Chapter 1 An Ancient Tale of Betrayal
Stupala, Forest Kingdom of Danavas
Ara faced her pursuers, her fists clenched so tight she lost feeling in her fingers.
She had limped and dragged her sore body all the way to the raised step that ringed the circular hall.
Her leg throbbed insistently from a knife wound.
Blood painted her painful progress through the hall in crimson footprints, but muted its savage intensity into the deep red of her saree, hiding the extent of her injuries.
A small elite group of devas had cornered her in the hall, brandishing maces, swords, and javelins.
The body of her guard lay dead a short distance away, crushed under a wall that had collapsed when the intruders forced their way in.
A split-second decision that had saved her life but ended his, when he had pushed her out of harm’s way.
Her mind played their last interaction.
“Why do you call me queen? Where are my parents? My sisters? My brothers?”
Her guard had answered without bothering to turn toward her, his sword cutting a way through the dense battle happening inside their palace.
“Open your eye, Princess. Acknowledge the truth. Everyone is dead, apart from your father. He has gone missing. There is no one left. You are to be the queen now. We must flee.” He took her hand once again as they ran toward the secret entryway.
That was before they realized the secret entrance was compromised too. A rogue group of devas had waylaid them, cutting off their escape.
Grief burned her throat and parched her eyes of tears.
She cried in her heart for the dead guard.
Like she had mourned the death of many others she had been witnessing since…
was it just this morning? When the devas had laid a sudden siege to their forest kingdom.
Family, friends, and acquaintances. They seemed to spare no one.
Through the partially demolished wall, screams and the sounds of battle floated in. She knew without looking most of them belonged to her people, the danavas.
Ara didn’t know how or why they were losing so badly, when they had weathered worse storms before. She held out hope, for as long as her father, the patriarch of their clan, was alive, their kingdom wouldn’t fall. He was the most powerful danava of this dimension and defeat had never touched him.
One among the group of devas stepped forward and removed his helmet, uncovering a face of exquisite beauty, with dark wavy hair and midnight eyes, a familiar face that had become as dear to her as her own.
“Dhanu?!” she gasped in shock, lifting trembling fingers to her mouth. It took her a moment to understand the significance of his presence here, now, wearing an armor emblazoned with the symbol of the sun. An armor exclusive to the devas and impossible to be worn by other races.
Why? Why did he have to be a deva? A sob built up in her chest only to be choked down.
She had loved him with all her heart. The day her family approved of their union was one of the happiest days in her life.
Her betrayed gaze demanded answers, but he merely unsheathed his sword and moved forward, his impassive visage giving nothing away.
An arm barred Dhanu from walking toward her.
“Have you forgotten her powers?” another deva from the group said. “She is their princess. She’ll smite us all to death before we even take a step forward.”
“What makes you think I wouldn’t do it now?” she said, her mouth forming the words by reflex, but her mind still reeled with the recent revelations. She wondered how much more her battered heart could take before it gave up.
A prickling in her left eye made her look up, and she spotted an invisible ribbon of power floating toward her, sedate and undulating in the still air. Her heart thudded seeing it.
No!
She shrank from it, mouthing her denial as more tears squeezed out of her eyes—she seemed to have some left in her, after all.
The bank of power came forward inexorably, her reluctance notwithstanding, and merged into her right eye, settling inside.
No one could see what had just happened; although, she saw Dhanu’s eyes narrow.
Her knees threatened to buckle under a fresh onslaught of grief.
Her father was dead. This was his power that came to her, and was now coursing through her like lightning.
The danava royal family shared the burden of their unique magic, and with each death, it redistributed among the remaining members. She was the only one left, and the magical abilities of their entire immediate family now resided in her.
Their voices echoed inside her head. Memories of her siblings’ lives, grief amplified tenfold, happier moments that now struck a bittersweet tenor—a cacophony that made her wonder if she was going mad. Was she Ara still? Or a weird entity that carried the collective consciousness of her family?
Through it all, one thought rang clear and bright—she was responsible for the destruction all around. She was the one who had vouched for Dhanu, the traitor who turned out to be a deva in disguise.
