“Who said?”
Priya shook her head.
“Priya.”
“I need to. I.” A shaky exhale. Priya took another step. “My skin. I look as if I have rot.Shit.”
“You can stop this,” Malini said. “Make it go away.”
“Can I?”
“Of course you can,” Malini replied, trying to pour all her conviction into her voice. “Don’t look at me in that way,” Malini went on, when Priya gave her a look that was unmistakable even through the flush of green in Priya’s eyes, the dull light of the tent. “I may not understand the depth of your magic, Priya, but I’ve seen you control it before.”
“What if I can’t? What I’m stuck like this? What if I’m not human enough anymore?”
“We can argue about this with you lying down,” Malini said. “You’re going to fall.”
“I threw a river,” Priya laughed. “Threw it—and you think I’m going to fall over?”
“Yes.”
Priya froze, limbs trembling.
She bit off a curse as she fell.
Malini managed to catch her, leaning her back against one of the tent poles. And Priya lolled back in her arms, smiling, weeping flowers from her skin.
“I told myself I wasn’t doing it just for you,” she said deliriously, flowers writhing from her fingertips, her scalp. “I told myself I was doing all of this for Ahiranya—my family’s sake, my country’s sake, my sake—but I was lying to myself, lying, lying—”
“Priya.” The name came shakily to Malini’s lips.
“It was for you. Maybe all of it or maybe part of it but you, you—I can’t—” A flutter of broken words, little shards of words, blooming as the roses twined from Priya’s skin onto Malini’s steadying hands. “I barely understand it, the way I would willingly kneel for you, anywhere, for anything. The way I would fight for you. The way I want to be at your side. Is that what love is, Malini? Is that how awful love is? Because if it is, then I love you, the way that roots love the deep and leaves love the light. It’s—the way I am. And no matter how much I try to be good, to do right—I’m all flowers in your arms, for your war, for you—”
“Priya.Priya.” Malini pressed her face against Priya’s. Felt the changing skin—the rhythm of her breath, the promise that Priya was here and alive. “I should never have asked you to come,” she whispered against Priya’s cheek. “I should never have let you go into battle.”
“But you need me. You needed me here.”
“I needed you,” Malini agreed. “Need you still. But not just for your gifts. Never just for your gifts. Surely, surely you know.”
“I do, I do.” And their faces were turning, not quite touching, sharing breath. Creeping ferns coiled out from Priya’s hair. She blinked her green-struck eyes. Strangeness, horrific strangeness, and yet somehow Malini could not bring herself to let go of her. Priya’s mouth parted. Words, again. Words, always cleaving distance between them. “I think there must be a scale somewhere in your head, where you weigh out how much my gifts matter to you and how much the rest of me matters, and I think—the scale is tipped, isn’t it? Listing to one side. You don’t have to nod or agree or—I already know, Malini. I already know.”
Malini wanted to say—Your gifts are you and you are your gifts, I don’t love you in pieces, I don’t separate you into parts.But Priya would have heard the lie in that. Malini broke everyone into parts—sifted through everyone she met for strengths and weaknesses, desires and loyalties.
“Do you hate me for it?” Malini asked, framing Priya’s face with her hands. “Are you angry that I don’t love as you do?”
Priya laughed. A breathless sound, oddly sweet.
“Were you afraid I’d die?” Priya asked.
She took hold of Priya’s hair. Heavy, dark hair, slippery as silk, riven with things flowering. Malini moved her fingers through it. She pressed her lips against Priya’s neck, feeling the heat of her skin, the warmth of it. She smelled of—sweat, salt, and rain-washed soil. It should have been unpleasant, too human and too strange all at once. But Malini could do nothing but press her teeth to the tendons of Priya’s throat, and breathe her in, and think with helpless hunger,I want to taste her, taste all of her, hold her in my mouth. I want, I want, I want.
Priya made a hitched noise—half surprise, half something else. Her head tipped back. Her fingertips traced Malini’s jaw, trembling.
“As if a simple battle could kill you,” Malini whispered against her skin.
She did not want to love Priya the way Priya loved her—that devotion, that terrifying gravity that took a person to their knees.
But some things were not in her control.
