Priya felt as if her racing pulse, quick with panic, tripped over itself for a moment. Frozen, she felt her understanding of the princess—ofthis—shift upon its axis.
She thought of Bhumika’s words from the sangam, suddenly.I must use all the tools in my arsenal, she’d said.
The princess was a daughter of the empire. The princess was trapped and desperate.
And Priya was… useful.
She’d been a fool.
“And what shall I get in return for helping you escape here?” Priya asked, rage and humiliation surging through her. “Were you hoping I’d risk my life for you just out of the goodness of my heart?” All those gentle touches, all those smiles—Malini’s hands on her own, and shared breath that could have been a kiss. All of it, no more than a careful leash placed around Priya’s neck, ready to be drawn at the right moment. “Maybe you thought I’d do it for a kiss? Do you really think so little of me?”
An expression flickered across Malini’s face, too quick to decipher. “Priya, whatever you think, you’re wrong.”
“Pramila told me not to trust you. She told me that you make people love you. That you’re manipulative.”
Malini said nothing.
“You’ve wasted your energy on me,” said Priya. “I’m not capable of what you want.”
“You are,” Malini said. “Please, Priya. If anyone can help me escape the Hirana, it’s you. There’s no one but you.”
“Of course you think I can,” said Priya bitterly. “You saw me after all, with Meena. You watched me kill her and you didn’t even look afraid. Don’t you know that you should be afraid of me? Don’t you know how easily I could killyou?” She gripped Malini’s hands harder in return, holding her fast. “I have so many reasons to hate you. You, with your imperial blood and your father and brothers who were happy to see Ahiranya’s temple children piled onto a pyre and burned.” Priya was surprised at the venom in her own voice, the way heat rushed to the surface of her skin, furious and prickling. “I have no reason to help the child of an imperial family that ordered my own family dead. I could break your neck, here and now, and you couldn’t stop me. I could fling you from the Hirana. If you think I have the power to kill all the guards, then you know I could just as easily end your life and free myself.”
“I’m not afraid of death at your hand,” said Malini.
“And why is that?”
Some of the vulnerability faded from Malini’s face. Leached away.
“The night you saw me, in my chamber, on the ground—I had convinced Pramila to leave the wine with me. I’d been nice to her. Sweet, biddable. For days. You know something about how that works. She left the wine. And I drank, and drank, and drank. I weighed up my choices. I thought: either I will grow sick enough that she will have to seek help, allowing me access to a physician who I can beg for aid to escape this prison, or I will simply die.” Malini’s voice trembled a little. “But then I grew afraid, and I flung the wine to the floor. I didn’t know what was real any longer. And I did not want to die in a pool of my own vomit, after all.”
And then, Priya knew, she had appeared. She remembered Malini’s eyes in the dark. The rasp of her voice, her words—Are you real?—with a shudder.
“Does that disturb you?” Malini asked. Her voice hardened. “I like you, Priya. But I am afraid that I’m running out of time for the niceties of our relationship. If General Vikram is dead—who knows where my brother will send me next, or what will become of me?”
There was no distance between them and yet somehow Malini took a step forward, tugging her hands free from Priya’s. She touched her fingertips to Priya’s chin instead, so close to Priya’s mouth, her fingers warm and steady, impossible to ignore.
“Kill me or save me,” murmured Malini. “But dosomething, Priya. My brother wants me to waste away here, or beg him for the sanctity of an immolation—but I will not. I have been able to do nothing to change my circumstances apart from obtaining you, so please do me the kindness of ending my suffering, one way or another. Surely you’re humane enough for that.”
Priya wrenched back from Malini’s hand.
“If you speak of what I am to anyone,” Priya said angrily, “I’ll force that needle-flower poison down your throat myself.”
“I have never,” said Malini, “threatened to tell anyone your secrets, Priya.”
“You know nothing of my secrets.”
“You know that I do.”
“I am not ashamed of wanting you,” Priya blurted out, even though shewasashamed of wanting Malini, because it made her a foolish love-addled thing unfit for the task her sister had set her. A failure. “But I don’t appreciate you using my wants against me, and I won’t let you do it anymore. Tell whoever you like that I want you. But if you speak of what you think I am—”
“I told you,” Malini cut in. “I haven’t threatened to reveal you. I could have long ago, and I have not. I won’t.”
That pulled a choked laugh from Priya’s throat. “How generous of you! But you want to keep me on your side, don’t you? Without me, you have no one here.No one.”
Malini said nothing to that. The vulnerability was gone from her face, and now her expression was nigh unreadable.
“Hide here from Pramila if you want,” Priya added, as she turned. “I’m not going to help you.”
