I settle into my bed on a thick exhalation. I feel different, and not only from spending the night in Deven’s arms. My bones do not ache, and my head is clear. I reach over my shoulder and feel for abrasions, but they are gone as well. I close my eyes, and a single star burns, a guiding light in a black velvet sky. I finally feel how I had hoped I would every time Healer Baka persuaded me to try a new treatment—healthy, whole, and strong. If my first day of being a full-fledged bhuta is any indication of what is to come, this may not be as terrible as I thought.

Asha comes in with my breakfast tray. I stretch out on the other side of the bed to give the appearance that I slept there. “Good morning, Viraji.” Asha sets the tray on the table and pauses to look at me.

“Yes?” I ask.

She frowns to herself. “You have a glow about you.”

“I had a good dream,” I reply, smiling.

“Hmm,” Asha says as she busies herself tidying the chamber.

I get up and pull on my robe. A flicker of movement draws my gaze to the balcony. Brac’s face fills with a broad grin. Asha tugs down my bedspread, her back to the wide balcony, and I sneak over to Brac. I shove him behind the same drapery Deven and I hid inside, and I follow behind.

Brac’s eyes sparkle. “Been here before?”

My face warms. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for your lesson.”

“It will have to wait,” I whisper. “I must leave for the tournament soon.”

He stays close enough to almost touch. His skin smells of soap, and his copper hair is slightly damp, darkened to burnt amber. “I will be brief. We can practice on your servant.”

“No! You aren’t using Asha.”

“I won’t hurt her. I used to practice on Deven all the time.”

I squint at him. “He let you do that?”

Brac shrugs one shoulder. “Didn’t think to ask. You have to learn to use your powers. You cannot let them go to waste.” He slips out of the drapery before I can stop him and creeps up behind Asha. I observe from behind the curtain, afraid to move and draw her attention. Brac places his hands on both of her arms. Half a breath later, she falls forward onto the bed.

“You dolt! What did you do?” I hurry over to Asha, who is slumped on her side.

“I parched her, like I did to the courtesan in the carriage.” Brac bends over her. By all appearances, she is asleep. “See? Still breathing. Parching doesn’t hurt, and so long as she doesn’t see me, she won’t remember. She will stir soon, and then you can try.”

“I won’t—”

Asha’s eyelashes flutter. Brac puts his hands on her again, and she collapses, facedown.

“There. She will be out a little longer.” He repositions Asha’s head so that she can breathe. “When she starts to wake, put your hands on her skin. Every mortal has a fire within, the essence of who we are. Feel for that soul-fire and draw it out.”

“I have no idea what you just said!”

“Feel for mine.” He places my hand in his. “Do you sense the heat? Some say soul-fire is a buzz or a tickle.”

I concentrate on the warmth rising off him, and my skin tingles. “I think so.”

Asha groans. Brac moves my hand to her arm. “Go on. Pull her soul-fire in.”

I reach for Asha’s inner fire and locate a well of buzzing warmth. Wrapping my mind around it, I draw it in, and an intense glow fills my mind’s eye.

The light is too big, too immense. Unable to hold my inner fire back, I push it at her.

Brac yanks my hand off Asha, and dizziness washes over me. He catches me from reeling. “You pushed instead of pulled. Good thing I was here, or you would have scorched her.” He checks Asha’s breathing. “She’s all right.”

I lean against the bedpost and wait out the white dots zipping around my vision. “Scorched her?”

“What I did to your coachman,” Brac replies with a grim, set look.

“Oh,” I say. He means Jeevan. I would be angry, but Brac and I were enemies then. I look at Asha, picturing her as a pile of dust, and what he said strikes me harder. “I nearly killed her?”

“I wouldn’t have let you. I know that it’s challenging to contain your fire, but this is a skill you must master. A good Burner never reveals his powers. He will—”

“He?”

“She will parch her opponent, weakening them by drawing out their soul-fire, and then she will end the battle without anyone knowing what she did.”

Devious, but also ingenious. I can weaken my opponents and finish them in a way that no one could trace back the victory to my powers. But there is a flaw. “What if my opponent is armed? How do I get close enough to touch their skin?”

