Darkness built behind his eyes, in his skull. Not pain but a pressing, inexorable thing. A storm, an inevitable coming—
He had shared a vision of the nameless with Aditya once. In it, he’d seen the yaksa. Their flowering eyes, their bodies pressing through the soil. Now he saw no soil, no plants, no monstrous deities. Only the darkness, pressing upon him, trying to crack him open, to seep through him. It felt like it could destroy him. All he had to do was welcome it. Lay down his whole self and say yes. Yes.
The darkness was the nameless. Surely it was. He heard a sound, impossible and vast, a hundred thousand voices twining together as one.Let us in, let us in, let us—
No.
The pressure evaporated.
Rao’s eyes snapped open.
At the outer edge of their circle, one of the youngest of the priests of the nameless was convulsing. Ishan, he realized. It was Ishan. Hands scrabbling the ground, opening and closing. His head beating the soil. Someone cried out in alarm. Bhumika held up a hand, and they fell swiftly silent.
More convulsions. The sound of heaved, desperate breath escaping a throat. Then Ishan abruptly stilled.
Slowly, he raised his head.
His eyes were blazing. All light. It hurt to look at him, so Rao lowered his head and watched the shadows writhe instead. He felt nauseated.
He hadn’t let the nameless in. Ishan had.
The priests bowed immediately. They knew the nameless as Rao did: in their marrow, their lungs, their beating hearts. Rao bowed with them, placing his palms against the cold ground. He heard the rasp of Ishan’s throat; heard the god in the skin of a priest begin to speak.
A voice left Ishan. It was the voice of the nameless, grating and deep, a wild thing so huge it made Rao freeze, like an animal in a snare.
The words made the ground tremble and the world…rewrite.
A gurgle of blood. The sudden roar of a body engulfed by flame. The yaksa and Ishan were both wreathed in fire. The yaksa screamed, a wild and ruined noise.
Rao scrambled up onto his knees, then his feet. It was too late. Ishan lay dead, his eyes bloody holes, his mouth tongueless, his body burned almost beyond recognition.
Around them, the rot was gone. The yaksa was dead too—a husk of charred wood, empty of life. A set of sapless limbs. A face hollowed out and empty. A face that was a mask.
“There, you see,” Bhumika said, her own eyes open now, her face calm under the salt tracks of her tears. She met Rao’s own gaze, and he saw the exultation there, but also sorrow. “It isstraightforward enough. All magic demands sacrifice. A life for a gift.” She rose and crossed the temple. Leaned down, and with grave tenderness shut Ishan’s empty, ruined eyes. “To destroy a god,” she said to her hushed audience, her worshippers, her people, “you require the strength of another god. And now—if you are a true worshipper, if a god holds your heart—you have it.”
She looked up. At him.
“This is the knowledge you must carry, Prince Rao,” she said. “To your empress. To your priests. This is why the nameless sent you.”
A shudder ran through Rao as he looked at the body.
Aditya. The gold light of fire. The gold light fracturing his dreams—
This should have been your burden, Aditya.
But Rao was all that was left.
He was suddenly sure, deep in his own marrow, that the nameless had a purpose for him yet.
Bhumika did not even flinch when he stumbled to his feet, when he ordered his men to restrain her and Jeevan for travel back to Parijat. She told Jeevan not to attack even as he reached for his sword, his jaw tight and face thunderous.
“She saved you all,” Jeevan said. “To imprison her for it—”
“She is still what she is,” Rao snapped. “I can’t simply let her go.”
“Lower your weapon, Jeevan,” Bhumika ordered, her voice even. “There are too many of them.”
Jeevan hesitated. But he lowered his spear and removed his saber, laying them on the ground under the watch of Rao’s soldiers.
