Star Daughter(58)

“You taught my mom, too?” Suddenly the obligatory lesson took on a completely different tone, one of tradition being handed down. A flower added to a lengthy garland.

One of family.

No. Even thinking the word hurt, like she was parched and still refusing to drink the glass of clean, sweet water that sat within reach. But she couldn’t let herself forget that Nani had forbidden their nakshatra from helping Dad. I already have my family.

It would be so easy to take Rati’s offer and run. To heal Dad right now. What would he want her to do?

“Naturally,” Nana replied. “Who better to teach her the ways of inspiration than her own mother?”

“She was a willful slip of a girl, always stealing mangoes from the orchard and eating them on the balcony with her friends.” Nani giggled, a light, girlish sound Sheetal would never have expected from her. “Always sneaking into the Hall of Mirrors. Do you recall, Jagdeesh, how proud she was of her craftiness? As if we failed to notice!”

Sheetal couldn’t help her grin. She’d never thought of Charumati as a little girl before.

“I would find her in the library, reading stories, and bring her back to her lessons,” Nana said. “Oh, how she would plant her feet and protest that she had learned more than enough and deserved to get her circlet early!”

Nani laughed again. “She always longed for more, precisely as my sister did.”

Sheetal sat up straighter. She had a great-aunt? That would explain the vacant suite of rooms by Nani’s. “Your sister? Where’s she now?”

Nani’s laughter broke off, and her next words were clipped. “She left the court.”

“Oh.” Sheetal looked away, out into the unfathomable expanse of black. It drew her, tugging on the part of her that, like her mother, had always longed for more.

And she’d finally started to find it. Not only was this her house, her nakshatra, but she had a great-aunt she’d never known about, one who didn’t even live here. Maybe Sheetal could go look for her after all this was done.

“Perhaps,” Nana suggested, “as we have spoken of inspiration, we should now demonstrate.”

All I ask is that you withdraw. Just yesterday, it would have been an easy choice. Take the blood and run. Save Dad.

But now, Sheetal wasn’t so sure.

“Yes,” she blurted. “Show me. I need to know what it feels like.” What was this thing people were willing to kill for? The thing she had unknowingly done to Dev?

She needed to understand her inspiration. She especially needed to be able to control it.

“A fine idea,” Nani said. Her light was still dimmed, her profile in shadow. She stepped back into the living room and beckoned for Sheetal to take a seat on one of the divans. “Let us begin.”

Sheetal had just gotten comfortable when starlight shot through her. It wasn’t a thing she saw so much as sensed: a river of silvery radiance sweeping in, opening channels in her spirit she had never known were there. Opening portals to wonder, to creation.

It was like a canvas had been installed inside her heart, only she was also the artist who would paint it. All possibility, all potential, existed in her, and now she had to create.

Music unfolded like a flower at her core, a moonlight lotus made of melody, and her lips parted in preparation. The stars in the firmament sparkled and grew larger, merging into a glowing canopy until they were all she could see. She could already hear, could already feel, the tendrils of song that yearned to spill forth, a series of pure, perfect notes.

But then the inspiration was gone, leaving her blank. Dark.

She stared at Nani, then Nana, desperate to anchor herself. She had done that to Dev? No wonder he’d stayed up all night drafting songs. If she didn’t sing now, she would explode.

Nana had put his hand on Nani’s arm. “You see the power of the stars. Your power,” he began.

Nani cut in to say this had only been a taste, because they wanted to save the full effect for the competition itself, and Sheetal nodded. But the nitty-gritty of her grandmother’s explanation zoomed right over her head.

Her palms tingled as her star half flared awake, obscuring the dazed human half. Pouring out jars of stardust had nothing on this. Here was true inspiration, true purpose.

Flame licked her fingertips. She couldn’t stop thinking of how close Dev’s ancestor and that star had gotten. How close she and Dev had gotten. The starry part of her wanted to inspire him like that again and again and again, while the human part, smothered as it was, said nothing.

“Do not let that pesky mortal boy continue to distract you,” Nani chastened her. “Your destiny is far greater than the blink of his entire mortal existence.”

A sick sensation brewed in Sheetal’s chest. Had Nani just read everything she’d been feeling? Gods, had Nani seen them making out? Had Nana? Her most private moments, out on display for the world?

She wanted to scream.

“Don’t worry,” she snapped. “There’s no chance of that.”

“Good.” A satisfied smile crossed Nani’s proud face.

Good? Sheetal glanced up sharply. What was that supposed to mean?

“Perhaps,” Nana hastened to say, catching her expression, “we should break for dinner. The poor child needs nourishment and a chance to rest.”

“Certainly,” Nani agreed, turning away. “We will resume instruction early tomorrow morning.”