Star Daughter(63)
Her mood perked up right away, and she smiled back. Success! That had been a lot easier than she’d expected—obviously she deserved a second bowl of sheero and a third glass of blue mango juice.
“So we will have the ice harp delivered,” Nani declared, and Sheetal snapped to attention. “Nitin, have it brought to Charumati’s practice chamber.”
“Of course, Esteemed Matriarch,” Nani’s secretary said with a bow of his head.
Sheetal rapped her knuckles on the table. “Excuse me, but can I maybe have a say in what I play? You know, since I’m the one who’ll be playing it?”
Everyone looked at her as though they were shocked to see her sitting there.
“Well, you play the harp and the dilruba,” Nani asked, “do you not?”
“Yeah,” Sheetal said, “but I haven’t even picked a song yet.”
Nani’s expression shuttered. “Would you please leave us,” she commanded her advisors.
Their faces ranged from hassled to fretful. “Are you certain?” one asked. “There is more we have not yet addressed, such as the upcoming skyberry harvest.”
“I appreciate your concerns, but I am certain. We will speak later.” Nani treated them to a weary but implacable smile, and one by one, they filed out.
She plucked a crystal rose from a vase on the table and ran her fingers over the faceted petals. “You are newly brought here, beti, so permit me to explain. We do not encourage mingling with mortals, and that includes indulging their customs. Here we defer to our elders and their best judgment.”
“Understand,” Nana put in, “it is our intention to ease the path for your success among us.”
“I appreciate that,” Sheetal said sweetly. Time to dust off an old trick for dealing with Radhikafoi—acting humble. Too bad she almost always got too worked up to remember to do it. “It’s clear you put a lot of thought and planning into all of this, which I really appreciate, because I wouldn’t have any idea where to start. But if it’s okay, I’d really like to be the one to choose my instrument. I do feel I know my music best.”
The lines on Nani’s forehead grew starker. Unlike Radhikafoi, she didn’t appear at all flattered. “I suppose you do, at that,” she allowed. “Which song would you play, then—the ballad?”
“The bhajan.” After Priyanka’s quacks like a duck routine, Sheetal wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to sing that ballad again.
And something about Nani choosing the harp made her want to do the opposite.
“You will need a dilruba, then,” Charumati said. There was a quiet note of triumph in her words, as if Sheetal had scored her another point in whatever tug-of-war was going on between Nani and her.
“Yes,” Sheetal said, keeping her voice neutral. “Can I see the options?”
Nana laughed and patted her hand. “That you will have to entrust to us! I am certain you will not be displeased with the results.”
Trust them? Yeah, right. Sparks flared at her core, and her hands started to tingle. How was she supposed to trust anything they did, now that she knew they’d once closed the gates between the worlds?
“Actually,” she said, “I have a question.”
Nana waggled his head. “Ask.”
Sheetal pressed her hands flat on the schedule to still their shaking. “You said something about not mingling with mortals. What exactly do you mean by that?”
Her throat closed as something sizzled under her palms. She lifted them from the cover to see scorch marks. Scorch marks in the shape of two hands.
Everything was skyrocketing out of control. It was like burning Dad all over again.
Nani, Nana, and Charumati exchanged troubled looks. Nani recovered first, her eyes darkening. “I told you she should have returned to us sooner. How will she ever take her place among us if she burns herself up first? She should have learned how to wield her flame long ago!”
Take my place? Sheetal eyed her own palm like it was a strange thing someone had grafted onto her wrist. Her throat refused to unclench, and the fire hissed through her, furious, famished.
Charumati circled the table and squeezed Sheetal’s hands as if to pacify them. “She is my daughter. I will help her. Leave her be.”
When Nani spoke again, her voice was a quiet thunderbolt. “You think what you did affected only you, beti? You were to be my successor, we were to retake the court together, and you threw it all away for a mortal!”
Charumati’s light licked the air like tongues of flame. “And I will never make amends to your liking, no matter that I left my life on Earth—left my husband, my daughter—in order to return and aid our house.”
“I’m a mortal,” Sheetal muttered, remembering what she’d read about how Nani had sealed off the Hall of Mirrors. “Did Mom throw away her time on me, too?”
After she’d shared in the connection of the cosmic dance, after she’d felt the entire universe unified, she couldn’t bear to hear her grandmother say it. But she needed to know the truth.
Nani’s furrowed brow softened into an affectionate smile. “What sort of query is that, dikri?” Starshine blazed fiercely from her. “You are our Sheetal, and you always will be.”
The astral melody vibrated with tension Charumati wasn’t even bothering to hide. And with her own, too, Sheetal realized. Nani’s answer was beautiful, but it hadn’t actually told her what she wanted to know.