She was still so terribly likely to lose.
She would have to trust this man. This priest, who spoke to her as if he knew her. Called her good. Dutiful. Pure. She would, if all else failed, have to place her life in his hands. Her skin crawled, even as she held the certainty inside herself, cold and sure.
She would make her own plans, of course. She would ensure Chandra’s death if she had the power to do it. If the priest betrayed her, then she would make sure she would not die helpless, all her work undone. By the mothers, and by her own vicious nature,someof her ambitions would outlive her.
She would need Priya’s help for that.
She thought of Priya. Priya, who was a temple elder. Priya, who worshipped the yaksa, and loved her people and her flowering gods.
She felt a terrible realization slide its way between her ribs.
She could not tell Priya the truth.
She would ask Priya to fight for her, maybe die for her, on the basis of lies. To enter battle for the sake not just of the bonds between their nations but for love. For the trust she’d placed in Malini long ago, when she’d allowed Malini to hold a knife to her heart. When she’d kissed Malini in a forest and told Malini she did not have the power to hurt her.
But I do, Malini thought. Her heart hurt. She wanted to be sick.
Malini had always known in her soul what her mission would make of her. She touched her fingertips to the flower beneath her blouse—a helpless gesture. She loved Priya. The feeling was dark and deep within her, with its own steady undercurrent, always reaching for her, always dragging her under. But she needed to win this war. Needed it more than tenderness or love, needed it with a fire that burned and burned and screamed in her heart sisters’ names. She needed it because her brother’s blade had found her and cut the goodness from her long before she’d ever learned the shape of a gentle, encompassing love. If she had to risk Priya for her vengeance—if she had to place her in danger in order to win, and see her brother dead?
So be it.
RAO
Rao watched Priya. She was standing out in the bare sunlight, arms crossed, her head lowered as if she were lost in thought. Sima was standing next to her, worrying at the end of her own braid with her fingers. If anything, Sima looked far more agitated than Priya. But Rao had seen enough of Priya’s gifts to guess that Priya somehow—somehow—had her attention trained on Malini, wherever she was within the temple.
“The empress has made a fast friend of that one,” Prakash said. He found the heat harder than most, and had seated himself beneath a parasol with his charioteer fanning him.
Rao made a meaningless noise, and Prakash took it as encouragement, as Rao had expected he would.
“She keeps her even closer than the sage,” said Prakash, referring to Lata. “She keeps her constantly at her side.”
“Elder Priya was injured,” Rao murmured.
“She’s not injured anymore, Prince Rao,” said Prakash. He dabbed at the sweat on his brow with his knuckles. “There will be men who do not appreciate her holding an Ahiranyi witch in high prestige.”
“She has few women of similar status that she can talk to,” Rao said in response. “When her court is properly established, things will change.”
Prakash laughed.
“Instead of wedding our women for alliances, we will be sending our sisters and daughters to court as emissaries to win the empress’s favor,” he said, as if it were a great joke. Shook his head. “It will be a strange business, having a woman on the throne.”
“Prince Rao.” A clear, light voice. Rao turned and met the eyes of the priest Mitul. “Will you come with me?”
“Me?”
Mitul inclined his head.
He glanced back at the others. Everyone looked as confused as he felt. But there was nothing to be done save nod in agreement.
He climbed the sandstone steps of the temple. Followed Mitul through the archway into a column-lined corridor, and from there, through narrower and narrower corridors that seemed to lead nowhere.
“You are not taking me to the empress, I think,” Rao said cautiously.
“No, Prince Rao.”
“I’m not familiar with the temples of the mothers, or all the traditions of your faith,” said Rao, emphasizing his Aloran accent—as if he had not been reared at the heart of the faith of the mothers of flame, alongside the imperial princes of Parijatdvipa. “What need do you have of me, a worshipper of the nameless?”
Mitul said nothing for a long moment. He guided Rao across a path next to a central garden courtyard, ushering him into a quiet room, walls carved from a pale, lustrous stone.
