“Bharata, that is not true.” I spared a glance for Dasharath, but he sat quiet in his throne, oblivious to all around him.
Shatrugna placed a hand on Bharata’s shoulder. “You cannot reason with her,” Shatrugna said, throwing me a look of undisguised loathing.
“Please—” I tried one last time.
The bond between Bharata and me shattered quietly.
As the pieces fell around me in a dreadful rain, Bharata turned away from me and said to the court at large, “You are no mother of mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“MY LADY?” CAME A muffled voice from the front room.
You are no mother of mine.
I was lying in my bed, repeating Bharata’s words over and over again to myself. How had anybody gotten into my rooms? Manthara and Asha had left, or so I thought.
Then Asha walked into my bedroom, and I realized she must have only pretended to leave, in order to keep watch over me. I did not deserve friends like this. “Urmila and Lakshmana have come to say goodbye.”
I waved a hand at her, and Asha interpreted it according to her own will. She walked away and returned a moment later, Urmila and Lakshmana in tow. I did not get up.
“Ma,” Lakshmana murmured, kneeling beside my bed. “Ma, I am so sorry.”
I wanted to turn away from him but could not muster the energy to do so.
“I brought him here,” Urmila said. “He did not wish to disturb you, but he should not leave without saying goodbye.”
“I did not wish to be disturbed,” I whispered, my lips barely moving.
Lakshmana’s hand found my own. “I am so sorry, Ma. You truly are the best of us.”
“Ha.” The sound came straight from my belly. I made it again, because I could. “Ha.”
He remained undeterred. “I promise I will not let you down. I will not let Sita leave my sight.”
“When you sleep, Rama can do as he pleases,” I said. “It matters not. Stay in Ayodhya if you wish.”
“You cannot possibly want that.” He rose to his feet. “I will not sleep if that is what it requires.”
“Lakshmana,” Urmila said fiercely, “do not kill yourself for Sita’s sake. I will not lose both my sister and my husband to this idiocy.”
“I can do it,” he insisted. With great determination, I focused my eyes on him and caught an intense glint in his expression. “I swear it. I will protect Sita with my life, I swear this to the gods.”
“The gods are not listening,” I said. Even though I knew that much of Rama’s sins lay at the feet of a man, not the gods, they had done nothing to stop him, just as they had done nothing to help me. But Lakshmana and Urmila were paying me no mind—they had turned away from me. Of course, I had summoned all my remaining vigor for words nobody would listen to.
I pushed myself up onto my elbows, just as Lakshmana dropped to his knees. What in the world? I blinked a few times, watching as the shadow in the corner of my bedroom moved, coalescing into the shape of a woman, swathed in a cloak of deep, glimmering black.
The shadow woman approached me, but my eyes had difficulty grasping onto anything but her face. Her form remained shrouded in slippery darkness.
“I am Nidra,” she said, and each word reverberated within the walls, within the cage of my ribs.
I tipped my head back and laughed. I felt halfway out of my body, uncontrolled, hysterical. Nidra had been my favorite goddess to pray to as a child. Every night, when dreams eluded me in my stone room in Kekaya, I sent a prayer to the goddess of sleep. And every night, I learned anew that the goodwill of the gods did not extend to me.
“I hope you do not expect me to bow, my lady.”
Sorrow passed over her features. “I heard every one of your prayers,” she said. “And each time, I hoped to respond.”
“Hope is useless,” I bit out. “I was a child.”
“It is, is it not? You achieved greatness without us. Imagine what you might have done with us.”
“I would rather not.” This conversation stung like thousands of grains of salt pressed into a hundred bleeding wounds. Of course, now the gods would choose to talk to me, to approve of my worst actions.
“Oh, Kaikeyi,” Nidra breathed, and she passed a hand over the top of my head. As she did, tension and exhaustion melted out of me. The pain and the despair remained, but I felt calmer, like a ship that had just weathered river rapids to arrive bruised and beaten at a dock.
Then my mind caught up. “I thought you gods could do nothing for me. Gods-touched, forsaken.”