“A teddy bear, it’s either a silly romantic gift,” she whispered at long last, “or the kind of thing you give to a child.”
He thought of the feather of blue green he’d found the night of Arav’s murder, of the fact that Nivriti had inherited the ability to mesmerize, and he could not discount the impossibility behind the troubled look on Mahiya’s face. “What has Neha told you about your mother’s execution?”
“That she began her death screaming and begging for her life.” Her fingers tightened so hard on the window ledge that her bones pushed up against skin. “‘I watched my dear sister’s organs spill out of the gaping hole that had been her womb and the blood pour off the stubs of her wings, then left her to starve to death.’ That’s what Neha said to me when I asked about my mother.” She swallowed. “Vanhi says she lied about the manner of my birth, but Vanhi had to leave after I was born. Neha could have done exactly as she said.”
Warmth, a hand on her cheek, a thumb on her jaw, the pressure gentle but inexorable. Turning, she found herself the focus of eyes of near obsidian that burned with a dark flame that had her heart skipping a beat.
Jason’s thumb moved gently across the dip of her chin. “As we see from Eris, from you, Neha knows how to hold a grudge.”
Mahiya sucked in a breath, for she’d expected Jason to argue against the painful hope inside her chest. “But to have kept my mother alive all this time out of spite?” She shook her head. “Why would she do that?”
“The same reason she did it to Eris—love and hate intertwined. You tell me Nivriti was her twin. That is a bond of the soul.”
Mahiya thought back to a day she’d come upon Neha and Eris in the courtyard when they’d believed themselves alone. She should’ve turned, walked away, but she’d been caught by the tableau they made: Neha, her expression young and vulnerable in a way Mahiya had never seen, allowing Eris to tip up her chin with his finger, tease a smile from her lips.
Of course, that moment hadn’t lasted, the past too crushing a weight to allow such fragile seeds to sprout, but—“I think if he hadn’t died, Neha would have allowed him out. Perhaps even soon.” She turned to face Jason, his hand sliding to cup the side of her neck. “Anoushka’s death hit her hard. She began to visit Eris more and more.”
“There were rumors she was trying to get herself with child.”
“I can’t give you an answer as to the truth of that, but what I believe is that she needed the comfort of the man who’d fathered her child—and Eris, to his credit, did give her that comfort.” How much had been real, and how much a fantasy created in order to get into Neha’s good graces, she didn’t know. Whatever it had been, it had given Neha some surcease—and who was Mahiya to gainsay the choices of a man who’d spent three centuries locked in pretty chains, even if he had made his own bed?
Releasing his hold on her, Jason shifted to lean one shoulder against the wall. “I’m not certain how long any freedom would’ve lasted. I’ve been able to confirm that Audrey was warming his bed.” A pause. “If she was the first and he lasted three hundred years before breaking”—Jason’s tone made it clear he thought otherwise—“then he may have been a stronger man than we credit.”
Mahiya thought again of that vulnerable look on Neha’s face and wondered if a woman with so much love in her heart would’ve eventually been able to forgive every trespass. “It matters little now. Eris is gone, and someone is either playing a sick game with me, or . . .” The words lodged in her throat, too heavy, too important to come out.
* * *
I hope she lives.
Jason didn’t speak the thought aloud, but regardless of how many complications it would create, he hoped that Mahiya got a miracle. He understood what it was to grow up without a mother, but he’d at least had a whisper of time with his own.
“Jason, baby, what in the world are you doing?”
He gave his mother a long-suffering look and paused in his labors. “Planting coconut trees.”
A solemn nod. “I see.” Going down on her knees, she picked up one of the coconuts he’d collected. “Perhaps you should plant them a little farther up the beach.”
He patted the sand over the coconut he’d buried, the sound of the waves lapping at the wet sand a familiar music. “Why?”
“The sea might wash them away otherwise.”
Considering that, he decided she was right. “Will you help me carry them?”
Her smile made him feel warm inside in a way nothing else ever did. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
Jason could barely remember what that warmth had been like, the echo of his mother’s love faded and dull, but he knew it had been something piercingly beautiful to the heart of the boy he’d been, and so he knew such beauty existed. Mahiya didn’t even have that. For her sake, he hoped that Neha had found herself unable to execute her twin, as she’d been unable to execute her consort.
“Will you tell Neha?” Mahiya’s question was nearly silent. “What we’re considering? That. . .my mother might be alive?”
31
“Neha alone knows the truth of our supposition,” Jason said, thinking through the matter, “and if we are right, and your mother is already free, telling Neha cannot disadvantage her.” The vampire with scarlet hair was unlikely to be the only one of her people Nivriti had found, gathered together. “Neha may also have an idea of where Nivriti might have located her base of—”
Mahiya made a sudden tight sound in her throat. “If it is my mother, I know why she killed Arav.”
So did Jason. The man had hurt Mahiya, hurt Nivriti’s child, deserved punishment. Jason found he had no argument with that, and the realization made him halt, consider who Mahiya was to him. He had no answer to that, but he suddenly saw one to her earlier question. “I will not speak to Neha about this.”
Mahiya shuddered, shook her head. “No. If she murdered Shabnam, I can’t protect her.”
“This isn’t about protecting Nivriti.”
Mahiya’s eyes searched his face. “What is it?” Closing the distance between them, she placed her hand on his chest. There was tenderness but nothing proprietary or possessive in the touch, and he knew she spun no moonbeams in the air, expected nothing from him but the man that he was.