We Shall Be Monsters, page 12
Kajal strained to hear any screams from above. All was quiet. Lasya hadn’t struck. Kajal had gotten away in time, or perhaps her pleading had stopped the bhuta from striking. She slumped against the side of the building with relief.
Then the pain descended.
It wrapped around her neck and squeezed, her bones just on the verge of cracking. She clawed at her throat, mouth working soundlessly, body convulsing against cool stone. She dropped to her knees as her lungs burned, her chest so tight she thought it would burst open and spill blood and organs across the courtyard.
Days seemed to pass until it lifted. Kajal coughed and sucked in air, shivering hard enough to rattle her teeth. The backlash had been even more intense than before. She reached for her neck and was horrified at the raised lines of scratches along her skin.
I should have let the girl die, Kajal thought. At this rate, another death—hers or someone else’s—was a matter of when, not if.
But with a Meghani here, it could be traced back to her. Could lead to Lasya’s exorcism.
Could help the Vadhia finally track her down.
Every hour she wasted was another hour rumors could start circulating. And if Lasya was already this powerful, how long would it take before Kajal ended up dead by her sister’s hand?
She pressed her forehead against the stone wall and tried to think. The rebels would only bring her Lasya’s body once she had revived the prince to their satisfaction, and she likely needed a little more time in order to get the method exactly right. Yet stronger than her rationality was the return of her rage.
Even if you were a student here, you’d be an abysmal one.
She bared her teeth.
Forget the rebels. She was resurrecting Advaith tonight.
* * *
She went to the flat to stuff some pillows under her blanket to make it look like she’d turned in early. Then she collected Kutaa and locked them both in the laboratory.
“You’ll help me, right?” she whispered, ruffling his fur. He gave a low woof.
She was thankful for her long hours spent here earlier, though she still had some work to do. Once the components were prepared and everything was assembled, Kajal stared at the bag laid out on the table, above the slab of limestone. The scratches on her neck burned with urgency.
Ideally, she would have tested it first to make sure her measurements were correct, to determine if anything was missing or needed to be adjusted to ensure no mistakes. But Riddhi’s words had laid a challenge at her feet—one she was more than capable of meeting.
Kajal untied the bag and let the earth packed inside spill onto the floor. Kutaa sat and watched with keen, glowing eyes as she pulled the bag completely away. All that was left was the prince, dirty and grimy and very much dead.
She carried over the basin of water from the corner. “Sorry about this, Your Highness.”
Kajal was not a stranger to nakedness. Living the way she had, she couldn’t help but see things. Nonetheless, peeling the clothes off a dead body was a new and unpleasant experience, a foreign mixture of discomfort and disgust. There was clotted, dried blood that made the fabric stick to his skin in places, and Kajal had to stare up at the ceiling muttering curses as she shimmied the trousers past his hips.
He looked even more like a cadaver then. It didn’t help that there were twin wounds in his abdomen, old and red, where some sort of weapon—Bakshi’s, no doubt—had punctured his armor and delivered the fatal blow. They were strangely symmetrical, the skin jagged around the edges where the weapon had caught his flesh on the way out.
Already light-headed, Kajal did her best to scrub off the dirt and blood. She wiped a wet cloth down his arms and across his shoulders, being extra careful when she cleaned his face. His serene expression calmed her.
When she moved the cloth to his chest, she paused. He was wearing a pendant on a thin chain around his neck. It was a rectangle of pale amber, artlessly forged. Preserved inside was a single lotus petal, its pink shade warped by the amber’s hue.
She had expected royalty to wear fine jewelry of diamonds and rubies and gold. Why would a crown prince wear something this ugly?
Kajal slipped it off and set it on the worktable before returning to her task. Other than the necklace, he also wore a sarbloh bangle, which she decided to leave on; the pure iron might help with the conducting of his energies.
