We Shall Be Monsters, page 27
“The body’s already been washed,” Sezal told Kajal. She indicated a wooden basin with water nearby, next to a bowl of thick, granular pink salt. “We noticed he—”
“Has a heartbeat,” Kajal finished. Sezal nodded, discomfited.
“Wait,” Dalbir blurted, “are you telling me he’s actually alive?”
“Yes and no.” Kajal pressed her fingertips to Advaith’s shrouded chest. “He does have a faint pulse, but it’s not providing any circulation or keeping his organs active. I don’t know what’s causing it.”
“Will it make reviving him easier?” Sezal asked.
“I suppose we’ll see.” Kajal lightly touched Tav’s forearm. “Tav?”
Hearing the question in her tone, he picked up the cloth draped over the water basin. Carefully, he washed Advaith’s face, threading water through his hair and detangling it with his fingers. Kajal couldn’t watch, so she turned to the Sodhis.
“We’ll need thread,” she said. “Thick and durable, as well as suturing needles.”
Once Advaith was fully clean, Kajal knelt at his head where the incense had been burning, the lingering smell of clove in her nose.
Advaith was in three pieces. Even if it were possible to bring him back on her own, the body had suffered more trauma than Tav’s. It would be a challenge even with the aid of his weak heartbeat. As much as she didn’t want to ask for help, she needed Jassi’s assistance.
First, they’d have to sew him up. The shroud was lifted away, and Tav hissed at the sight of the long, nasty stab wound above Advaith’s heart. The skin there was dark red and puckered, like it had attempted to heal. Even Kajal was unsettled by it.
“Bakshi,” Tav growled. “I’m going to repay him twice over for everything he’s done to us.”
“One step at a time,” Kajal murmured.
Tav’s face was grave as he held his brother’s legs in place. Kajal and Jassi reattached Advaith’s middle, a process that left them with cramped hands and faces damp with sweat. The head was difficult to keep in place, and the sensation of the thick, curved needle sliding through dead flesh left Kajal queasy.
When they were done, a line of black x’s surrounded Advaith’s neck like a torc and riddled his midsection like a belt. Tav scrubbed him down with salt—he’d insisted on doing it alone, and no one opposed him—while Kajal instructed Jassi on what to do next.
She had a sense of déjà vu while she worked, remembering doing this to the boy currently kneeling at her side. Jassi applied adder’s-tongue oil to Advaith’s doshas while Kajal carefully pried the prince’s mouth open to pour a mixture of haw and zinc down his throat. She trembled as she sprinkled the gotu kola and the goldenrod. Tav covered her hand with his.
“It’s all right.” His voice was as strangled as her chest felt. “No matter what happens. It’s all right.”
Kajal bit her lower lip nearly hard enough to draw blood. She didn’t deserve this gentleness, this preemptive forgiveness. None of it.
The Sodhis sat on one of the couches, Dalbir watching the proceedings intently. The rebels stood motionless and grim, ready to put a halt to everything should Kajal try to pull something. When the preparations were done, Kajal stared at the face between her hands, a mirror of Tav’s.
The crown prince of Dharati. The asura of Patala. The other half of Tav’s soul.
It was absurd, how so much depended on one person.
Tav’s shoulder pressed into hers. “I believe in you,” he whispered.
They were the same words Lasya had once spoken, so sure that Kajal could fix anything she set her mind to.
What if I can’t fix this? she thought. What if I’m only destined to break?
She focused on the warmth of Tav’s shoulder until she got herself under control. Pressing her palm to the top of Advaith’s head, she whispered, “Sahasrara, open.” An ember of the silent chakra flared to life, far faster than Tav’s had. As if it had been waiting, dormant and patient, for this very moment. She moved her thumb to the center of his forehead. “Ajna, open.”
She traveled down Advaith’s body, following the trickle of energy that began to circle through him. Jassi kept her hands on the prince’s chest, ready to keep the energy flowing once the chakras in those sections were woken.
