The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(43)

Where was he going? And if he thought I would stay behind like some petulant child, he was wrong. I waited a few moments and then slipped down the same hallways Amar had entered. As I crossed the halls, a second shadow nearly crossed mine.

A woman’s shadow.

My heart clenched. Who was she? I’d never seen another soul in the palace aside from Amar and Gupta. Her clothes were tattered and she moved with a strange, labored effort. Like she was in pain. I crept out of the hall, following the woman down the darkened hallway. I followed her around another corner and this time saw an impossible sight—

Hundreds of people were walking through Akaran’s halls.

I flattened myself against the wall, eyeing the crowds who wound through the halls like a great serpent. They were tall, short, fat, skinny, dark, light, young and old. And then I noticed stranger details: a woman with a black and blue neck, a man who looked distinctly gray, a child with something sharp protruding from her side and another man covered in blood. I clapped my hand over my mouth, my throat dry as I sank to my knees.

They were all dead.

*

The dead walked in droves. Crouching in the shadows, I searched their drained expressions. There was no light in their eyes as they queued outside a wall of scarlet and silver flames.

In the distance, four massive hounds—two pairs of eyes on each side of their heads—kept appearing and disappearing. Their mouths were full of something wet and silvery. Each time they snorted and dropped open their jaws, a soul dropped onto the floor. Hellhounds. I shuddered. Their coats of fur were close cropped, brindled like emerald and diamond.

Gupta stood at the front of the line, a heavy bound book in his arms. “Go quickly to the south wing and await judgment from the Dharma Raja.”

The south wing. I paled, turning slowly to a door made of nothing but pale beams of smoke. I recognized the arch beside it—the entrance to the glass garden.

I tried to grab something solid and only vaguely felt a stone pillar against my palm. My knees buckled. I thought of Amar’s promise outside the Night Bazaar … a kingdom of impossible power. A kingdom that all nations feared.

No wonder I’d never heard of Akaran … there was no such thing. I had always been in Naraka—the realm of the dead. Which made Amar the Dharma Raja, the lord of justice in the afterlife. A harsh laugh escaped me.

Partnered with Death.

Death shackled all fates. It was fixed. And all I could do was modify the ambiguities left between. No wonder Amar looked disturbed when I asked whether those who entered the Otherworld died. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. Gupta knew too.

I looked around, disoriented as the shadows of the dead striped the white marble of the floors. I was about to leave when a familiar woman caught my eye. Vikram’s mother. Her brow still gleamed with sweat and in her hands she carried a bundle of wilting flowers. Her neck was bent too sharply and bits of mountain gravel clung to her hair. She must have fallen.

I retched onto the marble, my body shaking. Amar must have pulled the thread. What outcome was there for the boy? I was disgusted with myself. I wanted to fling myself at the woman’s feet, and beg her for forgiveness.

Someone marched beside her. A figure silhouetted in metal, a limp crest of scarlet on its helmet. I remembered the stomping gait, the familiar vermillion sash now tattered and trailing blood. Memory clamped its jaws into my chest: he was a soldier of Bharata. But far, far worse than that—

He was a harem guard.

I remembered taunting him on the day my father told me of his plans. The young guard whom I had never bothered apologizing to. He looked aged. Or perhaps it was the cold lights of Naraka slowly teasing out his youth. My heart slammed against my ribs as I watched the line of the dead. Who had he died protecting? And where was he going? Who else would I recognize in these halls?

I wandered far into the line of the dead, pushing past them, refusing to shudder when my skin came away clammy at the contact. By the time I was sure there was no one else from Bharata, I couldn’t find my way back to the south wing. The halls skipped around me.

I was losing my way through the palace, but there was nothing I could do. The palace thrummed with its own magic, its own plans. Each step was a small battle against the draining energy of the dead. My skin shifted taut and stretched, as though I were turning skeletal with every movement, weighed down by the pull of magic and spent lives. I found myself at the threshold of the throne room. The doors were flung open and as I stumbled past the entrance, I saw Amar bent over the tapestry. A crown of blackbuck horns gleamed on his head, cruel and slick. In the dark, they looked blood-tinged. His hands roamed over the threads, fingers flicking, yanking, snarled in strands that he pulled out in swift, merciless strokes like he was tearing throats instead of threads.

The threads—whole entire lives—fell noiselessly to the ground. It was a slaughter.

I moved faster, heart racing. I couldn’t be caught. Years could have passed by the time I found myself outside the doors of our bedroom. Our bedroom. The weight of it sent a stab of pain inside me. I had slept beside him. I had kissed him. I had even … begun to feel something for him.

I sank to my knees. I had never escaped my horoscope. I had only been blind to its meaning until now. A wave of revulsion rushed over me as I glanced at the bed we had shared. He had concealed the consequences of my judgments and made me an accomplice to death. He had asked me for patience—for trust—but he had betrayed both.