The grief was corrosive, eating at her, and she wanted to pull her hair and scratch herself raw, bitterly wishing she had never been born.
Let this be the end, Ara. The whisper came as a command from her father’s memories. From anyone else, she could take it to mean “let things be,” but she knew her father. He would hate for her to go down without a fight. It steadied her and snapped her spine straight.
“You are in my kingdom, in my father’s hall.
I will kill you all,” she promised, flicking her eyes to the ornately carved ceiling that was still holding, despite the damage to the walls.
At her command, a circular design embedded into the carvings broke loose and rained dust and stone debris on them.
The design was shaped like a wheel that immediately began rotating.
The devas brought forth a small danava child whose wide, fear-filled eyes swallowed up most of his face. She inhaled sharply, recognizing her nephew, the son of a distant cousin. Her disillusioned gaze went once again to Dhanu, who now held a knife at the child’s throat, his meaning clear.
“So, the devas’ dharma means nothing then?” Her sarcastic words rang through the hall. “You would stoop to threatening children for your purposes?”
A flicker of regret in Dhanu’s eyes was the only satisfaction she got, but apparently it wasn’t enough to change anything.
“Remove your eye and your nephew goes free,” said another from the group.
Ara hesitated, weighing her options, knowing she had none. Her attention went once again to her lover, who stood complicit with everything that was happening. Her mouth twisted. Of course, he wouldn’t do anything. He was one of them.
She pulled a wickedly curved dagger from thin air.
Her self-loathing gave her the strength to stab unerringly into her own eye.
A burst of agony bored through her skull, and she wondered faintly through the pain enveloping every nerve ending, if this was how they had killed her family, each of them powerful in their own right.
Ara fell to her knees, blood pooling on the floor.
The devas moved from their position at the periphery of the hall, confident in her helplessness.
Varying degrees of a smile painted their faces as they surrounded her.
The devas, as a race, were said to be handsome but she detected only a cold sort of beauty in their sharp features, empty eyes, and cruel smiles.
Dhanu remained behind, keeping his knife steady at her nephew’s throat.
“I’ve done as you asked, now let my nephew go,” she choked out, past the scream of agony building in her throat.
One of them pulled her up by her hair and placed a thin file on the bridge of her nose.
“My sister died at the hands of a danava. Her mutilated body was dropped on the mountain Sumeru, in the middle of a holy ritual. Why should we spare any of you? Every living creature, beast or man, would rejoice if we were to wipe this earth-bound plane off your race.”
Ara’s fangs protruded past her lips in aggression. A pressure built inside her, seeking release.
“Stop. This has gone far enough.” Dhanu spoke for the first time and his voice carried across the hall, anger and authority swirling together, causing the devas to pause in their spot. “We are not like them, enjoying the cruelty meted out to others. It you must kill her, be quick about it.”
“Are you jesting? You want to show mercy to this?” The deva holding Ara by the hair shook her roughly, causing her to slide in her own blood pooling on the floor. The pain was a continuous beat under her skin, but she had to hold on. It would all end soon, like her father had wished.
A sudden grinding interrupted the argument. Everyone looked up at the source as the wheel on the ceiling began to move again.
“What the…but how? You told us where the power of the danavas is lodged,” one of the soldiers whispered, swinging his head toward Dhanu, who appeared just as confused as the rest. “If she injures her right eye, she is supposed to lose her magic. Did you double-cross us?”
Wild laughter broke out. The soldier glanced down at Ara fearfully and unclenched his hand from her hair as if burned and backed away fast.
Ara stood with difficulty, a mad rictus slashing her face, fluid dripping from her eyes, one clear tears and the other crimson blood.
It ran past her chin, staining her teeth with death.
“How quickly you accuse your own brothers of treachery. The power of a danava lies in the right eye, true, and the other eye carries immunity against that power. But I was born with an anomaly…it is reversed in my case.”
This was the one thing she hadn’t shared with Dhanu, the one thing that her father insisted she keep secret. He was proven right; it saved her life now. For a short while, at least until she could feed the vengeful beast within her.