The priestly warriors—her once enemies—moved forward on foot. They held their weapons. Before each of them lay a black chest. They were prepared.
Only Malini herself was left.
Prakash, quietly, cleared his throat. Malini looked at him. He was in the chariot beside her and his face was troubled.
“Empress,” he murmured. “I still suggest caution. The Ahiranyi will have the advantage among the trees. Even if the trees were not… as they are… they know the terrain better. To enter is to walk into darkness, where blades and magic may wait for us. Even a single arrow could destroy you.”
“I have heard you, Lord Prakash,” Malini said evenly. “But I am Empress of Parijatdvipa. It must be me.”
It must be me.
Not because of bravery, or because she possessed the desire to strive forward in battle in the way her brothers’ teachers had always urged them to. Just and righteous warfare did not concern her. The battle tactics girls learned in court were by necessity cruel and viperous and underhanded, and above all,clever. But this was not cleverness, either. Her desire was driven by a rage deep and acrid, a rage that had swelled and deepened after Priya’s betrayal of her.
If Ahiranya burned—even the smallest span of it—Malini wanted to be the one to strike the blow. She wanted to know if it could burn at all.
“Sahar, arrange my defenses,” she said to the head of her guard. Then, turning her head to the left, she called out, “Rao. With me.”
From horseback at Malini’s left side, Sahar gave a nod. With a gesture of her hand, the women who made up Malini’s personal guard fanned around her.
Rao, in his own chariot, had straightened from the forward-shouldered slump he’d been in. His bloodshot eyes met her own. He gave a firm nod. Malini’s charioteer gave a click at the horse, and her vehicle lurched forward.
They went to the border of the trees.
The snarl of branches was menacing—leaves blood-black and profuse, limbs stretching their fingers to the soil. The horsedrawing Malini’s chariot whickered and resisted the tug of the reins as her charioteer tried to guide it forward.
“Stop,” Malini said. She did not speak loudly—she felt like a prey animal, instinctually turning to a soft voice to avoid the attention of what lay beyond the trees. But her charioteer heard her, and with a nervous bob of his head, he stopped.
“What are you doing?” Rao asked. He had already alighted from his chariot, already had a chakram ready in his hand. It was foolish of him to ask.
Malini did not answer. She too alighted. Her feet met the soil with a thud that did not echo—the sound swallowed by earth and tree alike. She drew her saber, holding the gleaming moon-scar of it at an angle at her side, ready for the possibility of battle.
She met Sahar’s eyes. If Sahar disagreed with her decision, she did not say so. “Stay close to me, my lady,” she said.
In her left hand, against her hip, Sahar carried a black lacquered box.
Only one box of false fire. One burning, squirming thing stolen from a woman’s death, to protect the Empress of Parijatdvipa.
She strode forward.
There were cries of alarm from her generals, who were still a sensible distance back. A voice yelled,Hold. Rao cursed, a soft thing under his breath.
“Malini,” Rao began. And without pausing, Malini said calmly, “Will my warriors allow me to face Ahiranya’s wrath alone, Rao? Or will you walk with me?”
She did not turn her head, but she heard it as he and her personal guard thronged around her—heard the clang and thud of boots, armor, maces being hefted up; the songlike sound of a sword whip being unraveled from a belt.
It was absurd to think any of their weapons could stand against what waited in the trees. But Malini had brought them here. Malini carried her own saber in a tight clenched fist like a shining lamp against the dark, a shield against horrors. She could not judge them for it. As long as they obeyed. As long as they followed.
One step beyond the line of trees, only one, and she felt the coldness of the air—sticky as tree sap, icy as a deep river. The ache in her chest twisted, yawned open. If her hands had been unimpeded, if she had not had her saber, she would have clutched her own chest—felt the scar through cloth, searching for the open wound she could feel in her soul, if not her flesh.
“Empress,” Sahar said in a low, tense voice. “Shall we turn back?”
“No. Not yet.”
That same tug in her chest, that same memory of how the forest had rustled,breathedaround her when she’d escaped her imprisonment inside it. She looked down and watched as the ground shuddered. Green roots slithered through soil toward her. Moving, unwinding.
The roots… hesitated.
Grim satisfaction ran through her. The forest sensed what Sahar carried. It feared harming her.
