The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,83
will tell your stories. You will become beasts from a long-ago and forgotten culture!”
That made my blood freeze. Sesha’s plan for destroying the multiplicity of the multiverse had started this long ago?
“No, Sesha, it’s your name that will be forgotten!” I said. To prove my point, and to buy myself some time, I pulled out my bow and arrow, aiming right at Sesha’s head.
“Wait, I haven’t granted you the right of challenge kill,” Pinki protested. “What makes you think you have more right to kill than me?”
“Challenge kill is an ancient right among our kind, and if this rakkhoshi has the right of injury on her side, it cannot be denied.” Surpanakha the headmistress stepped in between Pinki and me. “You say this serpent prince has harmed your loved ones, land demoness. If that is so, you must bind yourself to him and let fate decide if you have the right of vengeance upon him.”
“Bind myself to him?” I asked, feeling weak again.
“Yes.” Surpanakha waved her hand in front of Sesha’s mouth and somehow magically extracted a fountain of poison from one of his teeth. This she caught in a little vial and handed to me. “Drink, young land clanswoman, and if you have the right of challenge kill, it will not harm you.”
I heard Neel shouting a warning, but without knowing why, I knew I would be able to drink the serpent poison without being harmed. Giving Sesha an approximation of Neel’s raised-eyebrow look, I lifted the vial, gave him a little “cheers,” and then drank the venom in one gulp. For a minute, I felt queasy and dizzy, but then the feeling cleared up almost right away. Even those few sips of Sesha’s venom made me feel sharper, stronger, and more powerful. I locked eyes with my serpent father, and I felt him begin to recognize me.
“Who are you?” he hissed.
I did not answer, because I heard Surpanakha asking me the question as if from far, far away. “What do you see, land clanswoman?”
What did I see? I strung an arrow in my magic bow again and peered down its shaft, my vision condensing to one sharp point, right in the center of Sesha’s forehead. What did I see? I asked myself, my own voice thrumming through me like a song. What did I see? What did I see?
“I’ll tell you what I see!” I heard Sesha shouting at me. “I see a monster made from hate!”
I hesitated, my bow arm quavering a bit. Then a shocked murmur rose from all the students, who were pointing at me and rising from their tree-side seats. The grove was buzzing with conversation, exclamations, and shouts, and even Surpanakha was looking at me with a seriously surprised expression.
My skin prickled with heat and power. I felt like myself, but a more beautiful version, a more powerful version, a more balanced and wiser version of me. Rather than killing me, I had survived Sesha’s poison and it had made me stronger. I glowed with what felt like moonlight from the inside out. It was as if I was manifesting into my most pure and true self.
“What do you see?” Surpanakha had asked me.
What did I see when I looked at Sesha? I saw hatred. I saw cruelty. I saw pain. I saw greed and suffering, but longing too. An intense longing, like a hunger. A hunger to possess things, to rule things, to dominate things. These were Sesha’s poison. These were the dark matter that had corrupted him. But even under all that poison, there was more there too. There was a desire to be more, do more, leave a mark on the multiverse. In these qualities, I saw myself. These were the parts of myself I had inherited from him. Parts of myself I could use for good or for evil. Ultimately, they were parts of myself I had to accept to truly know who I was.
Sesha was beside himself, frothing at the mouth even as he shouted at me. “You hate me, do you? Well, I hate you too! I hate you too! And you have no idea what future your hate will bring!”
As he snapped and hissed, banging against the bars of the magic cage like a demented animal, his words rang in my mind. You have no idea what future your hate will bring. Why did he say that? And where had I heard about hate bringing about some kind of future?