Page 91 of Heart of Night and Fire

Behind them walked a couple arm in arm, watching the girls and laughing with love in their eyes. Their parents, no doubt. The man was dressed in a tailored jacket, and the woman in a bright emerald sari draped in folds. Her dark hair was swept to the side and pinned with a large flower and a piece of black netting.

Zarya twisted her hand, trying to get a different look at the scene. The people seemed familiar somehow, like the tune of a song she couldn’t remember the lyrics to. The girls were throwing themselves down the hill, rolling to the bottom, then hauling themselves back up to the top again and again. They’d kicked off their black shoes, each with tiny heels and bows that matched their suits.

One of the girls, who looked like the older sister—she might have been about eight or nine—came into clearer focus as she ran to the edge of the bubble. Zarya let out a breath of surprise as she recognized her necklace—a tear-shaped turquoise pendant about the size of a thumbnail suspended from a gold chain.

The same necklace she had worn every day of her life.

The scene froze just before the bubble burst, mist rising into the air, sparkling in the moonlight.

“What was that?” Yasen asked, sitting up.

“I think… that was my mother. She was wearing the same necklace.” She grasped her pendant. “I’ve always had this. Row said it belonged to her.”

“And the other people?”

“I don’t know. A sister, her parents? I’ve never seen any of them. Where did that come from?”

“I have no idea. It certainly wasn’t my memory.”

“Memory? It wasn’t my memory, either.”

“Well, it must have been,” he said, tapping the book that he’d pulled towards himself. “It says here the spell recalls lost memories.”

“But that isn’t my memory. I don’t remember that.”

“Maybe Row told you about it when you were young, and it lingered there in the back of your mind.” He grabbed her braid and tugged it gently. “Besides, it says it’s for lost memories. Looks like you just found one.”

“I suppose,” she said. She tried to picture it again, but the image kept slipping away.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Me?”

“What kind of magic do you have? Do all rakshasas have it?”

“Nope.” He rolled onto his back and tucked his arms beneath his head. “I have no magic other than the usual enhanced hearing and sight and near immortality. And incredible good looks, of course.”

“Well, I guess that’s not so bad.”

“True, I could be a lowly human with their near blindness and fleeting lifespans.”

Zarya gave him a playful punch in the stomach.

“Oof, what was that for? You’re not human,” he said.

Zarya paused. He was right. She wasn’t human anymore. Or never had been. Not really.

“Still, that’s not nice.”

He chuckled.

“Some rakshasas have magic. Usually those of higher nobility who’ve mated with yakshis. Most don’t. The Ravanas all have it, of course. Gopal has a lot. Vikram, not as much. His brother was very strong. Some say he was nearly as powerful as a full-blooded yakshi.”

“What about your family? Who were your parents?”

“I’m Diya’s nephew. Her sister was my mother. Diya brought me here to live with the Ravanas after my mother died in a fire that almost killed me, too. No one knows who my father was.”

“I’m so sorry, Yasen.”