We Shall Be Monsters, page 19
The conversation went on a little longer, but Kajal stepped away from the door as her chest filled with hot pressure. The feeling was foreign and uncomfortable, and for a moment she wondered if she had accidentally ingested some of the bitter almond extract.
But no—this was jealousy, plain and simple. Jealousy over someone like Vritika, because a professor saw greatness in her and wanted to shepherd her toward it.
No one had ever seen greatness in Kajal. Lasya had believed in her, but that was the biased loyalty of a sister. The rebels had sought her abilities, but that was exploitation. She had allowed herself to be used. Was still being used.
If she had been able to come to the university on her own, perhaps with Lasya at her side, would someone like Jassi have seen her potential and taken them under her care?
The door whisked open, and Kajal jumped, blinking the wetness from her eyes. Jassi was equally startled at the sight of her.
“Kajal,” she said, closing the door. “I thought you’d be with the prince.”
“I wanted to clean up.” Kajal gestured at the already clean laboratory. “Seems I was beaten to it.”
“I had the janitorial staff come by as soon as I could. Didn’t want anyone else to see the broken door.”
Kajal tried to reorient herself for the conversation she’d been planning to have, but she couldn’t let one thing go. “You’re not going to help Vritika, are you?”
“I’m not going to point her in the direction of your sister’s bhuta, if that’s what you mean.”
Kajal forced herself to nod despite that hint of betrayal tasting like a rotten confection on her tongue. “I think I know how to restore the prince’s memories.”
Jassi’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “How?”
“There’s a place to the north where he used to go with his family. He can’t remember the exact name or what they did there, but if we visit, it could help trigger his memories.”
“Oh…Kajal, I don’t know. We should probably wait for Vivaan and Sezal to return first.”
“The rebels said that time isn’t on our side. The blight is getting worse every day.”
“That’s true, but—”
“So we should do this while they’re retrieving Lasya.”
Jassi sighed. “Where is this place?”
“He said it’s near a town called Pahari. Or maybe it’s the town itself. It’s hard for him to remember clearly.”
Jassi chewed on her thumbnail. “I have classes, and the administrative staff has to approve all my extended leaves.”
“There’s no need for you to come. Advaith is a soldier, remember? And besides, I have my sister’s bhuta. No one’s going to attack us and walk away from it.”
Jassi still seemed conflicted.
“It’s imperative we restore his memories,” Kajal said. “Not only for your plans, but for mine. If I can fix his memories, then that means I’ll be able to help Lasya if hers are missing too. The sooner this gets done, the sooner I can put the bhuta to rest. I don’t…I don’t want another Riddhi.”
Jassi winced. After a long, painful moment, her shoulders fell.
“All right,” she whispered. “But please make it quick. And be careful. If anything happens to him, the blame will fall on me.”
“Don’t worry,” Kajal said with a smile she didn’t feel, remembering how the bhutas had grabbed and scratched at her. “I’m sure the danger will be minimal.”
She was on her way to tell Tav when she ran into Vritika outside the building. The girl’s eyes were bloodshot, her hair halfheartedly brushed yet maintaining its usual luster. Recalling what Vritika had said about exorcising Lasya, Kajal scowled.
Vritika mirrored the expression. “What?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” Kajal turned toward the dormitories, but Vritika blocked her. “What do you want?”
“Jagvir told me you ran into Riddhi before she collapsed. What happened between you two?”
“I accidentally saw them in a compromising position,” Kajal answered, trying to keep her voice level as she ignored the drum-quick rhythm of her pulse. “I left quickly.”
“That’s it?”
“Are you trying to insinuate something?”
Vritika pressed her lips into a thin line. Kajal knew better than to agitate her, but Vritika’s conversation with Jassi kept itching in the back of her mind.
“They said she died of heart failure,” Vritika said at last. “But she’s too young for that, and she didn’t have any illnesses.”
“Maybe she thought she saw a rakshasa,” Kajal said with a flip of her hand. “She seemed eager enough to find one.”
Vritika curled her hands into fists. “They also suggested poison.”
“What does that have to do with me? I’m not the one she was kissing. Maybe you should question Jagvir instead.”
Vritika moved closer, and Kajal took an unconscious step back, all too aware of the freshly made almond extract in her pocket.
“I come from a family that studies rakshasas,” Vritika said softly. “How they hunt. How they kill. Riddhi didn’t die from a heart failure or poison. She died from a bhuta.”
Kajal did her best to keep her expression impassive. “I don’t know what that means.” Thinking of Jassi in the laboratory, she slipped on a confused smile. “I’m just a girl from Malhir. I’m not that knowledgeable about rakshasas.”
“Really,” Vritika said flatly. “Because that’s not the impression you give me.”
The whine built so gradually she wasn’t aware of it until it became a thin scream. Phantom fingers plucked Kajal’s clothing as a low laugh cut through the whine.
Vritika took another step forward, determination and grief making a grim mask of her face. Over her shoulder, a pair of red eyes glowed.
Kill, came a whisper in her ear. Kill?
