Chapter 1
HE WAS MORE THAN A PRETTY SUIT
“Araz…” I woke with his name on my lips and turned to reach for him, my palm meeting cool sheets.
Memory came in a tidal wave, slamming into me, stealing my breath, and twisting my gut into intricate knots.
The primordial evil had Araz!
I leapt out of a bed that wasn’t mine, the scent of roses clinging to my senses as I took in the opulent gold and red décor surrounding me. My temples throbbed, and another memory surfaced—Chandra’s arms crushing me to him as he carried me, clawing and screaming, to this room.
Heat flared in my chest.
He’d brought me here against my will.
Locked me away.
The door opened, and my jailor strode in with a tray of food. “Ah, good, you’re awake. Maybe now we can—”
I let out a battle cry and rushed him.
He vanished before I could reach him, and I barreled into the door, palms slapping wood. I grabbed for the door handle. Twisting. Heart swelling. I wanted out. Needed away from Chandra.
He snagged me around the waist and pulled me back against his chest, enveloping me in the scent of roses. “Calm down.”
I threw my head back, meeting air. Free once more but only for a moment before Chandra appeared in front of me in a blink and grabbed my arms, pinning them to my sides.
“I said calm down. There is nowhere to run. No point in fighting me. I am not the enemy.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a beat, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth for several seconds in which he continued to hold me.
Smart guy. I wasn’t done going crazy just yet.
The buzz of adrenaline, the impulse to lash out, to hurt someone, was still coursing through me. I needed a moment.
“You’re okay, Leela,” he said softly. “You’re safe here.”
Safe? My eyes heated, and I squeezed them tighter, willing the tears away before opening them to look up at him. “Where is he?” I was surprised by how calm I sounded. How…reasonable.
“Araz is gone, Leela.”
“Where did he go?”
He pressed his lips together before speaking. “You know what happened, Leela. You were there. You saw it. Now you must accept it.”
His smooth, calm tone made my skin itch. “You didn’t answer my question, Chandra. Where did Araz go?” He sighed, his eyes darkening with what I read to be pity, and my stomach clenched. “Don’t fucking look at me like that. Tell me where he is.”
“The primordial evil has incinerated Araz’s soul, using it to fuel its emergence. It has claimed Araz’s body as a vessel. Araz is gone, Leela. And he isn’t coming back. He’s dead.”
“No…” I shook my head, heat pricking my sore eyes.
“No! You bring him back!” I twisted in his grip, trying to get free, but he held me tighter.
“Bring him back to me!” He pulled me to his chest, wrapping me tight, one hand on the back of my head and the other around my waist, anchoring me to him.
“Get off me. Get away from me. Araz! Araz…” My voice cracked and my throat tightened as my mind took me back to the labyrinth.
No. I didn’t want to remember the details.
Heat bloomed in my chest. “Let me fucking go!” My voice deepened, gruff and not my own.
Chandra pressed his lips to my temple. “Calm. Down.”
The heat ebbed. He was taking it from me. “Gah!” I lashed out, clawing at his ribs and punching his back. How dare he? How dare he steal my rage from me?
He accepted the blows while rocking me from side to side, humming softly, the sound a primitive lullaby that weakened my limbs. A sob ballooned in my chest.
“Come back to yourself, Leela. Please. You saw what happened. You heard the entity speak using Araz’s voice.
You saw it wearing his body. You know the truth, and now you must accept it.
We need you. The Asura need a queen. Now more than ever, we need the full power of the throne.
If you break now, then the primordial evil wins.
If you break now, then Araz’s sacrifice will have been for nought. ”
Araz’s voice echoed in my mind, his words piercing my heart like barbs of truth.
I love you. I love you with every aspect of my being…I would have come back for you. I would have loved you for eternity…
But he would never come back for me now.
He was gone…
Oh gods, he was gone…
A vise clamped down on my heart and squeezed until I bled, a strangled sound climbing up my throat and spilling from my lips. My chest quaked, and the sob broke free, followed by another until I was shaking. Fracturing.
Chandra held me tighter, his voice background noise to my grief. “It’s all right, Leela. It’s all right. Sleep now.”
My limbs relaxed, the sob dying on my lips as darkness stole me from the arms of grief.
