CHAPTER TEN

The fortress of Devgarh sat on a ridge above the valley like a crown on a sleeping giant's head, and its courtyard — which served as market, parade ground, meeting place, and general centre of social life — was the loudest, most chaotic place Meera had ever been in her life, and she had grown up navigating the streets of Panaji during Carnival.

She'd stormed out of the fortress's main building, past the guards who'd tried to stop her, past the morning traders setting up their stalls, past a man leading a pair of oxen that were decorated with brass bells and embroidered blankets, and into the open air of the courtyard.

The cold hit her like a wall. She pulled Tara's shawl tighter and kept walking.

The courtyard was a study in contradiction. Medieval stone walls enclosed a space that buzzed with life both human and — other. Traders shouted in three languages she could partially follow — Hindi-adjacent, something guttural that might have been Pahari, and accented English. A woman was selling vegetables from a wooden cart, bargaining with the ferocity of a Pune housewife at Mandai market. A group of children chased each other between the stalls, shrieking with laughter, and one of them was wearing a faded Virat Kohli cricket jersey under his rough-spun tunic.

That stopped her cold.

The boy saw her looking and quickly pulled his outer tunic over the jersey, grinning sheepishly before darting away.

A Virat Kohli jersey. In a parallel dimension.

She caught Vikram's gaze across the courtyard — he'd been following her at a distance, giving her space while staying close enough to intervene. His expression said I told you so without a single word.

She walked toward the gate. The massive wooden doors were open, and traders were streaming in and out with carts and animals and bundles of goods. Guards flanked the entrance, checking those entering but barely glancing at those leaving.

She could leave. Walk out the gate, through the town, back to Vikram's cottage. Back to the forest. Back to the gate between worlds. Back to her car and her phone and her life.

She could be in Pune in two days. Back at Fergusson College, teaching undergrads about the Mahabharata, pretending none of this had ever happened.

And your sister's murderer walks free.

She stopped at the edge of the courtyard, under a scrubby apple tree that was somehow still bearing fruit in what should have been deep winter. She picked an apple and bit into it — it was the sweetest thing she'd ever tasted, crisp and cold and flooding her mouth with a flavour that was almost too vivid, as if even the fruit in this world was turned up to a frequency that normal reality couldn't match.

"Lady Meera?"

She turned. Aisha was standing a few steps away, wrapped in a green cloak, her dark hair braided and pinned in a style that looked like it took serious skill to achieve. Her blue eyes were bright and warm, but there was something careful in the way she held herself — the posture of a diplomat, not a friend.

"I'm not a lady," Meera said.

"You're Tara-devi's Prakash-Bandhu and a guest of the Maharaja's household," Aisha said with a smile. "In this world, that makes you a lady whether you like it or not."

"I'm a mythology professor from Pune."

Aisha's smile widened. "Perfect. Then you'll love the library."

Despite everything — the heartbreak, the confusion, the disorienting reality of standing in a parallel dimension eating an apple that tasted like someone had distilled the concept of autumn into a fruit — Meera felt a flicker of interest.

"There's a library?"

"One of the finest in Chhaya Lok." Aisha linked her arm through Meera's with the casual intimacy of a woman accustomed to physical affection. "Come. Let me show you around, and I can answer your questions. You must have so many."

Meera had approximately four hundred and seventy-two questions, and they were multiplying.

"Did you know Tara well?"

"She was my closest friend." Aisha's voice softened. "We grew up together — I came to the fortress when I was eight, as part of the Chaturanga Pact. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"Centuries ago, the four great queens of the realm — Devgarh, Dakshin, Suryanagar, and Madhya — forced their husbands to make peace. As a guarantee, each kingdom sent a child to the other three courts. It's like the foster system in medieval Indian courts, except it's still active here."

"A hostage exchange dressed up as diplomacy."

Aisha's eyebrows rose. "You think like a historian."

"I am a historian. Sort of."

"Well, I prefer to think of it as cultural exchange." Aisha guided her through a side door and into a corridor lined with brass oil lamps. "My mother is from Dakshin — the southern kingdom. My aunt married the Raja of Suryanagar — Seren's... Tara's stepmother. And I was sent north to Devgarh as a child."

"So Tara's father is married to your aunt?"

"Was. Raja Devendra remarried after Tara's mother died." Aisha paused. "It's complicated."

