“Wake,” she whispered. “Your family are waiting, yaksa. They sent me to seek you. Wake soon.”
She felt the sun sink above her. She felt—
Pain.
Her body staggered. Fell backward. An arrow through her. She clutched her side but found nothing there.
Something had happened in the sangam.
Priya felt the shadow of it, a cold dart, like an arrow through her ribs. She gasped. The cold stretched through her chest for one brief strange moment—then vanished.
She found herself in her skin again.Mostlyin her skin. But it was like the sangam was nestled close, pressed to her ear, a song inside a shell.
Somewhere in the sangam—somewhere inside her—the yaksa were howling. It was a high, mournful chorus that reverberated through her skull, and with it came fragments of images: soil, vast leaves, bodies, strangers, shifting through the shadows. Blood, and a gleaming silver whip, and a stranger’s bared teeth, and Ganam drawing up the earth with his hands.
Ganam, and a dagger at the chest.
Ganam and then—nothing.
Ganam is dead, she thought, and the realization was a punch that went through her more harshly than the first arrow-dart of cold. It was more awful, by far, than the song of the yaksa. Ever since she’d returned to Ahiranya he’d been her only ally. She’d guided him through the deathless waters. Dragged him out with her own hands, and cried over him, laughed with him.Look, he’d said, teeth chattering, water in his hair.You’re not the only one who gets to survive.
She was already moving. She hadn’t consciously taken a step, but she was striding forward regardless, the ground shifting under her, roiling in response to her emotions. The green was her, and she was the green, and the soil splintered as the moisture leached from it; the trees bent to her, and the flowers withered, and she strode on, until the great leaves she’d seen in the sangam loomed around her. She had made a seeker’s path from nothing, nothing but her own will, and she had brought herself to him in a heartbeat, and she knew she was where he had died.
Except.
There he was.
Kneeling. Head bowed forward. Tunic torn. The earth around him, a crater, jagged with stone. And his slumped shoulders risingand falling, rising and falling, as he struggled to breathe around the sharpness of the dagger through his chest, the hilt visible to her, ringed by a spreading stain of rose-black blood. She couldn’t feel him in the sangam—couldn’t feel that strand of strength that ran through cosmic waters, that bound them both—but that didn’t matter. She couldseehim.
He wasn’t dead. He was very much alive.
She swore, a helpless noise, and saw him jerk. He raised his head.
“Priya,” he said hoarsely. “Go.”
She took a step forward, and he shook his head wildly.
“Parijatdvipans,” he gasped out. “Danger—you.”
Behind him there was a noise. The crunch of soil. And then she felt them. How had she not? Panic, perhaps. Or the cry of the yaksa—still ringing painfully through her head—had masked the delicate chime of their mortal hearts and lungs. Ever since her power had grown, human flesh had grown less significant. Less noticeable. If she survived this, she would have to put that oversight right.
Perhaps the soldiers had come here hoping to set a blade through an Ahiranyi’s ribs. Perhaps they had come here specifically for her. She could imagine them deciding it over bottles of wine, eyes wild and lips wet with drink.The Ahiranyi witch tried to stab our empress through the heart. It’s only justice to stab her heart in return.
Perhaps it was Malini who had decided it.
A wound for a wound, a heart for a heart. Maybe if the blade were in her chest she would accept it as her due. But the dagger was in Ganam’s chest, and he was staring at her with wide eyes, the pupils tiny pinpricks of black against the whites.
Get up, she thought—urging him with her own eyes as she took one steady step forward. Two. Three. There was nothing chaining him to the ground. And she knew he could fight with a dagger through the torso. She’d seen him fight through worse. But he was wavering on his knees. He wasn’t standing.
Did he have a head wound? Was he injured in other ways that she couldn’t see? Something had caused the echo throughthe sangam. Something was stopping her from feeling him in the sangam now.
“No closer,” someone said, the voice a hoarse bark of Zaban. It took her a moment to place the Saketan accent—and a moment longer still to see the figure in Saketan green stride forward and place a saber to Ganam’s throat, their own arm trembling. Behind them, a dozen Saketan liegemen emerged, uncoiling their sword whips, their weapons spools of liquid silver against the shadows.
Knowing they were there didn’t soften the blow of the sight of them. Priya’s stomach still swooped. Her body still felt hot with fear as she forced herself to stand entirely still and said, “Give him back.”
“He stays where he is,” the soldier said, his voice clipped. His mouth was a grim line. He didn’t look as afraid as he should have. “And you—you stay where you are. If your feet move—if your hands move—I promise you he’s dead.”
She stayed still. Her feet were squared against the ground, her body as steady and rooted as an ancient tree. The earth held her. Waited with something like bated breath for what she’d do next.
