The Tiger at Midnight (The Tiger at Midnight Trilogy #1)(68)

Her eyes narrowed. This was the only shirt she had. She raised her hands to land a final blow. Suddenly, Kunal had her arm in a tight grip and the look in his eyes stopped her cold.

“When did you get that scar?” he asked, his words sharp.

His eyes darted between the raised scar that danced down her shoulder and her face. It was an old scar, a reminder of her youth and why one should never lose one’s focus when facing a knife.

“Naria?” he said, whispering the word like a prayer.

Esha felt the word like a slap to the face—bold, unexpected.

The last person who had called her that had climbed lemon trees with her in the lazy heat of summer, had been hidden away at the summer palace, away from the prying eyes at Gwali.

Her last real friend.

“Naran?” she asked.

Shock froze her in place. It felt as if the entire world was moving slower, so slow she could hear the change in her heartbeat as it pounded faster and faster. The names were a distant memory, of playing pretend and legends come to life.

“No, it’s impossible. It can’t be,” Esha said.

Naran and Naria. The founders of Jansa and Dharka. Her favorite game as a kid.

Their favorite game as children.

Kunal was staring at her. “I never thought I would hear that again,” he said, his voice shaky, disbelieving.

Esha swallowed hard, the lump in her throat refusing to descend. She felt as if her heart would burst out of her chest and lay itself in Kunal’s hands.

No wonder he had felt familiar. The heart always knew more than the head.

“How? Why? How?” Esha stuttered. This was her lemon boy?

“I don’t know,” he said, laughing. “I want to know too.”

They both grinned at each other, drawing so close that she could hear his breath hitch as she touched his skin.

“I thought that girl died, just like my old life,” he said.

Esha shuddered slightly. “She did, Kunal. That girl stopped existing on the Night of Tears. When her parents were murdered.”

A shadow passed across his face and Esha knew he understood. His mother had also been killed in the coup. His fingers had softened from their previous grip and were now tracing the edges of her scar. It was an ugly thing, raised and puckered. A mark she used to cover out of shame but now hid to make herself more anonymous.

Her posture eased slightly and she closed her eyes, letting him pull her closer.

“I thought you died,” he repeated, his eyes rapturous on her scar.

“You already said that.”

She shook her head, smiling.

“I really mean it.” He looked up at her, his eyes unsteady. “I can’t tell you the number of days I thought of you when I was first at the Fort. The other boys looked down on me and all I wanted to do was climb high, escape their viciousness and pity. I thought everyone who had been in my life was gone and I didn’t want to be there without them.”

Esha felt a small lurch in her heart.

“Your friendship brought light to that summer, the last one before everything changed. I didn’t realize till I thought you were dead that I didn’t even know your real name.”

Esha laughed. “That would be my fault. I dubbed you Naran and no one could convince me you were anyone else. And me? I wanted to be Naria, ‘warrior of justice,’ so badly I made everyone call me that for those few, blissful weeks.”

Now her laugh held a bitter edge.

“Why did you let them dim your light, lemon boy?” she asked. How could he have become a soldier? They had killed his mother, and there were rumors the king had seen to his father as well.

Did he not know?

“You used to shine so bright back then it made my eyes ache. I still remember when I first met you, when you jumped down from a lemon tree to scare the tutor,” she said.

His fingers tapped an unsteady, unhappy beat into her skin. He frowned. “I didn’t think I had any light left in me to dim once I got to the Fort. Not after my mother’s death.”





Chapter 44


Kunal could feel the honesty spill out of him before he could lock it away.

He didn’t want her pity. He wanted lost time, years of friendship and warm laughs and stupid fights. She had been big hair and sharp eyes when she had first come to the summer palace, alive in the best way possible and one to never let him get a word in edgewise.

Kunal had loved being bossed around by her, having someone shake the branches to terrorize him as he climbed to the tops of lemon trees and help him hide from their tutors. The summer palace had filled with their laughter and hijinks, putting a smile on his mom’s face as well, the first one since his father was gone.

How they both had changed in ten years. A lifetime.

She lifted her chin, gazing at him—not with pity, but with a challenge.

“Cowshit. You have more light in your thumb than any of those soldiers. Don’t go back, Kunal. Come with me,” Esha said.

Her words made him stop cold; even she looked a bit surprised. He had been about to laugh, tell her that he belonged with the rebels even less than she belonged at the Fort.

But before he could say so, he saw something else on her face: a desire so deep it caught him off guard.

A sharp whistle pierced the air and Kunal’s head whipped up.

It was the sound of the iron tip of a copper arrow, an arrow created only at the Fort.