Page 103 of The Encore’s Crown

“You've never told me about this,” she said.

“It’s just ink.” I smiled into the pillow. “Sex doesn't normally make you this curious. Did I hit an extra spot tonight? Open a chakra?”

She pinched my side.

“Ow.”

“Tell me. Now.”

I breathed out. The easy answer was that I liked snakes, shit guys accept without question. The better answer was that it looked good under stage lights. But the honest answer sat somewhere old and inconvenient, coated in incense smoke and held in my mother’s hands.

“My mom used to take us to a temple,” I said. “Buddhist, Cambodian. Not every week or anything, life was…” I paused. My dad didn't appreciate Ma having anything of her own, so she'd sneak us out when he was in a stupor. But Radhika didn't need to know that, that wasn't her baggage to carry. “Life was life. But when she could, she took us.”

Radhika’s fingers stilled, then continued softer.

“I remember the smell the most. Agarwood mainly, but the food, fuck me the food was crazy good. The floor was always warm under my feet when we took our shoes off. People actually talking in Khmer. Ma bowing, lighting incense, telling me and Rithy to stop acting like wild animals for five seconds.”

Radhika smiled. I could feel it against my shoulder before she kissed me there.

“The naga was everywhere in stories,” I said. “Protection, water, old things. Sacred shit. I liked that, I guess. Something dangerous that wasn’t evil. Something with fangs and muscles that could still guard a temple, that could keep us safe.”

Her fingers moved over the snake’s tail near my shoulder.

“So this is you?” she asked. “Something big and dangerous but not evil?”

I laughed, but it came out too quiet.

“I don’t know.”

She leaned down and kissed the line of ink at the top of my spine.

“You know, in our stories, Lord Shiva wears Vasuki around his neck. A serpent king,” she paused and let her fingers linger in the sweep of the snake along my back. “A naga too. During the churning of the ocean, the gods and asuras used him as the rope. He suffered in the middle of it, pulled between both sides.”

“Sounds fucking rough.”

“It's a very old story. Everyone wants immortality, so everyone pulls.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “That's people for you.”

Her hand rested warm between my shoulder blades.

“Shiva wears him,” she continued. “He's not a decoration, he represents power and control. Poison, destruction, protection and even stillness. All together.”

I stared into the dark. Something in my chest felt uncomfortable, and I couldn't pin down why. Radhika kissed along the curve of the naga, one slow press of her mouth after another.

“You carry your naga the same way,” she whispered. “Like you’re proud of what it means, but you're scared of what it might do.”

“No one should let you talk after midnight,” I said, trying to make light of how close to the truth she'd come. “You're starting to sound like those spiritual guides on infomercials.”

She smiled against my skin. Then she said something in Hindi, soft enough that I almost missed it.

I turned my head. “What was that?”

Her lips brushed my shoulder again.

“मैं तुमसे प्यार करती हूँ,” she whispered.

I knew that one. I’d have known those words in any language coming from her mouth like that.