Priya was silent. She didn’t look away from Malini. Didn’t move.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Malini asked, looking up, up. “If you had lost—and you were losing, Priya—he would have killed me or hurt me, or used me as a hostage in order to use you. Better to have killed you than that. Better to have killed you than let an enemy of Parijatdvipa have that kind of power. That… that is what I told myself before Lady Bhumika came. I told myself to drive the knife into your heart. I would have done it. I would have…” She squeezed her eyes shut. Images of Narina and Alori and the blood in Priya’s hair seared themselves behind her lids. She opened them again. “I couldn’t,” she admitted. “I couldn’t do it.”
Priya exhaled. The light was behind her. Malini could only see her eyes—the fall of her hair, black haloed in gold.
“Then you’re not the person you think you are,” Priya said.
“But I’m going to have to be, Priya. I need to be—the part of me I need to be—can’t be good. Or soft. Not to do what’s needful.”
Priya said nothing. She simply tilted her head, listening.
“I am going to have to carve out a new face. A face that can pay the price I need to pay. I am going to become monstrous,” Malini said, tasting the weight of the words upon her lips, her tongue. “For so long I have only wanted to escape and survive. But now I am free, and for the sake of my purpose… for the sake of power,” she admitted, “I am going to become something other than human. Other than simplynot good. I must.”
Priya hesitated. Said, finally, “I’m not sure that’s what being powerful means. Losing yourself.”
“As if you haven’t paid a price,” Malini said. “As if your Bhumika hasn’t. Or your brother.”
“Fine. So power—costs. But what you do when you have power, when you’ve gained it—that’s the key, isn’t it?” Priya took a step forward. “I know what my brother would do. And… it’s not exactly that he’s wrong. But he’s not clever enough to make something that lasts out of the carnage he’ll bring. I should know. Neither am I. But what will you do, once you have your justice?”
“Once Chandra is dealt with? I don’t know,” Malini said. “I can’t imagine it. To even hope—it’s been beyond me for so long.”
“You could do something good,” said Priya. “No—you’ve already promised something good. Ahiranya’s freedom.”
“And that’s kind of me, is it? Freeing Ahiranya so rebels like your brother can seize it and ill-use it in Parijatdvipa’s place?”
Priya sighed. “I don’t know what it means to be a just ruler, all right? I don’t know what you want to hear. But I think you can figure it out. You’re going to be influential when your brother Aditya claims his throne. I know it.”
“Priya. I almost slid a knife into your heart. How can you be here? How can you speak to me?”
“Well, if you had, I’d be dead, and we wouldn’t be talking about anything.” She shrugged.
“Priya.” And oh—the voice that came out of her was pleading. “Please.” What was she pleading with Priya for—honesty? Forgiveness? Whatever she wanted, she knew only Priya could provide it.
Priya gazed back at her, keen-eyed, unsmiling.
“When I was small, when I began as a temple child, I learned how important it is to be strong. We were trained to fight—to fight enemies and fight each other. To cut away the parts of us that were weak. That was what surviving—and ruling—meant. Not being weak.” Priya paused. “And still, most of us died. Because we trusted the people who’d raised us. I suppose that was weakness, too.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That… that the people you care about can be used against you. And strength—strength is a knife turned on the parts of yourself that care.” Priya’s fingertips touched at the hollow of her own ribs.
Malini swallowed. She thought of the night when the needle-flower leaving her body had nearly killed her, and she had pinned Priya beneath her. She thought of the blazing softness of Priya’s beating heart.
“I know what it means to have power,” Priya continued. “I know the price. I don’t know if I can blame you for wanting to pay it.”
“You should,” Malini rasped. Her throat felt raw.
“Maybe,” Priya admitted. “Maybe if I’d been raised gently by people who taught me to be kind and good, I’d know how to do it. But I was taught goodness and kindness, or what passes for it, by other damaged children, so I can’t.” She came forward. Sank to the ground by the tree stump where Malini sat. “My own brother ripped my heart out in a vision. That part doesn’t matter,” Priya said hastily, when Malini’s mouth began to shape an alarmed question. “What matters is that my own brother hurt me, horribly, and I don’t think I can hate him, even now.”
Malini pushed the obvious questions aside. “When my brother hurt me, I made it my life’s purpose to destroy him.”
Priya laughed softly. “Maybe that’s the better way.”
“I’m not so sure.” She couldn’t smile. Her heart felt like a howl. “You need to forgive less easily, Priya. You need to guard yourself.”
Priya looked up at her through those eyelashes like strange gold, those clear eyes pinning her soul.
“You couldn’t use the knife on me,” Priya said. “Do you think one day you’ll turn yourself into someone who’ll be able to? Who’ll carve out my heart with no regrets?”
