A Crown of Wishes (The Star-Touched Queen, #2)

by Roshani Chokshi

Death stood on the other side of the chamber doors. Today I would meet it not in my usual armor of leather and chain mail, but in the armor of silk and cosmetics. One might think one armor was stronger than the other, but a red lip was its own scimitar and a kohl-darkened eye could aim true as a steel-tipped arrow. Death might be waiting, but I was going to be a queen. I would have my throne if I had to carve a path of blood and bone to get it back. Death could wait.

Slender glass alembics filled with fragrant oils, tiny cruets of kohl and silk purses of pearl and carmine powder crowded a low table. Brushes of reeds and hewn ivory shaped like writing implements caught the light. Homesickness slashed through me. I had to clasp my hands together to stop from reaching out over the familiar cosmetics. The harem mothers had taught me how to use these. Under my mothers’ tutelage, I learned that beauty could be conjured. And under my and Nalini’s instruction, my mothers learned that death could hide in beauty.

When he first heard of the Princess, a pang of envy had stabbed him. What had she done to earn the throne other than be born in the right place? She had a reputation as a warrior, but reputations were slippery. So often they were little more than threads of rumors strung together. Unlike him, she probably never had to fight for anything.

My throat felt dry. A wish. In that second, I felt my sister’s hand reach through time to grasp my fingers. Her storytelling voice, like dusk and honey, poured through my thoughts: … they say the Lord of Treasures hosts a tournament for the very best and the very worst, the dreamers and the broken. He’ll play a game with you unlike any tournament you have ever played. You might have to find your true name in a castle of stars, or wrestle your voice from a demon, or sip poison and eat fear …

“Where will this trial be held?” asked Vikram, ignoring me. “At home,” grunted the largest vanara. “Must run some errands though. The Queen won’t want to return to an empty palace.” “If she ever returns,” sighed one of them. “She’ll come back! Curses aren’t made to be permanent. They like to be broken or they become resentful that everyone’s forgotten about them,” said another.

The ashram might have taught the princes numbers and letters, philosophy and diction, but Vikram knew something far more useful. He was raised on a bellyful of want—always kept at a distance, always in sight of everything he wanted and could never sink his teeth into—which only made him that much more attuned to seeing through words and straight to the desires. Know the value of the desire and the value of the deficiency. That was how he lived around his own wants.

“No one would avenge her husband. No one cared. So she grew her own vengeance. Cut out her heart to nourish it, stole bones to prop it up against the elements, coaxed it to bear fruit with her tears. And she forced it upon others, to eat of her fruit and partake of her vengeance. And to bring down all the kingdoms who denied her justice. Ah, but how much blood must you guzzle before time breaks you of your sorrow? Bad queen. Bad bad bad. For her greed, she is cursed until a kiss falls upon her stony brow.” “How much of that is true?” “Who cares if a story is true or not so long as it is told? Either way, your vanaras will not accept the fruit that damned and stole their queen.”

“It’s my life too,” he said tightly. “Your life makes no difference to that girl,” laughed the vetala. “Maybe someday. But today is not that day. Beast of a girl, I think in another life you would eat it. But bravery needs a bite. And you have lost it somewhere. Broken heart, perhaps?”

“You cannot break me with a tale, brother.” “You’re happy, aren’t you? You’re loved. You love others. I think people are convinced that if you asked the sun not to rise, it would stand down for you. But there’s only one story that people like better than a rise to fame—a fall from grace. And I can make it swift. And I can take all this away. You see, a story is not just a thing told to a child before sleep. A story is control.”

I didn’t know hurt. Or fear. When my skin gave way to fur and my nails bent into claws, I knew what it meant to be stripped down to your barest self. It meant seeing the world for what it was. I took off my skin and released the thing that had always lurked, crept and slept within me: A beast. A monster. A myth. A girl. What was the difference? My last thought before I turned was the wish I would’ve made. For freedom. True freedom. And even though I couldn’t speak it aloud, I could feel the weight of that wish filling me from the inside, pressing against my teeth. I felt that wish like a line of light, a boundary that my mind wouldn’t cross lest I lose myself forever.

