“When will you go?” Lata asked. Lata had always known her too well.
“This year,” Malini said. “Before the monsoon.”
“You could stay,” Lata said. “Rule until a grand old age. Become a legend. Change the empire entirely.”
“I will not become a grand old empress,” Malini said softly. That she was sure of. She wasn’t entirely human anymore. She had thought herself mortal after the Hirana fell. But in the years since she had not aged, and flowers still turned easily to her grasp, seeking her light. Whatever had happened to her in the waters—deep in Priya’s power—had changed her forever.
In the aftermath of the yaksa and the second Age of Flowers, there were many who still had rot—who lived with the mark of it. Forests of flesh still stretched across Parijatdvipa. Though the rot grew no worse, it grew no better, and strangeness had become commonplace. But Malini was still stranger than the rest.
There had been magic, for Priya, in being Mani Ara’s beloved. Terrible, cursed magic. But perhaps being Priya’s beloved would be a kinder fate.
“The prince is very young,” Lata said with a sigh. “And yet too old for a regent. The throne will be a hard trial for him.”
“He will grow,” said Malini. “All children do.”
And if he was too weak for the throne—if he could not holdParijatdvipa—then let it crumble. Perhaps the time had come to release them all from old vows, from the ever-turning wheel.
She traveled to Srugna first. This time there was pomp and ceremony. A banquet, and awed eyes upon her. She smiled through it all, impervious. All of it would be done with soon.
That night she slipped away from her guards and walked alone into Srugna’s countryside. Then its woods. Then, without pause, into Ahiranya’s own forest.
People claimed there was no magic in Ahiranya’s woods any longer, but she felt it. She could have followed it with her eyes closed. It was a beckoning. A tug beneath her breastbone. A calling.
Come home.
She found her way to a waterfall. Beneath it, a pool rich with lilies.
She unbound her own hair.
Maybe there was no Priya to be found here. But it was a tenderness and blessing that the forest knew her at all. It was enough. It would have to be. She had done everything she intended to do, and now she could sit quietly here in this water, until she was ready to move again. To start anew. To die, all forgotten bones as she’d threatened, or to start again as Rao had—striding over the horizon, gold-eyed, never to be seen on Parijatdvipan soil again.
Even if she was wrong, the world was vast and strange, and she would welcome it.
Rao had written to her at times over the years—thick letters, faded from sunlight, or touched with mold from the ruinous mingling of heat and rain. He’d written to her of golden mountains, and seas the color of emeralds.
The same griefs and joys live everywhere, Malini, he’d told her.But I find peace in seeing that we all rise and fall on the same waves. Maybe you would, too.
She slid into the water. Waded into it, the coolness of it rising to her waist. Closed her eyes, feeling the light on her skin.
“There is a story I once told a girl,” a voice said. It was afamiliar voice and also—not. “Of a man who garlanded a tree until it came alive and married him.”
One deep breath. Another. She could not turn. Her heart would break if she turned and found nothing behind her.
“I know that story,” Malini whispered.
A faint sound. Half a laugh, half a sob, sohuman, and it made tears come to Malini’s own eyes.
“It’s hard, you know? Wrestling a god into sleep. You helped me to do it. I saw the light of you and I followed it and it saved me. It helped me fight her. But even then, I couldn’t remember how tobeanymore. I had to learn again.” A sound. The swish of leaves. Of water. Maybe breath. Maybe a body, deep in the water behind her. “I left you for so long. I’m sorry.”
Malini closed her eyes and listened to that voice. Drank it like wine.
“It’s all right,” Malini said. “I gather trees grow very slow.”
Another laugh. This one had no tears in it.
“If I garland you?” Malini asked. “Will that make you human enough to stay with me?”
“If I send you flowers through the soil and through your skin, will that make you magical enough to stay at my side?”
