He wanted what she now had. And she knew—with the bone-deep assurance of a woman who’d felt his fist around her heart—that she could not give it to him.
She made her way up, up, up. And when she rose to the Hirana’s surface, she turned back and looked at the entrance to the deathless waters. She leaned forward. Touched her fingers to the stone. With the same bleeding, lacerating power, she drew the rock together. Sealed the way shut.
Ashok would not be able to find it without her now.
She crossed the Hirana: the empty corridors, the triveni. The air was cold and soft, the ground strangely warm—as if the Hirana came alive, sang, at her presence, at a twice-born crossing its surface.
The corridor to Malini’s room was quiet. She pushed open the door softly, expecting to find Malini as she’d left her, sleeping on the charpoy. Instead Malini was sitting up, clutching her cheek. Even between her fingers, Priya could see the dark shadow of a bruise.
She felt a movement behind her, from the corner by the door. There was suddenly something sharp beneath her chin. She felt something hot. The wetness, not of water, but of blood, as Pramila’s hand trembled around the blade.
MALINI
You poisoned me first.
Malini did not say it, of course. But she thought it. She sat very still, her hands in fists in her lap, her eyes wide, and thought it with all the fury in her. She had not had to feign softness or weakness when Pramila had first confronted her and slapped her, accusing her of poisoning Pramila in secret, of being an impure and evil creature down to her core. Malini’s tongue was thick with the taste of metal, the clinging memory of needle-flower, gently administered by Priya the last time Malini had briefly awoken.
The second—and third—time Pramila had hit her she’d refuted everything Pramila had said. No, she had not poisoned Pramila. No, there was no plot against her. Malini had been consuming her wine obediently, taking her medicine as was expected. No, Priya had not betrayed Pramila. Priya was loyal.
And yet. For all her lies, spoken with all the earnestness she could muster, here they were: Pramila, red-eyed and furious, her hand trembling around a knife. Priya, with her head slightly raised, a thin rivulet of blood winding its way down her throat.
“Why are you holding a knife to my maid’s throat?” Malini asked, letting a quiver shake the last words. It was not difficult. It was amazing, really, how close a tremor of fury sounded to a tremor of fear. How dare Pramila. Howdareshe. “Pramila, I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? What have I done to offend you?”
“Oh, don’t try that with me, you sly bitch,” Pramila said. Her voice was savage, and her hand twitched a little with the force of her feeling. “It may have taken me time, Malini, but I know now. You used this maid to poison me, didn’t you? You want me dead. Well, I can’t kill you. I…” A shuddering breath. “But this one is a traitor.”
Priya was soaked. Her hair was plastered to her shoulders. Water was dripping from the hem of her sari, and the blood at her neck had turned from red to a washed-out pink. Where in the world had she been? Malini had been trapped in a haze of sickness for mothers knew how long, and clearly much had passed in the time she was in a void. Curse it.
Priya looked strangely calm. She met Malini’s eyes. What did she want to tell Malini? What did that calmness mean?
Malini could not understand it. She was tired, hollowed out by grief dreams and poison.
“Priya has been a loyal maidservant,” Malini managed to say in a wavering voice.
“Loyal toyou.”
“She’s a good girl,” said Malini, even though she knew it was useless to continue the lie. Still. Theknife. “A simple girl.”
“I don’t even know if you’d be sad to lose her,” Pramila said thickly. “You probably didn’t even weep over my Narina, did you? And she was meant to be like a sister to you. Oh, but you let her die happily enough. What will a simple, stupid maid matter to a monster like you?”
This time it was not an accidental flinch that brought blood to Priya’s skin. It was a deliberate movement of Pramila’s hand. Priya’s mouth parted, just slightly.
And Malini felt something inside her tighten.
Being locked here had made Malini a shadow of herself. She’d been haunted by her own past—by a flower-wreathed princess of Parijat with a shrewd smile and a voice full of secrets, who had the hunger and the wherewithal to tear Chandra from his throne—and by how beyond her grasp even the possibility of being that woman lay.
But suddenly it no longer mattered. Suddenly her spine was iron. Her tongue tasted of blood, as if Priya’s hurt lay inside her. She did not need flowers or court or the graces due a princess, to be what she was.
“Pramila,” she said. Her old voice came out of her—water-deep. “Lower the knife. You’ve never killed before. Will you start with this one?”
Pramila went quite still. After Malini’s trembling, her sudden strength was a weapon all its own.
“I can do what is needful,” Pramila gritted out.
“Is killing a mere maid needful?” Malini asked, letting her voice spool from her lips like a silk noose. “Come now, Pramila. You’ve never been cruel.” A lie. But it was a lie Pramila believed, and it would strike her like truth. “The only needful murder you must commit is mine. And you balk even at that, don’t you? You feed me needle-flower, but not enough to kill me quickly. You entreat me to choose the pyre, but you will not light one beneath me yourself.
“In that, you are very like my brother.” Malini let pity seep into her tone. “He cannot stand to have blood on his hands either. He chose to place mine on yours, after all. Tell me, is he displeased I still live? Is my continued survival a failure?”
“I have dreamt so many times of killing you myself,” Pramila spat. “Believe me, I have. I don’t fear blood on my hands. But unlike you, princess, I try to do what is right. I’ve tried so hard to ensure that your death would purify you. But now, now I’ve woken time and again from a sleep riddled with nightmares, now I’ve dreamt drugged dreams where my daughter screams…” Pramila swallowed. She raised the knife an increment further.