“This should be impossible,” Jassi murmured. “It shouldn’t be this easy. If this were public knowledge, any physician could revive a dead body.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Vivaan cut in. “We only need him revived, and then the knowledge can die out.”
Kajal’s fingers twitched. Die out. Did the rebels mean to kill them once this was done? Throw her notebook onto the pyre that held their bodies? She could sense Jassi’s apprehension growing too, and Kajal wondered if she was thinking about her younger sister being left to fend for herself.
By the time she reached Advaith’s chest, Kajal was drenched in sweat and shivering with nerves. Tav kept her upright as she pressed her fingers above the prince’s miraculously beating heart. She traced the groove of the lethal wound, the spot that had proven the asura’s mortality against a single blade.
“Anahata, open.”
The chakra unfurled and flared so fast that Kajal would have been knocked over if it hadn’t been for Tav. She sensed his power shooting through her, past her fingertips and into his brother’s heart. She groaned through her teeth at the charged current of it.
Advaith’s body jerked and arched. The limestone underneath him cracked and crumbled. Behind them, the Sodhis had begun to pray.
A painful second later, Advaith’s feeble heartbeat gave a thunderous jolt, and his eyes flew open.
Everyone flew back by some invisible force. Kajal landed in a tangle with Tav on the rug. Jassi hit the wall, and some of the Sodhis’ delicate ceramics fell, crashing around her. Shri Sodhi covered his and his wife’s heads with his arms while Dalbir ducked behind the couch.
The crown prince sat up with a gasp amid the broken chunks of limestone. His hair fell in lank strands, hiding his face as he frantically felt the sutures at his throat. Blood trickled from his chest wound.
Tav pushed to his knees. “Adi!”
Advaith whirled around and froze. The twins stared at each other: inverted images, identical yet not.
Tav stretched out a shaking hand. He touched Advaith’s cheek, and his brother’s eyelids fluttered.
“Tav,” Advaith whispered. His voice was wrecked, hoarse, like gravel siding down a ravine.
Tav’s chest hitched, and he settled his hand on Advaith’s shoulder. “It’s me. You’re here. We’re…We’re all right. We’re alive.”
Advaith licked his chapped lips, removing the granules of salt that clung in the corners. “Alive.” He took in the room. His eyes were half a shade of brown darker than Tav’s, and they slid impassively over Kajal until they lit in recognition at Vivaan and Sezal.
They fell to their knees and prostrated themselves, just as they had when they’d thought Tav was Advaith. “Your Majesty,” Vivaan whispered, the words laid bare like a heart cradled within careful hands. “Blessed Asura, welcome back.”
Advaith took an uneven breath, his eyes bright.
Tav scooted closer to him, his hand burning blue as he pressed it to Advaith’s stab wound. “Do you remember what happened?” Tav asked.
“I…I think so. Why am I here?”
Kajal could only sit in stunned exhaustion while Tav quickly told him about the Harama Plain, the note they’d found in his room, how the Sodhis wanted to restore his rightful title as heir to Dharati. The Sodhis themselves had fallen into postures of deference, except for Dalbir, who stared at Advaith from behind the couch and mumbled soundlessly to themselves; likely what they were planning to jot down in their journal later.
Advaith looked to Vivaan. Something passed between them, something that made Kajal’s gut twist. Advaith’s confusion had mellowed into an unusual calmness.
“I see.” Advaith smiled up at Tav, but the smile was small and sad and didn’t reach his eyes. “And here we are, together again.”
“Advaith…why did you follow me to the Harama Plain? You were supposed to stay protected at the fort. Ranbir was…Did you…?”
Advaith tucked some of Tav’s hair behind his ear. Kajal noticed that the ruby in the ring he wore had a shape similar to the hole in Ranbir’s forehead. “So there are things you don’t remember. Maybe that’s for the best.”
“What? Why?”
“It wasn’t meant to turn out this way. He promised so many things, and I believed all of them.” Advaith gave a rueful laugh. “I suppose that’s my fault, isn’t it?”
