Page 2 of The Divine Lies We Weave

And one most of all. She would be his downfall. His biggest heartbreak. His comeuppance.

1

LEELA

The paper had long wrinkled and frayed in Leela’s hand. She couldn’t count how many times she’d sat and stared at the charcoal outline of the weapon that would lead to her revenge. She also couldn’t tell how long she’d been hoping, waiting for this night to finally arrive so she could escape. All these years of planning, and she would be free.

She just had to escape a loveless marriage first.

Sighing, she turned to the city. There was something alluring about the opulent oranges and reds lighting the Nihikian City tonight. Perhaps it was the hope swimming within Leela’s veins like a violent Flame, or maybe it was simply the fact she was staring at yet another sunset from the dreaded palace windows.

Thank the Flames it was going to be her last.

Leela leaned against the cool sandstone window overlooking the desert city, The City of Nihikia, trying to sort her thoughts before night fully blossomed. Warm desert wind swept in and tugged the loose black hair away from her round brown cheeks, allowing her a moment of reprieve from her restless thoughts.

She took one final glance at the city she never wished to be a part of. Strips of crimson ribbons ran along wires, interlocking the jagged sandstone houses spreading from the mountainside, in which the palace was carved into, to the surrounding twenty-foot wall. Drums beat through her as the citizens brought an end to the week-long celebration that would culminate to the marriage of ladies of the palace.

To the kingdom, it was a celebration of wealth and kingdoms uniting.

To Leela, it was the perfect diversion.

“Time to get dressed, Leela,” Sita, her main maid, said. “We have a dinner to get to.”

Tearing her gaze from the streets, she focused on the red blouse and skirt lying rumpled on her bed. Her wedding garments lay like a beacon, staring at her across the moonlit room as the twin moons continued to rise. The color wasn’t her choice—not that she had a choice in her six long, arduous years of entrapment.

Red. It was meant to be the color of new beginnings. Love. Power.

Once Leela put that garment on, it was over. She would marry and be trapped under a different master.

“They want you to wear this before the ceremony tonight,” Sita said. She held up another crimson gown with golden embroidery around the long arms and curved neckline.

“How delightful,” Leela quipped.

In a few minutes, she would venture down to the dining hall one last time and have a final dinner with her palace sisters. People she had no blood ties with but had been forced to engage with over the last six years, each one orphaned after the monsters tore their world apart and later poached by the palace to be wed off to powerful and rich investors. Women she barely recognized and refused to understand, other than knowing they all wanted one thing—to escape.

Besides, she already had a sister.

And she’d already lost her.

Realizing she had to get this part of the night over with first, she left the windowsill and took one final look at her wedding garments. The twin moons sparkled against the tiny beads, igniting the golden embroidery hand-stitched into endless circles and lines along the skirt’s edge to represent the divine Flames above. Each bead was meticulously placed. Each embroidered swirl sewn to perfection.

As beautiful as the garments were, Leela didn’t plan to wear them. She planned to burn them.

She narrowed her gaze, pushing back the warmth threatening to spill from behind her eyes. With all her might, she pushed it back and hoped that her plan tonight would go without any mistakes and she’d find her weapon.

Leela snatched the gown from Sita and quickly undressed, throwing her drab, gray gown on the sandstone floor and replacing it with the silken dress.

Sita spun around, averting her gaze.

Leela flattened the material over the curves and edges of her hips, letting the gown fall at her ankles. She reworked the loose braids of her thick, wavy hair that had nearly come undone from sitting by the window.

Sita took over, and Leela let her, a silent shadow of sadness dropping over them. To Sita, this was the last time she’d plait Leela’s hair. To Leela, this would be one of the last times they’d be standing together in the same room. Sita had been the first person to engage with Leela when she first arrived, encouraging her to come out of her bedroom and venture through the halls.

But the palace would never be the home Leela grew up in. She could still see the giant walls encasing her village of tiny huts scattered over bulging dunes. The river she used to run alongside with her sister, Anika, wishing to climb the wall keeping the dreaded monsters away from them to visit the ocean. The days she labored through the heat in the wheat fields to ensure she kept it alive in the cooler months.

Until the wall couldn’t keep them safe. Until it shattered and Leela was left without her village, family, and Rajesh, her fiancé.

Sita grabbed Leela by the shoulders, jolting her out of the painful memories. “Don’t you look beautiful?”