Chapter 10: The Court of Indradeva

The banquet was a trap disguised as a celebration.

Tanvi knew this because Veer told her, and Veer told her because he'd watched Indradeva use banquets as intelligence-gathering operations for three thousand years. "He feeds you. He flatters you. He watches how you interact, who you trust, who you fear. By the end of the evening, he knows exactly how to break you."

"Lovely. And I have to attend because—"

"Because refusing a divine invitation is a declaration of war, and we're not ready for war yet."

The banquet hall was in Indradeva's domain—the highest spire of the Mandapa, a space that made Tanvi's oyster-farm-trained brain short-circuit with its excess. Everything was light. The walls were light. The floor was light. The ceiling was light shaped into architecture, luminous columns supporting radiant arches, the whole structure a cathedral of photons designed to remind every visitor that Indradeva controlled the most fundamental force in the universe.

The surviving thirty-six contestants—three more had been lost in the Agni Pareeksha—were dressed in provided garments. Tanvi's was a sari the colour of midnight, which she suspected was Veer's doing, or perhaps the Mandapa's tailoring system responding to her patron's aesthetic. The fabric was impossibly light, like wearing woven moonlight, and it made the silver-white crystal structures at her shoulders gleam.

Tejas, beside her, wore a kurta of deep crimson that matched his new blood-red eyes. His Blood Crown—the ridges of dark crystal at his temples—caught Indradeva's radiance and refracted it into ruby sparks. He looked, Tanvi thought, like a warning dressed for a party.

"Stop fidgeting," she murmured.

"I'm not fidgeting. I'm strategically adjusting my—"

"You're fidgeting."

"Fine. I'm fidgeting. This kurta itches. How can a divine garment itch? That seems like a design flaw in the universe."

Mrinal materialised at Tanvi's elbow—she had a talent for materialising, appearing in conversations like a footnote that had detached from its text and gone wandering. Her silver-traced neck glowed faintly against the dark green of her sari, and her skull earrings—now permanently fused to her body—clinked with a sound that was almost musical.

"Status report," she said, in the tone of a woman delivering intelligence. "Indradeva has seated us according to patronage—his champions closest to the head table, the rest in descending order of political favour. You and Death-boy are at the far end. Which means either he doesn't consider you a threat, or he considers you the biggest threat and wants you where he can see you."

"Which one?"

"The second one. Obviously."

The food was—extraordinary. And confusing. The divine catering staff (lesser Divyas, apparently, beings of intermediate power who served the Twelve's household) had produced a spread that blended cuisines with the chaotic generosity of a wedding buffet designed by a committee with no common language. There was biryani—multiple biryanis, Hyderabadi and Lucknowi and a Kolkata-style version with potatoes that made Mrinal gasp with homesickness. There was dosa, crisp and enormous, with sambar that smelled like every temple kitchen Tanvi had ever walked past. There was fish curry—not Konkan-style, something Northern, cream-based, which was the culinary equivalent of cultural appropriation but tasted good enough that Tanvi decided to forgive it. There was dal makhani that glistened with butter. There was raita and pickle and papad and curd rice and—

"They're trying to make us comfortable," Tejas observed, loading his plate with an amount of biryani that violated several laws of physics. "Food from home. They've researched each contestant's regional cuisine."

"That's either incredibly thoughtful or incredibly creepy."

"With divine beings, those are the same thing."

Tanvi ate carefully, aware of Indradeva's presence at the head table—a presence that was impossible to ignore, the way it's impossible to ignore the sun. He was in full ceremonial form tonight, his light-body turned up to a frequency that made the air around him shimmer, his crystallised-dawn armour replaced by robes that appeared to be made of woven aurora borealis. He looked magnificent. He looked like a tyrant who had learned that magnificence was the most effective form of control.

Beside him sat the other Twelve—or rather, the ones who had chosen to attend. Tanvi counted nine. Prithvika, the Earth Goddess, looking uncomfortable in the excessive luminosity. Agnisha, the Fire Goddess, whose hair blazed like a torch in the radiant hall. Kuberon, the Wealth God, draped in so much gold that he clanked when he moved. Kaladeva, the Time God, ancient and thin, with eyes that didn't seem to be looking at the present moment.

And Yamadeva. Veer's father. The God of Death and Justice.

