“Then let me demonstrate.”
Magic crackled at my palms, twisting serpentine around my legs and arms until my limbs bowed under the weight of it all. I breathed deeply, sensing the movement of life around me as though it were light through prisms. From one angle, Gupta charged toward the crowd, walloping rakshas and asuras with his scrolls of bone. Kamala pulled her lips back to reveal sharp teeth, laughing to herself as she ripped out the throat of the bull-aspect raksha. I felt Amar’s power beside mine, a shadow to my light, a rhythm to match our music. And in that unknown space before me, I sensed Nritti. Her power was a wrenching thing, starless black and sorrow, but my magic was something more … it was hope.
A rupturing sound echoed and the Night Bazaar transformed into an unlikely arena. Rakshas the size of boulders flung themselves at Gupta and Amar. Gupta danced around their bludgeoning movements. From the palms of his hands, inky tendrils of smoke fell over the rakshas and peys and they fell backward, their eyes glassy. He jumped forward, spinning in tight circles, drenching enemies in sticky, blinding black.
Gusts of wind knocked back rakshas, sending them tumbling like avalanches down the ranks of the uprising beings. Nritti screamed, throwing up pillars of black. She darted through them, her reflection scattering. Shadow arrows sprayed across the ruined Night Bazaar.
Nritti didn’t seem to care who she hit. My eyes widened in horror as the feathers found less likely targets—peys who fought at her side, their last expression choked and bewildered; writhing nagas with their cobra-hoods flared open, baring fangs the size of scimitars.
Chaos lit up the riot of Otherworldly beings. They flew at each other, all sense of a common enemy gone. Blood sank into the ground of the Night Bazaar and the earth gathered the offering greedily, leaving nothing in return save for damp plots of dirt and ash. The cacophony of grinding hooves and entangled horns joined the din of lightning and thunder above. Steam rose languidly from the ground, burning where demon blood had evanesced.
I summoned magic to my fingertips until it gathered like a cloud around us. And then … I released it, letting it ribbon around the ruined Night Bazaar, bolstering shattered beams, siphoning away its cloak of broken gloom. Beside me, Amar dropped the diamond of light between his hands. It hit the ground and then the air stood still. Pinpoints of light burst in the air. Explosions erupting with heat, with screams …
Through the din, Amar’s gaze sought mine. Around us, the walls converged, shattering to the ground in thunderous claps. Light sang as it spread across the floor. Above, a great ripping sound echoed through the Night Bazaar. Nritti’s sneer faded, pale skin draining to an absolute white. She froze in mid-scream, wild eyes flashing between vacant and livid.
The magic at my fingertips shuddered with ferocity. I spun it in my hands, and then opened my palms, letting my own enchantment of binding wrap around Nritti, folding to encase her and preserve her in a translucent shell of ash and silt.
Not gone, not defeated … but contained.
She would never hurt anyone again.
With Nritti’s spell broken, the Otherworldly beings collapsed. The dark ones screamed, but the glittering light roared back, engulfing their sounds and bodies. Light washed over us and I felt a tug at my core even as my feet remained on the ground. Above, the sky of the Night Bazaar returned, one side gleaming with the sun and the other shining with the moon. Gupta flew to us, holding up his writing board as though it were a sword. I pulled him into a hug and when I drew away, tears shined in his eyes.
“I missed you, my friend,” he said, dabbing his eyes with one dirtied end of his torn coat.
I squeezed his shoulder. “And I missed you.”
Kamala trotted beside me, her lips a ghastly shade of red.
I bowed to her. “You can have a bite of my arm now if you’d like.”
She tossed her head, gesturing at the fallen demons around us. “I am quite sated. I would, however, ask another thing…”
“What is that?”
Kamala bent her head to the ground, her voice low and shy. “… I could stay with you. If you’ll have me. And I wouldn’t eat anyone. That is a promise. Unless you asked me to eat someone. In which case, I would be easily persuaded.”
I drew her to a hug. “You may stay.”
When we had shaken enough hands and embraced enough people, Amar pulled me away from the sounds, back through the room with flimsy walls where the torn obsidian mirror-portal glowed blearily. There was only a handful of air between us, but it was all illusion. We were closer than that, two souls sewn together with light.
His palm slid to my cheek and my skin sang. I loved him with two loves. One, a relic of another era. Another, unformed and hot, a freshly wrought star. All enigma and song. I think he felt the same way because his next words were almost resentful:
“You are quite deceptive, my queen. Like a handful of light one moment and then winged night the next.” He smiled. “I would know all your mysteries if you would let me.”
“You can try, but you’ll never know them,” I said. “I have a thousand smiles, a hundred forms. Not to mention all my names.”
He closed the space between us, lips skimming hungrily across mine.
“Then I am pleased we have eternity,” he said, pulling me into a kiss.
When we broke apart, I leaned against Amar’s chest and I listened. I listened to his heart, to the world outside folding away the shadows. I listened to the absence of my mother’s necklace from my throat, wondering whether the sapphire was now cool against Gauri’s neck. I listened as the seams of the earth absorbed its wounds, to the light falling thickly over the ruined Night Bazaar. I knew there were a thousand tasks left to complete. Markets to rebuild, a tapestry in need of tending … but for a moment, I concentrated on the sound of Amar’s heart and the feel of our fingers entwined.
I was free.
I was whole.
I was Queen of Naraka.