Heat bursts out of her hands, magic that glows orange, hitting me in the chest with the force of a blow. I bite back a cry even though pain laces through my ribs, nearly making me fall backward.
“You’re right. It shouldn’t matter to me. But, for some reason, it does. If there’s a choice between saving your life and taking the king’s, goddess knows I will always choose to save yours.”
A ringing silence. I still feel the heat of her magic, her anger vibrating in the air.
“But you don’t want to hear that, do you? You don’t want to believe in the possibility of anything except hate between a magus and a non-magus. Well, you’ll get your wish. This is the last you’ll ever hear from me.”
THE STAR WARRIOR
33GUL
The next morning, Yukta Didi comes to see me after breakfast.
“You look sallow,” she says critically. “And your eyes are puffy.” I’m wondering if she’s going to interrogate me about what happened last night, but she claps her hands, calling forth a serving girl into the room.
“Raja Lohar wishes to see you,” Yukta Didi tells me. “Alone.”
“Now?” The bajra puri and potatoes I downed earlier threaten to make a reappearance. “What does he—”
But Yukta Didi is already talking to my attendant. “Get her into something that complements her hair and those eyes. No, not yellow! Yes, the pink is perfect.”
I step behind the dressing screen and put on a loose, flowing pink blouse tied with crisscross strings at the back and a dusty-pink ghagra embroidered with roses in pale-gold thread. This isn’t the Ambari rose, which is Queen Amba’s signature, but the common rose found all over Svapnalok.
“Come on,” Yukta Didi says. “We haven’t got all day.”
“Only another moment, Didi,” I call out. Underneath the petticoat, I carefully adjust the daggers strapped to my thighs.
While my attendant braids my hair, weaving gold beads and chameli flowers into it, I hold on to my emotions, suffocating them in a relentless grip. It will not do to get weepy now. Especially since this outfit weighs at least twice as much as the blue ghagra I wore yesterday. Not exactly the best to run or fight in. Which is probably why they’re making me wear it.
I could always pretend it is battle armor. Though we never really did learn to fight with armor during Yudhnatam practice at the Sisterhood. Juhi found this frustrating, but she could hardly place an order at the armorer without drawing massive attention to us.
This is not what Juhi wanted.
But Juhi isn’t here. And by now, Amira and Kali must be gone as well. I told them to leave last night—without me—right after my disaster of a conversation with Cavas. I will stay, I mentally repeat what I told them. I will try to challenge the king to a death duel. For Papa. For Ma. It’s the only chance at revenge that I have now.
“There.” Yukta Didi adds the final touch: a gold-and-pearl-encrusted maang-teeka in the part of my hair, the ornament ending right over the center of my forehead. “Now you look like a princess.”
Delicate and ethereal, my eyes rimmed with surma, my lips stained deep pink with a paste that tastes like honeyweed and beetroot. Only my cheeks remain untouched, bare of the gold dust that will be applied to them every morning after I bind with Sonar. My clean skin reminds me of the girl I was, the girl I still am under this suffocating finery. So do Ma’s silver beads, which rest between my clavicles, above the heavy gold-and-pearl necklace. After brushing my anklet, my attendant’s fingers rise higher under the petticoat to adjust a stray fold of cloth.
“Enough,” I say sharply. “It’s not my binding night yet.”
The girl’s hands drop at once, seconds before they brush the sheaths of the daggers strapped to my thighs. I turn away from her stammered apologies.
“I’m ready,” I tell Yukta Didi.
The king’s chambers are at the very top of Raj Mahal, in the tallest tower of the palace, which is so reflective that no outsider can look inside, and so heavily guarded by Sky Warriors that getting in would have been impossible without an invitation. Yukta Didi leaves me with a guard in a lobby downstairs, right under a chandelier made of swords, thin longblades jutting out of the floating crystal orb like spikes from a poisoned mace.
Over the chandelier, the glass shifts color, revealing the outlines of a portrait—the sky goddess perfectly etched into the surface, her enormous eyes holding the sun and the two moons, shifting rain clouds and stars.
I breathe deeply, forcing myself to remain outwardly calm, to look happy even though I feel like I might vomit. Walking with a dagger strapped to each thigh, coupled with the heavy ghagra, is awkward, but somehow I climb the flight of glass stairs leading to the king’s apartments without tripping over my own feet and tumbling to an early death.
Outside the king’s door, I find a familiar face. Major Shayla. To my surprise, she doesn’t look at me, only moving aside to allow me entrance before closing the door. You’d think that being surrounded by glass would make the room feel open and full of sunlight at this time in the morning, but it is oddly dark, the air damp instead of dry.
Magic, I think, feeling its suffocating presence. And eucalyptus oil. The room reeks of it: a pungent smell that my mother surrounded me with whenever I was ill. A large, pillared bed dominates the room’s center, while the walls are decorated with scenes from battle, much like the portraits that often hung in our village schoolroom, only the colors here are so vivid that the figures on elephant and horseback look alive. In each panel, the king cuts the tallest and most handsome figure—even though he looks nothing like the paintings
