Star Daughter(57)

Sheetal gripped the sides of her chair. Whatever she’d expected Rati to say, it wasn’t this.

Rati didn’t give her a chance to recover. “Take it and return home to heal your father. You need not spearhead your family’s attempted comeback.”

“I . . . I can’t.” Sheetal’s tongue tangled in her mouth as her entire body lightened with hope.

She could go home now. She didn’t have to wait for Nani to help save Dad. She didn’t have to worry Nani might shut the door between the two halves of her life.

She didn’t have to win.

All she had to do was say yes.

“Of course you can. Call it my natal day gift to you,” Rati murmured.

“Why would I believe you, though? What’s to keep you from just disappearing once you get what you want?”

Rati gestured to the stack of books. “I have been observing you. You wish to know if you can trust your nakshatra. I am here to tell you you cannot. If for only that reason, you may believe I honor my promises.”

Observing her? Like, through the Hall of Mirrors? Revulsion snaked down Sheetal’s spine, and she wondered again at Rati’s lack of a starry circlet. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“I will say this.” Rati’s smile melted into icy resentment. “I know well what it means to be left behind. To have your choices taken forcibly from you. I would not see that happen to another.”

She sat back and spread her arms wide, blatantly courting the curious gazes around them. “Are you truly so keen to be a pawn?”

“Why aren’t you worried about anyone seeing you talking to me?” Sheetal countered. “What’s to stop me from going to my mom right now and telling her about this?”

She waited for Rati to backpedal. To beg her not to.

Instead, Rati’s eyes gleamed. “With all haste,” she said. “Indeed, nothing would please me more.”

She pushed away from the table and tossed her length of hair over one shoulder, making its jeweled clips dance like grains of black sand in a silver sea. “Do not dally with your answer. I may well think better of it and retract my offer.”

Sheetal and Padmini stood inside Nani’s and Nana’s apartments, silent as Nani fumed. Nani had called to Padmini through the sidereal song, and Padmini had immediately arrived to fetch Sheetal from the library, where she’d been searching in vain for Minal.

“How could you treat your lessons so cavalierly, beti?” Nani paced before them, a booklet like the one she’d given Sheetal clasped behind her back. “We have so little time to prepare you, and every part of the schedule I arranged has its purpose. Such irresponsible behavior will not be tolerated.”

She whirled on Padmini. “And you! I entrusted you with the care and preparation of my granddaughter.”

Padmini’s lip trembled. “I allowed myself to become distracted, Esteemed Matriarch, and for that you have my sincerest apologies. I will not do so again.” She joined her palms before her distraught face.

Sheetal’s thoughts were bubbling over with Rati’s proposal and Kaushal’s status as a former half-star. How much angrier would Nani get if she mentioned either of those things?

But she’d already put her training too far behind schedule to risk another argument.

“No,” Nani asserted. “You will not.” She inclined her head, dismissing Padmini.

“Come,” Nana said gently. “What is done is done. Let us not squander what time we yet have.”

He led Sheetal and Nani onto the balcony. Even though it was only early evening, the night sky spread out before them, an eternity peppered with sparkling silver diamonds.

“You have noticed the song that flows through us, yes, Sheetal?” Nani didn’t wait for her to answer. “It both stems from and binds us. We are a constellation, a galaxy, a cosmos, all connected. As a star, you are made to illuminate the darkness, to inspire, but as a mortal, you are made to be inspired.”

“During the competition,” Nana added, “each champion will be inspired by a member of their nakshatra, and they will then have an hour in which to produce or perform a work of art as they feel so moved.”

Sheetal was pretty sure she might burst with impatience. There were questions she should be asking her grandparents, like how an hour could be long enough to make a sculpture from scratch, and how it actually felt to be inspired. Like if they really did plan to close the gates again and trap her in one place.

But all she could think was that a drop of blood was waiting—if she could trust its source.

Nani watched her intently. “I can feel your misgiving from here. What troubles you, beti?”

“I’m just nervous,” Sheetal lied. “So I’m going to be inspired?”

Nani arched an eyebrow but accepted it. “Indeed.”

“Then why do I need to bother rehearsing?”

“To prepare you for the stage.” Nana’s wrinkled face shone. “To keep your voice and muscles limber for your moment of victory.”

Sheetal couldn’t meet his eyes. He had way more faith in her than she did. They all did; their whole house was betting everything on her. What if Priyanka and Rati were right, and she would only make a fool of herself up there?

A tender smile illuminated Nani’s face and sent starlight streaming over her body. “This puts me in mind of teaching your mother when she was a child. She was an apt pupil, yet so restive and so swift to lose interest.”