Prologue
The Night Without a Moon
The night Krishna was born, the world itself forgot how to breathe.
Across Mathura, lamps burned behind shuttered windows. The streets were empty. Guards stood beneath the walls of the royal prison, their hands resting upon spears, unaware that destiny had already entered the city.
Inside the prison, Devaki lay exhausted upon a stone floor.
Beside her sat Vasudeva.
For years they had watched their children die.
One after the other.
Seven lives.
Seven little bodies taken from their arms by the same man who ruled Mathura with fear.
Kamsa.
Devaki closed her eyes.
“Vasudeva...”
“I am here.”
“The child...”
Vasudeva looked toward her.
For the first time that night, there was something different in her voice.
Not fear but Wonder.
A strange blue light had begun to fill the prison there were no lamps burning yet the darkness was disappearing the chains around Vasudeva’s wrists trembled.
They fell open.
The prison doors unlocked themselves outside, the guards collapsed into sleep and the wind stopped.
Devaki opened her eyes.
A child lay beside her.
He was dark as a rain-filled cloud a tiny curl rested against his forehead and in his eyes was something no newborn child should possess.
Infinity.
Devaki stared at him for a moment she could not speak then the child smiled not the smile of a king, not the smile of a god but the smile of someone who had known her long before she was born.
A voice filled the chamber not from the child’s mouth, from everywhere.
“He has come.”
Vasudeva bowed his head he understood.
The prophecy had not been a warning, it had been a promise, The eighth child of Devaki would end Kamsa’s reign but there was something the prophecy had never told Kamsa it had never told him what would happen afterward.
