QUOTE : What is it?” I hissed at Kamala. “I thought you were going to talk right then and there and then we would’ve been thrown out.”<br />Kamala wouldn’t look at me. “It’s the Dharma Raja.”<br />I froze. “What about him?”<br />“I can sense him.” The blue veins that once stood out so prominently on her skin had begun to sink beneath pearlescent hair. Even the garnet gaze of her eyes had receded into something bright and black. Thoroughly animal.<br />“And?”<br />“He was here, but only for a moment.”<br />“Where did he go?”<br />“I couldn’t tell you that, not for all the salk-skin in the world.” Kamala sighed.<br />“Do you know where he was?”<br />“That’s the thing I was trying to tell you, maybe-queen!” exclaimed Kamala, pawing at the ground. “He was at the Chakara Forest. You were right.”<br />I was right. There was a soft glow of warmth in that knowledge, even if knowing that I had just missed him rent through me like a new wound. I had trusted my instinct and it had been right.