CHAPTER NINE

Meera woke to a knock at the heavy wooden door and a voice calling, "The fire, didi."

She wrapped the thick wool blanket around herself and padded to the door in bare feet on cold stone. The room they'd given her — Tara's old room, though no one had said so — was beautiful and freezing, with stone walls, carved wooden shutters, and a bed that was essentially a wooden platform piled with quilts so heavy they felt like armour.

She opened the door to find a sturdy woman in a cotton sari and a thick cardigan, holding a bucket of kindling and a small oil lamp. The woman's face was round, freckled, and kind, and when she looked at Meera, her expression went through a rapid series of adjustments — shock, grief, recovery, professional composure — in about two seconds.

"Good morning, didi. I'm Kamla. I look after the guest rooms."

"Thank you, Kamla. Please come in."

Kamla bustled in with the confidence of a woman who'd been doing this job since before Meera was born. She cleaned the ash from the hearth, arranged the coals, and built a fire with movements so practised they were almost musical — scrape, arrange, blow, wait, add, blow again. The fire caught and filled the room with warmth and the smell of juniper wood.

"Shall I bring hot water for a bath, didi?"

"That would be wonderful." Meera looked at the window. The shutters were closed, but a thin line of silver-grey light outlined the edges. "What time is it?"

"Early. The traders haven't started their day." Kamla eyed Meera's tangled hair with the professional assessment of a woman who had opinions. "I can brush your hair for you if you like. I'm not a lady's maid, but Tara-devi never wanted one, and I used to help her with—" She stopped. Her mouth pressed into a thin line. "Forgive me."

"It's okay." Meera sat at the small dressing table. "Please. I'd be grateful."

The dressing table held a collection of brushes, combs, and small bottles of oil — some amber, some green, all smelling of things she couldn't identify. Kamla picked up a wide-toothed wooden comb and began working through Meera's hair with the careful firmness of a woman who had done this many times for someone with this exact hair.

"You look so much like her," Kamla said softly. "But you hold yourself differently. Tara-devi always sat like she was about to jump up and run somewhere."

"I'm more of a sit-and-think type."

"Mmm." Kamla's hands were gentle. "That's different."

"Tell me about her?"

Kamla paused, then continued combing. "She was brave. Everyone says that, and it's true — she rode into storms, she fought with the palace guards for practice, she could draw a bow from horseback. But that wasn't the part of her I knew best."

"What was?"

"She was lonely." The comb moved through a tangle with practised patience. "She had Arjun, and she had Aisha, and she had the Naga — Takshak. But she missed her mother, who died when she was young. And she missed... I think she missed a world she'd never seen. She used to stand at the window of this very room and stare at the forest, and when I asked her what she was looking at, she'd say, 'The other side.'"

The other side. Prakash Lok. The world where Meera's mother had painted impossible landscapes and talked to trees.

Kamla finished with her hair and opened the wardrobe. "These are Tara-devi's things. No one's touched them since—" She cleared her throat. "They should fit you."

The wardrobe was full of clothes in deep reds and greens and golds — salwar kameez sets in rich fabrics, cotton kurtas for daily wear, a few saris in silk so fine they felt like water. At the bottom, a pair of leather boots that looked well-worn and comfortable.

Meera chose a cotton kurta in deep green — Tara's colour, apparently — and a pair of loose cotton trousers. The boots fit perfectly, which shouldn't have been surprising but was somehow the most unsettling thing that had happened yet.

Kamla tied a shawl around her shoulders with a knot that was clearly traditional, though Meera didn't recognise the style. "There. You look—" Another pause. "You look ready to face the day."

"Thank you, Kamla."

"One more thing, didi." Kamla's voice dropped. "Be careful with Aisha."

"The healer?"

"She's kind and she's clever and she loved Tara-devi like a sister. But she's not from here, and the people she comes from..." Kamla glanced at the door. "They have their own interests."

Before Meera could ask what she meant, another knock came at the door.

---

It was Arjun.

She knew it was Arjun from the way her heart lurched — that involuntary, stupid, treacherous lurch that her body performed regardless of what her mind thought about the situation.

He stood in the doorway holding a tray with two earthenware cups of something steaming, a bowl of fruit — apples, again, apparently the only fruit that grew in this climate — and a small pot of what smelled like honey.

"Good morning." His voice was careful, the voice of a man navigating a minefield while carrying something fragile. "I brought you — well, it's not coffee. There's no coffee here. It's herbal something. Aisha makes it, and it's actually quite good, and there are apples and—"

"Come in."

He stepped inside, and Kamla stepped out with a nod so subtle it was barely visible. The door remained open.

Arjun set the tray on the table by the window and stood there, not sitting, not speaking, looking at her with those green eyes that had first made her believe in the sun.

He was wearing Chhaya Lok clothes — a blue cotton kurta, loose trousers, leather boots. His hair was tied back. Without the crown and the silk, he looked more like the man she'd known in Pune — the one who'd shown up at her lectures uninvited, who'd learned to make filter coffee because she mentioned once that she preferred it, who'd held her hand in the dark of Nigdi railway station while they waited for a delayed local and told her about a wife he'd lost.

He'd told her about Tara. He'd told her the truth — that he'd loved someone and lost her. He just hadn't told her the rest.

"Sit down," she said.

He sat. She sat across from him. The distance between them was about two feet, and it felt like an ocean.

"Meera." He leaned forward. "I know you're angry, and I know why, and I know that nothing I say right now is going to fix it. But I need you to know something."

"I'm listening."

"When I went to Pune, I went looking for answers about Tara's death. I went looking for her Prakash-Bandhu because I thought — I don't know, I thought maybe the bond between twins would give me a clue. Something to follow." He looked at his hands. "I didn't expect to find you."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I found a woman in a bookstore who told me fairy tales were as real as the sun, and I thought—" His voice cracked. "I thought maybe the world was bigger than my grief."

She wanted to believe him. Every cell in her body wanted to lean across the distance and take his face in her hands and kiss him until the doubt dissolved.

But doubt didn't dissolve. It only went quiet.

"You should go home," he said. "This place isn't safe for you."

The words landed like a punch.

"What?"

"It's not safe. Whoever killed Tara — they're still here. And you have Tara's face. If they see you, if they think Tara is somehow alive—"

"You're sending me away?" She set down her cup. "You disappear for six weeks, I cross a literal dimension to find you, and now you want me to leave?"

"I want you to be safe."

"Is this your idea or Vikram's?"

"It's mine." He forced the words out like they were made of broken glass. "I love you, Meera. But I've already lost one woman I love in this world. I can't—"

She stood up so fast her chair scraped against the stone floor. The sound echoed in the room like a gunshot.

"Then you should have thought about that before you walked into my life," she said. "Before you brought me coffee every morning and played music that made the air go still and kissed me like the world was ending. You should have thought about it before you made me fall in love with you."

"Meera—"

"I'm not leaving." She walked to the door. "I came here to find you, and I found you, and now I have a dead sister I never knew about and someone murdered her. So no, I'm not going home."

She was halfway down the corridor before she heard his voice behind her.

"Meera, please—"

"The irony," she muttered, echoing Vikram's words from the night before, "is that you went looking for me for exactly the same reason."

She didn't look back.

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