What was she doing, trying to explain politics to a maidservant?
But Priya is no simple maid, a voice whispered in her head. It sounded like her own voice from—before. Before she had drunk poison day in and out and her thoughts had begun to fray within her mind. It was a sweet voice, speaking cultured court Dvipan with a cadence like a boat skimming deep, deep waters.She is a temple child, isn’t she? She has more power in one finger than you possess in your entire body. You do not know what she knows. You do not know what she can do.
“What harm,” Malini asked, “is there in listening to me?”
Priya hesitated. There was a sound somewhere in the Hirana. A name was being shouted. Priya’s mouth firmed, and she took Malini by the elbow, hauling them both to their feet.
“Harm enough,” said Priya. “But I’ll do it anyway, I suppose.”
The bitterness in Priya’s voice… ah, if Malini were one to indulge in self-hate, she would have felt it then. There was something so blazingly soft about Priya’s heart. She had never seen the like of it before. When Priya had spoken of making an offering of coconut and flowers to the Ahiranyi spirits, when she had spoken of grieving her dead, Malini had been sure she couldfeelthat heart in her hands: a muscle as fragile as an egg with a world inside it, compassion flowing from it as terrible and nourishing as lifeblood.
But Malini was not one for regrets, so she felt nothing.
Pramila was not even angry. Priya glibly concocted a story of how Malini had raced away in fear and panic and Priya had sought her out, calmed her, and brought her back as soon as she could—a blatant untruth, but one Pramila was ready to believe. The older woman had been crying, and trembled still. Once she was assured that Malini was safe, she turned away and closed herself into her own room. To weep more, Malini assumed.
She and Priya were not the only ones with terrible memories of fire, after all.
Priya moved restlessly around the room as Malini sat still upon the charpoy, cross-legged, her spine straight. Without preamble Malini said, “My brother wanted me dead because I tried to arrange for our elder brother to take the throne from him.”
Priya stopped pacing.
“Aditya left the faith,” Malini added. She did not know what Priya knew, or did not know, about Parijati politics. Best to tell her everything. “He had a vision and became a priest of the nameless god. He could not do that and remain crown prince of Parijatdvipa. He could not be emperor. And so we were left with Chandra. But I knew in my soul Aditya should rule. I knew he would be so much better at it than Chandra, because he was so much better than Chandra in every way. And I knew his status as my father’s firstborn—and his nature—would give him the backing of Parijatdvipa’s nations. So I sought those kings and princes out, and cultivated them. I ensured their support. Then Chandra discovered my intent.”
“You told me you were impure,” Priya said. Flung the words out as if they were an accusation.
Impure. Yes, Malini had implied it—that her wants had been the thing that condemned her. It was not… untrue. But Malini had always hidden her desires well. If Chandra had known her true nature, her otherness, the fact that she preferred women to men, perhaps she would have ended up on the pyre sooner. But he had not known.
“I am,” she said simply. Watched the way Priya looked at her—the flinch of her, the disbelief. “But it was what he called treason that brought me here.”
“And was it not treason, to try to depose the emperor?”
“If I had succeeded, it would not have been,” Malini said. “And I may still achieve my aim. The kingdoms of Parijatdvipa do not forget the Age of Flowers, or the sacrifice of the mothers. They made a vow to our bloodline, to unite around the rule of a son of Divyanshi’s line. By their honor, they will not break it. But Chandra’s vision places them not at his side but beneath his feet. I have offered them an alternative that provides them the status he wants to take from them. No more.”
No more.As if building a coup against the emperor of Parijatdvipa, grand empire of city-states and forests and seas, were a small matter and nothing of consequence. It was a thing she had worked herself bloody for—riskedeverythingfor. And she had lost so much in the process. Her heart sisters, her Narina and Alori. Her standing at court. Her freedom. And her health and her mind, slipping from her, bit by bit. If Chandra had his way, her efforts to depose him would also cost her life.
“And you truly think this—this feckless brother who left your empire in the hands of someone everyone hates is fit to rule?”
Malini had to work to not flinch. She thought of Aditya—his morality, his goodness, the way he looked at her with fondness. Feckless, yes. She couldn’t deny what he was. But he was a better man than Chandra. He had never held a knife to her. Never tried to burn her alive.
It was not, admittedly, a high standard to judge Aditya by. But ah, by the mothers, if the vow between the nations required a male scion of Divyanshi on the throne of Parijatdvipa, who else was there but him?
“Let me simply say, the men of my family have a problem with overindulgence in religion. But Aditya is still a good man. And Chandra is not.”
“What makes him a bad man?” Priya asked.
Malini swallowed. “Is it not evidence enough, that he burns women? That he wants to burn me. He is—driven.” She would not tell Priya about her childhood. All the years of creeping, terror, that no one had seemed to see or understand. She would not talk about all the Srugani and Dwarali, Saketans and Alorans he had angered, long before he even had the opportunity to sit upon the throne. “Chandra is a man with a vision of what the world should be. It’s a horrible vision. And he will cut the world bloody to make it fit.”
Something flickered in Priya’s eyes.
Malini pressed on. “Chandra will destroy Ahiranya as you know it,” she said. “But Aditya would not. And in return for you helping me… I can ask him for more than you have. More than this.”
“Tell me.”
“The same power all city-states of Parijatdvipa possess,” she said. “Your own rulers. Places at court, to assist in the administration of the empire. A level of freedom, within the empire’s hands.”
“You can’t promise me that,” Priya said immediately. Her eyes were wide.
“Aditya has strong support,” Malini countered. “And he has the element of surprise. Chandra does not know what forces have been amassed against him. He does not even know where Aditya is. He only knows thatIbetrayed him, stirring up ill feeling against his reign. I, and my ladies-in-waiting. And what could I, his whimpering child of a sister with her two simpering women, do to truly compromise his throne?”
