Priya reached for it.
Sleep, she said to the rest of herself. That great, endless, grieving strength that roiled inside her.Sleep until the world crumbles, until the stars welcome you home.
Sleep. All you love is gone, and there is nothing in the world for you here.
The part of her that was ancient clawed at the waters. The part of her that was ancient bared its teeth and wept—because it no longer remembered how to be only stars, and had lost too much.
But Priya knew who she was.
She had one last task to do.
She crumbled the sangam around herself. Broke the banks of its rivers. Reduced its churning waters. Destroyed the way, untilonly the smallest flickering sliver of water was left. Just enough to keep alive what the sangam—and the yaksa—had already made.
People with rot. Once-born. Temple elders. Ganam.Bhumika.
Her Malini. Malini should have been dead, drowned and burned, but Priya’s immortal magic was shot through her like gold. She was a yaksa’s beloved now, because she was Priya’s beloved. They were wound together like two halves of a whole. As long as Priya lived, so would she.
It was just enough.
She woke in her own body. Flowering, and no longer strange. A weight filled her arms, as Malini settled in her grasp, wreathed in light.
She kicked her feet and rose to the surface of the water. Walked, with the weight of Malini in her arms, across the ground. Around her the soil flowered. It knew them both.
My beloved, Priya thought with all the wildness and tenderness of a mortal woman over the woman she loved. And with the abstract vastness, the emptiness, of a yaksa loving a mortal who was part of her. A mortal with a piece of a yaksa forever in her heart.
My Malini.
I’ll come back to you. I promise.
The Hirana opened, a dizzying kaleidoscope of light—and Malini slipped from her arms, onto the safety of the earth, onto the welcome of new blooming flowers. And Priya…
Priya closed her eyes and let the Hirana—the falling Hirana—close over her.
RAO
He staggered through woods on makeshift crutches, through throngs of screaming people, wounded soldiers. But he found Sahar near the Hirana, as he’d half feared, half hoped. He hobbled to her, sweating with the effort. Kneeled down beside her with a hiss.
She was bleeding. Her clothes were sodden with the blood. His stomach lurched at the sight. But she was awake, conscious, alive. There was still hope.
“Tried to staunch it,” Sahar gasped. “I grabbed… a cloth…”
“You need more than a cloth wadded against your side,” he said grimly. “At least tell me it was clean.”
“I can’t promise that.”
He tried to help her up, and her hand clasped his arm, her grip like iron.
“I waited for her,” Sahar said. Pain had made her vision hazy, but she was clearly trying to focus. “Went back. Waited and—went to look for her. In the end. She’d gotten out somehow from that fucking temple.”
“Did she go to burn?”
“I don’t know—what she went to do,” Sahar said slowly, painfully. “Only that—she did it. They’re gone, aren’t they? The yaksa.”
He breathed carefully, slowly. Nodded.
“Was Elder Priya with her?”
Sahar’s gaze darkened.
