Priya looked back wildly at Malini.
Malini was struck, in that moment, by their shared helplessness.
Then Priya turned away. Slowly, she kneeled.
The rebel took a step forward. For all his size, his footsteps were almost soundless upon the ground. He removed his mask, revealing a face that was all angles, brushed dark at the jaw by stubble. He did not look at Malini, or the other rebels. He seemed to see nothing but Priya.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said.
“But you have,” she said. Her voice was strained, as if she were pushing against a great weight.
“I will die, Priya. All of us will die.” He kneeled down too. “Do you want that?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Then tell me the way,” he cajoled. “Show me. We can go together.” He held his hand out, palm open. “I’ve bested you. I’ve proved myself stronger. It’s only right.”
A sharp shake of Priya’s head.
“Will you really deny me my rights as your temple brother? You would deny me the chance to give Ahiranya the freedom it needs to survive?”
Of course. Of course he was a fellow temple child, Malini should haveknown. Should have pieced together the nature of this. But she didn’t move. She listened, and hoped there was an outcome from this better than all the dire ones that seemed to lie before them.
“Would I deny you the right to make us into exactly what the elders feared we’d become?” Malini could not see Priya’s face, but she could imagine what expression Priya wore: the bared teeth, the challenging set to her jaw. “I would.”
“You’re acting like a child,” he said. “You know what needs to be done. You know Ahiranya’s only chance is freedom from the emperor’s control and his ideology. Our only chance to be more than rot, degraded by Parijatdvipa’s idea of us, made smaller day by day, year by year—isthis. The deathless waters. Their blood on our righteous hands. And yet you still refuse.”
“I’m not refusing,” snapped Priya. “But I won’t give it to you like this. Ashok, not like this. Not the way you want it.”
The man—the rebel, the temple son—named Ashok stood, drawing himself to his full height.
“Then how?” he asked, voice dangerously calm. “You want me to grovel, Priya? Maybe there will be time to make a world and a rule more like you want in the aftermath. But right now, you have a weapon you have no idea how to properly use. And it’s mine by right.”
“I want you to talk to me. I want you to use your reason. But you’ve backed yourself into a corner, haven’t you, Ashok? You’re killing everything you love. Yourself. Your followers. And you can’t see any way out but this.” Priya’s head was still bleeding freely, dripping onto the soil. “Maybe I should thank you after all for abandoning me. If I’d stayed with you, you’d be killing me too. At least now you’re only hurting me.”
“I told you. I have no desire to harm you.”
“Whatever you say,” Priya said, and Malini could hear the sneer in her voice, goading him.
Ashok’s face darkened.
Priya had moved a little in the time she’d spoken, carefully trying to angle her body in front of Malini’s. But finally—unfortunately—Ashok looked at her. He tilted his head, examining her.
“A lady of Parijat,” he said softly. “What should I make of this, Priya? Is she a hostage?” He took a step toward her. Looked her up and down, measuring her.
“Ashok,” Priya said. “No.”
“There are so many ways to hurt someone,” he said pleasantly. “Do you remember when Sanjana hit Nandi once, to make you give her something she wanted? What was it—a hairpin?”
“A bracelet,” Priya said thinly.
“She did it because she knew you wouldn’t give in if she hit you. But you cared too much about Nandi to watch him suffer. I’m sure the principle still applies.” A pause. “This is your last chance, Priya.”
Malini met his eyes. The glint of them. She knew a man who took pleasure in pain when she saw one, and this one did, whether he admitted his darkness to himself or not.
Priya turned her head, looking between Malini and Ashok not with fear, not with helplessness, but with a kind of mulish fury.
“I really hate you sometimes, Ashok,” Priya said in a low voice. “I swear it.”
