“Why do I have power like your own?”
Priya shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“I have my guesses, of course,” said Malini. Her sureness was returning. “I gave you my heart, and the yaksa had me cut that heart from you. But I think the shape of what we were—the scar,the eroded stone where the waters of love washed over you again and again, reshaping you—those must still be there. The shape of love, even if the love is gone from it.”
The love isn’t gone, Priya thought. But she believed that Malini knew that. Maybe it was kinder to both of them to let the lie stand.
“If anyone learns about your secret…” Priya began.
“I am not sure if knowing I have something rotten and yaksa in me would be enough to destroy my reign now,” said Malini.
“It might,” Priya said. “But you’ve always known politics better than I do.”
“I don’t know if I am as clever as you believe,” said Malini. “You’re here, after all. I should never have brought you.”
“I’m a valuable hostage. A weapon taken from the yaksa.”
“Yes,” said Malini, her voice even. “But that wasn’t my reason. We both know it.”
Their eyes met, and held. Malini was still holding her.
“I let you steal me,” Priya said, not looking away from her.
“You fought me.”
“I could have done so much more. Youwerefoolish, Malini, to do what you did. I could have killed you so easily.”
“You didn’t kill me in my own court, when I was entirely vulnerable to you,” said Malini. “You didn’t kill me in my bed. I knew you wouldn’t kill me by a lake in Alor, after all that.
“Do you know what the yaksa desires?” Malini asked. “The strongest of them—the one that calls you beloved?”
“Apart from me? She wants to live,” Priya said, finally. “She wants to feel the ground beneath her feet. She wants the sun on her face. She wants her kin around her, whole and safe, with a world built to hold them. That’s all she wants.”
“It’s a huge want,” Malini murmured. “A want that breaks the world even now. Do you know more of her?”
A shiver ran through Priya.
“I know more than anyone,” said Priya. And she could know more, if she was willing to pay the price. Skin, soul. “But none of it will allow you to destroy her.”
“I won’t let her have you,” said Malini.
From Malini, it should have been a threat. But to Priya in that moment—it sounded like hope.
“I know you won’t,” Priya said. Her finger traced the edge of the last frayed vines at her wrists, raw as silk. “I know.”
Malini’s hands released her, slowly.
“No more heart’s shell,” Malini said finally, quietly. “No more prison cell. I do not know what to do with you, Priya. I need—I needtime. But let us begin with this.”
RAO
They made a strange group: a snaking line of priests on horseback or in carts, dressed in blue with the sun burning their skin red and then deep brown. Rao and his men—all of them armed—guarded Bhumika. Just one Ahiranyi woman, dressed in the Aloran style, with her lone guard chained beside her.
Rao kept turning to look at her. He couldn’t help it. He kept expecting her to vanish at any moment—to slip away and escape.
He wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. But she made no effort to run. She was nearly entirely silent, her gaze fixed on the distant horizon.
When they stopped to rest and make camp, three days from Parijat’s border, Bhumika finally spoke.
