The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(79)

And I had to untangle it from the black, widening hole of the tapestry. I marched forward, letting the tapestry call to me, sing to me, serenade its secrets and entwine about my ankles. I let it fill me and guide me to myself. I flung out my hands, breathing slowly and deeply, pushing out all the sounds I imagined in the background—of mirrors crackling, and an entrance tearing. My fingers skittered over the tapestry, hovering over threads that I knew weren’t mine … and then I felt it. A pinch in my soul, and something startling me, like a word caught in my throat.

I reached forward, my eyes burning at the sight of the tapestry. Sweat beaded on my skin and my breath fell out in damp heaves. My thread was slick, shining as indigo and oil. But it was caught in something, another thread that was white-hot and iridescent. Nritti.

I braced myself, knowing what would happen the moment my skin touched the threads. I remembered my insides wrenching around Vikram’s thread all those days ago. I remembered the tapestry weighing me and finding me wanting. I remembered his past flickering like a beating heart in my hands. It had been hard then, and that was just one soul. Now, I was plunging myself into two lifetimes.

The two threads seared against my palm. Pain flared behind my eyes and I was falling, my feet slipping against the dusted marble, my whole body tilting around the inferno of the tapestry. I clutched the two threads and my hands burned. I screamed, but never heard myself. The room had lapped up my shrieks.

The skin on my hands peeled back. I was being pried open, each bone lifted from my body to make room for memories—memories stout as trunks, thin as lightning, furred and fanged, solid and slippery. Memories that were mine and Nritti’s. Memories that were starving for recognition. Memories so hungry, they consumed.

The threads called, and I answered—

It was too late to turn back now.





28

LOST NAMES

I remembered my lost names. I unfurled them, smoothing their worn creases, inhaling their scent of star-swollen evenings and monsoon dusks. Nritti had lied. I was no yakshini by the edges of forest glens. I was more, so much more. I clasped my lost names to me—

Yamuna. The name barreled around my ankles, brackish and forceful. A river striped with tortoises and water that glowered and snapped. A force that could drown.

Yamini. The name pressed a cool hand against my heart, warm as freshly wrought stars flung into the winter-black of night.

The names gave me strength. They gave me history. They gave me one more secret to myself, and I would know them all. I opened my eyes, squinting against the brightness as two images spun around before converging into a single scene.

*

Nritti was dancing in Patala, a part of the sprawling Otherworld that held neither sun nor moon, but remained bright with sparkling, unearthly jewels. She danced in a hundred courts, content. Happy. The pride of all the devas and asuras. And then she met Vanaj, the youngest son of a mortal king, brought to the Otherworldly court for his role in vanquishing five rakshas who had plagued sacred grounds.

He loved her.

And she loved him.

And in such bliss does devastation grow.

*

They spent years in each other’s arms. Wandering groves, living as hermits in an ashram of marble where nothing grew around them but lush fruit trees. No one murmured their discontent but the silver fish in the nearby rivers. Nothing interrupted their lovemaking but the cusp of dawn and the famished growl of their own bodies.

*

Then came the war of the two sundered families.

And Vanaj was called away.

*

Nritti stood before me, her lovely face wasted, gaunt. She stood in Naraka’s palace, facing the thrones where Amar and I sat.

“You must help me, sister. He is dying. I know it. I have done everything I can.” Her voice cracked. “I have performed the severest of penances. I have begged each sage. I can do no more.”

Amar looked at me and my heart clenched. I knew that gaze. Resignation. Already I knew where Vanaj’s thread hovered, flickering, unraveling from the grand tapestry. But there was nothing that could be done. Some threads left no ambiguity for life or death.

And Nritti saw it in my face.

“Traitor,” she hissed.

“What can I do, sister?” I beseeched her. “Even we are powerless. But I can follow his soul, remake him anew. You need only wait and he will be your Vanaj again.”

“I. Want. Him. Back.”

“You cannot,” said Amar softly. “We know your pain, but—”

Nritti laughed, her eyes wide. “You? You don’t know my pain. Neither of you do. You sit there, commanding life or death as though it was nothing but a foolish child’s game.”

Amar stood up, his face stony. “There is nothing we can do.”

“Yes, there is!” she screamed, tearing at her hair. “He doesn’t have to die! Who let you decide? Why are either of you fit to take away life? Death is unnecessary.”

She hissed, hurtling her curses at both of us. She would not listen. Even when I tried to find her, day after day, year after year. I spent hours poring over the tapestry, seeking out her thread, but it was as though she had vanished.

*

I saw Nritti stalking burial grounds and defiling ancient temples. She walked through crowded villages, murmuring under her breath. The moment she touched something—tree bark, cow skin, a boy’s forehead—they burned and burned. She entered in silence and left in chaos. She trailed it, dropping fury like candies.