“No,” she said. “No. She’s gone.”
He tried to assist Sahar up again. She gave an awful, wrenching cry.
“I’m getting help for you,” Rao said. She grasped him tighter.
“The empress first,” she said.
“You deserve to live,” he snapped. “Sahar, I—I’ll protect her myself. I’ll make sure she’s well.”
“You don’t understand,” Sahar said. “She’s—behind the rocks. Go. Look at her.”
It was clear Sahar wouldn’t be dissuaded. So he released her. Went to look.
He understood immediately.
Malini was alive. Unburned. Lying unconscious, soaked to the bone, on a bed of black flowers. When she breathed, they moved with her. A heartbeat of life.
He took a step back. Another.
“She burned,” said Rao.
Sahar stared at him. “What?”
“She burned,” Rao said again. “That’s what you saw. And she stepped out of the flames unharmed. She saved us all. That’s what we’ll say. When you survive this—and youwill—that’s what you’ll say. She’s a living mother of flame. A living goddess. You understand?”
Through the pain, Sahar’s expression cleared. She nodded.
“Yes,” she said, more firmly. “That’s what I saw.”
No one would have power over Malini again.
MALINI
She woke alone.
The temple was in rubble, Lata was telling her in a low voice. A careful voice. The Hirana had crumbled. Elder Bhumika had allowed a few chosen members of Malini’s council to see what remained of it—to examine the dirt and the stone and find nothing in it, no yaksa, no Priya. No life at all.
She is not dead, Malini thought. She grasped the thought like dust, like sand, ash trying to drift through her fingers.
She is not dead.
Priya.
Priya.
“I will meet with Elder Bhumika,” said Malini. “I offered her the safety of Ahiranya if she and Elder Priya helped us, and she kept her part of the bargain. Parijatdvipa will keep its vows.”
No one argued with her, even though she spoke from her sickbed, surrounded by court officials and scribes and highborn—a scene so like her father’s own death that it would have made her laugh, if she’d had the strength for laughter.
She saw her life stretch out before her. She would be a great empress. A living mother of flame. She would be alone, friendless and powerful, as Raziya had warned her she would be. She woulddie alone, mourned but truly loved by few. She would never hear Priya’s laughter again.
She felt no pain at the thought yet. She knew now from experience that a grave wound was often painless when fresh because the hurt of it was too great for the mind to grasp. The agony would come later.
It was weeks before she dreamt of darkness, and fingertips against her lips.
The yaksa are gone, she said—or tried to say. Reached out, and felt Priya’s smiling mouth beneath her palm.
The yaksaare gone, agreed Priya.
