It made her sick.
Finally, Priya straightened.
“Do you know what it means to be a temple child?” Priya asked them, gaze sweeping over them.
A long silence followed, where they all stared in different directions.
“It means you serve the yaksa,” Rukh said finally. Priya shot him a look, and he shrugged.
“It means worshipping,” Ashish said, bolder now that someone else had spoken.
“To have magic and powers,” another child said with a worrying amount of enthusiasm.
“Yes,” Priya said after a moment. “All those things. But first, it means you obey me, you understand?”
They nodded.
“This boy Rukh is going to help keep an eye on you,” Priya said, gesturing at Rukh.
“Is he a temple child like us?” a soft-voiced girl asked.
“No,” said Priya. “But he’s my family, just like you’ll be. So you can trust him.”
She refused to meet Rukh’s eyes.Family. She’d never called him that before. But it was true. The only family she’d ever valued had been made by choice and circumstance, and never by blood. It was all she knew, and all that mattered.
These children were hers now.
“I’ll show you somewhere to sleep,” she said to them. She should have taken them up the Hirana to sleep, but the thought filled her with nausea. Smoke, and Nandi’s dead eyes, and bloody terror worming through her heart—no. She wouldn’t send them there to live, and wouldn’t go herself. But she’d keep them close.
Padma was crawling toward her, so Priya leaned down and scooped her up. Padma promptly bit her arm. Priya swore, wincing as Padma kicked her for good measure.
“She wants to walk,” Rukh murmured helpfully.
“Fine—Padma, if you want to walk, you can walk.” She lowered Padma to the ground, holding her by the arm.
Padma did a smug, determined waddle forward. She looked up at Priya’s eyes, and Priya drew on her reserves of patience and nudged her in the right direction.
“We’ll go slowly,” she said, and saw one of the temple children smile, from the corner of her eye. That was good. A step in the right direction.
She took the children to her own rooms.
She roped Khalida and Rukh into helping her arrange new bedding and makeshift curtains to divide up the room. By the time night fell, the children had been fed and given a few more clothes, and bidden to sleep.
The room was hot with so many bodies inside it. In the silences between the noise of insects and plants moving in the breeze, she could hear muffled sobs.
Priya hated this. There was nothing more she could do, or so she told herself. But it felt like a lie. It was a lie. She could have refused to allow the children to remain. Could have summoned Mani Ara’s strength. Could have…
Could have let Arahli Ara hurt or kill the people she loved. And that was no choice at all.
She sat cross-legged on the floor by the bed where Padma and Rukh slept. Her skin itched with anger—at herself, at the yaksa—and there was no chance she’d sleep tonight. Instead she did the only thing she was good for, and placed the crown mask on her face, and tried to reach for Mani Ara.
It would have been better to go to the deathless waters. But tonight she didn’t want to leave the children alone.
Deep, coiling breaths. Breaths winding her further and further into her body andthroughher body. The sangam waters rising in her.
Her shadowy body within three twining rivers. Her body of flowers. She remained there in the waters as the hours lengthened and melted around her.
She didn’t know what else she could do to seek out Mani Ara.
