A shuddering breath left her. She could feel the eyes of those men on her.
“I don’t care about my safety,” she said. “But you can’t keep him.”
Romesh shook his head.
“That’s not for me to decide, Priya,” he said.
“I’m not for the empress to take,” she said, just as soft. “Let my friend go. We’ll leave.”
His jaw tightened. “I’m sorry, girl,” he said.
He drew a dagger from his sleeve. Black stone.
Before she could move, it slashed her arm—the barest brush of stone on flesh—and she felt a strange, awful jolt run through her. She stumbled back.
For a second, when the blade had touched her, she’d been cut off from the sangam. For a second—perhaps not even a whole second, maybe only the thinnest, cleaved strand of time—she’d felt no more than human.
She turned vines onto him. Cracked his wrist. She dragged him in front of herself as he made a noiseless sound of pain, using him as a shield.
“Give my friend to me,” she said sharply. “Or I take his life. I don’t need a blade. I just need my magic.”
A breath of utter silence. Then one man said, teeth bared, “We can take your magic from you.”
He shot an arrow. Priya moved, shifted.
Heard a sickening thud, and a gasp.
“Romesh,” she said raggedly.
The arrow had gone through his chest.
She felt it with her hand. Touched trembling fingers to his throat, where his pulse should have been, and felt—nothing.
He fell dead from her arms.
The saber was still against Ganam’s throat. One of the men was shouting. Another was drawing his bow again. Her ears were full of the sound of her own blood, which roared like a fast-moving river, like deep water with deeper currents.
A strange reverberation filled her voice. Something ancient, powerful.
Sapling.
Mani Ara’s voice, a whisper and a dream in her ears.
For so long, she had only been able to grasp at Mani Ara in dreams. She had recoiled from her: from her thorn mouth, the flowers of her eyes, the viciousness of her love.Beloved, Mani Ara had called her, but Priya had never wanted to be her beloved. She wanted her heart to lie in different hands, or at least safely in her own chest.
But this time, as Romesh bled on the ground and Ganam stared at her with blank eyes, she did not care for her own revulsion anymore.
Yes, Priya said in response, and welcomed her. Her ribs were an open door.
It was not like in the war, in the fire and the Veri river, at the borders of Harsinghar when her chariot had overturned and Mani Ara had come for her in her moment of darkness and despair. It was like the water rushing in where it belonged. Priya was hollow. It was meant to fill her to the brim.
She moved, but it was not just her. She was bigger than her own skin. Memories that weren’t her own skittered at the edges of her conscious mind. She remembered running, crawling. Desperation, and the blue light of a distant shore, the curving edge of a world, knowing she would do anything to make sure her kin survived—
The men before her were so small. Kneeling between them, the temple son was a glowing thing, shot through with the deathless waters.
Kin.
A negligent raise of her left hand. The soil moved with her, throwing them from their feet. Arrows, mid-flight, flowered and collapsed, withering against the earth. She had sacrificed to be part of the green, sacrificed and bled starlight like water, like blood. It followed her bidding.
