Amar looked at me and my heart clenched. I knew that gaze. Resignation. Already I knew where Vanaj’s thread hovered, flickering, unraveling from the grand tapestry. But there was nothing that could be done. Some threads left no ambiguity for life or death.
And Nritti saw it in my face.
“Traitor,” she hissed.
“What can I do, sister?” I beseeched her. “Even we are powerless. But I can follow his soul, remake him anew. You need only wait and he will be your Vanaj again.”
“I. Want. Him. Back.”
“You cannot,” said Amar softly. “We know your pain, but—”
Nritti laughed, her eyes wide. “You? You don’t know my pain. Neither of you do. You sit there, commanding life or death as though it was nothing but a foolish child’s game.”
Amar stood up, his face stony. “There is nothing we can do.”
“Yes, there is!” she screamed, tearing at her hair. “He doesn’t have to die! Who let you decide? Why are either of you fit to take away life? Death is unnecessary.”
She hissed, hurtling her curses at both of us. She would not listen. Even when I tried to find her, day after day, year after year. I spent hours poring over the tapestry, seeking out her thread, but it was as though she had vanished.
*
I saw Nritti stalking burial grounds and defiling ancient temples. She walked through crowded villages, murmuring under her breath. The moment she touched something—tree bark, cow skin, a boy’s forehead—they burned and burned. She entered in silence and left in chaos. She trailed it, dropping fury like candies.
The golden-skinned apsara with the quick smile and eyes like crystal was gone, replaced with an equally beautiful but terrifying and bloodless version of herself. I saw her watching me through the obsidian mirror that we used to summon one another.
I saw her pressing herself against it and snarling:
“One day, your inadequacy will sneak up on you, like shadows upon bodies. One day, your pride will fall like glass. And when it does, I’ll be there to take back what is mine.”
*
I remembered the terrible decision that fell to me. A deva had been cursed to rebirth as a mortal man. I weighed his crime of theft and measured his life thread, spinning out his doom and death, inscribing those truths on his forehead. For his terrible crime, a terrible end—death on the battlefield, a bed of arrows for his funeral pyre. He would take no wife. He would bounce no child upon his knee or know the joy of love. But he would be illustrious and wise. And when his time on earth expired, the heavens would embrace him once more.
And as I spun it, sang it and wrote it, so it became.
*
Fury and rumors flitted to the Otherworld, that the Rani of Naraka had befouled her title with her decisions. I paid no attention to the rumors.
But Amar did.
“If this continues, they will storm our palace. I cannot let that happen. We have the sanctity of the balance to maintain.”
I flinched; something in his words felt strangely distant. “Do you believe them?”
“Of course not,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. But I caught a tremor in his fingers. “Still, we need to control the peace. We must care what they think.”
“Why? It won’t change anything.”
“It’s your”—he caught his words—“our reputation.”
*
The realms held council in illustrious courts above the clouds, where thunder stalked in the corners and lightning crowned each throne. The air was uncommonly bright, livid with sunshine and splendor. Many-limbed devas reclined on carved clouds, clutching ambrosial soma in golden goblets as they questioned me.
Throughout my questioning, the Dharma Raja stood by my side, a silken shadow against all this light. I believed in myself, and with Amar supporting me, my decision was invincible.
“How could you be so cruel?” exclaimed one. “No wife in his mortal life?”
“His wife would not be reincarnated with him. I will not give him another.”
A woman with a white veil, whose skin glowed like dawn, shot me a trembling smile.
“And what about his brothers? Did they not also partake in his crime of theft?” retorted another.
“They did,” I said.
“Then why must he endure a whole life as a human when his brothers live less than a year in that realm?”
“Because they were accomplices. Not the instigators of the crime. It was he who committed the most wrong. It is he who must live the longest.”
The deva beside me stomped his feet and lightning flared behind him.
“And what say you, Dharma Raja? How will you defend your queen’s decision?”
I remembered holding my chin high, surveying the crowd with the tasteful indifference of one who knew she was impervious. And I remembered when that moment fell with his next words:
“If you doubt her, then I propose an agni pariksha. Fire will always tell.”
The devas and devis nodded approvingly to themselves. A trial by fire. Humiliation burned through me. I dropped my hand from his and the world broke between us.
*
Betrayal felt bitter and acrid in my throat, and the ghost of it was everywhere, taunting my reflection. How could he do this to me? How could he doubt me so much to expose me to the ridicule and glances of the celestial world? All this time, Amar said nothing. Our bed became a cold thing and my heart froze with it.
*
I remembered the night I awoke all alone, my eyes still puffed and swollen from weeping. Our bed was empty, the room echoing. I heard my name called through a mirror portal that Nritti had once used. Silently, I walked through the halls, my hair unbound and catching along the newfound icicles hanging across marble eaves.
Nritti was there. Waiting. I ran to embrace her, not once seeing that her fingers were stained red, that the smell of rot clung to her. I was blind.
“I forgive you,” she said tonelessly. “And I come in warning.”
“Of what?”
“Your Dharma Raja has turned on you, sister.”
Her words became my poison and I let it fill me, blind me, until all I saw was betrayal.
*
Nritti fed me images through an obsidian portal—Amar tearing out the tapestry threads like throats, of him gloating in the fallen lives, of him ignoring my words, waiting for the moment where he could use the agni pariksha to exile me forever.
“You were nothing but his dark plaything,” Nritti said.
And I let myself believe her.
*
On the day of the agni pariksha, light transfixed Amar’s face.
“I have every faith in you, my love,” he said, trailing fingers along my jaw. “This will put an end to every rumor. This will keep you safe from them. I know our days have been cold, but after this, we will be as we once were.”
Inside, my heart snarled, but I kept my face blank. “I will not disappoint.”
All the members of the Otherworld assembled for my trial. I wore white, the dress of mourning. In the Night Bazaar, a dim glow lit up the faces of the attendees, clinging to well-oiled horns and scaled skin. Leonine rakshas waited patiently, weapons quivering in their grip. If I failed, they were free to depose me. If I succeeded, they would end their bloodshed in the human realms.
Sacred flames lapped up from the ground. Ribbons of fire snaked out like tongues and grasping hands. I looked to Amar. His face was stern. Hopeful. For what outcome, I thought I knew. But I was wrong.
The agni pariksha scraped through me, burning talons that combed through my being. Survive unscathed and it was proof of my worthiness as queen. I did not doubt that I would pass. The question was what to do after. Nritti’s words floated through my mind as I burned and burned and burned. He wants you to fail, sister. He does not know how strong you are. When you succeed, leave. Leave his horrible kingdom. Let him fend for himself. Let him weep. Let him fail. Start anew. With me.
Nritti had fed me so many images—Amar dancing with a beautiful nagini in a sea palace carved of glass. Amar flinching from my touch. My tongue was full of smoke and heartbreak. My mind was full of lies.