71
" I walked back into the bedroom. Amar was standing by the foot of the bed, playing lazily with the cuffs of his sleeves. I tensed. That foolish disappointment was gone.
“Are you frightened?” he asked.
Don’t cower. I straightened my back. I would’ve stared him in the eyes if I could. “Should I be?”
“I should hope there are more frightening things than sharing a bed with me,” he said. He flourished a bow. “Did I not promise you that we would be equals? Your will is where I lay my head. I will not touch you without your permission.”
I moved to the bed, taking stock of the unnecessary amount of cushions. I could feel Amar’s gaze on me and rather than tossing the cushions to the ground, I stacked them in the middle of the bed. Amar followed me and slid onto the opposite side. The fire in the diyas collapsed with the faintest of sighs.
“A daunting fortress,” he said lazily, prodding one of the pillows. “Have you so little faith in me?”
“Yes.”
He laughed and the sound was unexpectedly…musical.
“The dark is a lovely thing, is it not? It lets us speak in blindness. No scowls or smiles or stares clouding our words.”
I lay in bed, my body taut. Amar continued:
“I spoke no falsehoods in the Night Bazaar,” he said. “I would rip the stars from the sky if you wished it. Anything for you. But remember to trust me. Remember your promise.”
I fell quiet for a moment. “I remember my promise.”
After that, I said nothing.
The air between us could have been whittled in steel. An hour passed before I ventured a glance at Amar. His face was turned from me, leaving only dark curls half visible in the light. Moonlight had limned his silhouette silver. The longer I stared at him, the more something sharp stirred within me and I was reminded of that strange ache in my head, where forgotten dreams jostled for remembrance. "
― Roshani Chokshi , The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen, #1)
77
" What do you think of your kingdom?"
"It's beautiful," I said. And very empty. Where is everyone? "It might even be dangerous to live in such luxury and repose."
"This is no place of repose." Amar glanced outside where a sliver of moon glimmered behind clouds. “I am at the mercy of the moon to reveal the secrets of this kingdom. Until then, you must practice what it means to rule. I will test you, as this palace will, in its own way.”
I straightened in my seat. “On what?”
“Familiarity, you might say.” His voice was low. “All the usual aspects of ruling. I’ll test your fangs and claws and bloodlust.” He stopped to trace the inside of my wrist, and my pulse leapt to meet his touch. I scowled and grabbed my hand back. Treacherous blood. “I’ll test your eyes and ears and thoughts.”
“Not geography, then?” I asked, half joking.
“It’s useless here.” He shrugged. “You’ll see.”
“History?”
“Written by the victors,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in one-sided tales.”
“Legends? Folktales?”
This time, Amar grinned. “Perhaps. Do you have a favorite tale?”
My throat tightened and I thought of Gauri standing outside my door and demanding a story. “Many…And you?”
“All of them. Except for tragedies. I cannot abide those.”
In the harem, all the wives preferred tragedies. They wanted stories of star-crossed lovers. They wanted betrayal and declarations of love that ended with the speaker dying at their feet.
“You don’t find them romantic?”
“No,” he said, an edge to his voice. “There is no romance in real grief. Only longing and fury.”
He rose to his feet. “Tomorrow, you can tour the palace fully. It’s yours now. "
― Roshani Chokshi , The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen, #1)
78
" Do these past days mean nothing?” he asked, so gently that my weak self curled around his words.
But I would no longer be weak. I tapped into that power in my veins and a shimmering wall of flames sprang up between us. Amar jumped back, shocked and then…amused.
“A little ruthlessness is to be admired, but it’s cruel to play with a powerless heart.”
“Crueler still to promise equality and hide a person’s true self.”
“I thought it was best for you,” he repeated.
“Strange how something that only affected me was decided by you.”
Amar’s smile turned cold. “My promises were true. You seek to punish an illusion without fully knowing. What were your kisses, then? Vengeance?”
The wall of flames shimmered away. Anger still flared inside me, but now it was mixed with something else. Something I couldn’t push away, despite fury. Want.
“They were nothing,” I lied. “They meant nothing.”
I didn’t look at him. And then, a bloom of cold erupted beside me and Amar was at my side. His fingers traced a secret calligraphy along my arms.
“Nothing at all?”
My heart twisted. I reached forward, my hands tangling in his hair as I kissed him. It was a kiss meant to devour, to summon war. And when I broke it, my voice was harsh:
“My kisses mean nothing.”
“Cruel queen,” he murmured, tilting my head back. His lips skimmed down my neck. Amar’s hands gripped my waist, before tracing the outline of my hips. Heat flared through my body. But just as I pulled him closer, a sudden clash echoed in the hallway, and we sprang apart. "
― Roshani Chokshi , The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen, #1)
80
" In every tomorrow I had imagined, this was never one of them. There were never any prospects beyond the life of a scholarly old maid, but that was a fate I had looked forward to—to live among parchments and sink into the compressed universes stitched into lines and lines of writing. To answer to no one. There was another sorrow, tucked beneath my surprise. Although I had never envisioned marriage, I had thought of love. Not the furtive love I heard muffled in the corners or rooms of some of the harem wives. What I wanted was a connection, a shared heartbeat that kept rhythm across oceans and worlds. Not some alliance cobbled out of war. I didn’t want the prince from the folktales or some milk-skinned, honey-eyed youth who said his greetings and proclaimed his love in the same breath. I wanted a love thick with time, as inscrutable as if a lathe had carved it from night and as familiar as the marrow in my bones. I wanted the impossible, which made it that much easier to push out of my mind. "
― Roshani Chokshi , The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen, #1)
