“Maybe they made me smart enough to delegate,” Priya said dryly.
Kritika muttered something unsavory under her breath in response.
“What did you say?” Priya asked, because she clearly yearned for death.
Instead of replying, Kritika said slowly and firmly, “We mask-keepers can only act and serve Ahiranya if we know the will of the yaksa.”
“Then ask the yaksa.”
“You are the High Elder!” Kritika snapped. “Only you can speak for them. They are great spirits, Elder Priya—they only ask for worship, they only look through us, as if we are nothing. But you…” Her voice trailed off, choked with feeling.
“I what?” Priya asked.
“They lookatyou,” Kritika said after a moment. “They speak to you. So you must lead us. Do you understand?” Her voice shook. “What if we anger them?”
Priya swallowed.
“Tell me what you think must be done, and how it must be done, and I’ll… I’ll make sure it’s the will of the yaksa,” she said finally. “And get the highborn here. I know they’re hiding scared, but we can use them. They have gold, and food supplies. And soldiers. We’ll need those soon enough.”
Kritika sucked in a sharp breath. “The highborn are not,” she said, “in any position to help Ahiranya.”
Priya’s own footsteps faltered, her stomach going cold, some instinctual part of her recognizing what that breath—and those words—meant.
“Are they all dead? Or just most of them?”
“No,” Kritika said. “They’re not dead, Elder. They await your guidance. As the yaksa bade them to.”
Still, dread gnawed at her heart, like a canker of larvae in a ripe fruit.
She was silent—for too long, maybe, because Kritika huffed a sigh.
“There is so much you’re ignorant of,” Kritika said.
How could she grow less ignorant if no one would tell her what she didn’t know? How could she fix anything if Kritika spent all her time haranguing Priya, rather than helping? Rage swelled in her. It would be easy to make Kritika grovel and beg for forgiveness. She acted like she knew what Priya was, but she didn’t, not at all. Priya was Mani Ara’s chosen. There was more sap in her than blood, more cruelty than kindness.
It would take nothing to wrap a vine around Kritika’s throat and snap her neck clean.
Saliva filled her mouth. The strength of rage left her all at once. She felt sickened by her own thoughts.
“I’m trying,” Priya said tiredly. “Believe me, I am.”
She couldn’t look at Kritika now, but she heard the older woman’s low sigh.
“You must rule, girl,” said Kritika slowly, her voice finally softening into something real—something that recognized the Priya in front of her, all shattered and stitched-together parts, all bared teeth and grief. There was tiredness in her voice, too. “Whatever you once believed of yourself—there is no one else.”
Priya found Ganam. He was leaning over a balcony’s edge, staring down at the training grounds, where a handful of soldiers were practicing with hand sickles.
“I hear you’re in charge of the guards now that Jeevan is gone,” she said, leaning on the edge next to him.
“Hear?” Ganam repeated. “Who did you ask, the trees?”
“People still talk to me,” Priya said defensively. “Some of them definitely think I’m a yaksa—”
“I did see Khalida run away from you yesterday,” Ganam said agreeably.
“—but others are more sensible,” Priya finished. She scowled at him and his mouth quirked up into a smile. “Are you more sensible?”
“You’re still Priya,” he said. “You’re nothing like ElderBhumika, but you’ll do.”
