The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(54)

A painfully thin horse emerged. It looked like it had one hoof on death’s doorstep. Although, given where I stood, maybe it did. Its bones jutted out of translucent skin and a dark bulge that could only be the animal’s heart quivered between spindly legs. The horse turned its skeletal face toward me, snorting to remove the gray wisps of hair from its face. A pearly sheen coated its milky eyes.

“What are you?” asked the horse. Her voice was rasping, shadowy, like corrugated steel dragged across marble. “You can see me, can’t you, false sadhvi? Oh, your fear is a thing so lovely. Like a salt wheel. I could lick it if you gave me the chance. I am all out of sustenance, as you can see.”

I’d never heard a voice so cold. My knees buckled. The horse jolted her head to the charring body beside her.

“He dreamed of barley his whole life and yet he worked in rice paddies. Strange are the ways of humans. But I am more interested in you. Not human. You don’t smell of sweat and reek of lust. But you are not Otherworldly either.”

The horse cocked her head to one side, a quizzical motion. And then she smiled, revealing bloodstained teeth. I suppressed a shudder. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything like you. Such a delectable morsel. May I take a bite? Just one … or maybe two…”

“No,” I said firmly, digging my heels into the ground and crossing my arms.

“Oh, look at that,” said the horse. “Feisty too. I bet you taste like spice and cinnamon. I bet you taste like heartbreak. Young things always do.”

Something caught in my throat and the horse laughed and it was a terrible thing, like blood sluicing between broken teeth.

“Oh, I am good, I am good. I want to play again. May I guess again? You are heartbroken. You are broken, broken. Which is to say, you are like me. Where is your tail, false sadhvi? Where is your soul? Do you feed off of them too? Where are your hooves?”

The horse trotted forward, snuffling at me. I could smell rot and blood on her breath, and bit back the urge to gag.

“I’m not like you at all,” I said, stepping back. I hesitated, trying to look straight into the dead horse’s eyes. “I’m … I’m the Rani of Naraka. At least, I was.”

The horse stared. Blinked. And then laughed. She laughed so hard she fell to her side, snorting and neighing, casting up clouds of dust and ash so that I had to cover my mouth with my arm.

“I am!”

“And I am a beautiful stallion,” said the horse through laughs.

I wasn’t a liar. I remembered, like a soft breath against my neck, that real feeling of power. Like the world was something pulpy and easily pushed aside, something I could sift through … something I could change. And the more I heard the horse’s laughter, the more fury growled to life inside me.

“I am,” I shouted, this time with so much force that thunder clapped in the sky and lightning seamed across the gloaming earth like a broken eggshell veined with light.

The horse stopped laughing, jerking its head to the sky.

“Do it again,” she said.

But that flash of power was gone.

“I—I can’t,” I said lamely.

“What are you doing here then, oh great queen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you dressed like the living dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why—”

“I don’t know anything!” I shouted.

The horse considered me for a moment.

“What do you know?” I asked, sarcasm coloring my voice.

“I know emptiness,” said the horse. “I know the taste of blood against my teeth. I know what it is to fill your belly with iron. I know hunger. I know pain. I know memories that won’t stay. I know the ghost of life and the perfume of souls.”

Memories that won’t stay. I almost laughed. Perhaps this horse and I had plenty in common.

“I need to get to the Otherworld. I need to get back to Naraka. He needs me.”

“Who?”

“Am—” I stopped and swallowed his name. I wouldn’t say it again until I saw The Dharma Raja.

“Handsome, handsome. Even I would die for him,” said the horse, smacking her lips. “I’ve seen him so many times. Times, times, times. Oh, and he is cruel. Oh, and his horns are wicked, piercing things; they like to slice through stars and falling birds. Does he taste like bone and kiss like—”

“Enough,” I hissed. “Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

“With what? Your soft words? Your young hands?”

But the horse wouldn’t laugh and when she spoke, she looked up to the sky, waiting for a thunderclap, some signal that she was wrong.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” I asked.

“I believe in nothing,” said the horse. A touch of her mania was gone.

“If I knew anything before I became this, I have since forgotten. I have forgotten, even, what it is like to speak to another.”

The horse looked once more to the sky, and this time I did the same. Maybe it was the lights from all the palatial buildings of Bharata, but whatever remained of night had left the sky so thick with stars that they looked more like dollops of cream on a black platter.

Once, I would’ve hurled curses at the stars.