He heard the doors bang open as the dark swallowed him.
A dream.
No. Not a dream. He knew this. He’d seen this before, in dark water. In Aditya’s eyes.
A vision.
The void surrounded him. Dark, vast and liquid. And then it bloomed.
Mountains. White snow. A slash in the stone, a wound, bloodletting. Blood the color of deep waters.
A coming. An inevitable coming.
A man holding out his palm. Aditya, smiling even as he wept.
Rao. Rao—
He opened his eyes.
His vision swam for a moment, then steadied. The two soldiers were holding Sima tight by the arms.
“Let her go,” he forced out. His words were rough and slurred, but the soldiers understood and set her free. He forced himself up onto his palms, his knees. His whole body was shaking, god-struck. “Didn’t you think—a physician—might be more useful to me? Than…?” He gestured vaguely at Sima, who was rubbing her arms, her expression tight.
“Sorry, my lord,” one soldier muttered, looking suitably ashamed. The other was already ducking out of the room—likely finally in search of some real help. Rao almost called out to summon him back. A vision was not an illness. No medicine could cure it.
But when he managed to get up to his knees, he heard Sima whisper his name.
He looked at Sima’s gray face, her horrified eyes. And then he looked beyond her, unable to meet that gaze.
He met his own in the mirror.
His eyes, in the silvery glass, were a smear of fiery gold.
BHUMIKA
She felt as if she were being carried along by water. Her body swayed out of her control. She could not find her breath easily and when she did, she cried out, begging for something or someone she’d lost. The ache of grief yawned open in her like a chasm, and the voice that shushed her, growing steadily more frantic, was not the one she sought.
Her head ached, a storm in the cup of her skull.
“Breathe,” the voice said. A man’s voice. The man begged her, “Tell me what hurts.”
I named her for a flower. I named her. I left her. I left her. I left her—
“Fever,” the man’s voice said. And then he made a noise that had no words but might have been a choked sob. “Shit,” he said. Then he cursed again. The world tipped as he did so, and she felt breath on her hair. The water in her ears sounded suddenly like a heartbeat.
She wasn’t being carried by water, she realized. It was flesh that guided her. Arms were cradling her. The wind roared, biting at her face. It hurt.
“Hold on,” he said. “Hold on, my lady.”
She held on. Even as the waters rose, as a storm tried to swallow her, she held on. Time passed and then she was still again, the whine of insects in her ears.
“Please.” She heard the man’s voice, ragged with exhaustion. “Auntie, I need help. My wife is sick.”
With great effort, she managed to peel open her eyes. Her vision was a half-moon, a soft blur of dusk-gray sky fading into black earth. A stooped figure stood ahead of them, framed by a door. Silver hair, a sari.
“You’re Ahiranyi,” the figure said warily.
The man shifted her in his arms.
