—perhaps you’re dead and gone—
—I know that if you are alive—
The stone beneath Priya’s feet began to splinter. Hairline fractures. Her vision was wet, wavering again.
I hope you can forgive me for leaving you behind.
The sister she’d known would never have run from Ahiranya. Never would have left her own child behind. And Priya wanted to believe Bhumika had done it with good reason. But all the faith in her had been twisted out of shape. Priya wasn’t the same woman she’d once been—the woman who believed she could cure the rot, and help Ahiranya have a future, and maybe even have one herself.
Priya had set aside hope. Or thought she had.
But she must have kept hope alive somewhere deep within, because her body felt heavy and her heart ached. And she was swaying, leaning into the wall face-first, and pressing her face into the crook of her arm, and her own teeth into her skin, and she was screaming, screaming, muffling the sound as best she could.
She didn’t know how long she cried. But the sun moved, the shadows shifting across the floor until she was in a pure spill of hot sunshine. She breathed in and out, and wiped her face again with her hand, for what good it would do. She was sore-headed from weeping, and tired, and angry with herself and the foolish softness of her own heart.
No more, she thought. And resolution settled, cold and steady in her bones. She had told herself she had to protect her people. Protect whatever Ahiranya was now, for the sake of those who lived inside it. That hadn’t changed. She had to be pragmatic.
Had to think of Padma and Rukh, and hold that like a shining thread—a golden thing, stronger and braver than mere hope.
Maybe breaking and weeping should have felled her like a great tree. Stopped her from going on. But that was not the way Priya was. She’d never been able to stop. She straightened up instead, the vines haloing the walls of Bhumika’s chambers uncoiling and knotting around her, like tangles of grief-rended hair. She suckedin a breath through gritted teeth, then turned on her heel and walked away from the chambers.
She went in search of a yaksa.
She went to the closest yaksa. She could feel them—deep in the orchard, a presence like a pulse, like a call.
The orchard was utterly changed. The old fruit trees were rich with rot. But there were new trees, too—glowing with life, blood running through their roots. And seated between the trees, legs folded, ankles buried in soil—
“Yaksa,” she said. Bowed her head, and raised it. “I need to speak with you.”
The yaksa who wore Sanjana’s face looked up from where she’d been contemplating the ground—sleeping, or dreaming, or communing. Priya didn’t know.
“I thought you would go to your brother,” the yaksa said, and her voice was a lush thing, all susurrating leaves, damp from a storm.
Not my brother, Priya thought. And that was exactly why she had not gone to him. If she had to choose a wound to pick at, an old one was preferable. Her grief for Sanjana was as far off as her childhood. The loss of Ashok was still fresh and bloody, too painful to touch. She didn’t want to face the yaksa wearing his skin. Not now.
“Yaksa,” she said. “To face Parijatdvipa, I’m going to need to be stronger. You… beneath the Hirana. You all asked me to yield. You meant to Mani Ara. That is how I’ll get power, isn’t it? Power to fight Parijatdvipa. To save it.”
The yaksa slowly inclined her head.
“But I can’t reach Mani Ara,” Priya said. “Yaksa, please. Help me.”
“You’re not really trying.”
“I am.”
“I have seen into your soul,” the yaksa said, as dappled light reshaped the contours of her face—shifting it into softer andharsher edges as she rose and walked toward Priya, as she looked at Priya, her eyes all shadow. If she’d been human, Priya would have called the look on her facedisdain. “I have seen your nature flayed open. I know all that you are.” Her mouth widened. Not quite a smile. Something with too many teeth. “And still I don’t know why Mani Ara chose you,” she went on, viperously soft. “I do not know why I have to teach you this lesson, and why you ask me foolish questions when the answer is clear:Try harder.”
Sanjana began to glide past her.
“Mani Ara won’t answer me,” Priya said quietly. “I think… I think she’s choosing not to.”
The yaksa stopped, and with her the trees seemed to still; their leaves were frozen, alien to the breeze trying to draw them into movement. So Priya pressed on.
“I called to her when I walked across Parijatdvipa. When I walked—here. Home. And she didn’t answer. I looked for her in the sangam, when you all tested me and asked me for my loyalty, and she wasn’t there.”
The yaksa’s head turned with a click. Facing her.
If Priya hadn’t known better, she would have thought that was fear flitting across the yaksa’s face. But there was nothing fearful or animal in it, a heartbeat later. Only a smile, curving that mouth. Amused.
