She buried the men. The ones on the topsoil she choked with roots. An easy thing. All mortal flesh was meant to die eventually.
When it was done, the only one left was the temple son.
She breathed, and breathed, and—was not all that she’d been, for a moment.
She was Priya again.
She doubled forward. Shaking. Forced herself to straighten, and stumble over to kneel in front of Ganam, as the wave of otherness washed over her again. Between it, she breathed, and remembered to care about the wound in him, the knife, his survival.
“Ganam,” she called. “Ganam, answer me.”
His mouth moved. One noiseless motion.
“Hold still,” she said. She wrapped her hand in cloth. She drew the dagger slowly free, terrified she would kill him in the process. It dropped to the ground. Blood followed, ruby dark.
PRIYA
Priya grasped part of Ganam’s torn tunic and pressed a hand hard to his wound, staunching the blood.
“Shit,” he said, his voice shaken. Light was returning to his eyes, but his skin was still horribly dull. “I thought I was dead.”
“So did I.” She swallowed. She wasn’t trembling, but she felt as if she should be.
“That weapon,” he rasped. “It—did something to me.”
“It would be better not to speak of it to anyone,” Priya said. “We need to leave. Can you stand?”
“I’m not sure.”
She lifted him up a little; he groaned. He was heavy in her arms.
He’d been alone when she’d found him. He shouldn’t have been alone. The vastness of her new power yawned open. She reached for it.
She found her warriors—sensedthem through the green, their heartbeats and their footsteps—and ripped a path through the green to lead them to her.Come, she called, and the green beckoned them: rot-riven plants turning their vines and their leaves, trees bending with the pressure of her command.
It shouldn’t have been so easy. She’d marveled at the paths Mani Ara had created through her, that labyrinth spiraling across Parijatdvipa from the bower of bones. But this came to her withsavage ease. She wanted the path, and there it was. It was simple, now that her mind understood what it was to be a yaksa.
A moment passed, and the Ahiranyi warriors emerged in a group.
She turned her head to look at them. She didn’t know what expression she wore, but the warriors went very still.
“Where were you all?” Priya asked.
A long silence.
“Speak,” she demanded. The ground trembled faintly.
Shyam stepped forward, standing tall, arms behind him. Ready to take a blow.
“We were fighting the Parijatdvipan soldiers,” Shyam said. “When Ganam drew their attention and led them away, we couldn’t follow.”
“You’d be surprised,” Ganam said with difficulty, a grimace of a grin on his mouth, “what a few bushes of thorns will do to slow them down.”
“I’ll need to train them harder,” Priya said.
“I led the Saketans away,” Ganam said, breathing heavily. “When I realized what their weapons could do.”
Priya looked at her warriors again. Ruchi was bleeding from her arm. Her eyes were glassy with pain. The broken waters should have healed her. They hadn’t.
