The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(41)

Outside my room, a slamming sound echoed, raising goose bumps along my skin. What door was that?

I paused. The doors. I remembered them flinging open, all their locks and bindings forgotten. With a lurch, I remembered what lay behind them—swaying bodies, the fug of decay. Fires to drown out worlds.

They had opened to my power. Responded to it like a song.

Guilt tugged at me. In the shadows of the Night Bazaar, I had pledged Amar my trust, my patience. But this was not Amar’s secret to keep from me. It was mine. The warning rhyme flashed through my head. Perhaps it was not some aimless trick of the palace. I needed to find the door.

I just had to figure out how.





16

THE MEMORY TREE

A knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts. I opened it, expecting to see Gupta, but it was Amar. His expression looked carved in stone and his lips were set in a grim line. But the moment we held each other’s gaze, something in him relented. His hands tightened at his side.

“I would never want to cause you pain.”

I flinched. “I am not in pain.”

Lie.

“I am not some animal you wounded,” I added.

Truth.

“It is only a night longer,” he said.

The warning voice from the halls echoed back to me: You are running out of moon time. Listen to my warning rhyme. What would happen tomorrow?

Amar hesitated, before reaching out to hold my hand. I stared at the circlet of my hair around his wrist. Bitterness rose in my throat. I glanced from my bracelet to the other one on his wrist—black leather and knotted—dull and malevolent.

“Do these past days mean nothing?” he asked, so gently that my weak self curled around his words.

But I would no longer be weak. I tapped into that power in my veins and a shimmering wall of flames sprang up between us. Amar jumped back, shocked and then … amused.

“A little ruthlessness is to be admired, but it’s cruel to play with a powerless heart.”

“Crueler still to promise equality and hide a person’s true self.”

“I thought it was best for you,” he repeated.

“Strange how something that only affected me was decided by you.”

Amar’s smile turned cold. “My promises were true. You seek to punish an illusion without fully knowing. What were your kisses, then? Vengeance?”

The wall of flames shimmered away. Anger still flared inside me, but now it was mixed with something else. Something I couldn’t push away, despite fury. Want.

“They were nothing,” I lied. “They meant nothing.”

I didn’t look at him. And then, a bloom of cold erupted beside me and Amar was at my side. His fingers traced a secret calligraphy along my arms.

“Nothing at all?”

My heart twisted. I reached forward, my hands tangling in his hair as I kissed him. It was a kiss meant to devour, to summon war. And when I broke it, my voice was harsh:

“My kisses mean nothing.”

“Cruel queen,” he murmured, tilting my head back. His lips skimmed down my neck. Amar’s hands gripped my waist, before tracing the outline of my hips. Heat flared through my body. But just as I pulled him closer, a sudden clash echoed in the hallway, and we sprang apart.

Gupta’s screams thundered through the walls, lingered in the air. In an instant, small lanterns sprung up on the blank walls. Amar took off at a run, following the path of light, and I chased after him.

At the end of the row of lanterns, Gupta lay half slumped on the floor. He was shaking violently. His clothes were singed. I looked around, but there was no fire, no scorch marks on the ground or the walls. The only thing that bore signs of damage was Gupta. For all I knew, he might have spontaneously combusted where he stood.

I moved toward him, but Amar blocked me.

“He’ll be fine,” he said coolly.

I stared at him. Danger had unleashed itself from this very spot and we were standing around like nothing was the matter.

“If there’s danger, I should know,” I protested.

“Your intentions are admirable, but let me handle this.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” I said in a steely voice.

Gupta’s gaze never wavered from Amar. “There was an accident.”

“How?” I nearly yelled, pointing to the emptiness of the room, the vast, leering space of the palace.

“Maya,” said Amar through clenched teeth. “Return to the room. Immediately. It is not safe.”

I stepped back, scolded. Here I was, a child playing queen. Anger flashed through me. I turned on my heel, marching down the halls as shame lit up my cheeks. I stood before my bedroom door, but I refused to enter. If the doors responded to power, then power is what I’d use. I concentrated, curling my power in my palms like a handful of dust, and blew, seeking all the time for one thing—the charred door wrapped in chains. The door with the voice.

*

The door did not take long to find. I felt like it had been waiting for me and had only made itself known when it sensed my power fluttering against it like the lightest of knocks. Despite the chains and charred frame, it looked oddly ordinary. Just a slab of wood, as any other. At first, the chains wouldn’t budge, so I gathered my will and imagined it melting the metal. Like the weather that had bent to my will, the chains wilted beneath my hands. Soon, they were nothing more than a pile at my feet.