Once the wounds in his abdomen were washed, she sutured them closed, afraid they would bleed as soon as he woke, depending on how quickly his circulation kicked in. She stared at the ceiling again with gritted teeth in order to clean the last bits of him and, when she was done, covered his lower body with the cloth. Kajal pushed the basin away and looked at the prince.
Please, she thought, rubbing her thumb against the finger where that butterfly had perched. Please work.
It had to.
Heart in her throat, Kajal collected the zinc pellets. She wrenched the prince’s jaw open and stuffed the pellets into his mouth. She used the pestle to push them down as far as she could, grimacing despite knowing full well he couldn’t feel it.
Kutaa followed her every movement as she slathered salt over the prince’s skin. On top of this, she sprinkled goldenrod and gotu kola, and rubbed some into his teeth for good measure. Her mixture of adder’s-tongue oil she used to anoint the junction points of the doshas, the ones that helped maintain Vata, Pitta, and Kapha in the body. Vata, for space and air. Pitta, for fire and water. Kapha, for water and earth.
Her racing pulse made her vision blacken at the edges. Kajal leaned against the table and caught her breath.
“Such a smart sister I have,” Lasya cooed, pinching Kajal’s cheek. “You can do anything, can’t you?”
“Not anything,” a younger Kajal had grumbled, despite her pleased grin.
“Anything. Once you put your mind to it, you’ll accomplish it. I believe in you.”
Kajal blinked away her tears. Inhaling deeply, she reached for the prince’s body.
When she had brought Kutaa back to life, she had focused on only a couple of chakras, urging sentience and a heartbeat without considering everything else that made up a life. She had to do better this time.
Kajal settled a hand on the top of the prince’s head. “Sahasrara, open.” A distant hum of vitality ignited against her palm. She pressed a thumb to the center of his forehead. “Ajna, third eye, open.” A pinpoint of energy swirled beneath her thumb pad.
She touched his throat, his navel, his hip, the inside of his thigh—her earlier discomfort overtaken by focus—making sure each chakra was connected and opened, that energy could flow through his channels. She paid special attention to the stomach, hoping it would allow him to eat again.
Damp with sweat, she touched his heart last. “Anahata, open.”
The prince’s body jerked.
Kajal pressed more firmly against Advaith’s chest, salt granules digging into her palm as she directed the energy to surround the organ. The prince’s body jerked again, limbs flopping like a fish on land. She bit back a cry as energy lashed painfully up her arm, settling around her with a faintly metallic smell, raising the fine hairs along her body.
The limestone groaned. Under her hand, wintry skin grew warm.
Kajal didn’t dare let go. In her disorientation, she thought she saw flashes behind her eyelids, the landscape of unknown places, the faces of people she didn’t recognize. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, a brutal reminder that her life, too, could be taken away in an instant.
The next pulse of energy passed through the prince’s chest and made him arch off the limestone, which cracked in two with a boom like crashing thunder.
His eyes flew open.
He and Kajal stared at each other for a breathless moment. Then he screamed and pushed her away. Kajal toppled to the floor as he thrashed and fell off the table.
Kutaa came to stand between Kajal and the prince, growling. Advaith snatched the fallen cloth to cover himself and pressed his back against the wall. Salt fell from his skin as if he had just emerged from sand.
“Who are you?” he demanded. His voice was rasping and breaking, whether from being dead nearly two decades or from her shoving the pestle down his throat, she wasn’t sure. “Where am I?”
Kajal stood with hands held before her in a gesture of peace. Her body was weightless, her face overtaken with a dazed smile.
“I…I did it.” Tears sprang to her eyes again. “I did it!”
She wanted to fall to the floor, wanted to sob, wanted to ride east to Lasya—blight and the Vadhia be damned. The only thing stopping her was the prince’s bewildered horror. For someone who’d looked so tranquil in death, he had quite an expressive face in life.
“Did what?” he choked out, glancing between her and Kutaa. Still pitifully clutching the cloth to himself, his other hand went to his sutured wounds, which were trailing blood down his hip bone. “Where am I? Who are you?”
