The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(67)

“Start a fire in the harem,” I said.

Her eyes sparkled. She smiled.

“Don’t harm anyone,” I added quickly. It was best not to stoke Mother Dhina’s particular brand of cruelty. “The last thing we want is for Gauri to be blamed for any deaths.”

Mother Dhina considered this and nodded reluctantly.

“Send them all to me. All the wives, all the women of the harem. The Raja Skanda will be able to take care of the fire, but by the time that happens, Gauri will already be gone.”

“You speak her given name,” warned Mother Dhina. “That is far too familiar for my liking.” She took a step closer to me, her eyes scrutinizing my face. Whatever ash and paint streaked my features, her gaze seemed to chisel everything away. “Do you know the Princess Gauri from before?”

I swallowed. “No.”

Mother Dhina stared at me for a long while. “You remind me of someone.”

I could guess who.

“She died in childbirth,” said Mother Dhina. “She left behind a daughter who needed a mother—” She broke off and her face, even through the veil, was stony. I knew who she was talking about. Advithi. My mother.

“She was not afraid to trust and hold someone’s trust in return,” said Mother Dhina, in a tone of begrudging respect. “Though that didn’t earn her any admirers. Or my friendship, for that matter.”

“And her daughter?” I prompted, trying to hold back the tremble in my voice.

“She had an affliction, one could say,” said Mother Dhina. “This was during a time when the realm gave credence to horoscopes.” She sighed. “That time is gone. But the girl had a poor one. A dangerous one. And we were living in strange times, not nearly as strange as now. But it was a start, you understand. We were not used to it. We wanted answers and had none. We wanted an explanation for our grief but could find none. So many of us had lost children, brothers, families in war … and so the girl became, well, she—”

“Became someone to blame?” I finished.

“You have to understand that it was easy for us.” Her voice was choked on tears.

A familiar acidic feeling gripped my chest and I turned from Mother Dhina and spared a glance at Kamala. She was watching a peacock drag a bejeweled train across a tangle of brambles.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked.

Mother Dhina blinked at me. “Gauri asked me to stay away for a while before I did as you asked. But I believe I would have come to you anyway. The Raja Skanda told us that you are here to offer spiritual consultations. Counsel me, then.”

Had she asked me this years ago, I would’ve had a more colorful response. But that was in a different time that no longer belonged to either of us.

“You haven’t asked a single question.”

“Weren’t you listening?” said Mother Dhina. “I have told you my story, my shame. There is no one left alive that I may beg of for forgiveness. So what would you counsel me?”

I kept waiting for the desire to see her cry, to let my mouth fill up with so much anger for another person that I could feel it claggy between my teeth. I waited and waited until it felt like a century had pried its fingers off my hate one by one. At the end of it all was nothing but pity.

Mother Dhina stood before me, her lips slightly parted to reveal a row of decaying teeth behind her lips. Nothing I could say would serve as absolution. Mother Dhina was past the point where she might believe in words. She had even given up on horoscopes.

My gaze fell on a statue that no one had moved for years. The stone was fashioned in the lithe shape of an apsara, her torso jutting dramatically to one side, hair frozen in tendrils of polished diorite and granite. It looked surprisingly heavy, but I remembered that the one time I had moved it aside, it had been light. It was hollow, after all, and the space inside was large enough to hide small things within—things like books you didn’t want to part with or candies wrapped in linen or even … a pair of slippers that didn’t belong to you.

I pointed to the statue. “Look inside.”

“You must be daft,” she said with a huff. “That statue is far too heavy to be moved.”

“Just because it hasn’t been moved doesn’t mean that it can’t be,” I said, conjuring the most sage voice that I could.

Mother Dhina went to the statue and, with a pointed glare in my direction, moved to pick it up. It gave way with ease, as I knew it would. The only sound was the soft whumph of upturned earth.

“It’s hollow,” she said.

She reached in, drawing out a pair of dirty but altogether unscathed slippers. The tassels were still intact, as were the annoying pair of bells that used to jangle each time she stomped through the harem. Mother Dhina held them in the air for a full minute before clutching them to her chest, as though doing so could seal some terrible void within her.

“The daughter,” she said through soft gasps, “she had hid these from me. I could never find them.”

I considered scrubbing my face and telling her who I was and that I had forgiven her, but that wouldn’t be true. I did not forgive her. I pitied her. I preferred our screen. She had her veil. I had my costume of a sadhvi. That would serve us both.

“I should go to the harem now,” said Mother Dhina, her gaze not moving from the slippers, an awed smile on her face. “Enough time has passed. Is that all I should do? Start the fire?”