And yet.
Would she do more good here, defending her home and her people? Soothing the yaksa with honeyed words and worship? Surely she would. It was the path she had always taken.
Perhaps she would come to love them again. Feel faith in them well up in her. She’d come to love her husband. The lie of it had carried through years, years. Until it had not.
But her husband had never known her heart. And the yaksa held hers in their hands. She’d given them her heart—torn it out herself. She’d made herself their creature in return for power. And they had Padma. Her child. The compass of her heart.
The walls were closing in upon her tighter, tighter.
“This opportunity won’t exist for long,” said Ashok.
“Because you won’t.”
“Yes.”
She squeezed her hands into fists, hard enough that her fingers ached.
“Can you protect her when I’m gone?” Bhumika asked, and felt wretched. How could she ask this? How could she consider this? “Can you keep my little one safe? She’s a child, Ashok. She deserves—”
“We deserved a great deal too,” Ashok said. “They burned us anyway. The people who should have loved us.”
“And you think I want to visit that kind of grief on her, too? No. Ashok. I’ll do it, if you can promise me her life.”
“You have no way to hold me to that promise,” he said. “Ihave no way to hold me to that promise.”
“You once saved our sister’s life. When she was—small. When she was afraid. You carried her.” She looked at him. “And the yaksa you spoke of loved children. Children like my own. Ghost or not, fading or not—you won’t leave my daughter. Will you?”
He looked back at her. Something flickered over his face—something soft and wounded that reminded her of the boy he’d been before their siblings burned.
“I’ll try,” he said. “That. That’s all I can vow.”
She nodded. She couldn’t thank him. She hated—shehated—
“Why did you have to die?” Bhumika’s voice broke and ah—she hated it, how small losing all her allies had made her. Hated that her greatest strengths—her love for her own people, her love for what little family she’d cobbled together, for the possibility for a future, for herchild—had been turned upon her. “Why did I have to be left to carry this burden alone?”
Ashok hesitated. Raised a hand, as if he would reach for her. It hovered for a moment, then, slowly, lowered.
“Because I made bad choices,” said Ashok. “Because bad choices were made by the people who raised me, and the people who raised them, and the immortals who built our world. Because we are small and disposable, Bhumika, every one of us, and it was just your luck to make it longer than the rest of us.”
“Of course you only admit how bad your choices were now that you’re gone,” Bhumika said, with a laugh that was all grief. “Of course.” She forced her hands to loosen. Forced herself not to sway on her feet, or crumple. Strong roots. Deep roots, holding her fast. “When will we do it?”
“Meet me at the bower of bones,” Ashok said. “Before dawn.”
“Are you giving me time to say goodbye?”
“If you need it,” he said. “Time to prepare.”
And then he turned and walked away from her. She watched him go—the bend of his spine, the shape of him. A shell, a skin, for a yaksa she did not know.
She turned back. Jeevan stood in the doorway. He was in the shadows, far back enough that she could only see the gleam of his eyes.
“You listened to everything.”
Jeevan gave one jerky nod. He said nothing.
“I’ve never been the impetuous one,” she said. “I don’t take foolish risks. I know better. I have worked so hard, Jeevan, to ensure I am strong enough to find a way through for all of us. This is not what I want.”
“My lady,” he said. “I will go with you.”