“No,” Kajal breathed. “Don’t.”
Vritika paused. Then she hissed, raising her arm and staring at her sarbloh bangle. The bhuta formed fully behind her, white kameez fluttering, dark hair like tendrils of shadow. Lasya’s normally placid expression was twisted into a sharp grin—eager, wanting.
Hungry.
Kajal bolted.
The dormitories weren’t far, but they might as well have been across the country as she darted between startled students and staff. The dissonant notes of Lotus Blossom wove around her like a net ready to ensnare her.
She managed to stumble into the flat right as the hum reached its peak and cold fingers clamped around her throat.
Kajal fell to the floor with a choked gasp. Above her, Lasya stared down with burning eyes the crimson of fresh blood, that unnatural smile distorting her face into a stranger’s, a monster’s. Kajal kicked and fought, drumming her heels against the wooden floor and scrabbling at her neck, doing little more than scratching up her own skin as her fingers passed through the bhuta’s.
But those spectral fingers were substantial enough to close up her arteries, to cut off the rush of oxygen to her brain. Her entire skull felt like it would shatter, the pressure growing intolerable, maddening, while her heart fell out of rhythm.
Part of her wondered if it would be better to let it happen. To give her sister the satisfaction of revenge: one life paid with another. They had once done everything together—why not die together too?
A bark pierced through the roaring of her ears. Lasya snarled as a dozen butterflies descended on her, forcing her to dissipate into clouds of purling white smoke.
Kajal struggled for breath. Someone gently rolled her onto her side.
“Kajal! Kajal, can you hear me?”
She couldn’t speak, so she weakly lifted a shaking hand and patted the closest thing to her. By the feel of it, it was Tav’s knee.
“Damn. All right. Hold on,” he was mumbling above her. Something wet and cold touched her temple. “Kutaa, sit.”
The dog sniffed at Kajal’s face a second longer before obeying. How does he do that so easily? she thought in a bleary, out-of-focus way as fingertips came to rest lightly at her bruised throat.
“Focus on breathing,” Tav said. Her vision was murky, but she turned to the sound of his voice like a flower to the sun. “You’ll be all right.”
Logically, she knew the words were an empty comfort. But her body reacted to them like they were steeped in truth, turned to gilded law.
Warmth, sweet and mellow, soaked into her skin. Kajal shuddered and relented to its slow devouring of her body, the way it traveled from the crown of her head to the bowl of her pelvis to the tips of her toes.
Her throat flared with pain, sharp and dull at once. Every breath was like swallowing fire. But as the warmth sank deeper, the pain lifted from heavy fog to light mist, leaving her a little less lost and a little more at ease.
There was music in her blood, familiar, as quiet and essential as her next breath. All the vulnerable, creature parts of her body relaxed and gave in to it, acknowledging that the danger of the storm had passed—that this, finally, was shelter.
For the first time in years, she fell asleep knowing she was safe.
* * *
She woke not in Jassi’s bed, but her own. She blinked, disoriented, and turned her face into a mound of fur.
“Mmph,” she grunted. Kutaa lifted his head. “You’re too warm.”
Her voice was hoarse, but the pain was only a fraction of what it had been before. She touched the base of her throat and pressed experimentally. No bruising.
“Kajal?”
Tav sat on the edge of the bed, haggard and troubled.
“You healed me,” she said.
He reached out and then paused, waiting for her consent. She nodded. His calluses were rough against the soft skin of her throat.
“Hopefully I managed to undo most of the damage,” he said. “How do you feel?”
She sat up and leaned against Kutaa. “Fine, actually.” Being strangled was a traumatic experience for the body, but she was only tired and sore, as if she’d done a hard day’s labor. “I guess being the deva has its perks.”
His healing was nothing short of a miracle, which surpassed Ayurveda by leagues. The wheels in her mind immediately began to turn, wondering what would happen if she could channel that magic. Could she better detect illness and injury, or modify bodies? Could she resurrect multiple people at once?
She’d spent years learning the mechanics of the body and how it worked, how it could be healed, how it could be altered. Yet it had taken Tav moments to do what would have taken her hours, if not days. The itch of jealousy returned.
At least it seemed to have taken a lot out of him, which meant his powers had a limit.
“So that was the bhuta,” he muttered. “Your sister.”
“You could see her?”
“No.” He lifted a hand in reply. His bangle shone silvery on his wrist. “But this grew ice-cold when I came near.”
Sarbloh bangles were made of pure iron, and rakshasas—including bhutas, apparently—were known to detest the metal. Kajal thought back to Vritika’s hiss; her bangle must have grown cold too.
Kajal paled. “Vritika, is she—?”
“No one’s died,” he assured her. “I think my yakshas have weakened the bhuta for the time being.”
Kajal slung an arm around Kutaa’s thick neck with a relieved sigh. “When I refuse the bhuta a kill, it attacks me instead. But last time, that didn’t stop it from taking a life. That’s why Riddhi…” She quietly cleared her throat. “I can’t control it, at least not anymore. Maybe I never could.”
His expression tightened. “Then I hope the rebels come back with your sister’s body soon.”
