“I know.”
“When we were hungry, when we had nothing, I gave you what little food we had. I stayed up with a dagger in my hand when you slept on the street so you wouldn’t be harmed. In the Hirana I saved your life.”
“Iknow,” she choked out. “Ashok. I know.”
But she said nothing more.
He thought of waking in the husk of the tree, knowing that Meena was dead. Knowing that his own weakness had left the rebellion without a spy, without a valuable weapon in its hands.
He had not cultivated Priya into a weapon. He had let her go to Bhumika. And this was how she thanked him?
“There is so much you don’t remember of our childhood, Priya. But do you remember how we were trained when we were children?”
Silence. Then she said, “I remember pain.”
“It was how we were taught to be strong. How we were all taught to be strong enough to survive, and to rule. Pain can be a loving teacher. Spirits know I’ve had my fill of it.”
But you, he thought.Have you?
She was too weak, his sister. Too unaware of what she should have been.
“Do you know why we are nothing but shadows in the sangam?” he asked her then. “Have you ever questioned it?”
“No,” she said.
“Some of us who were older—we spoke of it. All our gifts are a reflection of the powers the yaksa possessed. Even this. It was the yaksa who traveled the cosmic rivers, once, and came to our world. When we come here, I believe it’s only the yaksa part of us that moves.” He curled his hand to a fist, placing it against her collarbone, above her heart. “When you taste the deathless waters, they carve out a place for the gifts of the yaksa inside you. The power of the yaksa is a cuckoo in the nest of your body. But worse still, you convince yourself itisyou. It’s only when the power fades that you realize a part of you has been erased.”
“You’re not making any sense,” she told him. But she was listening.
“The part of you that stands here is the part of you that isn’t human,” he told her. “The part of you that stands here is the part the deathless waters carved out, gutted and hollowed to make a space for power.
“You don’t feel it day in and day out, but I do. Every time I drink the waters a new part of me is torn away.” He steeled himself to do what was necessary. To teach her. “You want to know what we are, Priya? Here. Let me show you.”
She realized a moment too late. Once, she would have known far more quickly—would have dodged or run or used her teeth. Life in the mahal had left her slow. But as it was, she could do nothing, before the shadow of his fist forced itself into her chest, the dark smoke of her unspooling.
He tightened his fist, close around where her heart should have been. And tightened, andtwisted.
She screamed, the shadow of her a shimmer of agony.
“I know that it hurts,” he said roughly. “I know. This is how I feel all the time. Scoured and twisted and—inhuman, Priya. This is our inheritance.”
Like a hole through the heart, he thought.Like your soul is a decayed structure, crumbling, the light pouring through you.
There was something ugly and sweet about the feeling that ran through him in response to her pain. It was, he reasoned, the satisfaction of watching a lesson being learned.
“My will is stronger than yours, Pri. It always was. I saved your life time and time again, and now I tell you: Save mine. Your debt is due. Or you condemn me to die feeling likethis.
“I want to make this ugliness in us worth something, Pri,” he told her. “I want us to use it for something greater. For something good. For Ahiranya as it should be, free of the empire. For ourhome.”
He wrenched his hand back. Darkness fell into the water from her shadowy form, bursting into black flowers before withering away. Her hands moved, fluttered, as if she wanted to touch her chest but didn’t dare.
“You could have been kinder,” she choked out. “You of all people, who suffered what I suffered—I thought I could trust you to be my brother.”
He shook his head.
“Family don’t have a duty to be kind to you. They have a duty to make you better. Stronger. I am being true to our family. Right now, Pri. And always.”
His voice became more tender.
