Page 8 of The Prince Without Sorrow

Chapter Seven

Shakti

S HAKTI KNEW THAT SHE WAS DREAMING, BUT SHE FOUND that she could not wake herself.

The last thing she remembered was dropping onto the hard forest floor. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a throne room that seemed to have been painted by darkness. Precious jewels hung from a light fixture above her, and rubies glowed brightly in the eyes of the carved leopards that sat beside a dark lacquered throne. She knew of only one seat of power hewn from stone as black as poison.

The Obsidian Throne.

Glimmering lights cast soft shadows and lamps dotted every foot from each other along the walls worked to brighten the grim room. Impossibly tall and square glass windows allowed for the moonlight to dance along the ground.

How long have I been unconscious , she wondered. It was hard to tell. Impossible.

Shakti pinched herself only to find that she could feel no pain. It was as if all sensation had left her body. Her peripheries appeared slightly unfocused, blurred. It was the same feeling she had whenever she lucid dreamed, but at least then she could force herself awake. Here, no matter how many times she tried, her body felt stuck.

As she stared down at her arm, the sound of a sandal scraping against the floor caused her to glance up.

Where the Obsidian Throne had been unoccupied moments ago, a very much incensed Emperor Adil now sat upon it, gazing at her with a furious ire. She was startled by the appearance of that same black liquid she saw had spread across his chest, marring the white shirt in tendrils and cobwebs.

Seeing him brought a sudden and unpleasant taste in her mouth, metallic and salty. Moments later, her chest heaved of its own accord, and Shakti bit her lips hard enough to bleed. When she glanced down at her chest, Adil’s marks were mirrored over her own skin, bleeding through her shift.

‘You witch .’

The emperor’s voice was hoarse as if he was suffering from a fever and had ingested sufficient poison to kill an animal. His anger terrified Shakti enough that she took several steps back.

‘This is a dream,’ she said aloud to herself. ‘This isn’t real. This is only a dream. I’ll wake soon enough.’

Emperor Adil let out a bark of wicked laughter. ‘You foolish mayakari ,’ he sneered. ‘This is no dream. This is a part of my consciousness.’

His consciousness? Shakti thought to herself, stupefied. She shook her head, trying to wake herself up despite her own mind screaming at her that this was no ordinary dream.

‘I am indeed a mayakari,’ she said as her eyes met the emperor’s cold brown ones. ‘What of it?’

‘What of it, Emperor Adil ,’ he stressed his title. ‘I will be addressed as such, you wretched girl.’

‘You’re a figment of my imagination,’ she shot back. ‘I can address you any way I like, so how about I call you a fucking bastard instead?’

The stain on Emperor Adil’s chest grew. The lights in the throne room flickered and, for a moment, the ruby eyes of the leopards seemed alive.

He let out an incredulous laugh. ‘Watch your tongue, witch.’

‘Burn me, then,’ she snapped. ‘I’d like to see you try.’

The emperor’s scowl turned darker, but he did not respond to her taunt. ‘What did you do to me, little girl?’ he asked instead. ‘I remember waking in fits of delirium, seeing a black cancer spreading through my veins.’

He spoke like he was real, but he couldn’t be. This was some sort of sick nightmare that she had created for herself. Still, the dream emperor’s haughtiness made Shakti angrier. How dare he sit on the throne and ask questions of her so dismissively. Glowering, she straightened her back and squared her shoulders.

‘I cursed you,’ she said.

Emperor Adil’s lips pursed like he had bitten into a lemon. A grey cloud settled over him. ‘No. That goes against your code,’ he replied. Each word was slow and clearly enunciated, like he was still digesting her words as he spoke. ‘Mayakari do not—’

‘Curse?’ she finished for him, slightly taken aback. What did he know of their code? ‘How sorely uninformed you are. When you killed my aunt, the last thing on my mind was the code, Adil .’

The emperor appeared stunned. ‘You... cursed me?’

She summoned every ounce of bravado she had. ‘With living misfortune,’ she said. ‘I could have killed you instead, is that what you’d prefer?’

‘Misfortune?’ Emperor Adil repeated with a scoff. ‘All that power and your kind are still soft. How useless you are. Go, leave me be.’ The golden circlet glinted in the light as the emperor dipped his chin and closed his eyes.

Deep in the pit of her stomach, Shakti felt an uncomfortable pull. It was as if someone had poked a finger into her belly button, insistently and without care. It felt like she was about to bleed. Letting out a soft grunt, she clamped her hands around her sides, willing the sudden burst of pain to vanish, and oddly enough, it did.

The emperor opened his eyes. For the first time since she had laid eyes on him, he appeared nervous.

‘You won’t leave,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.

‘It’s my dream,’ she replied. ‘Why would I go?’

‘This is not a dre—’ he began in annoyance but stopped. Shakti watched curiously as he stared at his hands, the throne room, and then her. The black stain expanded once more.

‘ The steps ,’ she heard him say. ‘ The palace steps .’

Suddenly, Emperor Adil’s body seized. His eyes glazed over and rolled to the back of his head until she could only see the whites of his eyes. With his mouth hanging open, the man looked utterly demonic.

His voice was guttural as he spoke. ‘ I will die ,’ he said. ‘ Please, Ashoka, I will die .’

Die . Surely, this was her subconscious enacting some sort of twisted delusion. And why call out for his child? The name sounded like a plea, a last-ditch attempt at a bargain. What would the young prince have to do with any of this?