Kajal kept her hands raised. “Your Highness, there’s no need to worry. I promise I’ll explain everything. You’re not in danger.”
He froze at her words. Now that his eyes were open, she saw they were a warm, light brown, framed by those ridiculously long lashes. They widened as they regarded her.
“What did you call me?” he whispered.
“Your…Highness?” A hint of trepidation made Kajal’s smile falter. Were his memories damaged? Did this mean Lasya’s would be too? “You’re the crown prince of Dharati.” Remember. You must.
“Crown prince?” he repeated blankly, and her trepidation spiked into full-on panic.
“Isn’t that you?” she demanded. “Aren’t you Advaith Thakar?”
“Advaith? No, I…”
He shook his head, salt and grave soil falling from his hair.
“I’m not Advaith,” he said. “I’m his brother.”
Chapter Twelve
Kajal froze with her arms held out before her, less a gesture to reassure the boy than to reject his words.
She blinked slowly. He blinked back just as slowly, like a cat.
“What,” she rasped.
His face twisted in…fear? No, it was more nuanced than that. Something like regret, like he hadn’t meant to speak it out loud.
“What did you say?” she demanded, mind sluggish with incomprehension and that ever-growing panic. Perhaps the process had damaged his memories, or his sense of self. But if so, then why come to this very specific, very unsettling admission?
“The prince didn’t have a brother,” she insisted. She lowered her arms and took a step forward. He didn’t flinch, but his mouth tightened. The cloth he held was stained with the blood leaking from his abdomen. “You were identified as Advaith. You were wearing his armor.”
Of course, when waking in a strange laboratory with a strange girl and an even stranger dog hovering over him, he might have instinctively lied to protect himself. But he shook his head again, lifting his eyes back to hers. They were nearly the same shade as the amber pendant she’d taken off him.
“My name is Tavinder,” he said firmly. “And I want to know how I came to be here.”
Kutaa maintained his position between them, unmoving, waiting for Kajal’s order to attack or stand down. She let him stay exactly where he was.
“You’re here because you were identified,” she repeated. “As Advaith.”
“Who identified me?” he asked. “Who even are you?”
“Does that mean you admit to being the crown prince?”
He leaned his head back until it met the wall with a low thunk. “Yakshas preserve me.”
“Funny thing, that,” she said. “They did. You died on the Harama Plain, which became a burial mound for you and your soldiers, a no-man’s-land filled with bhutas. We found your body, one thing led to another, and now here you are.”
His brow furrowed. He parted his chapped lips as if to tell her off, but then his gaze turned inward, unfocused.
“I died?” he whispered, more to himself than to her. His free hand went to his wounds, which were beginning to clot. Kajal made a mental note of that, and to check his circulation once he let her examine him. “I…died…”
“And I brought you back,” she finished. “Feel free to applaud or sing my praises. Preferably both.”
His confusion gave way to alarm. “That’s not— No. No. If I’m…then Advaith is…”
Kutaa’s fur bristled as the prince grew agitated, his chest heaving with panicked breaths as he wrestled with the idea of his own mortality. Kajal allowed herself a moment’s satisfaction that his lungs were working well.
“You don’t have to keep lying,” she insisted. “I—”
“I’m not Advaith!” he yelled. “I don’t know where he is. I—I have to—”
His gaze landed on the door. He darted straight for it.
Kutaa barked. Unthinking, Kajal launched herself at the prince and wrapped an arm around his neck, pressing down on the carotid artery. He stumbled and fell against the door, too startled to fight back. He could only grab her arm until he lost consciousness and slid to the floor in an ungainly sprawl.
Kutaa padded over and sniffed at the prince’s hair before giving her a flat look.
“Mm,” she agreed. “Could’ve gone better.”