“It’s not about things that are earned, but just things as they are. Magic chose us for a reason. Did you believe in the Otherworld before you saw it with your own eyes?” I nodded. “Magic is like that,” he said. “It’s like faith.”

People always think killing requires a force: a cup of poison tipped into a mouth, a knife parting flesh from bone, a fist brought down repeatedly. Wrong. Here’s how you kill: You stay silent, you make bargains that peel the layers off your soul one by one, you build a scaffolding of flimsy excuses and live your life on them. I may have killed to save, but I killed all the same.

“Well? Will you follow me from one world to the next or not?” Determination blazed in his eyes. There was no doubt in his mind that he was right. His belief felt like heat that crinkles and greases the air. The force of it pressed and needled the world, as if it could summon kingdoms out of sheer force. His conviction set me alight. I grasped his hand.

The taunt of that unlived human life started as a seedling of curiosity. It grew in the dark of her thoughts, gaining shape and strength when she wasn’t looking—a home somewhere with a thatched roof and no silk in sight, an orchard where the trees groaned with fruit, an expanse of skin free of a blue star. Now, it ate up the space around her heart. A living nightmare that snapped her joy. What was that life she had been denied? Maybe it would have been short, but at least it would be hers. But no one cared that she desperately wanted to touch someone and feel their pulse rising to her fingertips and not their life withering at her touch. And no one noticed when she returned home from that first mission, sick and shivering, the human king’s sticky desires glommed to her skin. Her sisters called that first mission a mark of freedom. In the end, no one cared that her freedom didn’t look like the freedom of her sisters.

I looked up. What I saw in Vikram’s gaze rooted me to the spot: understanding. Those secrets had coaxed a shadowed part of us to step into the light. Understanding felt like a hand reached for and found in the dark. No one had ever looked at me that way because no one, until now, could.

In Ujijain, the council had been quick to teach him who he was. At first, they had showered him with little slights, so small that when he was younger, he hadn’t even recognized them. But enough tiny sharp jabs can cut as deeply as any knife.

Vikram had spent the rest of his life fighting that image. But the council had been right. Secrets did make people dance. And he had made it his calling to know every single secret there was about Ujijain, until he could hold them in his fist and force the people around him to dance. But it was never enough. His own secret mercilessly tugged his strings.

The moment he spoke his secret truth before the gate, his heart sank. He had expected that Gauri would fix him with the stare he’d grown up with all his life. But she didn’t. Understanding filled her gaze, and the force of it knocked the wind out of his lungs. He hadn’t realized, until then, how much it mattered that she didn’t see him the way everyone else did. And when she parted with her own secret, he understood. Threads had strung them up and tugged on both of their limbs. All this time, they were both just trying to cut themselves free.

The rational part of him knew this was a display for the attendant. But every other part of him couldn’t care less. He threaded his fingers through her hair, pulling her closer. Her kiss burned in his bones. And maybe it was the magic of Alaka or maybe his mind was splintering from everything they’d gone through, but he would have sworn she tasted like cold honey and caught magic.

“I don’t want your pity,” she bit out. “Why not?” he asked. “Don’t I have your pity? What’s more pitiful than an orphan with delusions of a grand destiny?” It felt freeing to say the words. And the truth was that he was not afraid of being seen for what he was. He was afraid of being seen as someone who could never be more. “I wanted to change things,” she said. “Me too,” said Vikram. “But I can’t change Ujijain with an illusion of a title. And if that’s all that’s left for me, then I won’t go back.”

Cosmetics lined a small vanity to the right of the wardrobe. I rolled the small vials between my palms, warming up the oils. After murmuring a quick prayer for my harem mothers, I donned my armor, lining my eyes with kohl until they were dark as death and patting crushed rose petals on my lips until they were scarlet as blood. In a separate dresser, I found a small cache of knives. I took two and strapped them to my thighs. Just in case.

