Star Daughter(33)

“Welcome to House Ashvini and its champion Sachin Khanna!” The stars of the Ashvini nakshatra formed a tight, possessive loop around a middle-aged man who lifted a stone statue above his head.

“Sachin is a sculptor of—”

But Sheetal missed the rest, because the starsong rang through her so forcefully, she let out an “oof” and doubled over. Come to us. It is time.

“Are you okay?” Minal whispered, kneeling beside her.

Nails digging into her palms, Sheetal staggered forward. The astral melody was almost hauling her toward the stage.

“House Pushya,” said the herald, “if you are unable to produce a champion at this time, you must withdraw from the competition.”

Champion. Her. The light in Sheetal’s heart couldn’t touch the shadow spreading there. Her family really had brought her here to compete for them.

She was going to be sick. They couldn’t just spring this on her with no warning, no training, nothing. She’d thought they wanted her by their side for her, not for this.

“No champion, and yet still in the running?” someone questioned. “Oh, that is true hubris. Call the delay what it is: desperation.”

“House Pushya must withdraw!” someone else shouted.

“Ah, but she is here,” a familiar voice corrected, silencing the titters. “Our champion.”

Sheetal’s breath hitched. Another group had claimed the stage, wrapped in black-and-silver silks embroidered with the constellation she knew as well as her own name.

Right in the middle of that group stood a woman with the indescribably lovely face that had never dulled in Sheetal’s memory. Charumati.

Her mother.

Sheetal had thought she was ready for this.

All the grief and anger and utter yearning of the past ten years raced toward her, an avalanche, until she thought she might suffocate beneath it. She wobbled, gasping, trapped between sprinting to the stage and retreating from it. For an instant, she even forgot Dad.

The stars of House Pushya began to sing. The entire hall hushed. The song was the silver of starlight, of wind chimes and ringing bells and stories braided with skeins of myths and dreams and wishes. It called to the blood in Sheetal’s veins, stoking the fire at her core, making her ache for the strings of her harp and her dilruba.

The song was the stuff that ran in her veins, the liquid flame that could heal. It needed to be free. She needed to free it.

Bright, pure notes soared from her throat to join the harmony, and radiance spilled from her skin and out of the alcove where she stood.

She stepped into the open and sang to Charumati, just a handful of notes, just enough. I’m here.

“Sheetu!” hissed Minal, right on her heels. “What are you doing?”

The courtiers around them skewered Sheetal with their stares. “The missing champion has surfaced!” exclaimed the herald. “Can it be true?”

Charumati, too, looked directly at her. Their eyes met, dark brown echoing silvery brown, and relief gleamed there. Though her mother’s song didn’t falter, its tone deepened. It became a ballad of recognition, of connection, and the surrounding stars’ voices shifted to accommodate it. You came.

Sheetal felt how the chorus wove its song, how it entwined filaments of light into a living net that enclosed the sky. She was part of that cosmic flow, part of a great glittering web. In that moment, even Dad and Dev seemed long ago and far away. All she knew was the gaze tangled with hers, and the way her heart had grown whole at last.

Charumati beckoned her to the stage.

“Half-creature,” a voice jeered, its owner hidden in the throng. “Mortal half-thing. Go home!”

Minal whipped around. “Who said that?”

Sheetal’s mind screamed at her to pay attention, to hear how the entire hall was whispering, to stop and think about this. The slur, the strange circumstances, all of it.

But the song was stronger, overpowering everything else. She was home, it warbled, and she’d found her mother once more.

Following the call of the music, Sheetal glided through the audience, up the stairs, and onto the stage, where the shining ring of stars waited.

“Welcome to House Pushya,” the herald cried, “and its champion Sheetal Mistry!”





11


So here they were, together for the first time in ten years—just Sheetal and the mother who’d left her behind.

They wordlessly faced each other on a pair of royal blue mirrorwork-embroidered divans in Charumati’s apartments, while Minal pretended to doze on an ornately carved bench. Her mother had brought them here right after Sheetal’s introduction, leading them offstage through a rear exit to bypass all the prying eyes.

Charumati wore a translucent black sari dotted with tiny diamonds, and her dangling chandelier earrings and necklace were wrought from silver. In her long, shimmering hair perched a circlet of silver stars outlined in obsidian, and her delicate, ring-covered hands were folded in her lap.

“I was afraid your foi might not give you the message,” her mother said, slicing through the silence. “I am so very glad she did.”

She looked different than Sheetal remembered, far less human, much more a being of light, if light were made flesh. Except for her silvery aura, she could have been an apsara or even a goddess. Not anyone’s mom.

This close to her, Sheetal didn’t know what to do with her own hands. Her skin didn’t fit right, as if it had grown too small. Her legs jiggled like overcooked spaghetti. She felt every bit of her human half, grimy and gawky and in desperate need of a nap. “She wasn’t going to. But then you forced her with the starsong.”