The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(9)

I would escape.





4

THE INTRUDER

Night coaxed out the stars, my jailers. Above me, the moon burned dull silver. In the dark sky, it looked flat enough to pry and use as a mirror. I had spent the last hour staring out the window, watching the sentinels patrol the vast walls that enclosed everything I had ever seen, touched and known for the past seventeen years. After hours of staring, I had found a spot left unguarded, a hole in the palace’s security. All I had to do was reach it and then … freedom.

But until I could escape, other tasks clamored for my attention. I faced my room. It was the smallest of the chambers in the harem, shunted to the end of a hall that had no other occupants. They moved me here when I was ten. Mother Shastri told me that it was punishment after a swarm of bees chased my half-brother Yudhistira into a pool of water. He had teased me that day and had kicked over a drawing that I had labored over. I had glared at him, wishing that he would go away. That’s when I learned that sometimes my wishes had a strange way of coming true. Over the years I told myself that it was all mere coincidence, but now I hoped that whatever saved me back then from Yudhistira’s bullying would save me from the swayamvara. Stop that, I scolded myself. Hope and wishing wouldn’t save me.

A veil of cold purpose fell over me. Enough meetings in the sanctum had taught me the layout of the city, the demographics of its inhabitants. I could do this. I just had to move fast. I opened up my chest of clothes and began separating the gaudy fabrics from the practical, the nonessential from the necessary. I was halfway through when I heard a voice at the door. Shoving the two heaps of clothes behind a screen, I jumped to my feet.

“Maya didi?” called the voice. Immediately, my heart sank. Gauri. I would never see Gauri again. “It’s time for my story!”

In spite of myself, I smiled and opened the door for her. She glowed against the dark of the hallways, and it took every last wisp of strength not to hold her to me and weep into her hair. Tomorrow loomed in my mind. I could feel the heft of it like a solid weight against my fingers.

“Story!” she said, shaking my arm in a mock-pleading voice.

“What story do you want?”

It was a tradition between us. The moment evening slipped into night, Gauri would sneak into my room and I would recite fairytales to her—embellishing the beautiful, glossing over the grotesque. Gauri clambered onto my bed, tugging the blankets around her. I sat by her side.

“Tell me about the other realms,” said Gauri wistfully. “I’m going to live there when I grow up.”

“Which one?”

Gauri frowned. “How many are there?”

As far as I knew, there was only one and it had nothing in it but scheming courtiers, lying wives and gilded menageries. But I wasn’t going to tell Gauri that. In all the tomes and folklores I had read from the archives, there was no limit to the worlds around us. Somewhere unseen were demonic realms filled with laughing asuras and blackened suns. There were austere kingdoms on the peaks of mountains where phoenixes serenaded the moon and the halls of the gods glinted with lightning. And there was our own, human world, mortal, with only the comfort of stories to keep away the chill of death.

“There’s thousands, but mainly three. Think of it like cities within kingdoms,” I said when I saw her brows scrunch up. “There’s our world, which has you, and is therefore the best one.” Gauri grinned. “Then there’s the Otherworld, with its Night Bazaar and strange but beautiful beings. And then,” I dropped my voice to a whisper, “there’s the Netherworld, which holds Naraka, the realm of the dead.”

Gauri shivered. “What’s there?”

“Demons,” I said, raising my arms like a giant bat.

Her eyes widened and she curled closer to me. “Tell me about the Night Bazaar.”

I worried the edges of my dress … this was the part I made different from the stories. But Gauri didn’t need to know that.

“It’s a market for the Otherworld people, the beings in our stories, like apsaras, who dance in the heavens, or gandharvas, who play celestial music. Or even naginis, who want to buy new scales for their serpent tails. All of them.”

Gauri wrinkled a nose, unimpressed. “They buy dresses there?”

“Much, much more,” I said. “It’s a place for purchasing nightmares and dreams sweet as rasmalai. You can buy sleepless nights or trade your full name for a wish. It’s where demon mercenaries lend out their magic like colorful ribbons. There’s memories of beautiful women for sale and a thousand potions for things from a broken heart to a sore tooth.”

“Really?” asked Gauri, her voice barely above a whisper.

I shrugged. “Maybe. But I’ve told you and now it’s time to sleep. No more tales.”

I rolled to the side, feigning sleep, when Gauri poked me.

“How will I find it when I’m done growing up?”

“If I knew, don’t you think I would have tried to get there already?” I laughed. “It’s hard to find, Gauri.”

“I can find it!” she piped up. “Last week, I found slippers beneath a statue. But I don’t know why they were there.”

I tried to stifle my laugh with a cough. I may have hidden those last week. They belonged to Mother Dhina and had the most irritating tassels. And to add insult to injury, they had bells.