The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(33)

Flurried sounds of movements quickened outside and I closed my eyes, feigning sleep. The bed sank as Amar sat beside me. Warm fingertips trailed across my cheek, brushing the hair from my forehead and sending sparks of light up my spine. His lips grazed my temples.

“Soon, jaani.”

I waited until his footsteps echoed outside before squinting around the room. Without him, it seemed colder. I retraced his touch lightly, careful to avoid smudging the imprint of his lips against my skin. He had called me jaani—“my life.” I stared at the closed door. Where his skin touched mine felt burnished, hallowed by the words he left hanging in the air. Jaani jaani jaani. I wanted him to say it again. I wanted him to say it closer to my ear, my neck … my lips.

But the surge of warmth faded as the memory of my dream prickled behind my eyes.

Magic was not the only coaxing, dangerous thing around me.

Like yesterday, when I returned after washing up, the bed had been made, and a new sari was waiting for me. This time it was a rich amber, studded with topaz stones and small mirrors so that when I wrapped it around me, the colors shimmered as if they had borrowed some of their brilliance from the sun. A similar set of matching jewels lay in piles on the bed.

Something about wearing a necklace other than my mother’s felt wrong. Inevitably, my thoughts turned to Gauri. Who was telling her stories in the dark?

When I stepped outside my room, Gupta was already standing there. The air felt tense. As if someone had smothered the palace into silence so that it could watch … and wait. I paused outside the door. I thought I heard something. A voice? My name?

Shaking my head, I walked down the familiar hall toward the dining room, but my glance kept darting from the walls and doors, ignoring the beautiful sights flashing in the mirrors. What had happened to that door from before? Around me, muddled voices filled the palace.

Sometimes the voices were incoherent, but today, I heard a sound sonorous and riven as an ancient stream: You can have him, but not hold him He gives you gold, but your bed is cold You’ve seen his eyes, but not his spies Who is he?

“Amar,” I breathed.

Gupta looked up. “Did you say something?”

“The riddle you asked,” I said, a little dazed.

“I didn’t say anything.”

A chill shot through me. There was no one in the hall but us. I said nothing, and walked quickly down the halls, trying to shake the doubt and fear that kept creeping up my arms.

When we got to the dining room, it was decorated in a sun-drenched yellow. Carven statues of mynah birds with ruffs of silk around their stone necks dotted the room. Outside, there was no flash of the sun. No hint of clouds.

Gupta pulled out a chair for me.

“I figured out your riddles from yesterday.”

I looked at him, my mind still twisting around the words I heard in the hallway.

“And?”

“Your first one was, ‘I am a nightmare to most, and a dream for the broken; who am I?’ and the answer to that is death.”

“Correct.”

“Your second riddle was, ‘I am your future, who am I?’”

“And?”

“The answer to that is ash.”

“Again, correct. And the last?”

“‘I hide the stars but am frightened by the sun. I am not the night; who am I?’ The answer is darkness.”

I smiled. “All three are correct.”

He stared at me. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked aged in the space of a day. “You ran off last night.”

“I got lost.”

“You’re smarter than that, and so am I,” said Gupta.

I looked away from him, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt.

“If I were you, I’d remember the answers to those riddles when you’re walking around the palace.”

“You yourself said that you held the key to anything dangerous.”

“Even so,” he said, mirroring Amar’s response.

I tried to think of something to say, but Gupta had turned from me and the tight, closed-off expression on his face said that I shouldn’t even bother trying to push the subject.

“You seem quite absorbed in your work,” I said, trying to change the topic as he bent his head toward the endless scrolls.

“If only I wasn’t,” said Gupta.

“Can I help?”

He smiled, but it was a weary thing. “The fact that you are even here is help enough.”

But I wasn’t doing anything. I was wearing clothes set out for me on a bed, wandering allotted spaces of a hall, feeling around for questions they could answer. I was in a limbo of waiting.

“How did you sleep?” asked Gupta, his gaze once more fixed on the parchment.

I thought of the nightmare and masked a shudder.

“Well enough,” I lied.

*

After breakfast, Amar stood waiting for me in the center of a marble vestibule. Around him, the mirror portals flashed through the settings—a fox napping in tall grass, a shining cave strung with ghost-lit threads and a cliff jutting a stony chin to the sea. Amar grinned and once more, I was transfixed by the way a small smile could soften the stern angles of his jaw and the haunted look in his eyes.

“Are we going to the tapestry room?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. Those decisions take time. There are other things to see and know here.”