“True war isn’t philosophical.” “All war is philosophical. That’s why we call it war. Strip it of its paint and it’s nothing more than murder.”

“May I ask you something, Your Majesty?” Kubera tilted his head. “Yes, little jewel, go ahead.” “Why do you want us to compete in this Tournament? What do you win?” “I win a story,” said Kubera, smiling slowly. “And that treasure is infinite and will change and grow wings. The world is entering a new age. After this game, there will never again be a Tournament of Wishes. The Otherworld will close its portals. It will smile at the human realm, but nothing will pass its lips. Those who play our Tournament and live to tell the tale will let us breathe in that new age. With a tale, we will not simply exist as figures in stone temples, all our myths static and told and fixed. We will live. Passed between mouth and mind and memory.”

“The key to immortality is in creating a story that will outlive you. Each tale is its own key, hiding in plain sight beneath all the things we want and all the things that eat away at us.”

The Feast of Transformation demanded a trade of hurt. The moment I grabbed a vial, I felt ghostly fingers carding through my memories, searching for a kernel of pain. It wasn’t hard to find. I felt a sharp tug behind my heart, the sound of a memory unclasping and rising to the surface of my thoughts. And then: Nothing. The memory faded.

“How did you do that?” I asked. “I just let go,” he said, shrugging. “I looked at the desires and I told myself I didn’t want them. Then they freed me. Try it.” I tried. I tried to pretend that I didn’t want the images anymore. But I couldn’t. I saw myself kneeling in a square of sunlight in Bharata’s gardens, wrist-deep in earth as I dug a home for a rosebush. I craved for that belonging, the kind that knits happiness to your heart so it never wanders too far out of sight.

“I’m warning you—” I started, but the words awakened something in the vishakanya. She was no longer smiling. No longer wheedling. “No, girl,” she said, as cold as glass. “I’m warning you. That human boy is now mine.” “He was never—” “He is in our tent. He is not protesting. Therefore, he is ours. And now that he is mine, you should know that I am not someone to steal from. You see, girl, we like humans. Human desires are nothing like the desires of yakshas and yakshinis. Yours are a treat. There’s something different about human desire. How damp it is. The way it gloms on to your nightmares and silvers your hearts with a rime of frost. You will carry that desire, ripping up the earth at its seams if it means you can have what you want.” “It’s destructive,” said the vishakanya. “It’s beautiful,” chimed another. “And we will have it,” said another. “So don’t take my toys, girl.” And then she lunged straight for me.

He smiled. A true smile. I knew his smirks. His half-grins. Even halfhearted and lopsided upturns of his mouth. This smile was different. It was soft and unguarded. And it softened me in return. I had put that smile on his face and I felt strangely territorial about it. I wanted to keep it.

“You see,” said Kubera. “Nothing is yours. Not even a story is yours, though you may lay claim to it with the teeth of your mind.”

“Stories are boundless and infinite, ever-changing and elusive,” said Kubera. “They are the truest treasure and therefore my dearest possessions. Each contestant grants the world a new tale, pours a little magic back into the earth. That’s all that will remain once the world dons the clothes of a new age and the Otherworld seals its doors. You will see. If you survive.” “Even the ones who die?” I asked, sharpness creeping into my voice. “What’s a story without a bit of death?” said Kubera, grinning. “I’ve always loved tales of broken lovers who roam through countrysides singing their stories of woe and separation, their honey-sweet longing for the next life when they can suddenly be reunited. It makes other people happy, you see. It makes people grateful that it hasn’t happened to them. I like making people happy!” Kubera clapped his hands. “Well, I should not keep you. Enjoy the celebrations,” he said. “And if you do nothing else, give me a tale worth telling. Worth keeping.”

A story had no ownership. A story could break its bones, grow wings, soar out of reach and dive out of sight in the time it took just to draw breath. It meant we weren’t walking a cut path. We carved it into existence with every step.