* * *
When Supposedly Not Advaith roused next, he jerked against the chair Kajal had hauled him onto. He flexed his arms against the rope she’d wrapped around his torso, binding him to the chair’s back.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“What are you doing?”
“What am I—?” He fought harder against the rope. “Untie me!”
Kajal took the stone pestle from the table—the one she’d used to push zinc pellets down his throat—and smacked it against her palm in warning.
“What a commanding tone,” she drawled. “Almost like an order from a prince, wouldn’t you say?”
He let out a sound halfway between a growl and a frustrated sob. Then he noticed the bloodstained cloth on his lap. “Why am I naked?”
“I don’t think you’d prefer to wear the outfit you died in.” Using the pestle, she pointed at said outfit, caked in dirt and blood, on the floor. “But if you change your mind, let me know.”
He grimaced at the pile of clothing, then dropped his chin to assess the wounds she’d sutured. When he’d been alive, they had been fatal. But resurrection was a form of healing, she guessed; and from her observations of Kutaa, there was a possibility of heightened strength and perseverance.
Her grip tightened on the pestle, glad that her scalpel was close by. If he did have revenant strength and broke free, she had to be ready.
He suddenly grew frantic again. “My necklace. Where is it?”
“What, this ugly thing?” She lifted the amber pendant, letting it swing like a pendulum. He eagerly followed its arc. “Don’t worry, I don’t want it.”
“Then will you return it to me?”
Kajal hesitated. Thinking he might be more receptive if she granted his request, she warily stepped forward and slipped the chain over his tousled head, letting the pendant settle against his chest. He breathed out in relief.
“Let’s try this again.” Kajal backed away, pleased at the steadiness of her voice. “I’m Kajal. I resurrected you on behalf of an interested party. This is Kutaa, my undead dog.” Kutaa whuffed softly. “Your turn.”
“Undead…?” He visibly forced himself to move on. “What do you mean by ‘interested party’?”
“I’m going to leave that to them to explain. I’m only a freelancer.” She leaned her hip against the table, smacking her palm lightly with the pestle again. “Your turn, I said.”
“I already told you. My name is Tavinder Thakar. I’m…” His pause was a long, ringing silence that filled the laboratory with a tension she wouldn’t need her scalpel to cut. “I’m the brother of Advaith Thakar, the crown prince of Dharati. His twin brother.”
Kajal had become skilled at intuiting liars over the years, noting the way their eyes shifted, their bodies twitched, their foreheads beaded with sweat. But this boy merely sat and stared at her with steadfast determination, albeit threaded with unease.
She knew that body language too. It was the language of one who had been keeping a secret their whole life, only to have it unravel before their eyes.
Kajal’s arm dropped to her side. “You’re telling the truth.”
The boy—Tavinder—grunted. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“I don’t understand.” Twins, she thought, mind spinning. “If Advaith had a brother, why keep it hidden? And why were you using his name and armor to fight against Bakshi’s forces?”
He turned his head away with a clenched jaw. He’d seemed to have reached his limit.
“I guess it’s not my business anyway,” she muttered. She didn’t belong in whatever world he came from, full of politicking and deception and wars and duty.
Tavinder licked his lips, their previous blue shade having ripened to pale pink. “I still don’t understand why I’m here. How I’m here.”
Kajal squatted so she was more on eye level with him. “What do you last remember?”
He took a few moments to think. His hair hung on either side of his face, in dire need of a wash. Despite that, he certainly had the bearing of a prince, or someone prince-adjacent. Something in his posture, his speech, his presence.
The only thing that marred the image—other than his being naked and bound to a chair—was that he kept his chin down. As if wanting to take up less space or avoid notice. Even Gurveer Bibi had spoken to her with her nose pointed skyward, convinced of her superiority.
Interesting.
“I remember putting on Advaith’s armor,” he whispered eventually. “And riding out to the Harama Plain. I remember fighting. Then…” He shook his head. “There are holes. I don’t know what happened. But I remember pain.”