The knot in Kajal’s stomach tightened as Tav leaned away from him. The wound he’d been healing was now covered in a thin layer of fragile skin.
“What are you saying?” Tav whispered.
Advaith’s smile twisted, and he dropped his hand to the place on Tav’s torso where Kajal knew his own fatal wounds lay.
“Did it hurt,” Advaith asked, “when my blade found you here?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nobody in the room moved. They may as well not have existed save for the two brothers locked in their half embrace, one stricken and the other wearing a pained, crooked smile.
“Ah, Tav,” Advaith whispered. “Are you remembering now?”
Tav’s breaths shortened. Kajal wanted to drag him away, but there were red tendrils emanating from Advaith’s bare shoulders, and the rings of his irises were glowing scarlet—an unspoken warning to anyone who dared interrupt them.
“You…” Tav put his hand over Advaith’s, over the closed wounds. “You were with him. Bakshi.”
The scarlet in Advaith’s eyes flickered. “That fool. He told me—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head. The ends of his hair brushed his shoulders. “No. I’ll deal with it later.” He turned to Vivaan and Sezal. “I believe you’re to thank for this?”
Vivaan, still kneeling in genuflection, seemed torn over whether to admit or deny it. “You didn’t tell us you were leaving the fort,” he said instead. The accusation was quiet but all the more palpable for it.
“Or what you planned to do.” Sezal glanced at Tav, clearly wanting to ask if it was true—if the asura had really killed his own brother. “Since that battle, we’ve been stuck in Martya. Our only source of news from Patala has been from the nagas.”
There was a flash of…regret? hurt?…on Advaith’s face, too quick for Kajal to process. “I’m sorry. It all happened so fast.” Lowering his voice, he asked, “Did it work? The halahala?”
Sezal frowned. “You mean the blight?”
“Blight? No, that’s not…” Advaith’s fingers tightened against Tav’s wound until his brother grunted. “Something must have gone wrong. Which means there’s still work to do.”
Advaith looked back up at Tav, his next smile showing teeth. “And now we can do it together, bhara.”
* * *
The Sodhis offered Advaith a change of clothes, a rosewater bath, almond oil for his skin, and someone to treat his hair. He donned a black-and-silver dhoti sherwani but waved the rest away; his thick hair, which fell in waves of black, was tamed only by his fingers.
The rebels explained the situation to him while he dressed. Jassi sat, reticent, on the couch and stared at the line of sutures around Advaith’s throat. Dalbir stood near their parents with arms crossed, their earlier excitement long since faded to disquiet.
Tav sat on his heels beside Kajal with his hands held open in his lap, as if asking for an explanation to fall into them. His expression was bemused, the face of someone forced to accept something they could not.
Did it hurt when my blade found you here?
Everyone thought Bakshi had killed Tav on the Harama Plain. Yet somehow, inexplicably, the one who had spilled his lifeblood was his own brother.
Why? Kajal thought as a shudder racked through her, remembering the pain in Lasya’s cry. Why?
She reached for Tav, but he flinched when her fingers brushed his thigh. She snatched her hand back and continued to shiver on her own.
“I remember you,” Advaith said. “If I recall correctly, you come from a line of cousins.”
Dalbir raised an eyebrow. “We’re related?”
“Distantly.” Advaith smiled with disarming cheer. “I believe my father often invited your parents to the palace,” he said to Shrimati Sodhi.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I would sometimes accompany them.”
Advaith snapped his fingers. “That’s right! You and I played pachisi. You were quite good.”
She flushed and ducked her head while her husband looked on with discomfort. “We knew that what Anu Bakshi did was unjust,” she said. “So we moved out of the capital and kept our relationship to the royal family quiet. I vowed to find some way to undo the damage he’s caused in your absence.”
“So you are the ones responsible for reviving not only me, but my brother.”
She reluctantly shook her head. “I did not revive you. I merely supplied the necessary Ayurvedic resources.”
“Then who did?”
Vivaan stepped forward and jerked his chin at Kajal. “That one.”
