Page 120 of Queen of Shadows and Ruin

“I am Loka, the God of the People,” the figure answered.

Zarya’s blood turned sluggish at those words.

“A god? The one my mother saw?”

Loka dipped her chin. “It was my duty to bring the visions that foretold of your coming. To share that you would be the one to bear the power that would free the vanshaj.”

Loka gestured to Zarya’s hands and the magic contained within them.

“I’ve been doing it,” she said. “Or I was. I was breaking their collars, but now I’m trapped here.”

Loka nodded. “The gods have noted your actions and commend your efforts.” She fell silent, eyeing Zarya up and down.

“But?” she asked, sensing Loka had more to say.

“But that was not what we meant when we said you’d free them. While your magic does break the collars, you have already surmised the problem with your plan many times.”

Zarya exhaled a long breath. “There are too many of them. I can’t do it fast enough to stop this once and for all.”

“Exactly,” Loka responded. “When I spoke with your mother, I told her about you. The gods granted you a paramadhar to aid you in this quest. Never has there been anyone who needed a protector more.”

Tears filled Zarya’s eyes. “But Abishek turned him against me. He… broke us.”

“He’s in there,” Loka said. “You will reach him, and you will need him at the end. You will need everyone.”

“At the end of what?”

“The seal must be opened,” Loka said. “Only your magic can do it, and that, my dear child, will free every vanshaj from their chains. It will break the enchantment on every Aazheri who was unjustly caged. It will also lift the curse we placed on the Aazheri that nullified their children’s magic when they bred from outside their line.”

Zarya blinked heavily at those words. “That was a curse?”

Loka nodded.

“You mean I could have a child with magic? With Rabin?”

“Perhaps,” Loka answered. “It was the only way we could stop the Ashvins and their followers from spreading their evil any further.”

“But if I open the seal, it will free the nairatta.”

Loka dipped her head. “It will.”

“But isn’t that trading one set of problems for another?”

“You can defeat the nairatta by ending the Ashvins once and for all. The Chiranjivi will have the power working together. The twins’ death will break the ties between the demons’ world and ours. It will purify the magic they once tainted and send them back to the realm of shadows where they belong.”

The tattoo on Zarya’s chest throbbed as Loka spoke.

“But the Ashvins live inside me,” she whispered.

Loka nodded. “So they do.”

She didn’t finish her sentence, and Zarya couldn’t bring herself to ask, but the pitying look in her eyes told her everything she needed to know.

The only way to free them was for Zarya to die.

She felt a tear slip down her cheek as she mourned so many things. Her life with Rabin and Yasen and Row and all the other friends she’d made.

The future she’d never have.