The magic writhed.
It didn’t want to obey her. She was asking so much from the soil, the roots, the earth.
This was not Ahiranya, where the green sang and moved with her easily. She was far from home, weaker and weakened. But she was also stubborn, just like she always had been, and she was not going to give up now. She reached deeper, and held on harder, throwing all her strength behind that movement of magic calling magic, of her soul reaching out, and the green reaching back.
Her head ached—it felt as if her skull were splitting, too tight for the power unfurling inside it, splitting through her with roots as vicious as teeth, gnawing her flesh open.Stop, everything in her screamed.Stop, this is too much, too fast, too far.
Her strength wasn’t enough. The water was too heavy. The green too small. And for all that she’d been healed—that Bhumika had healed her—Priya could feel the echo of the false fire like a scar through her lungs. Breathing around it was hard. It made her magic fracture, twist.
She reached harder. Grasped the strength of the world around her.Obey me, she told the green.I am a temple elder, I am thrice-born. I won my power by strength and sacrifice, and you will yield to me. You will.
You will!
A pause. And a moment when the pain in her skull sharpened to a knife—and then the green yielded to it. An animal pinned, throat bared.
It was hers now.
Come to me.
Everything she could touch with her power breathed and struggled and rose with her call.
The earth shuddered. Shuddered again. The pain in her skull grew and grew, and through it, she forced her eyes open in the murky water and saw, through the shifting gloom, the shape of the silt breaking in two. Of roots rising up, reaching. Felt it, as the water moved, displaced by the violence of the ground beneath it. She stretched a hand before herself and drew the soil toward her own body.
Even through the water she heard the cries of shock and horror on both sides of the river as the green banks crumpled inward, responding to her. The water was clouding with dirt and blood, growing darker and darker as the water roiled and the earth churned, and the river began to collapse, pulled inexorably into her orbit. The water was hers. The earth was hers.
The tightness of her skull shattered, so swift it was like a blow, leaving her gasping—mouth open against the water, her nerves fraying with an agony so fierce it left her numb—and the darkness rushed over her.
Silence.
She knew she was in the sangam even before her eyes opened. She was lying on the convergence of waters—lying with her arms spread out and her shadow of a body floating, and gentle hands carding through her hair, gathering the weight of it together, then letting it flow free again. Those had to be her sister’s hands. When she tilted her head, water lapping against her forehead, she saw it was indeed Bhumika leaning over her.
“You’ve used too much of your strength, little sister,” Bhumika said. Her voice had a sweetness like sugarcane. She was all warm brown skin, dark hair, smiling mouth. No part of her was made of shadow. “In a moment, your flesh will need to breathe. And then you will drown.”
Above Priya—above the shape of Bhumika’s face—Priya could see stars blooming. She forced her mouth to open.
“I don’t want to drown,” she managed.
“No one does.”
“That isn’t what I’m here for.”
Bhumika’s hands moved from Priya’s hair to cup her face.
“What are you here for?” Bhumika asked curiously, keeping Priya’s face above water. As if, by keeping it above water here, she could do the same in the world of flesh. “What are you trying to do?”
“Use my power,” Priya said. “Win this battle. That’s what I want to do. Turn the river against them. In Ahiranya I could do it. I know I could.”
“You’re not in Ahiranya,” said Bhumika. “You’re on land that hasn’t known the touch of the yaksa in far too long. And you’re still weakened, Priya. You’ve made an error.”
Fond, chiding words. And yet…
“Bhumika,” Priya said. “Aren’t you—angry with me? Sad that I’ll die?” She looked up not at the stars this time, but into Bhumika’s eyes. “You don’t seem like yourself.”
“I can give you what you want,” Bhumika said calmly, eyes almost luminous. “You can have your strength. You can turn the waters with your mortal hands. All of that can be yours, if you want it as much as you think you do.” Bhumika’s hand curled tighter around Priya’s face, fanning her jaw, the nails sharp points of contact. “But every time you come to me, the bond between us grows stronger. Every part of you becomes more mine, and every part of me is consumed in turn. We’re changing and shifting together, sapling. And it is sweet. I don’t deny the sweetness. But you should know I’ll demand something in return, for the privilege of power, and the privilege of having me.”
Sapling.
A cascade of memory swept over her like drowning waters: the yaksa with a mouth of thorns; the yaksa kissing her; a yaksa’s nails cutting her cheek open; Priya’s own hands carving open her own chest and offering all of herself, all that she had left, all that remained of her heart—
