Chapter 1 – Sugandha

Spring Year 2

For most of that first day on the river, Prince Atul rowed like a man expecting trouble. His gaze swept the banks, searching for signs of pursuit. Whenever he spotted someone, too far from us to tell if they were fishermen or travelers, he quieted his strokes and steered us farther from shore.

Sweat glazed his muscles as he rowed with the strength of three men. Suddenly, his head snapped toward a thicket of trees by the water’s edge; his eyes were sharp and his jaw set. He looked like a hunter watching for movement. I studied him in that moment, still unsure if I had been brave or foolish to ask him to come.

“Crouch,” he whispered, in the kind of voice that expected to be obeyed. He folded in on himself, head tucked to his knees. I stayed upright, eyes sweeping the landscape for whatever had rattled him, until his hand pressed down on my head and forced me lower.

“With instincts like yours, how did you survive this long?” he murmured, a grin tugging at his mouth.

“By not trusting strangers,” I shot back, though I stayed crouched. My brush with the nagas had made me bolder, yes—but not foolish enough to believe a divine rescue would come every time I found myself in trouble.

“What are we doing?” I asked after a few heartbeats passed and nothing came flying at us from the trees.

“I saw a glint—like the tip of an arrow,” he said, lifting his head just enough to peer through the branches. “I’ve no desire to be struck by another.”

I understood that well enough. Two days ago, one of Chief Vikramasinha’s men had shot him in the chest. Without the intervention of the semi-divine nagas, I would not have been able to save him. When he thanked me, I asked him to join me on this journey. But doubt still lingered. I had met him only three days ago and knew nothing beyond what he had chosen to tell me. Worse, I wasn’t even sure why I was chasing the past. It was already carved in stone, and I had no power to change it.

With the arrival of spring, flowers burst into bloom around us, but I barely noticed. A year ago, I had been just a girl living quietly with my grandfather. Now I was on the run with a prince from a foreign land. Prince Atul was unlike any boy I had ever met, though in my sixteen years, I had not known many.

Most of the boys I’d encountered while fleeing this past year carried themselves like nothing could touch them. But this careful prince beside me was a different sort entirely. “I thought princes were supposed to be brave,” I said before I could stop myself, my fingers flying to my lips the moment the words escaped.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a low groan. I shouldn’t have said it—not after all he’d done. He’d saved me from the edge of death after a venomous snakebite, and he’d agreed to help me chase down answers about a past neither of us fully understood. Cowards didn’t do such things.

“I didn’t mean—” I began.

“I intend to keep us both alive until we make sense of what’s happening to you,” he said, simply and without ceremony. I waited for a proud defense of his courage. It never came.

I guessed he was only a few years older than me, but he carried himself with the weight of someone twice his age. He’d told me he was married to two women and had fathered a child. Was that where his maturity came from? As my thoughts spiraled, I missed his question.

“Nanda, tell me what you know about Purohit Parivan,” he asked again, and I blinked as if surfacing from a dream.

Purohit Parivan. The name pulled me straight to my grandfather. I used to think his death was the hardest part. I hadn’t realized living without him would be worse. “In his final moments, my grandfather told me to find Purohit Parivan. But the priest… he perished in a fire just ahead of my arrival.” The priest appeared to me in a vision shortly before his death, but I kept that detail to myself. I didn’t know this prince well enough. Not yet.

“I heard he once served as royal guru to King Jayadheer,” I went on. “But when his son, King Kulashekara, took the throne, Purohit Parivan fell out of favor and left Tipti.”

Atul’s gaze swept the riverbanks, where thick greenery clung to the edges and tiny fruits glistened like gems among the leaves. Birds darted through the canopy, and the occasional rustle gave away the presence of animals hidden in the undergrowth.

“Guru Ori claimed he searched for you out of some deep-rooted familial love,” he said, his eyes flicking to mine before shifting to an approaching boat. One hand hovered near the hilt of the sword tucked discreetly beside him.

“My uncle wouldn’t recognize love if it was served to him on a silver plate. He killed his own father,” I spat loudly, not caring if the wind carried my words.

Atul stayed silent until the boat drifted past, but the tension in his jaw told me he’d heard every word. My uncle had taken the only family I’d ever had, and no amount of time or reason would make me forgive that. Would the prince understand that kind of bitterness?

I glanced at him. He had left his family behind, even his own son, to come to Kashgar. Perhaps family did not mean the same to him. This time, I held my tongue instead of blurting out my observation.

Prince Atul’s eyes cut to me. Sharp. And filled with something I couldn’t quite name. The river stretched around us, wide and quiet, no other boats in sight.

“Show me your strength,” he said. “Call on your river magic.”

I stared at him, uncertain.

“Show me how powerless I am against you.”