A numbness had taken hold of me. Blessed. Welcome. Even the dawn, as beautiful as it was, failed to stir me. I sat on the window seat of my loaned chamber, watching the palace grounds come alive beneath golden rays.
The click of the door opening registered, followed by the delicious aroma of coffee and toasted bread. I sighed and turned to face the room, to face Chandra and his breakfast tray.
His hair was tousled this morning. The sleeves of his tunic rolled up, feet bare. This was his home, after all. But soon…Soon it would be mine.
I didn’t want it.
I didn’t want anything.
He set the tray on the table by the hearth and sat in one of the armchairs. “Come eat.” He smiled to soften the words from a command to a request.
This couldn’t be easy for him. He was liege.
He was practically a king, and yet over the past few days, he’d dealt with my rollercoaster of emotions—rage, grief, suspicion, apathy, a spectrum that I’d been forced to ride.
He’d stayed with me. Never once berating.
Only soothing. Only taking the edge off when the fire burned too hot for my soul to handle.
I owed him my compliance now. Owed him some level of peace for the chaos he’d endured from me.
I swung my feet to the floor and padded over to join him.
“You look better today,” he said, his expression optimistic.
I responded with a soft snort. “You mean less like I want to kill you or myself?”
He let out a soft breath that was almost a laugh. “Yes. Much less.”
He poured coffee from a carafe into two glass mugs, adding sugar and milk, his face a mask of concentration.
I took the offered glass, cradling it in my hands, unaffected by the heat of it.
My body was changing. I was changing in ways I didn’t fully understand.
Ways that Chandra might be able to explain, if I cared. I exhaled and sharpened my focus.
I had to care.
There was an evil walking about wearing Araz’s body like a pretty suit. I was going to get that body back and give it the burial it fucking deserved.
I took a breath and fixed my gaze on Chandra. “Have you found any evidence yet?”
Chandra shook his head. “No. And I doubt I will. The Authority covered their tracks well.”
“They set a fucking snake on me in the labyrinth, and you’re saying there is nothing to lead that breach back to them?”
His jaw tightened. “Believe me, Leela, I have searched.” He ran his hand through his hair, and I noted the dark smudges beneath his eyes for the first time. He looked weary, the whites of his eyes threaded with crimson. “I’ll keep looking.”
“No. Don’t bother. They failed to kill me, and now they’ll pay for what they did. When can I ascend and take the throne?”
He stilled and then slowly lifted his gaze to meet mine, studying me for several beats before nodding.
“We’ll visit the throne in a few days under Authority watch, and it will test you once more to decide if you’re worthy of claiming it. If you are, then ascension and coronation will take place on the equinox in a month’s time.”
“A month. So we have to wait a month to harness the full power of the throne?”
He smiled thinly, his nostrils flaring. “It’s good to see that you no longer question your worthiness.”
I blinked sharply. He was right. I didn’t question it. Not any longer. A wave of calm washed over me. “I’m ready, Chandra. No question about it.”
He pressed his hands to his thighs and nodded. “Good. Now we wait. We’ve fortified the wards around Aakash Sansaar. Nothing will breach them. Our sky domain is safe.”
“And what about the land? What about all the people in the settlements? What about the Asura forces stationed on the ground?”
“They have been alerted of the threat. They will be on guard.”
“On guard? The primordial evil is loose, and they’re going to be on guard? They’ve been on guard all this time against the devouring force, and I’m assuming that threat is going to increase in power now, right?”
“Yes. It will. But once you take the throne, we will have the power to fight back. To attack, not simply defend.”
A month… “And what do I do in the lead up to the coronation? I won’t sit around twiddling my thumbs. I can’t.”
He leaned forward, his expression earnest. “You’ll shadow me.
Learn the workings of court. Learn who to trust and who to be wary of.
Shahee Kshetra is your home now, and the east wing of the palace will belong to you and your retinue until you take the throne.
After which, the whole palace will belong to you, to do with as you please. ” He smiled warmly.
“And you? Where will you go?”
“The guest house will do for my needs.”
“Or you could just…stay here.”
He blinked sharply, and when he spoke, his tone was soft. Hesitant. “You’d allow me to stay?”