“It can’t be that bad,” Aasha said, when one of her sisters tried, once more, to stop her from meeting Gauri. “We were once human after all, so—” “Never say that in this tent,” said one of her sisters. “We may bleed and birth the same way, but that is where the similarities end. We are different. Only we carry the Blessing in our veins. They do not.”

I didn’t know why my first instinct was to protect her. She was a thousand times deadlier than I’d ever be. But her face when she saw the yakshas tugged at my heart. I’d seen that expression whenever the harem eunuchs announced Skanda’s visits. It was worse than fear. It was hopelessness. It warped a person’s face—flattening their eyes, crimping their lips into grimly determined lines. I recognized it. And I hated it.

I couldn’t shake the sound of my name on his lips. It slinked through my thoughts, spreading roots and thorns. Even though all he said was my name, a question had gathered form in his voice. As if … as if he was asking whether I would let him worry about me, and let him rest his fingers at the nape of my neck, and let him memorize my unimportant secrets that would never bring kingdoms to their knees but still pinned my soul in place. Away from him, I knew the right answer: No.

There was no future without victory. If we didn’t win, we would be like ghosts: our forms held together by the sheer force of our unfulfilled wants, with nothing left of our lives but what had been and what could never be.

The Nameless stepped backward, and one broke from the trio to place her hand against the bone white tree and rest her forehead to its bark. “Planted of a sister’s heart, unwillingly given,” said the first. “Fixed to the ground of a beloved’s bone, unwillingly given,” said the second. “Watered by tears, unwillingly given,” said the third. Their words chilled me.

The bones had stood out too sharply. A little too knowingly. As if they had been waiting for him to find them. Maybe those bones belonged to someone like him. Someone who believed that magic meant they were destined for more. Maybe they believed it right until the moment they died. Vikram wasn’t so blinded by the idea of magic that he thought it was a toothless and beautiful thing. He knew it bit. But he hadn’t imagined it could bite … them.

It was the connection people craved; the feeling that touch connected them to something beyond themselves. That was why he needed to dance with her. He craved that connection to the moment when magic had snapped his reality and showed him that his destiny as a puppet was only a path. Not a promise.

“If you know that we’re here for your venom then you know why we need it,” said Vikram calmly. “We don’t have a choice.” “Oh, but you do,” said the Serpent King. “Choose which story to believe. A man in love or a man in lust? The wronged or the wrongful? You have the choice to believe my innocence and I will let you leave in peace. I will tell the Lord of Treasures what you have done and I will personally procure you an exit. Or you can choose to believe in the harm I caused. You can fight me for my venom, and if you win, I will give it to you. I, too, follow the rules of the Tournament. So what will it be? Once you choose, it cannot be undone. No matter how much all of our hearts may break beneath your choice.”

I was wrong. Guilt accretes. It builds and builds, whittling stairways and spires in the heart until a person can carry a city of hopelessness inside them. My guilt was building a universe.

Magic might be vast, but right now, he felt it as a quiet hum in his chest. The enchantments that seemed greater than life had done them no favors. He turned, instead, to small, ordinary magic. The same magic that his mother had conjured each time his nightmares shot him out of sleep and left him breathless with fear. She used to fold him to her, rocking him back and forth and crooning a song. Vikram let go of reason. He lowered his lips to her ear … and sang. Soft, broken words. He was no singer. But, he thought, thinking back to the sage’s invitation so many nights ago, maybe it was about the sincerity. So he sang, forcing his heart into every lopsided tune. An unspoken summons and plea cropped up between the notes of his rusty voice: Don’t leave.

Once you choose, it cannot be undone. No matter how much all of our hearts may break beneath your choice. The problem with guilt was not how it attacks the present, but how it stained the past. Hindsight was a blemish on memory.

“Surviving isn’t just about cutting out your heart and burning every feeling into ash,” he said. “Sometimes it means taking whatever is thrown at you, beautiful or grotesque, poisonous or blissful, and carving out your life with the pieces you’re given.”

