That woman had placed her faith—her fractured, ruinous faith—in a person who’d given Malini her heart, then stolen it back, and then returned it to her once more. A woman who was gone.
“I believe in you, Priya.” Her voice was a rasp. Thin in the dark, the absolute quiet. With her eyes closed, she could pretend that Priya could hear her. “I have faith in your humanity. In all of you that is broken and hurtful. I have faith in all of you that is mortal. You have many faces, Priya. The mortal one, the flawed one, and the one with power, thisimmortalone—they’re all mine. If you will allow it. They’re all mine.”
She opened her eyes. Gold light, the very edge of fire, gleamed like a river in the veins of her wrists. Her arms. There were flowers growing beneath her knees.
Around her, shadows flared. In the flicker and hugeness of the flames she saw figures form. She knew them even without the color and texture of flesh or cloth.
Alori. Narina.
Aditya.
She realized her face was wet with tears.
Sacrifice was terrible. Monstrous, when it was bred into you, inflicted. But it could be an act of love too. It could destroy one part of you and set the rest free. For a priest, a priestess, a worshipper kneeling lonely on soil by deep waters—
It did not have to be death, even when it was.
“Priya,” she whispered. “Find your way back to me.”
Then she stood and stepped into the water. The fire was at her back. It glowed on the walls of the cavern.
The waters were poison. She remembered that. The waters were a trial, and not one meant for her. To enter them would be a willing death.
But there was green in her too, and Priya’s soft dreams—and Malini could not let her go. Could not, without reaching out, one last time.
What was a little more poison, willingly imbibed? Malini slipped into the water without fear. The fire followed her path as the water swallowed and clasped her life in its palm. The gold in her skin was a fire from another world, and water could not blot it out.
BHUMIKA
She lay gasping on the ground. The waters were overtaking her. She could not breathe through them. Her ghosts were drawing in. Jeevan was holding her steady, his hand over her own. Khalida was leaning over her, calling her name. Crying.
She saw her ghosts, and suddenly she knew them.
They were all her temple siblings. All children like her, who had served on the Hirana and passed through the waters—and drowned, or burned. She knew their names, their dreams. She mourned them.
They wereknowledgefrom the deathless waters. They were the scraps of themselves—face, voice, memory—that the waters had saved long after they died. They were corpses given brief life.
She knew now. The waters left in her were returning to the sangam—and all that she had left in the sangam, her own voice and memory and spirit—were flowing into her in turn.
She turned horrified eyes on the ghost kneeling closest to her. His bowl was empty. His veil was gone. He was smiling.
“Ashok,” she said, voice splintering.
“I told you that you’d mourn,” he said.
He vanished. She reached a hand for him, trying to grab him. Trying to hold him.
She followed him into the sangam. Left her flesh behind.
She fell.
He’d been right. She grieved. He was gone.
She kneeled in star-flecked water. The three rivers of the sangam churned, storm-driven, breaking their banks. She could see the shadow of Ganam, a distant light. But there before her was Priya.
She knew her sister now. Knew all the terror and love that Priya induced in her, just by being her brave, bright, awful self. It rushed through her.
Priya wasn’t just shadow. She stood in the rising, rough waves untouched by them. Her body was immovable. Her body was at war with itself. Flowers and flesh—brown eyes and marigold irises. She was a yaksa and she was not. She was more than any yaksa Bhumika had seen before, and she was also Priya, always Priya.
