The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(55)

But the longer I looked, the less I hated them. The stars, filled with cold light and secrets, held no emotion in their fixed language of fate. Emotion belonged to life, a thing the stars could never experience. I, not the starlight, shaped my decisions. And it was me, not the evening sky, who shouldered the responsibility for decisions gone wrong. My horoscope had already come to pass, leaving nothing before me but a future ripe with the unknown. The stars had already told me everything they knew. And even though it left me untethered from any cosmic map I had once known … I felt freed.

Once, I had shaped the fates of others, even though I couldn’t remember how. I didn’t even know if I could ever do it again. I didn’t know whether the life that I had left behind was something forever out of reach, a relic of a former reincarnation, or something that was mine to claim. But I had no one to tell me otherwise. And I wouldn’t cast away the possibility that maybe it could be reclaimed. I wouldn’t allow myself to be lesser. To fall into the lulls of Nritti’s whispers that I was nothing and no one.

“What exactly are you?” I asked the horse.

“I am a shadow. I am a pishacha.”

I shuddered. I knew that name from the folktales. A flesh-eating demon. A haunt of cremation grounds.

“But you know where the Dharma Raja goes?”

“Oh yes, maybe-queen-maybe-liar. I know. I know. I smell him.”

“I need to get to the Otherworld, where the Night Bazaar is,” I said, thinking of the bright orchard where he had led me. The nexus between the human world and Naraka. It may be the only place where I could find him and set things right.

The horse laughed. “And you expect me to take you?”

“What can I give you? What do you want?”

The horse’s eyes narrowed. “I’d like to take a bite out of you. Maybe two, if you’d let me.”

Cold frissons flared along my spine. “But I’m the Rani of Naraka. You wouldn’t want to do that.”

“You don’t sound so convinced,” said the horse in a singsong voice. She sounded delighted.

“But if I am, I mean, I am,” I stressed, scolding myself, “then you would want someone else’s blood. Not mine. That might get you in more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Oh, but you smell so good … and what are repercussions and consequences to something not even alive? Not even dead? A half-being … like you.”

I stared at it. “Maybe … when I prove myself to you, about who I am. Maybe I can get you a new soul.”

“To eat?”

“No, to inhabit. A soul that’s yours.”

The horse whinnied and hissed, red steam billowing from her nose and splattering like blood spray on her muzzle.

“Fine words, fine words. False words, false words.”

“If I’m wrong”—I closed my eyes, praying that I wasn’t—“then I’ll let you take a bite—”

“Or two,” interrupted the horse.

“—or two, of me.”

The horse stared at me.

“Well?” I prompted.

“What assurance do I have? Give me something.”

“What do you want?”

The horse flicked her eyes over me. “Your hair. It is matted, but it is lovely. It looks like coal and soft earth, and I would have it.”

I was already in rags. Already caked in someone else’s death. Even if it was a small thing, I hesitated a little. This was the same hair that Amar had cut a length of and wrapped a bracelet from its strands, slid it onto his wrist and proclaimed it the finest piece of jewelry he had known. But there was no time for vanity.

I knelt to the ground, knees sinking into the soft ash, and bowed my head forward, never once letting my eyes move from the horse’s. She could kill me in a second if she wanted.

“And you?” I asked. “What will you give me in return?”

The horse blinked. “My name.”

“What good is that?”

“It is all I have,” said the horse, bowing her head. A flicker of pity went through me. “It is all I remember.”

“Then it will suffice.”

I closed my eyes, tilting my head down. The horse moved softly over the ash, hesitant. I heard her jaws creak open, smelled the rank thickness of rot and sour breath. A soft tear, a strange—but not ungentle—pull, and a single word murmured in the thicket of my scalp:

“Kamala,” said the horse over a mouthful of hair.

I pulled away, wincing as some of my hair tore through her clamped teeth. What was left fell wetly against my neck. I shivered. I thought I would be furious, disgusted with myself, but when I stood, I felt nothing but calm. I felt light. I shook my head, nearly smiling at the now-torn strands about me. Kamala had taken more than just hair. She had taken some weight and burden from me.

She regarded me with mild eyes. No longer quite as bloodshot. Perhaps just a deep garnet.

“How do we get to the Otherworld?”

“Climb atop my back, maybe-queen-false-sadhvi.”

I balked. Kamala barely looked fit to walk on her own, let alone bear the weight of another person. Her bones jutted out, catching the light. Ghostly reins sprang up around her body, fashioning into a saddle the color of marble.

I flashed a weary smile before hoisting myself up.