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"Because it's true." Aisha pushed open a set of carved wooden doors, and Meera's breath caught.

The library was three stories tall, with walls lined floor to ceiling with books, scrolls, and bound manuscripts. Wooden galleries circled each level, accessible by carved staircases, and the ceiling was painted with a mural of the cosmos — not the Western zodiac but something older and stranger, with Nagas coiling between the stars and Gandharvas dancing on the rings of planets she didn't recognise.

Light filtered in through skylights of translucent stone — not glass, but something that let in the grey-silver glow of the Chhaya Lok sky and diffused it into the room like softened moonlight.

"This is magnificent," Meera whispered.

"Tara loved this room." Aisha's voice was gentle. "She'd spend hours here, reading histories and mythology and—" She smiled. "She was always trying to find accounts of Prakash Lok. Your world fascinated her."

"She knew about our world?"

"Everyone here knows. The gates work both ways — things come through. Stories. Objects. Occasionally people." Aisha ran her fingers along a shelf of scrolls. "There's a rather lively black market in denim jeans and cricket equipment, if you can believe it."

The Virat Kohli jersey. Meera almost smiled.

"Meera, I know you're hurt and confused," Aisha said, turning to face her. "And I know Arjun has handled this badly — he's brilliant with music and magic and absolutely hopeless with human emotions. But I need you to understand something about Tara's death."

Meera's attention sharpened. "What about it?"

"It wasn't natural." Aisha's blue eyes were hard now, the warmth replaced by something steely. "Tara was the healthiest person I knew. She could ride all day, fight for hours, bond with Takshak and not break a sweat. And then one evening at a feast, she collapsed. Three days later, she was dead."

"Vikram said she was poisoned."

"I believe she was. But I couldn't prove it. By the time I examined her, the toxin — if there was one — had done its work and left no trace I could identify." Aisha's voice dropped. "I'm a healer, Meera. It's what I do. And I couldn't save her. That failure lives in me every day."

"Do you have any idea who did it?"

Aisha glanced at the library door. It was closed, but she lowered her voice anyway.

"Tara had enemies. She was the Nag-Bandhu — the only human in a generation who could bond with Takshak. That gave her enormous power. Power that some people in this court didn't want her to have."

"Who?"

"I have suspicions. But suspicions aren't proof, and in this world, accusing the wrong person can start a war." Aisha took Meera's hands. "Will you help me? You're a scholar. You know how to research, how to ask questions, how to follow threads. And you have Tara's face — people who loved her will talk to you. People who feared her will... react."

"You want to use me as bait."

"I want to use you as a key." Aisha's grip tightened. "The door has been locked for two years. I think you might be the one who opens it."

Meera looked at the shelves of ancient texts, the painted cosmos on the ceiling, the silver light filtering through stone. She thought about Tara — the sister she'd never known, the woman with her face who had ridden into storms and spoken to serpents and been murdered at a feast.

She thought about the depression that had almost killed her. The black, drowning thing that she now understood had been grief for a loss she couldn't name.

"I'll help," she said. "But I have conditions."

"Name them."

"First — I want access to everything. This library, the court records, the healers' logs, whatever exists. No secrets."

"Done."

"Second — I want to talk to everyone who was at the feast the night Tara died. No exceptions."

"That might be... difficult. Some of those people are powerful."

"I don't care how powerful they are. If they were in the room when my sister was poisoned, I want to look them in the eye."

Aisha studied her. Then she smiled — a real smile, not the diplomatic one.

"Tara would have liked you," she said. "You're quieter than she was, but you have the same spine."

"And third." Meera held up three fingers. "I want to meet Takshak."

"The Naga?"

"Tara's Naga. If she was Nag-Bandhu — if she could hear the serpent's thoughts — then Takshak knows what happened to her. He was bonded to her. He would have felt her die."

Aisha's face went pale. "Meera, Takshak left the fortress after Tara died. He went into the mountain lakes and hasn't been seen since. The Nagas are wild creatures — they don't answer to human summons."

"Maybe not to humans," Meera said. She touched the pendant at her throat. "But I have her face. And if the bond between Chhaya-Bandhus is real — really real, not just metaphor — then maybe Takshak will respond to me."

Aisha stared at her. Then she let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for two years.

"You might be right," she whispered. "God help us both, you might be right."

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