The Library of Fates(16)

Perhaps Arjun sensed it. Or maybe he felt exactly what I did. Still, I wasn’t expecting him to say what he said next.

“Run away with me.”

I choked out a laugh. “Are you serious?”

“I wish I weren’t.”

My heart began to race again, but not out of passion. I glanced around the familiar walls of my abode, the ceiling painted a bright cerulean, the white lacquered cupboards, the mosquito net over my bed. All of a sudden, it seemed like an entirely different world. I shook my head, overtaken by a fear that silenced me. A seesaw of terror, panic on both sides of an impossible equation: Losing Arjun and being Sikander’s bride was bad enough, but what if we were caught running away? What would Sikander do to us then?

And yet, I wanted desperately to flee.

“I’ve traveled the world,” Arjun told me. “I can show it to you. I’ve always wanted to; now here’s our chance.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he placed two fingers on my lips.

“Nobody in Shalingar knows what you look like. We could hide. It would just be you and me, together.”

“Sikander and his men know what I look like.”

“We’ll lie low. We’ll get help from people in Ananta. We’ll—”

“How would we even get out of the palace without anyone noticing?”

“There’s a way out through the Temple of Rain. I heard my mother talking about it once. It’s an emergency escape route.”

“But why didn’t I—”

“You’re not supposed to know. For your own protection.”

“And my father?”

Arjun looked back at me, but from the expression on his face, I could tell that he hadn’t yet worked out the answer to that particular question.

“Your father doesn’t want you marrying Sikander. He was right. The oracle was a threat.”

There was a protective note to his voice, but I found myself thinking about the oracle again. I promised I would return, but her words left me shaken; after I departed her cell, I fearfully locked the door, my hands shaking, and ran from the Temple of Rain as fast as I could.

“She told me that we shouldn’t believe Sikander.”

“Who?”

“Thala, the oracle.”

“What else did she say?”

“Something about an attack. Animals running loose, a fight in the west. That we can’t trust Sikander . . . It didn’t all make sense. I think she was hallucinating. And I don’t even believe in that sort of thing, but—she knew other things too.”

I didn’t mention what she said about Arjun loving me, about how he would save my life, but all of a sudden, I wondered if it was possible that he might. That maybe we could actually run away together.

“What could it possibly mean, Arjun?”

“It doesn’t matter, Amrita.” He was holding my face in his hands now, urgency in his voice, desperation in his eyes. “I can’t let you end up like her.”

“I can’t just run away and leave my father. Imagine what Sikander would do in retaliation!”

“Your father would want you to go. He knows you’d be safer with me than with anyone in the world.”

“You’re acting crazy because I snuck you into my chambers, and because everything is changing, and because we’ll be apart for the first time in—”

“You’re right. I am acting crazy. But it’s not for any of those reasons. It’s because I love you, Amrita.”

He had said the words that silenced me.

So the oracle had been right on one count, at least.

“If you love me too,” he continued, “run away with me. Don’t think about the things that scare you. Don’t think about all the things that could go wrong. You and I, we’re a team. We always have been. If anyone can pull this off, it’s us. And I can’t possibly spend the rest of my life—”

But he didn’t need to say anything else—couldn’t, actually, because right then, I reached for him and kissed him, his mouth against mine, his strong hands clasping my waist. He pulled at the pallu of my sari, untwisting it around me, kissing my neck, my shoulder blades, his tongue tracing the exposed skin of my décolletage. I unbuttoned his khalat, pressing my face into his chest, till we were just skin on skin, just mouths and hands, till I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began, our arms and legs entangled, our eyes fixed on each other.

“All right,” I said, pulling away from him. “If we were to run away, how would we even—”

But Arjun already had a plan. “The morning after Sikander’s last dinner here, we can leave before dawn, slip out of the palace. Meet me at the mango grove, and we’ll go out the Temple of Rain. I’ll take care of everything. Just be ready,” he said, an intensity in his voice I had never before heard.

It was real, I realized.

He was right.

We could run away.

Maybe my fate wasn’t sealed yet.





Eight



“RISE AND SHINE!” Mala’s voice cut through the humid air in my bedroom like a scimitar, making me jump.

I had been plagued by nightmares all night: Mala coming in, drawing the curtains as she did every morning to start getting me ready for the day, only to discover Arjun in my bed, scandal registering on her face. Arjun and me running in circles through the Temple of Rain, lost and confused. Sikander tossing me into a box and locking me in there, while I screamed and banged against it with all my might.