I never wanted to fall in love. To me, love looked like pale light. Not lustrous enough to illuminate the world or dazzle one’s eyes, but bright enough to fool you into thinking it might. In the harem, some of my mothers told me love was a decadent ambrosia, something to be sipped and savored. Others told me it was an open wound. One of the mothers—a slip of a woman who wouldn’t survive her first pregnancy—had pulled me aside and told me something I never forgot: “Love is like Death without the guarantee of its arrival. Love may not come for you, but when it does it will be just as swift and ruthless as Death and just as blind to your protestations. And just as Death will end one life and leave you with another, so will Love.” Her words terrified me. I would never feel that way about someone. I never wanted to.

“What does sweet taste like?” “Uh…” I stumbled. What was sweet to someone who didn’t know flavor? I searched for the right words, trying to think of it differently. See it differently. “It’s like … like waking up and remembering a good dream. Like eating poetry.” Aasha closed her eyes. “That sounds good.”

The second spoke. “It is not the way of fairness—” I laughed. “Fairness? Not even the gods promise fairness. This is a competition. We figured out the riddle. We fought. The end.” “Careful, girl,” said the second. “You have no knowledge of the game you play. Everyone here has a story to tell. But some of us have more at stake. Some of us have magic in need of replenishing. And some of us will do whatever it takes to ensure that our wishes come to pass.”

In Bharata, I guarded myself. Weakness was a privilege. It divided you, snipped out your secrets and gave every sliver of power over you. I didn’t have parts to spare. Bharata called me their Jewel, and maybe I was like one. Not sparkling or precious. But a cold thing wearing a hundred faces. Like facets on a gem. One for every person. But Vikram had seen through every facet, holding me against the light as if I truly were translucent, and instead of making me feel as if I had been looked through and found wanting, I felt … seen. My eyes dropped to his hand. Even through the fugue of that poisonous sleep, I remembered his touch. Reverent and dream-soft. I remembered how he looked at me when I woke up, the way you behold the sacred—not with your eyes demure and half lidded, but with wide-open awe, gratitude and even a touch of greed because one sight will never be enough.

“The trees want you, Princess,” said his voice from everywhere. “You can grow a beautiful tree from that heart of yours. It’s been so long for them. Not since Queen Tara ripped out a heart and watered it with her tears and sheltered it with her beloved’s bones. I can teach you to live forever. I can teach you how to turn your vengeance into a fruit. I can teach you what it means to be invincible. All you have to do is give me the venom.” Moth wings whipped my face and tangled my hair. Before Alaka, I would have been tempted. Invincibility was all I had wanted when Ujijain had kept me in that cell month after month. But I’d tasted the fruit of vengeance. And it was narrow and sour. Not a story at all, but an ending. I deserved more. “Never,” I hissed.

Since that night, he needed to tell her … something. But what? “Please don’t die” sounded foolish. “You smell nice” sounded worse. He wasn’t even sure what the right words were, but they sat on his tongue and made it impossible to speak around them. Before Alaka, he would have been content keeping whatever thorny not-feelings had reared up inside him. But Death commanded urgency. Death tore the skin off dreams and showed the bones underneath. And Vikram saw the bones now. When he closed his eyes, he saw Gauri’s long-lashed gaze closing. And staying closed. He saw his own body crumpled by the shores of a pool not unlike the Serpent King’s portal, turning to a skeleton for some ignorant prince to ponder or ignore.

That blink of awareness—it’s a new day—flashed in his head. One blink later, and an empty, snowing hall filled his sight. His knees hit frozen dirt. Goose bumps pebbled his skin. He blinked. Breath knotted in his chest, leaving him gasping as his mind feverishly gathered scraps of observation—a kiss at the hollow of his throat, a shard of sky peeled back to reveal a new day. Snow in his eyes. A cold fire burning down to a new truth: The second trial had started. Cruel and swift.