The Tiger at Midnight (The Tiger at Midnight Trilogy #1)(84)

Kunal didn’t think he could be a good judge of loyalty anymore.

And sister . . . Princess Reha would be his cousin, wouldn’t she? Her mother, the late Queen Gauri, his aunt. The thought was a jolt. He tried not to think about the fact that the prince was his cousin too. It just made him queasy.

He turned to watch Esha, finding himself slowly making his way through the crowd so that he could see her more clearly. Her chin, not covered by the mask, was raised as the prince spoke, and she didn’t move an inch.

“—and we will accomplish this. Especially as we have the Viper in our lair.”

The prince coiled an arm around Esha and pulled her into him, a position so intimate that there was no doubt as to what he was implying.

Esha’s eyes darted quickly to Kunal’s. A look of fury flashed in them, barely perceptible underneath her mask, but the prince’s hands held her in place and the flash disappeared as quickly as it had come.

The low fire that had been ignited in Kunal was back with a fervor. And there was—had there been something going on between Esha and the prince?

Kunal rubbed his eyes. He was a teeming pot of anger and confusion. Nothing was making sense to him and he wanted, more than anything, to return to those moments in the jungle where it had been only the two of them.

He wanted it to always be the two of them.

Esha had a tight smile plastered on her face as the prince held her, his fingers playing with the snake bracelets twining up her bare arms. Kunal saw the tensing of Esha’s grip on the chair and the murder behind her gaze.

The fire in her eyes worked quite well with the image of the Viper. The prince looked at her quickly and Kunal saw that he knew it too.

Kunal would have to reevaluate this young man. He was more than clever, he was a schemer, and that was infinitely more dangerous.

“—first the general, then Vardaan.”

The prince finished speaking and the room erupted in noise, the nobles’ excited voices rising. In the din, no one was watching the prince anymore. Kunal realized this was because of the long table laden with food that had appeared in the center of the hall, courtesy of the servants now scurrying out.

But Kunal’s eyes hadn’t left the pair.

Esha flicked at the prince’s fingers and he flinched, removing his hand. The smile dropped from her face and she left the hall in a haze of cloth and fury, leaving an emptiness in her wake.

Kunal strode forward to where she had been, ready to follow her. The guards moved with him and he looked back at them, annoyed, his hand going to a weapon that wasn’t at his side.

The prince held up a hand to them and locked eyes with Kunal.

“I would leave her alone,” was all he said.

Kunal’s vision was blurred with outrage—it made him reckless.

“I’m not the one she’s mad at,” Kunal bit back. The prince’s eyebrows rose, considering him—Kunal didn’t miss his slight wince.

The prince shrugged and moved away, telling the guards to stand down with a flick of his hand.

Kunal brushed past the guards and the prince into the hallway outside.





Chapter 55


He pushed into Esha’s room after catching up with her, ignoring the clear message conveyed by its shut door. Esha sat in a corner, her uttariya tossed to the ground, her head in her hands.

Something in Kunal’s heart had flipped. He wanted to blame her for the pain he had endured for the past week, for taking away his freedom, but he had made every decision that had led him to being stuck behind enemy lines.

And he had seen that the life she had wasn’t wholly her own either. She needed someone as much as he had—as he did. And she had saved him. He understood the prince’s warning now.

Esha had saved him and the prince was anything but pleased.

He entered the room, shutting the door behind him. The creaking gave him away and Esha’s head shot up, her mouth a grim line.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, moving in closer to her. Slowly, as to not frighten her away. Kunal was about to say more, explain, when she jumped up and started moving frantically, pulling at her pinned hair and clothes. Apparently, she had understood him well enough.

“What do you know? The Himyad royals took me in when I had lost everything. When I was nothing,” she said, her voice emotionless.

“You don’t owe them your life because they saved yours once.”

“Don’t I?”

The hopelessness in the question sent a dagger into his throat and deeper into his soul. It was a question he had whispered to himself over and over when he had been younger. It was the question that had led him here, drove him to pursue Esha at all costs.

Esha was avoiding his gaze, instead plucking pins from her hair and throwing them into the silver bowls on top of the dresser. She tugged at her delicate uttariya with rough hands, tossing it onto the bed.

“You can continue bossing me around about a life you don’t know and would never understand, but for now, can you turn around so I can get these cursed clothes off me?” There was an edge to her voice. Her jaw was wound tight, her chin uptilted.

Kunal quickly turned, though the motion made him sway, facing the long tapestries adorning the room’s walls. He counted the silence between them through his breaths.

The sounds of her undressing—the tinkling of bells, the clatter of jewelry—faded and finally, there was rest.