The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(44)

Shadow and light danced across the floor through a sliver in the door frame. What did he want from me? What would happen when the moon had run its course? Outside my window, an ochre glow crept up a nearly dying moon. I shuddered. The warning rhyme flickered in my heart, dredging up old nightmares: I know the monster in your bed.

So did I—

Death.





17

A FINE LEGACY

As dawn crept slowly along the floor, my eyes flew open. The memory of my nightmares clamored for attention—dreams of trees incinerating, of silent chasms deep in palaces, of threads being ripped savagely from their place.

Beside me, the weight of the bed shifted. I squeezed my eyes shut, only to feel the brush of Amar’s lips against my cheek, the rough stroke of his fingers at my forehead. A humming trilled in my body, but I clenched my fists, waiting for him to leave.

Ache and unrest flooded my bones as I pinched myself to alertness. The room was silent. Amar had left. Pinned to the cushion beside me was a note that said I should rest until the evening. I crumpled the letter. I was done doing what Amar wanted. Ignoring the peacock blue sari on the bed, I smoothed down my silk nightclothes, fixed my hair in a braid and crept outside.

A Bharata soldier had walked these halls. And he had disappeared into them too. Even now, I could picture the dead. I could see Amar ripping out the threads in a bloodless slaughter. The images scalded me. Every time I blinked, all I saw was the deceit that I had welcomed so openly, mistaking it for magic, for power … for something deeper.

I willed the shadows to swirl around my feet, mute the jangling of my anklets and conceal me in case the walls were watching. Though the dead had long since passed into the south wing, their echoes lit up the walls, as if the wisps of their lives had stamped burning footprints into the floor.

Slowly, I wound my way through the palace until I stood at the entrance to the glass garden. Behind me, the windows leaked blurry sunlight onto the ground. There was no sign of the smoke and glass door from yesterday. The stonework had swallowed it whole, but even so I could feel it, like a cold shadow. It was hidden somewhere in front of me, wedged between some slice of air. I pressed my hands against the wall, searching inside myself for that spiral of power, that weird sense of calm … of summoning … and the door of the south wing shimmered.

Vast and transient. That is death. I knew because I stood on the other side, peering through a tear in the frame, and all I saw was light. All I heard was my heartbeat’s echo fluttering softly, sleepily against my ribs. All I tasted was smoke on my tongue. A dry wind carried pale ashes across my feet and the particles were so fine, it might have been like stepping over pulverized sugarcane.

I could have turned around, but I didn’t. Guilt stilled me. Who had I left behind when I fled Bharata? What had I done to them?

Life and death surged from behind the smoky portal, calling me from beyond the door.

Breathing deeply, I pushed open the door. Heat seeped through my skin and I shivered. Cold sludge moved through my veins instead of blood. I turned around the room, my ears straining to hear the whisper of a voice, but only silence met me. There were no exits in the south wing and the only entrance had already closed.

The moment my foot touched the gray floor, lanterns sprung up along the dark halls. Their light was as silvery as moonshine, but cast no shadows. They were only beacons in a haze, like thousands of unblinking eyes. My breath came in ragged heaves, and the straight walk forward felt like an uphill battle. My muscles ached and my head was dizzy, but I pushed through. Eventually, the floor ended, melting into a steep cliff with soft sloping sides of ash. The smell made me nauseated. I could taste funerary ash on my tongue and quickly clasped the end of the sari to my nose. Once more, lanterns lit my way along the edge of the cliff. All along the walls, sheaves of parchment covered in Gupta’s neat handwriting fluttered in the windless air. I leaned closer and saw that they were the records of the dead. They stretched in infinite directions.

The sides of the cliff revealed jagged steps leading to the edge of a strange body of water. Sounds bubbled from below. Human ones. Goose bumps erupted along my arms. With one hand touching the craggy slopes, I descended into the depths of Naraka. At the base of the cliffs, a silver pool lapped at the stone. Something about the pool kept teasing my mind, as if there was some reason why I should know about it. From where I stood, the pale moon-bright water looked like a mirror. I leaned over the water’s edge and what twisted in its reflection sent me reeling back—

Spectral bodies writhed beneath, turned over and over by invisible mechanics. In its waters, luminous souls were being sheathed with new skins and new identities. Something in the water fitted a silvery lion pelt over transparent shapes; affixed tusks to a humanoid snout; braceleted a dancer’s ghungroo bells around the ghost of an ankle. This was the reincarnation pool. The place for remaking souls.

I stumbled backward, flailing a hand behind me until it hit rock. Something seared my skin and I turned, eyes widening as the wall of rock shimmered and revealed a thousand rooms sprawled behind it—some filled with ice, others with flame. At first I thought the rooms were empty, but then I saw the souls toiling in the flickering light. Some were digging holes, sweat glittering thickly on their necks. Others hung suspended by chains, their groans echoing in their cells. I knew why they were there. Before passing to the next life, the soul must atone for sins of the past life.

I walked past the sea of cells, relief flooding me each time I didn’t recognize someone.