“Yes,” he said quietly. “Now, one more question.”
He lifted his head and stepped to within a breath of her body. He’d never stared at her with deeper concentration.
Kavya wanted to look away, but that would be tantamount to running. “Ask me.”
“Do you mourn those who were hurt and scared and stolen?”
Tears were sticky like gelatin in her throat. “I do,” she managed to say. “A piece of my heart died at dusk.”
“And if you were able, what color would you wear to express that mourning?” Surely he had other features, but she was riveted to his tortured eyes. “Tell me, Kavya. What color do the Indranan wear to mourn their fallen?”
“The same color we gave to the humans here in India, Pakistan, Tibet. No matter the faction, North or South, we wear white.”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Tallis stared at her face, her honest face, and ducked into himself. He didn’t move, but there was no denying his withdrawal from Kavya’s simple words. It shook everything he knew to its bedrock.
He’d rebelled against the Sun—the dictator who’d turned him into a killer. He’d plotted against her and hated her. She’d been using him, and he’d been right to rebel. He only regretted that he hadn’t started to revolt years ago. It was past time to break free of that false prophet.
That the apparition happened to look like Kavya, happened to use the name her innocent followers had bestowed . . .
He was mad.
Or Kavya was even cagier and more manipulative than he’d believed.
No, he couldn’t hold on to that logic anymore. Kavya was an optimist in a time of despair. She manipulated people, but he’d never seen what might qualify as malevolence, only subtle pushes toward the hope and courage few dared dream: peace.
All that remained of his antipathy toward Kavya was that her goal of unification aligned with the woman who’d directed his violent hands. That thing was not optimistic or innocent. He’d felt only selfishness and ambition.
For the sake of the Dragon Kings as a whole, that ambition could not come to pass.
Part of him had grudgingly come to respect Kavya. It seemed a shame to find a reason to continue thwarting her noble endeavors. But his intention remained the same. He would rid himself of the demon in his mind, even if it meant keeping Kavya from accomplishing her mission.
“I dreamed of you again.” Throat tight, he cut off her protests with a stiff sweep of his hand. “It wasn’t you. Nothing fit. She was a warped version of how you appeared before your followers. Something to please everyone. Only . . . more exaggerated. It was the first time I could see through the illusion. She said she mourned the dead, but she wore turquoise from the North.”
“That would never happen. Ever. It would be an insult, not to the South, but to the people we used to be. Long ago. A people who shared the same name, without qualification.” She forcefully shook her head. He’d known as much, no matter his unanswered questions and fury at having been used. “What else did this . . . Sun tell you?”
“She claimed that peace between the factions would mean unification of the Five Clans.”
Kavya’s brows drew together. The more she revealed of her authentic personality, the more animated her features became. She exposed more with her frown than she could have with a hundred words. At least that was reassuring. Toward the end of his dream the phantom in his head had gazed down at him with an eerie blankness that reminded him too much of Pashkah.
“That has never been a facet of my hopes,” she said. Her fingers compulsively itched the evergreen’s shredded bark. One foot tapped the needle-strewn ground—a soft patter of sound he identified despite the steady, growling flow of the Beas at his back. “How would the end of our civil war unify all of the Dragon Kings? I can’t even comprehend the power someone would need to make that happen.” The drain of hope from her eyes buried pain behind his sternum. “To force compliance? By any means?”
Tallis nodded. His eyelids felt lined with grit. “The Sun I envisioned said that the factions would unify when twins stopped resisting the inevitable. A gift split between two people was a gift that hadn’t been allowed its full potential.”
“So just start killing each other?” Her melodic, softly accented voice pitched toward hysteria. Whatever tricks she’d used when speaking to the assembly, none had been to modulate the musical rhythm of her speech. That rhythm was choppy now, made staccato by her mounting outrage. “Murder your twin? Your triplet? Was that her message? She might as well advocate brinksmanship among human nations that stockpile masses of weapons.”
“ ‘Survival of the fittest,’ she said.”
“And those who survived would be powerful and insane. Can you imagine the upheaval? For the most part, our kind blends with the human population. You have, haven’t you?”
“For years.”
“Do you think our relative anonymity would last if we started killing each other in the streets? Or bringing innocent humans into the fray?”
The jab of guilt made Tallis look away. He’d led the Asters to his niece’s home. Just for questioning, they’d claimed. Only, Tallis had watched in horror as her unassuming life had been shattered by the Asters’ men and a few of his warped Cage warriors—those Dragon Kings who fought to clear debts or, for some, to earn the right to conceive children. Dr. Heath Aster, son of the cartel’s patriarch, was the only person in the world to have discovered a method of circumventing the barrier that had hampered natural conception for a generation. Fighting for the survival of one’s bloodline had driven some Dragon Kings to the underground world of the Cages.
Then how had Nynn been able to conceive a natural-born Dragon King son?
Just for questioning.
He’d never wanted them to invade Nynn’s home and murder her human husband with a shotgun blast to the chest.
“It’s happened already,” he said. “I know of at least one human who’s died because of this increasing need to consolidate power.”
“You thought by discrediting me and keeping the Indranan split into factions, that power would never come to pass?”
“Yes.” He paused, glanced at a very grim-faced Chandrani, and decided to tell the truth. “And because I genuinely hated you. I wanted revenge for twenty years of having been manipulated toward a goal that held no more substance than my dreams.”
Kavya was a strong woman. Any other would have railed and cussed and blamed him—rightfully so, it seemed. Layers of guilt. Soon he would be buried beneath them, with only a life of berserker mindlessness to swirl free of the cloying dirt.
She was strong because she nodded. “You hated the wrong person.”
“Seems that way.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I don’t know. And believe me, twenty years is a long time to ask the same question.”
She drew back and did that odd thing with her fingers. Hands clasped at her stomach. Some particular adjustment to the alignment of her fingers. What followed was an expression of serenity and steady calm that Tallis envied. He coveted it more than he’d ever coveted anything.
What would it be like to go through life again with a sense of rightness and certainty? He’d known that feeling once, but he would never trust it again. Too much damage had been done when he’d relinquished free will in favor of blind faith.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” she said simply. “But I do think we need to go. A telepath must’ve driven you to these extremes. If she—or even he—has been feeding you these lies for two decades, then it must be someone with a great deal of power.” She paused. Her gaze darted all around, as if the trees might come alive. “Two decades . . . My brother killed our sister almost exactly twenty years ago.”