The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(63)

“Why don’t you want the Princess of Bharata to go?”

“Illusion,” he said, gesturing with sweaty hands toward the failing orchard around us. “I need to hold on to the illusion of power. If that slips the moment Gauri leaves, then I am finished. They’ll probably throw me out.”

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“I do not know. You’re the charlatan. Fake something. Some ceremony where you can counsel her otherwise, and then announce it to the realm. It has to be something that all the people can understand and empathize with.”

Kamala snorted, pushing her muzzle into my hand and leaving dark tracts of mud—and something else, which I didn’t want to discover—on my palms. Her anger was a palpable thing.

“You have my word, sire,” I said.

Kamala whinnied, nibbling on my arm, and I swatted her.

“Excellent,” said Skanda. “You can settle up with the royal treasurer at the end. What do you have in mind?”

Behind him, a slight shadow dipped in and out behind a banyan tree. I held back another smile. Gauri. No doubt she’d heard everything. There was no way I would follow Skanda’s plan, admirable though it might have been. His heart wasn’t in the right place. At least when my father made sneaky decisions, they were always for the good of the country. Never just to save face.

“With your permission, sire, I’d like to hold vigil outside the palace temples and allow those members of the royal court to speak with me at will. If you can convince the Princess Gauri to join in one of the sessions, perhaps have another member of the court … a harem wife whom Gauri is close with … to join and stand as witness to our session, I can craft the correct words to announce to the court.”

“Excellent.”

He tugged his hand through his hair and my heart clenched, a brief memory of Amar flashing in my mind. There were so many times in Naraka that I had watched him do something similar. So many times that he had twirled one dark curl around his long fingers. I needed to get back to him. I couldn’t let go of too much time.

“By your leave, Your Majesty, I would like to hold that session today.”

“Today?” repeated Skanda, stunned.

“I believe it would look more natural to your citizens. An immediate announcement revealing the change in the princess’s mind would show some transparency. That perhaps you had not bullied or bribed me into saying such words by holding me within the palace walls for more than a day.”

Skanda nodded approvingly. “You’re quite bright for a charlatan sadhvi. How long have you been in this business of deception?”

Oh, if only he knew.

“Years,” I said through a thin smile.

“Consider it done.”

Skanda pointed me to the palace temple, cast a nervous glance at Kamala and stalked off in the direction of one of his yes-man advisers.

“What is it?” I hissed at Kamala. “I thought you were going to talk right then and there and then we would’ve been thrown out.”

Kamala wouldn’t look at me. “It’s the Dharma Raja.”

I froze. “What about him?”

“I can sense him.” The blue veins that once stood out so prominently on her skin had begun to sink beneath pearlescent hair. Even the garnet gaze of her eyes had receded into something bright and black. Thoroughly animal.

“And?”

“He was here, but only for a moment.”

“Where did he go?”

“I couldn’t tell you that, not for all the salt-skin in the world.” Kamala sighed.

“Do you know where he was?”

“That’s the thing I was trying to tell you, maybe-queen!” exclaimed Kamala, pawing at the ground. “He was at the Chakara Forest. You were right.”

I was right. There was a soft glow of warmth in that knowledge, even if knowing that I had just missed him rent through me like a new wound. I had trusted my instinct and it had been right. I could have reveled in her words if they didn’t make me furious.

Kamala sighed. “But there is something else.”

“What?”

“He left something in his stead.”

“In the same place?”

“Yes.”

“What did he leave behind?”

“I don’t know. My own senses do not tell me such things. Though that would be a great help. I wouldn’t have to lie in wait, hiding behind bushes and hoping some unsuspecting stupid person would wander past me. They might even wear such signs on their heads proclaiming, ‘Eat me!’ and such a thing would be—”

“Is the thing moving?”

“Yes, yes, but only in the area. I think it is dormant. It is waiting, I suspect, for something.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh silly Rani, silly sadhvi, I have had so much experience with death. I know that it is waiting. It is waiting for the soft thud of freshly culled souls. It is waiting to paint its lips red with blood. It is waiting to crunch bones and wear them like clattering raiment and robes.”

“Does that mean the Dharma Raja will return to the spot?”

“Yes.”

“How long does death usually wait?”

“Eons and blinks.”

I couldn’t abandon Gauri. Not now. Not when I had come so close to seeing her for the first time in weeks. I had to move quickly.