“Chandra, you’re my only blood kin. You belong here.”
His expression cleared, and a slight smile lifted the corner of his mouth. He inclined his head. “Then I shall stay as long as you need me. I’ll begin by arranging a retinue for you.”
“What’s a retinue?”
“Advisors. Guards. Assistants. Asura and pari that will stay close to you and be loyal to you.”
Yes, I needed a circle of trusted people, but they wouldn’t all come from the Asura who already lived here. No. “I’ll do what you ask. I’ll learn the way of the court. I’ll shadow you, but I want to choose my own retinue.”
“Of course. I can introduce you to—”
“I already know who I want. And they’re not here in the Shahee Kshetra. They’re in Prashikshan.”
He exhaled heavily. “I see.”
“Good. Then you’ll arrange a carriage to take me to Prashikshan and enough carriages for me to bring my chosen trusted here.”
He fixed me with a level look, his icy blue eyes cold and unflinching. “I can only allow those who have passed the labyrinth to come with you.”
He wasn’t going to get any arguments from me on that front. “That’s fine. There are four demigods who I want to ask.”
He nodded. “Very well. That can be arranged. But you will need more than four in your retinue. Will you allow me to employ the rest?”
“Yes. You can employ the rest. I also want our anchors here too.”
He shook his head, a soft sound of exasperation escaping his lips. “There is no nest here for the anchors. They will—”
“Then build one.” It was my turn to hold his gaze with what I hoped was an unyielding one of my own. “It didn’t take long to build one in Prashikshan once you decided to create the anchors, did it?”
He looked down at his coffee, which was probably tepid by now, thinking the logistics through. Finally, he sighed. “I’ll commission the structure. It might take a couple of days, but you shall have it.” He picked up his glass.
“Thank you. And there’s one more thing.”
“Just one more?” He arched a brow.
“For now. I want to train with Pakshiraj. I want to learn how to fly well enough to go into battle.”
He stilled, coffee glass partway to his lips. “You want to go into battle?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I need to be on that battlefield when we take down the primordial evil.”
I waited for him to protest, to shut me down, but he didn’t. Instead, he fixed me with the kind of look that usually preceded a heavy truth. My gut tightened.
“What? What is it?”
“I was going to wait to tell you this. To find the right moment, but…now is as good a time as any.” He set his mug down and sat back. “The primordial evil cannot be killed.”
“What?”
“The only weapon that may have been able to kill it was destroyed a long time ago.”
“The Vajra? The one that killed Vritra?”
He dropped his gaze. “Yes, that one. Now all we can do is imprison it.”
“Okay, so we put this primordial evil back in its prison and—”
“No, Leela. That isn’t possible. It would take pure deva power to do that, and not just one deva. We would need several.”
“I don’t understand. Then how do we cage him?”
“We cage it in a body. An immortal body. And we strip it of power.”
Ice flooded my veins. “No…”
“Yes. If we’re going to stop it, then we’ll have to trap it in flesh. Inside Araz.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, blinking away the heat gathering behind my eyes.
“Araz’s soul is gone. It’s just a body now,” Chandra reminded me.
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Okay. So how do we cage it?”
“Not we. You.” He paused to let that sink in before continuing. “There is a blade that acts as a lock. Only a deva can activate it. Leela, you have enough deva blood to wield it.”
A blade… “Wait, are you saying—”
“Yes. You’ll need to pierce the vessel’s heart.”
The vessel…The breath exploded from my lungs.
The vessel was Araz.
Chandra wanted me to pierce Araz’s heart. I closed my eyes, taking a breath to remind myself that Araz was gone. He was just a vessel now. A suit for evil. And if the bastard liked the suit so much, he could wear it for eternity.
I opened my eyes and locked gazes with Chandra. “Okay.”
His studied me warily. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay, I’ll do it.” I picked up a slice of toast. “Let’s eat, then we can go to Prashikshan.
” I bit into the buttery bread, barely tasting it, chewed, swallowed, and took another bite.
I’d eat, not because I was hungry but because I needed fuel.
Ascension wasn’t just about freeing Nani and Pashim.
It was about stopping an ancient evil and avenging Araz.
I would not fail.