Something prodded the back of her head, but Shakti ignored it.

‘Pleases won’t help you,’ she said loudly. Her voice echoed around the throne room. ‘They didn’t help my aunt.’

The emperor’s seizures stopped. His eyes reverted to normal. ‘I will die leaving this world unfinished,’ he said.

‘You will leave this world with a mark tainted with fear and persecution,’ Shakti remarked through clenched teeth. Her mind cast back to Kolakola, the flames of orange and blue. ‘Perhaps your children can rule with a gentler hand.’

Adil laughed like he found her pathetic. ‘Place your deluded hopes elsewhere, witch. My children are my mirror images, though I cannot say the same for Ashoka. Spirits forbid that child sees the mayakari as anything less than people. Stupid boy.’

He sounded displeased. Hateful, even. That Adil had a child he thought to be unlike him gave her a modicum of joy. ‘On the contrary,’ she remarked. ‘He sounds like the sane one in your useless family.’

The room blackened. ‘I am your emperor,’ Adil hissed. ‘Do you have such little respect, commoner?’

‘You lost my respect when you slaughtered your own people,’ Shakti fired back.

‘The mayakari are not my people,’ Adil hissed. ‘In this war, there will be casualties, and your village was one of them. It was for the good of the empire.’

‘My aunt didn’t die for the good of the empire ,’ Shakti growled. ‘She was a peaceful woman.’

‘Your powers are a plague.’

Though he saw her as a plague, the royal family seemed to Shakti like nothing more than parasites. They sucked the life out of innocents and ravaged everything in their path.

And parasites, in nature, required terminating.

‘Even in my dreams you remain a monster,’ she said. ‘What will you do next, Adil ? Will you burn me where I stand?’

Glaring hard enough to burn her out of existence, Emperor Adil let out an embittered growl. ‘I very well should, witch,’ he said, ‘for the moment you wake is the moment I die.’

A bitter chuckle escaped her lips. ‘Liar,’ she said. A world where Emperor Adil did not remain alive was a fantasy.

Her remark seemed to infuriate him.

‘When reality turns into fantasy, it appears that my subjects like to take liberties,’ he said. ‘Stupid girl, this is no dream. I will die. Our consciousnesses will meld. Why is it so hard for you to grasp?’

‘Because that is impossible!’ she exclaimed. What was this nightmare?

Melding consciousnesses. Hah . What was this dream Adil blathering on about? Such power did not exist. Mayakari could not wander into dreams, neither could they attach themselves to another’s consciousness. Their powers were limited to three.

Logic told her this was a torturous illusion. Emotion told her not to judge so quickly.

He spoke about dying so surely, but it had to be a fabrication. A trick. Likely the guilt of cursing a living being was feeding this dream. In fact, she half-expected Jaya to materialize, an admonishment ready at her lips. Still, Shakti couldn’t quite push away that bothersome what if. What if this was no dream? What if this was really Emperor Adil?

No , she shut that thought down immediately. That would mean he was dead, and she couldn’t have done that. She couldn’t have killed him. Her curse hadn’t specified death, only living misfortune.

Shakti wanted to wake up.

Calm down. Think.

‘How do I wake?’ she asked the emperor. Asking an apparition seemed fruitless, but he was the only other person present. ‘Tell me.’

‘I would rather you didn’t,’ the emperor replied. ‘You’ve ruined everything.’

Infuriating man .

‘Shakti!’

Startled out of her anger, she turned towards Emperor Adil. And yet, it was not his voice that she had heard.

‘ Shakti! ’

This time, Shakti saw Adil’s mouth remain closed as the sound of her name reverberated in the great throne room. This voice belonged to a woman, and it was oddly familiar.

‘Shakti,’ Emperor Adil repeated aloud to himself. ‘So that is your name. Strength . How apt.’

Shakti was unable to concentrate. Her vision had suddenly become unfocused and doubled. She felt a strange pull in her stomach and at her back, like she was a puppet being dragged away on its strings by its master.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked aloud, clutching at her head and closing her eyes to avoid looking anywhere. Her altered vision was starting to cause vertigo.

‘You are finally being called back,’ Adil said, sounding rather curious. ‘This is not the material world but, rather, a collective consciousness to which you do not belong. You are being wakened. Leave, for I do not wish to gaze upon your face any longer.’

Bastard.

Shakti gritted her teeth. She opened her eyes to give Emperor Adil one last dirty look and saw that he appeared to be fading away. His brown skin grew paler and paler as he, the room, and the Obsidian Throne began to wash itself white. Shakti glanced down at her hands, only to find that they were translucent, like those of a ghost meandering about in the realm of humans, invisible.

She was fading away too.

‘Shakti,’ she heard the voice again.

‘I’m coming,’ Shakti whispered.

Just as she felt herself fading away, Shakti closed her eyes to see someone else appear at the forefront of her mind. Another man.

This was a man with untied raven hair falling on his shoulders, his deep brown skin glowing in the light. His crown – a golden circlet woven with rubies – was the only giveaway to his identity.

Another royal. One whom she did not know.

He smiled pleasantly and extended his hand. Instinct drove her to clasp it and the sudden surge of raw power that she felt travel up her arm at the contact made her gasp.

She felt invincible. She felt like she had known a thousand lives – a thousand lives that were not hers.

Just when Shakti was about to call out for the man’s name, he let go, and she awoke.