The Library of Fates(62)

Tamas laughed as though I was playing some sort of trick on him. “It’s his bird that delivered a dispatch for you.”

I was silent as my eyes scanned the mountain for Saaras. “Saaras, you mean? The bird that Varun sent?”

“So you have met him,” Tamas exclaimed.

Tiny electric spikes made their way up my spine. I could tell from Tamas’s face that he understood I hadn’t known.

And then he said the words that stunned me. “Devi,” he said, taking my hand in his, “Varun is the Keeper of the Library of All Things.”

My hands began to tremble, and my mind couldn’t make sense of what Tamas was saying. All I could do was shake my head, tears spilling from my eyes.

“It’s all right . . . ,” Tamas said, touching my arm. “I thought you knew.”

My head was spinning, and yet still, somehow, my eyes landed on him. He was standing on the far side of the lagoon in a dark corner, away from the cluster of Sybillines watching images flash and disappear across the walls of the cave. I got up as though in a trance, Tamas calling after me.

From across the bowl, Saaras flapped his wings.

And as he did, a familiar recognition crystallized within me.

With every step, I understood—I knew something in my bones that hadn’t quite risen to the place of my consciousness.

He flapped his wings again, and I darted around the Sybillines, my bare feet on the cold rock in order to get to him.

Saaras was standing apart from the other birds, and I knew why.

He wasn’t one of them.

As I approached him and stood before him, he flapped his wings one last time, and he was no longer Saaras. He was a person.

“Varun.” I said his name, and he smiled back at me, his eyes fixed on mine.

I shivered in the breeze.

He reached for me tentatively, touching my arm, leaving behind a shiver of goose bumps. He opened his mouth, but I could tell from his face that he was overwhelmed, as though he had been waiting for this moment a long time.

Forever.

Or what must have felt like forever: so many lifetimes. And now here we were, face to face in the white glow of the moonlight.

I felt shy and awestruck and moved, all at once.

There was only one thing I could think to ask him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”





Thirty



VARUN WATCHED ME with his blue eyes, his full lips pressed into a concerned line. “I wanted you to find everything out for yourself,” he finally said. “I didn’t want to . . . influence your choices. And I wanted you to learn about your abilities. You made it here all on your own . . .”

He waited me out before he reached for my hand, pulling me down beside him. We sat, facing each other, and I felt as though time had ceased to exist. All that remained were his fingers against my wrist, the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I took in his eyes, his familiar face. So familiar, and now I understood the reason.

“You still could have told me,” I whispered.

“Would you have believed me?” he asked with urgency in his tone, as though he had longed to tell me everything on the trail to Mount Moutza. It must have been difficult for him, waiting, keeping it all to himself. And I understood then that there was so much he ached to share with me but couldn’t.

I considered his words.

He was right.

I wouldn’t have believed him. He had waited for the right moment to reveal himself to me, and it was now. I had needed to make the pilgrimage to the top of Mount Moutza, to see the statue of Maya. To observe the way Maya’s devotees reacted in the temple. It was necessary for me to feel as though my old life was gone, to learn that I could speak to the sand and the wind. Finding the Sybillines, discovering the Janaka Caves for myself, was all a part of my journey.

Varun watched me carefully before he spoke again. “Vetalas are . . . no different than humans,” he continued. “We want to influence those around us. We could change the fate of everyone on this planet. But we don’t. We have great respect for human will. I have great respect for your will,” he said, gently. I could tell that he was trying to gauge my feelings for him, that he was nervous and hopeful all at once.

I thought about the day that I had met him, the day he had told me the story of Maya the Diviner and her beloved. I never would have thought that he was sharing our story with me. Our story. It was strange to think we had a past that I couldn’t remember.

For a long while, I couldn’t speak. I turned to look at the Sybillines enjoying their dinner on earthenware plates, flatbread crisped and burnt at the edges after being cooked in a stone stove, juicy figs, and stewed pears. Tamas met my eyes from across the lagoon and put his hand up in the air, as though checking to make sure I was all right. I simply nodded at him, realizing that the Sybillines weren’t thrown off by anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps this was because their entire existence was out of the ordinary; they believed in magic, and it was all around them.

Varun reached for my hands, and I felt an electric charge in his touch.

“You’re cold as ice,” he whispered, and I shyly took him in: his long, dark lashes, the cut of his jaw, his broad shoulders.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thala stir awake on her cot. I realized that this was what she had been trying to tell me before she passed out.