Star Daughter(100)
Jeet broke free of Dev’s hold. He lunged, and Sheetal cried out, but he wasn’t even looking at her. At least, not at her face. In the next instant, he was kneeling before her, swiping at the blood that had collected like mercury at her feet.
“Jeet!” Dev pleaded, his whole broken heart in that one name.
Before anyone could stop him, Jeet licked his finger.
Sheetal’s heart swelled with revulsion and pity. No one should be drinking star’s blood. Ever. And Jeet had been tricked into it. She had to help him.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, she grabbed his arm, the one that had held the blade, and hoisted him to his feet. Then she ignited.
She flared; she smoldered; she burned. Her silver radiance ratcheted higher and hotter, higher and hotter, until she blazed like Nani, as dazzling and fiery as a supernova. Dev lurched backward, and Minal hid her face against Padmini’s shoulder. Charumati and Nana clasped hands, while Nani observed with a hawkish scrutiny.
Sheetal’s near-unbearable brilliance bleached the room of everything else. White, blinding, but the opposite of a snowbank. Pure light, pure heat.
The flame sprang from her into Jeet, but this time, unlike with Dad, she was in control. She conducted it like a song: the pitch, the tempo, the scale. Jeet paled with that peculiar silvery cast as she scorched the stolen stellar blood right out of him.
He moaned. Sheetal knew he felt every second of the flame, felt it searing through his bones and into his marrow in search of every last droplet, and she didn’t care. Let him suffer a little. It was only fair.
The pilfered blood rose around him in a halo of smoke and sparks, so bright no one watching could possibly miss it. The court erupted in shouts until Sheetal could hardly make out her own thoughts. For the first time ever, she felt whole.
She also felt like she was going to faint as her wound started spurting blood again.
“There,” she cried, dropping Jeet’s sleeve. He fell to the floor, panting. “See what happened to this mortal because of all these power games?”
With a detached expression like he’d removed himself from what was happening, Dev held out the vial he’d taken from Jeet’s drawer, and the viewing pool magnified it a million times. “Like this.”
“Don’t forget, Rati gave him that blood,” Sheetal called so the entire court could hear. “He didn’t exactly have to twist her arm, either.”
The sidereal melody grew deep and ugly, hungry bass notes where there should have been a clear treble. It raged around them, an inward assault. The ruling Esteemed Matriarch and Patriarch looked furious.
Rati, though, only seemed amused, a sly smile slipping over her face. She vanished into the audience, probably to leave the court while she still could. Well, she’d gotten what she wanted—seeing House Pushya publicly disgraced.
Both Charumati and Nani approached Sheetal then. She instinctively stepped back.
“Be still, child,” Nani said. “We are trying to heal you.”
“Child?” Sheetal laughed. “I thought I was an adult now?”
She felt more than saw Charumati steady her as Nani grasped her hand. “Hold fast, beti.”
Sheetal half-heartedly leaned back into her mother’s arms. But seconds later, she clutched at Charumati, writhing as Nani inundated her with heat, with radiation, with power.
When Nani let go, the wound was gone, the skin perfect.
Sheetal felt amazing, like she could soar through the universe and never stop. Or kiss Dev for hours. Or eat all the things she’d missed on the banquet tables at the ball.
While Charumati held the bloody knife by its hilt and incinerated it, Nani advanced on Jeet.
“What is the meaning of this?” Her barely checked wrath made Sheetal’s look like cooling cinders in comparison. “You intrude into my court and harm my family? Did you truly believe you would succeed?”
Sheetal glanced from Nani to Jeet, and her fury trickled out of her as swiftly as it had come, leaving only sorrow. Pain bridged the gaps between them. And how very fast unchecked pain could fester, one terrible choice turning into a chain of terrible choices through the centuries, each feeding the next. “You really hate me, don’t you?” she asked him.
“You took my chance from me,” Jeet said hoarsely. “What do you think?”
She turned to Nani and Charumati. “Honestly? I think it’s time we all stop holding grudges.”
Her grandmother, however, loomed over the still-pinioned Jeet.
Her words were antagonistic, full of barbs. “This mortal boy will be made a black hole and loosed into the night sky. It will be his fate to spend eternity fruitlessly swilling all things into himself, always thirsting for the light that can never warm him.”
The crowd hummed with shock. Even Nana looked perturbed. But he merely said, “As you will, my wife.”
Sheetal exhaled irritably. There Nani went again, taking over. “No.”
The crowd whirled in its seats.
“I get it,” she said, glowing with all the fire she could call up. “I do. He did a horrible, horrible thing, and I kind of want to cut him back. But we can’t do this anymore.”
Charumati touched her arm. “He hurt you, my daughter.”
“And that’s why I’m the one who gets to decide what happens to him.”
Sheetal knelt before Jeet, who flinched. He might have done some seriously awful stuff, but he was far from the only one, and it wasn’t like he’d gotten to this point alone. She wouldn’t let Nani ignore the stars’ own culpability and pin everything on him.