crescent.

“Right,” I said, deflating a little. I kept forgetting the rules of the Otherworld. Not a word could be spoken about Akaran’s secrets until the new moon.

I glared at the moon.

Gupta shook his head apologetically and pointed at the food. “Please, eat.”

As I ate, I watched Gupta from the corner of my eye. He was writing furiously, quill rapping against the wood as he filled the page with line after line of ink.

“What are you doing?”

He looked up, quill half suspended in the air before he tapped the scroll. “Record keeping. Nothing is certain until the ink dries.”

“What’s not certain?”

“Life,” said Gupta matter-of-factly.

The half-eaten platters of food stared back at me glumly. I was, against all experience, strangely without an appetite.