The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(47)

“Nritti?” I ventured.

She nodded and smiled. “Do you remember me?”

“I—” I faltered. I knew her. But I didn’t remember her. Not really. I knew her in blips of memory.

“I’ve been waiting,” she said, tears shining in her eyes. “I have been looking for you for centuries. Ever since you were taken and scurried away into that awful palace, I knew I would find you. But then all of that”—she stopped, breaking off into a sob—“but then everything changed,” she said through gasps of pain.

“Where are you?” I asked. “How did you even … know … where I was?”

“The mirrors,” said Nritti, tapping the black veil. “I knew there was a portal leading from the Otherworld to his palace.” She snarled his, refusing to say Amar’s name. “I knew it would be a matter of time and now you’re here! The moment you stepped into the room, I could feel it. My own mirror lit up.”

I said nothing, words failing me. Distantly, I heard Gupta’s voice in the back of my mind, shining like a warning.

There are places behind our doors that must never be opened because of what they hide … They can sense an invitation by something as small as another person’s lungs filling with air in the same room and it’s like a lightning bolt, like a conduit of destruction.

“So you know now … you know what he’s capable of,” said Nritti through the mirror. She pressed her hands against the glass, like she was desperate to be free. “We have to get you out.”

I nodded, still numb. All those threads being pulled from the tapestry. All those people wandering the halls close by where I slept. Oblivious. All those promises and dreams he had kindled in my head.

I looked at Nritti. “Where have you been? Why now?”

She gave me a pitiful expression and I felt chastened beneath her stare. “It’s hard work to get into this part of Naraka. And harder to stay.”

“Tell me everything,” I said. “How do we know each other?”

“We grew up together,” said Nritti. She pointed vaguely at the memories above. “Our story is somewhere in that tree. We were like sisters, you and me.”

I frowned. But what about the memory of Amar and the other woman? That had been his, hadn’t it?

“There was someone else,” I began, “a woman, she—”

“There’s always a woman,” said Nritti, with a flippant wave of her hand. “He traps them here. He finds one girl, lovely or not, it doesn’t matter. And he feeds off of them. He is Death, he can do anything he wants.”

“But why was it in my memory?”

“You must have found out what he was up to,” said Nritti in a rushed voice. There was sweat gleaming on her brow. And a smell, like metal, perfumed the air. “I am sure you figured out in the end what he had planned. Perhaps you found the other girl’s memory tree and that’s why it’s there.”

I felt a leaden pit in my stomach. “There’s more?”

“Oh yes,” said Nritti. “Hundreds of trees, hundreds of girls. Just like you.”

I fell silent. Had I been wrong the whole time? I thought I had seen an expression of love between the woman in the flame and Amar. But he was ancient and deathless. Perhaps he had just learned how to cull a heart, like he had a soul.

“But how do you know?”

Nritti flashed a thin, pitiful smile, like she was explaining a child’s redundant question. “Was your horoscope something horribly grim?” asked Nritti.

I nodded.

“All of them are,” said Nritti with a sigh. Her words were so casual, but they slid into me, sharp as knives. He finds one girl, lovely or not, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t matter. “And then he seduces them, tricks them with power, makes them think that it’s real…”

I remembered how the weather had changed outside the throne room. How the floor had shifted beneath my feet, and at the end of it, I had collapsed in the glass garden, falling straight into his arms. He had planned all of it. My hands curled into fists, and I pressed them against my chest. In Bharata, at least I had the solace of holding my mother’s necklace. But I had nothing to hold on to, nothing but words and thin air and false hope.

“Last time, you got away,” said Nritti, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I don’t know how, but you did it. And I thought,” she stammered, “I thought you were dead. But something led me back to you.” She smiled, but it was a cold thing, feverish and burning.

“What was it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. Another smile. Another burst of cold. “Maybe it was something in the wind or a change in my heart.” She brought her fingers to her heart, her beautiful eyes cast downward. There was so much desperation in her eyes. I felt heartless for not trusting her. “But I knew I only had a number of days before I could get to you.”

“The new moon?” I guessed.

Her head snapped up, and something dark flared in her lovely eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “Why? Has it already happened?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I murmured. “I just remember that that’s when—”

“That’s when he’ll kill you,” said Nritti. “You’ve seen him. He cannot stand being crossed. The first time you were here, you got away. Somehow you must have gotten to the reincarnation pool to escape him. It must have taken him years to find you again. But he locked away all those old memories. He would never want you to find out who you had been. His arrogance couldn’t stand that a girl escaped his grasp.”