“No, my friend. It was you who was weak.”
I looked past her, to the ruined Night Bazaar in the portal. The sky should have shown the sun and moon dancing above. Instead, there was only clammy dark. And I was tired of the dark. I closed my eyes. In my mind, I pictured the mango grove outside my room in the harem. I pictured the sweetness of Amar’s kiss, the fierce look in Gauri’s eyes, Kamala’s blood-curdling laugh. Those moments were parsed pieces of myself and they held a power more potent than chaos—it was life, strong and pulsating.
I stretched out my fingertips, letting their strength leak onto the ground, pooling into golden puddles that sent a force of light between me and Nritti. She screamed, throwing her hands to shield herself. And as she did, Amar’s noose was thrown out of her hands and soared into the air. I reached out—
—and caught it.
I grinned. This time, I didn’t look back to see what I had lost. I felt the mirror-portal against my hands, let hope swell between my ribs, and then I pushed.
*
I stumbled through the portal. The sounds were deafening. Outside the small room where Amar lay, voices hollered for war, for blood. Nritti’s enchantment of hunger hadn’t ceased. If anything, it had only grown. Within seconds, they could storm through the barriers of the Otherworld and sink their teeth into the human realms. I couldn’t let that happen. But I couldn’t stop them alone.
I gathered Amar in my arms. For the first time, there was no nagging absence in the seams of my soul. I was whole. All the frayed patches of my spirit mended. The tapestry’s glittering threads had climbed through the fissures of memory and half-dreams and filled them with color. I looked at him and love filled me. I loved him with the force of a thousand lifetimes, made greater by the fact that my love was returned.
I clasped his hands around the noose. A touch of color returned to his cheeks.
“You are my life too,” I said and then I pressed my lips to his.
A burst of heat met my hands before it tempered to something cool and distant. Amar stirred on my lap, solid hands reaching to clasp my fingers. He blinked, shaking his head. Slowly, as if he was approaching something fragile and hallowed, he traced the length of our tangled fingers before his gaze trailed past my arm, my neck, before fixing on my eyes. We were truly, finally visible to one another.
Neither the secret whirring song of the stars nor the sonorous canticles of the earth knew the language that sprang up in the space between us. It was a dialect of heartbeats, strung together with the lilt of long suffering and the incandescent hope of an infinite future. Amar searched my face, his fingers hovering over my jawline, lips and collarbones. But he didn’t touch me. Instead, he took in a shuddering breath.
“Are you real?” he managed, his voice a shadow. “Or are you an illusion? Some final punishment for losing my way?”
“I’m no illusion,” I said, staring into his eyes.
The ferocity of his stare laid my soul bare for him to judge.
“I thought I would be lost forever,” he said hoarsely, pulling me to him.
His hands tangled in my hair, the kiss resonating at my core. He pressed his lips to mine with the intensity of lifetimes and when we finally broke apart, his lips curved into a fragile smile.
“You’ve saved me.”
“Did you have any doubts that I could?”
He hesitated. “Your abilities are something I could never doubt. Your will, however, I was unsure of. When I could finally bring you back, I thought you would leave again. I’d never have a chance to explain. Forgive me—”
I stopped him. “I will not let us be beings of regret. I know my past. What I want is my future.”
He smiled and moved to kiss me again, when the entire room quivered. The flimsy walls of the room split and tore. The obsidian mirror before us snapped in half and Nritti tumbled out. She stared at us and her mouth curled into a snarl.
“Not again,” she hissed.
Amar tried to protect me, but I slipped out of his arms and rose to my feet. I wasn’t the one in need of protecting. It was Nritti. Amar smiled and joined me. He stamped his foot against the earth and the walls around us fell. The din of the Otherworld rose riotous around us. Nritti’s enchantment nearly claimed my balance, but I held strong.
All that hunger. It was plain in the faces of the Otherworldly beings. Rakshas the size of elephants had sunk to their knees, filling their mouths with dirt. Even the great timingala had begun to keen, slapping its tail into the water and drenching the Otherworld. I watched as a bull-aspect demon slammed his horns into the ground, upheaving dirt. My stomach flipped. If Nritti wouldn’t lead them to the human realm to sate their bloodlust, then they would dig their way to the human realm.
In the fray of people, my gaze flew to the only two beings not moving: Gupta and Kamala. The moment he saw me, Gupta dropped his hold on Kamala. He stared at me, a huge smile tugging at his lips. Kamala snorted and stamped the ground before galloping to me. I caught her around the neck, burying my face in her mane.
“Certainly a false sadhvi, but not a false queen…,” she said, nuzzling me.
Eyes like lamplight turned to us, glances cutting away from the dirt to witness me and Amar. When the Otherworld beings saw us, they paused, brows furrowing as if they had forgotten something important and had only just remembered. I flexed my fingers. Some of the darkness lifted, blotted away like ink on a page. The space around me was a pelt in need of mending. Even now, I could feel through its rifts, sensing all the pieces that had been knocked askew in chaos like broken bones. Somewhere under the muddled air of sweat and dried blood was the bright scent of fairy fruit. Somewhere between those ragged strips of night lay moonbeams tangled with lightning, stars ripped and furious. I could mend it all.
The whole of the Otherworld fell silent. Some of the Otherworldly beings shook their heads and stumbled backward. Others dropped their weapons and prostrated themselves on the ground. But most of them didn’t fall as easily. Instead, they turned their attention toward Nritti, waiting for directions.
“You have gone too far,” said Amar.
Nritti grinned. “You have not even begun to witness the destruction I can wreak.”
“We won’t give you that chance,” I said.
Amar moved to my side. He didn’t crouch behind or run in front. He stood by my side as an equal. He laced his fingers in mine, his expression handsomely severe.
“What should we do, jaani?”
“Restore the light,” I said.
Amar grinned. He wrung his hands like he was balancing an invisible sphere, his face drawn in focus. In the space between his fingers, a small pinprick of light began to whirl faster and faster. Nritti roared, flashing her palms up. But I was faster. Stronger.
She screeched at the nearby rakshas and bhuts, pointing wildly at me, but the monsters refused to budge. “What’s wrong with you fools?” she yelled. “Forget it! I’ll do it myself! You’re weak,” she seethed at the shrinking fey, “and when I’m the Rani of these realms, I will find each and every one of you pathetic excuses of monsters and show you the meaning of hell.”
“For that,” I said, “you’ll need some experience.”
Nritti turned her glinting eyes on me, her lips stretching into a sneer. “And you’re going to do that for me, are you? You don’t know the first thing about power.”