Star Daughter(30)

“Deal,” my father said. “Sheetal, go put on your shoes.”

I hurried to the hall closet and found my sandals. When I looked back, my parents were embracing, her face tilted up to meet his.

She didn’t love mortals, I knew, but she loved us. She stayed for us, in a place where she had no friends, no allies. No one she could confide in.

And she always would.

—FROM SHEETAL’S JOURNAL





9


Sheetal floated among the stars, one of them. Her nakshatra, her constellation Pushya, beckoned, its song vibrant in her blood, in the beat of her heart. She was so close, she could fall into it as easily as a puzzle piece sliding into place. All she had to do was get there. She beamed, her whole body glowing. It felt so natural, so right. It was as though she had never been anywhere else.

How beautiful the sky was, out here where it was always night, beautiful enough to make her ache. Shades from midnight blue to squid-ink black, an entire continuum of darkness. She’d expected to be frightened, or at the very least flustered. The universe was a gargantuan, humbling place, and she’d never even been away from Earth. Yet now, as she rose and rose, Sheetal felt herself enlarging, transforming, illuminating.

Her arms lifted and spread, mirroring her legs until she made a pentagram. Music like silver chimes and veena strings swept through her, turning to light that scattered out from the five points of her body.

The darkness was beautiful because of her presence within it.

It was funny, the way things changed. How people could be shocked by something, a bit of information that didn’t fit what they knew of the world, and then expand and grow around it, into it, until it became part of them, just another piece in an overarching narrative.

She’d known she was half star, of course. She’d always known that. But she hadn’t known what it meant.

Sheetal was expanding, widening, as the magic sparked through her. She could feel it molding her internal landscape, rearranging it into something new. Silver in her bones, silver in her blood—she was truly becoming a star.

But it wasn’t time yet. There was something—no, someone—she had to remember. Someone who was calling her name. Someone who needed her.

Dad? Radhikafoi? Minal?

Minal. Minal was calling her name.

The starshine ebbed below Sheetal’s skin as she glanced over to where Minal waited on a fleecy white cloud, tiny against the enormity of night. “Look!”

There, just out of shouting distance, hovered a golden palace. It was mammoth in scope, so large and surrounded by ample tracts of grassy loam that it was really more of an island. Ornate crenellations topped the seemingly never-ending walls, probably designed so the demigods could retaliate when the demons assaulted them.

Svargalok. Sheetal stared, awestruck.

“Come on,” she called back. Raising her arms once more, she soared toward the palace.

At last they reached the entrance, a far grander and more elegant thing than Sheetal could have envisioned, all curves and marble inlays. Minal hopped from her cloud onto the loam. “Okay,” she said, all business. “What’s the plan? How’re we getting in?”

“I don’t know,” Sheetal admitted. She stared at the palace gates, a few minutes’ walk from where they stood. “I hadn’t really thought that far. Find my mom and get her to help us, I guess.”

Minal looked doubtful. “We can’t just waltz on in. My grandma told me humans aren’t allowed here unless we die a heroic death out on the battlefield. Then an apsara brings us, and we get to be spoiled before our next life.” Her smile was all mischief. “I could rock a sword no problem, but it’d be harder to pull off the dead part.”

“Well, you were a pretty convincing zombie that one Halloween.” Sheetal squared her shoulders. “Maybe I’ll go full-on Radhikafoi. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’”

Minal snickered. “They don’t stand a chance.”

They approached the gates arm in arm, where two mustached guards in golden turbans and red uniforms waited, hands resting on the long swords in decorative scabbards at their waists.

“What is your business here, mortals?” the guard on the left asked, shooting their clothes dubious looks. “You do not appear to be dead.”

Sheetal kept from commenting on his razor-sharp powers of observation. Even though she really wanted to. Instead, she put her palms together in greeting. “I am Sheetal, daughter to Charumati of the Pushya nakshatra.”

“Daughter of Charumati!” said the guard on the right, returning Sheetal’s greeting. His voice turned chiding. “You are late. The welcome ceremony has already begun.”

Welcome ceremony? Her mother had a lot of explaining to do.

“A half-mortal star?” The guard on the left gripped the hilt of his sword. “I was unaware Princess Charumati had a daughter, let alone one with mortal blood.”

Sheetal let haughtiness bleed into her voice and through her skin as silver fire. “You deign to question a daughter of the sidereal houses?”

The guard on the right hushed his partner. “He means no offense, Lady Sheetal.”

Still channeling her auntie, Sheetal gave the guards her best poker face. “I should hope not.”

“Pray indulge me, daughter of the House of Pushya,” said the guard on the right, “but as you come unescorted, I must ask you three questions to verify your identity. Pardon the impertinence, but protocol must be observed. You understand.”