Her mind sank into darkness.
Arahli Ara’s hands on her wrists, his face like her brother’s. Malini’s hands on her face, her scalp. The fury and salt of hertears. Bhumika gone—nothing left of her but a scrap of words, a child. She’d lost them all and still had more to lose.
Sapling.
Mani Ara’s voice rushed through her like water breaking a dam. She fell hard back into her skin; sucked in a deep, gasping breath before pressing her mouth shut to hold the noise in. Power had followed her from the sangam, dizzying her. Her vision was swimming.
Roses had bloomed profusely around her.
She clumsily tried to brush them away—and felt them wither around her, turning to decay and then dust. Hands brushed them away. But they were not her hands.
Her head snapped up. The yaksa with Ashok’s face—Arahli Ara—was crouched over her.
She hadn’t sensed him. Her blood was burning hot inside her and her mind was an overfull cup, spilling magic. It made her vision dance. She took off the crown mask with trembling hands.
“Yaksa,” she breathed out. “Why are you here?”
“The children,” he said simply. “They should be on the Hirana. Close to the deathless waters and the stars alike.”
“I wanted to keep them with me,” Priya said, catching her breath. “And this…” She looked around her room. Bhumika’s old room. “This is where I want to be. Will you make me take them there now?”
“No. They are yours.”
“You were always going to give them to me, yaksa. Respectfully, you tricked me.”
“Saying ‘respectfully’ does not make your words respectful,” he murmured. But there was nothing sharp or monstrous in his voice. He’d pitched it low enough not to wake the children around her.
He watched her with deep, strange eyes—mirrors to the faint moonlight seeping in through the windows. But the darkness made the rest of him more human, concealing the leaves of his hair, the whorls of his skin.
“When I reared the first temple children, I began with their strength,” he said finally. “I taught them to trust their limbs. To resist pain. To persevere. To run and to fight. Then I led them to the edge of the Hirana and bade them to climb down.”
A difficult journey for any child.
“And then? What did you do with the ones who didn’t fall? Take them to the waters?”
“It is a long path to the waters,” he said. “Many years. As it was for you.”
He wanted her to make the temple children strong. She swallowed back anger. Nodded. She thought of Ashok, and their shared childhood, and her grief threatened to overwhelm.
“After strength, what comes next? What did you teach those temple children?”
“Then,” he said in Ashok’s voice, “I taught you to use a knife and the power of your rage.”
A flash of memory scythed through her. Ashok’s hands on her own. A knife between them. Showing her how to move. How to fight. How tocut.
“They are yours, Elder Priya,” he said. “But they continue to be mine, also.”
And so do you.
“Ashok,” she said.
A whisper of leaves. Then he was gone.
BHUMIKA
They were offered transport by a man leading an oxen-drawn cart of grain. The man was bearded, his face flayed red at the nose and cheeks by exposure to the sun. His gaze slid dismissively off Bhumika, but he spoke easily enough to Jeevan. As Bhumika tucked herself into the back of the cart, the man urged Jeevan to sit near the front between the sacks of grain and talk to him.
“Looks like you’ve been in some trouble, friend,” the man said, whipping his oxen forward.