The crown prince turned, and his eyes met Kajal’s for the first time. His maintained a tinge of red while they studied her with focused intensity, like a scavenger looking for the best pieces of meat to strip from the bone.
Then those eyes narrowed. “Such a miracle can be performed with Ayurveda?”
When Kajal remained silent, Vivaan snapped, “Answer your king.”
She couldn’t help the wry twitch of her mouth. “Who’s a king? Pretty sure someone else’s ass warms the throne. Goes by the name Bakshi. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Felt his sword go through your gut, even.”
Before Vivaan could retort, Advaith threw his head back and laughed. The prince’s laughter shocked Vivaan into silence, but his shock quickly gave way to soft wonder. Beside him, Sezal looked similarly torn between concern and fondness.
“You’re not wrong!” Advaith agreed. “But we’ll change that soon enough.”
He strode over and grasped her chin, forcing her gaze higher. All traces of humor fled, leaving him solemn and searching. She held her breath and focused on the ring of scarlet around his irises. She might as well have been a bird pinned under the curious, cruel hands of a boy yearning to understand how she worked.
A cold, familiar wisp curled around her. The faintest hint of a whine. The barest caress of a whisper. Advaith’s grip tightened on her chin, squeezing painfully as two of his fingers pressed into her pulsing carotid artery.
“Ayurveda,” he repeated slowly, and if she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was amused.
In a flash, Tav was on his feet. He grabbed his brother’s wrist to wrench Advaith’s hand away, glaring at him with eyes burning blue. In that moment he was beyond boy or animal, a creature of both divine and feral construct.
Advaith inhaled sharply, then let it out as a breathy laugh. “Bhara, why so grim? I won’t hurt her. I’m merely interested in how she came to learn such an unorthodox procedure.”
“We aren’t answering questions now,” Tav said in a low voice, and Kajal’s mind snagged on the word We. “Not until you answer mine. Why did you work with Bakshi?”
Advaith tried to tug his wrist away, but Tav squeezed until he made a pained sound. Only then did Tav let go, and Advaith took a couple steps back. Vivaan put a warning hand on his sword’s hilt with a glower at Tav.
“Working with Bakshi,” Advaith muttered. He touched the sutures lining his neck, fingertips bumping along their black ridges. “I was betrayed by Bakshi.”
“What are you talking about?” Tav demanded. “Speak clearly, Adi.”
Advaith stilled at the nickname. A mask slipped over his face, shuttering the flashes of bright life that had been returned to him. Like he’d brushed up against something that burned and immediately retreated, a hand feeling the kiss of a hot stove.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he whispered at last.
“How do you expect me to understand unless you explain?” The glow of Tav’s eyes had dimmed, but at this they blazed again. “Explain why it was your weapon that gave me these wounds. Explain why you’re the one who killed me!”
His voice rose with the same ferocious grief that howled in Kajal’s chest. The whine in the back of her skull rose higher.
Advaith shut his eyes. “I didn’t…Tav, I didn’t mean for it to happen. He told me all we had to do was fight.”
“Who told you? Bakshi?”
“No. Lord Dukha.”
The Sodhis touched their foreheads to the floor with fervid, whispered prayers against the name of the demon lord invoked in their household. Shri Sodhi drew out a small marble icon of the Elephant. Advaith, seeing this, snatched it out of his hand.
“Does a mere name scare you into theatrics?” Advaith demanded. “Has the demon lord been reduced to nothing but a tale to induce nightmares?” He closed his hand around the Elephant icon, and it crumbled to white dust between his fingers. The Sodhis gasped.
“There would be no balance in this world without his existence, without the rakshasas! And yet,” Advaith went on with a bitter laugh, sweeping his arm around the room, “everyone believes it’s solely the yakshas that keep this plane stable. They are taught that yakshas are good, that they are necessary, but the rakshasas…We become cautionary tales, things to be feared in the dark. The yakshas become saviors, and we become monsters.”
He threw the white dust at Tav’s feet. Tav stared at him with hands clenched at his sides, imploring, as if they’d had this argument before.
