The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,81
never about me!”
“You’ll regret this for the rest of your life!” shrieked Sesha. He turned, snarling, at the rakkhosh school gathered around him. “All of demon-kind will regret this. I will destroy your kind, if it’s the last thing I do! No one will remember who you are! I will erase your stories from the multiverse!”
Sesha raged inside his magical cage, prompting a bunch of rakkhosh guards to hop onstage and surround him. Pinki moved aside, flanked by a dazed-looking but passive Rontu as well as a fierce-appearing Ai-Ma. Surpanakha shouted orders, and most of the students ran around in utter confusion.
In the chaos, I made my way off the stage and back to Neel, stopping to pick two champak flowers off the tree on the way. “Come on, I think our work here is done! Pinki’s marrying your father, and she and Sesha hate each other—just the way things are supposed to be!”
“No, stop! Something’s not right!” Neel sputtered.
“What? You’re not blurry anymore, are you? What’s the big deal?” I pointed to Neel’s once-again-solid outlines.
“I may not be blurry anymore, but you are!” Neel said, his eyes wide in alarm.
“What the—” I sputtered, looking down at my now-blurry body. “What’s happening?”
“The Queen has made her choice of consort!” Surpanakha boomed from the stage. “Now, to complete the ceremony, she must kill the other suitor competing for her hand!”
At first, I didn’t get it, but Neel looked at me in horror. “Kiran! This is a disaster! We’ve made sure that my parents get married so that I can exist in the future. But now, if Pinki kills Sesha, that means you can’t ever be born!”
Oh, blast. This was horrible. What were we going to do?
“My queen!” Neel called out, his voice desperate and urgent. “You can’t kill the snake prince!”
“Why the heck not?” Pinki already had begun spitting hot fumes of fire at Sesha’s cage, making him cower in the corner.
“Because … because … you’re better than that?” Neel suggested.
The students all around us began to laugh, like Neel had made a splendid joke. Even the vicious-looking Gorgor-da slapped Neel heartily on the back. “That’s a good one, kid!”
“Better than that!” scoffed Pinki, but I could tell, even if no one else could, that she was torn. “I’m not better than that. Why should I be better than that? What a thought!”
“You loved me once, Pinki,” Sesha spat out. “But you got squeamish and turned your back on all that! We were a good pair, you and I! How could you want to dim your light, hitching yourself to someone who doesn’t even see you for who you are?”
Even through his thick enchantment, Rontu, the future Raja of the Kingdom Beyond, seemed to understand that Sesha was insulting him. “Hey there, I’m not dimming anyone’s light! I just want her to follow all the rules of my kingdom and be the picture of a good and docile wife to me, supporting me in all my dreams and having none of her own!”
This got the crowd laughing again. “As if!” chortled Surpanakha. “Oh, you poor demented little prince, your rakkhoshi wife is going to marry you and use you to rule your kingdom!”
Rontu blinked a little at these words, as if they were penetrating the magical fog around his brain. He looked what seemed like directly at Neel. “I hate rakkhosh,” he pronounced.
“Husband-to-be, you are such a bore!” Pinki snarled. “Go to sleep now, and have a good snore!”
At a wave of her hands, Fatteshwar Orebaba, aka Rontu, Neel’s father and the future Raja of the Kingdom Beyond, curled up next to the throne and went fast to sleep.
With that done, Pinki turned back to Sesha. “How dare you!” she snarled. “You pretended to love me only because you wanted my power!”
“Like you weren’t doing the same thing!” he spat out through the glowing bars of the cage.
Pinki’s expression faltered at these words, like she had loved Sesha for real, and thought he felt the same. Then a mask fell over her features again. “Of course I was, it was all a joke, and now it’s over!”
Pinki jumped forward, reaching through the bars of the cage and putting her hands around his throat. Sesha gasped, and the crowd cheered. Sesha was strong, and powerful, but inside his magical cage, he could do nothing. The rakkhosh students all around me jeered and taunted him. Something in my chest constricted. I remembered Neel explaining how much rakkhosh hated snakes. I understood everyone’s gut