He was—terrifying. Not in the way Indradeva was terrifying (overwhelming power, aggressive display). Yamadeva was terrifying the way a cliff edge is terrifying—through the simple, undeniable fact of what he represented. He was dark, darker even than Veer, with eyes that contained no colour at all—just depth, endless depth, the visual equivalent of looking into a well and not seeing the bottom. He sat very still. He said very little. The air around him was colder than the air around anyone else, and the contestants nearest to him had unconsciously leaned away, the way the body leans away from a precipice.

Veer was not seated with his father. He was at the far end of the table, near Tanvi, in the position of minimum prestige—the son of Death, choosing exile over proximity to the throne. His face wore its habitual mask, but Tanvi could read the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands rested on the table (flat, deliberate, controlling their stillness the way you control a dangerous animal).

"Your father," she said quietly.

"My father."

"He looks—"

"I know what he looks like. Please don't finish that sentence."

A beat. Then: "He has your cheekbones."

Veer blinked. Whatever he'd expected her to say, it wasn't that. "He—what?"

"Your cheekbones. The way the bone sits under the skin. You got that from him. Your jaw, too. And the way you hold your head when you're trying not to react to something—that exact angle. I've watched you do it a hundred times in training, and he's doing it right now."

She wasn't sure why she'd said it. Probably because she could see, under Veer's mask, the particular pain of a person sitting in the same room as a parent they loved and couldn't reach—and she knew that pain, had carried a version of it every day of her life under a framed photograph of a woman she'd never met.

Veer's mask cracked. Not fully—not here, not under Indradeva's surveillance. But a hairline fracture. Enough to show her what was underneath.

"He knows about the rebellion," Veer said, barely audible. "He's known for centuries. He doesn't approve. He doesn't disapprove. He simply—waits. That's what the God of Death does. He waits for things to reach their conclusion."

"That must be—"

"Maddening. Yes."

Indradeva stood. The hall went silent—not the voluntary silence of polite attention, but the involuntary silence of a room full of people whose vocal cords had been temporarily overridden by divine authority.

"Champions." His voice filled every corner. Every crack. It got inside Tanvi's ears and set up residence. "You have survived the Vana Pareeksha and the Agni Pareeksha. You have been tested in survival and transformation. Thirty-six of you remain."

Out of forty-two,* Tanvi thought. *Six dead. In two trials.

"The remaining trials will test deeper qualities. Courage. Wisdom. Desire. Fate. Endurance. Each trial is designed by one of the Twelve, according to their domain. Each trial will eliminate those who are—insufficient."

Insufficient. The word landed like a slap. Clean, precise, designed to sting without leaving a visible mark.

"But tonight is not for trials. Tonight is for communion. For the divine and the mortal to share space. To understand each other." His smile was radiant. Literally—photons increased in the area around his mouth when he smiled. "Eat. Drink. Be known."

Be known.* Translation: *be surveilled.

The banquet resumed. Conversations started up—tentative, strategic, the social manoeuvring of people who knew they were being watched. Tanvi saw Chiranjeev move through the crowd with the fluid efficiency of a diplomat, stopping at each contestant's seat for precisely calibrated small talk. She saw Agnisha, the Fire Goddess, laughing with a group of northern contestants—a big, warm laugh that seemed genuine but probably wasn't. She saw Kaladeva, the Time God, staring at Mrinal with an intensity that made Tanvi's skin crawl.

And she saw Indradeva watching her.

Not covertly. Not through sidelong glances or peripheral attention. He was staring at her directly, openly, with the unblinking focus of a being who had never needed to be subtle because subtlety was for creatures who feared consequences.

His eyes found the crystal structures at her shoulders. The light woven through her hair. The silver-white glow of her irises. The Aadya marks that the Agni Pareeksha had activated.

And in those luminous, magnificent, terrifying eyes, Tanvi saw something she recognised.

Not admiration. Not curiosity.

Hunger.

He knows what I am,* she thought, and the hum in her chest—which had been quiet during the banquet, politely contained—surged. *He knows, and he wants it.

She looked away. Found Veer's eyes. Through whatever silent communication they had developed—not the twin bond, something else, something built from proximity and trust and the slow recognition of a shared enemy—she transmitted a single message:

He's watching.

Veer's response was the faintest inclination of his head. I know. I'm watching too.

The banquet continued. The food was excellent. The company was dangerous. And somewhere in the gleaming, light-saturated heart of Indradeva's domain, a trap was being set.

Tanvi ate her biryani. She complimented the raita. She laughed at Mrinal's joke about curse-resistant divine tableware. She performed normality with the precision of a woman who had been performing normality her entire life.

And underneath the performance, behind the silver-white eyes and the crystal wings and the ancient power humming in her blood, she was planning.

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