“That’s up to you. I’m only here to teach you Burner skills.” Brac runs a hand through his damp hair, preoccupied with his duty. “There’s more. You can burn low if you aren’t careful. Fire takes fuel, and so do we. Eating helps you restock your powers. Regardless, you could use more meals.” He pinches my skinny arm. I tug away from him and his quick grin. “You can also burn too high if you take in a lot of inner fire from others. To get rid of the excess soul-fire, you need to expel it in waves. You know how heat ripples off fire? You cannot see it, but when you get too close, it singes. That’s a heatwave. We will need somewhere safer to practice that . . . somewhere with less cloth. And people.” Brac looks down at Asha and starts to lift her veil. “I wonder if she’s pretty under there.”

I smack away his hand. “Help me with her.” We lift Asha to lie more comfortably on my bed and stand back. “She looks peaceful.”

“She’s going to wake with a horrible headache.”

I look at Brac sidelong. For all of his lightheartedness, it must have been painful to leave his family and join the bhutas. “Who taught you to use your powers?”

“No one. Burners are the rarest bhutas and the most destructive, so naturally the rajah sought to annihilate us first. My mother knew what I was and hid it. Everyone thought I was feverish, but when I got older, Hastin found me. He was looking for bhutas in hiding and recognized my symptoms. He helped me raze. After that, I read about the fundamentals of Burner abilities in Kishan’s private journals. The rest was trial and error.”

Noise travels up from the courtyard, where people gather for the procession to the amphitheater. Brac peeks out the balcony. “Don’t you have to be somewhere?”

I groan. He knows full well that I have to get to the tournament. “No wonder Deven didn’t miss you.”

“He didn’t?” Brac slants his eyebrows together, affronted.

“He did, but he blamed himself for your death, so give him time.”

Brac starts to the balcony. “Where is my elder brother now?”

“Looking for the book.”

“The Zhaleh?” Brac stops midstride and leans heavily against the wall. “That’s a different Deven than I know.”

“Will you help him?” I do not add that more is at stake than my bargain with Hastin. Deven can decide whether or not to tell his brother about our plan to leave Vanhi.

“You’re more likely to milk a scorpion than find the book. I have looked for it everywhere.”

“Please keep trying. And, Brac?” I tuck my robe tighter around me. “Jaya has been listening in on Gautam’s conversations with Tarek. She may have learned where to find the book.”

He shakes his head. “You should not have included your friend, but since she’s already involved, we will pay her a visit. You should practice parching today.”

“At the tournament?”

“The key is stealth. If you can parch someone there without others noticing, you can parch anywhere.”

After what I did to Asha, I am hesitant to use my newfound talents, but if Deven cannot find the Zhaleh, I will have a greater chance of winning my battle match with my powers. Still, I am afraid to test my Burner abilities and risk revealing them or, worse, accidentally scorching someone to cinders. I glance at Asha’s motionless form and pray harder that Deven succeeds.

27

Rajah Tarek meets me in the main entryway. “Morning, love.” He kisses my cheek and then slants back and frowns. “You look tired.”

I look like me. This is the least done-up that I have been since I arrived. Asha woke just before I left. She was baffled about falling asleep and apologized over and over for her laziness. She did not remember being parched. I felt so guilty about letting her think that she had shirked her duties that I ran out the door before she could fix me up properly.

“I woke early to train.”

Tarek clucks his tongue. “You should not stress yourself. You’re my champion. I have every faith in you.” He places a firm hand on the small of my back and steers me outside.

A line of elephants waits in the busy courtyard. I climb up to the howdah on the first elephant and notice the rubies I tore off have been replaced with more.

Tarek notes their reappearance as well. “Ah, they recovered my jewels.”

I force myself not to react. His soldiers recovered them. They are not new rubies; they are the same ones I threw to the crowd. Regret grates at me. I do not want to think about how many people the soldiers must have harassed to get back those precious stones, but I do know that Tarek retrieved them as a warning for me not to go against him again.

The procession is every bit as elaborate as yesterday. More people pack the roadway, all of them cheering and waving, and I realize that Brac has asked the impossible. I cannot practice parching with so many eyes on me. Though, if I could, I would test my abilities on Tarek.

He rests a hand on my knee and leaves it there during our travel. I peek at it intermittently, expecting his hand to slither up my leg, but we reach the amphitheater without a single one of his fingers stirring. I suspect that he used to sit with Yasmin this way. I abhor his nearness all the more.