“They better.”
She’d gotten lucky that Vritika hadn’t also dropped dead. But Kajal knew how suspect she must look to the demon hunter in training. Her days at the university were numbered.
“We need to leave for the Harama Plain,” she decided. “Now.”
“But you were just—”
“We’re going now.” She touched her neck again. Even the scratches she’d clawed into her own flesh were gone. “And if you think one bhuta is troublesome, then be prepared to have a really bad day tomorrow.”
Chapter Eighteen
They needed a horse.
“It doesn’t feel right to steal an animal,” Tav muttered as they crouched in the foliage outside the university walls. There was a separate gate for guards and soldiers that led into the Tortoise Court, where the barracks were. A few guards were riding up to it after what Kajal assumed was sentry duty.
“We’re not stealing one,” she whispered back. “We’re borrowing one.”
“That’s not much better.”
“Do you have money for a mount, O Hallowed Deva of One Hundred Morals?”
He sighed in resignation.
The guards dismounted. Kajal patted Kutaa’s side, and the dog slipped through the underbrush, making enough racket to cause the horses to grow skittish. That, combined with Kutaa’s smell, had them pulling at their reins.
“What’s wrong with you?” one of the guards complained. “It’s probably just a monkey.”
Beside her, Tav’s eyes glowed blue. The horses bolted. The guards gave chase and Tav held out his hand, making a beckoning gesture. One of the calmer horses stopped, tail swishing, before it turned and sedately walked toward them.
“How does that work, exactly?” Kajal asked as Tav took hold of the fallen reins. “This thing you have with animals.”
He shrugged, the light leaving his eyes. “I’m not entirely sure. It’s innate. I can’t sense their thoughts, but I can feel their sattvic energy. It’s sort of like a string between us.”
“Like a puppet master and his puppet.”
He narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“Does the asura have a similar connection?”
“Mostly with rakshasas, but yes. Although he was always better with people than I was.” His hands were suddenly on her waist. “We don’t have long until they return.”
“Hey!” She smacked at him, and he yanked his hands away.
“Do you want to get on the horse or not?” he demanded.
“I can get on myself.” Although the only horse she’d mounted on her own had been an aga ghora, and it had gone to the trouble of kneeling to make it easier.
Tav passed her the reins. “Fine. Go ahead.”
Kajal stood up straighter at the challenge. The horse was standing placidly beside her, a brown gelding that probably weighed the same as about a dozen of her. She shoved her right foot through the stirrup.
“Wrong foot,” he said. “You’ll end up sitting backward.”
Before she could snap I know that, the guards’ voices filtered through the trees as they returned with the runaway horse. The gelding, hearing them, began to walk forward.
“No no no no.” Kajal awkwardly hopped along beside it, frantically grabbing at the saddle. “Stop! Stop!”
She craned her neck to see Tav standing in the same spot, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. “Good job,” he drawled. “Interesting technique.”
“Shut up and help me.”
“I thought you didn’t need help.”
Kajal held in a strangled scream and launched herself at the saddle. There was only minimal flailing as she hauled herself over and landed on her stomach with an oof.
A choked-off noise came from where Tav was standing.
“You better not be laughing at me,” she warned. “I can and will poison you when you least expect it.”
“Noted.” Tav took the reins and led them farther into the trees. “Are you done?”
“I got on, didn’t I?” Never mind that she felt like a sack of rice thrown over the saddle.
Kutaa came out of the brush as she slid one leg over the beast to properly sit up. When Tav made to get up behind her, she shoved a hand in his face.
“Get your own horse,” she demanded.
“The guards are almost here,” he said, muffled by her palm. He pushed it away. “We can’t risk taking another.”
“Ride in front of me, then.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Tav’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t relent. Muttering to himself, he shifted his stance and effortlessly swung up in front of her.
They were nestled far too close for her comfort. But at least this way she wouldn’t be ensnared by his arms, made to feel small and trapped.
“Hold on to me,” he said. He shifted his weight forward to get the horse moving, swaying with its momentum.
She wrapped one arm around his waist. She’d never been pressed up against a boy before. He carried the scent of grass and the cha he’d had this morning, a gentle blend of nature and spice. His back was a flat, warm expanse, unfamiliar and also oddly inviting, as if encouraging her to lay her cheek upon it.
Kajal shook the thought away. She was only marveling that her creation could exude such heat when she herself ran so cold.
* * *
They traveled for a few hours, avoiding the roads. When the sun sank, they were forced to stop for the night in a wooded area. Like during her travel with the rebels, Kajal’s legs were sore when she slipped off the saddle, and she braced herself against Kutaa. She didn’t have Sezal’s pouch of chamomile, but she had something better.
“To what extent can you use your power?” she asked once Tav pulled the saddle off the horse. “What’s an injury you couldn’t heal?”
“You’re still on about this?”
Earlier, Kajal had pressed her fingertips as softly as possible over the knob at the top of his spine, using the point to try and delve into his channels and suss out what fueled his power. He’d immediately told her to cut it out.
