Abruptly, he became aware again of the weight of the arm strapped to his back. Embarrassment rushed through him. How could he have allowed himself to forget something so important? He should have spoken to Aditya immediately, but the sight of his old friend had undone him.
“Lord Mahesh,” he said. “I must speak to Prince Aditya alone. My apologies.”
Mahesh nodded and departed with a swiftness that surprised Rao. But Aditya smiled, a little sadly, and said, “We rest when we can now. What is it, Rao?”
Rao took the box—strapped close to his back all through this journey—and placed it on the ground in front of Aditya.
“You once showed me a vision from the nameless,” Rao said, into the silence that followed. “A coming. An inevitable coming. And here… here is the proof. The yaksa are returning. Their remains are reviving. You had the vision, Aditya. I was given this proof, but I believe… I believe it was meant for you.”
He opened the box with a click. Aditya leaned forward and looked upon it.
He exhaled; a soft, worshipful noise.
Aditya’s eyes near shone. Through all the grime and dirt, Rao saw priest and prince in him.
“My purpose,” Aditya murmured. “I’ve been waiting all this time, and here it is. A war greater than any we’re fighting here. A war calling me.”
“What will you do,” Rao said in return, voice just as soft. “Now that you know?”
Aditya lowered his head. A long silence followed, that Rao could not read.
“We win here,” he said finally. “We win, knowing that the nameless has a higher purpose for us. And then we face what comes.”
Rao nodded, oddly relieved. This wasn’t the end. This couldn’t be the end. The nameless had promised it to them.
“If you need to navigate the fort,” Rao said, “then I have someone that may be useful to you. But he’ll need some—convincing.”
MALINI
Her first thought, on beholding Harsinghar, should not have beenI’m finally home.
But it was.
Almost her entire life had been spent in Harsinghar—in its white marble and pale sandstone, its sweet-smelling flowers and streets lined with trees laden with green leaves, golden blossoms. But it was fitting that the Harsinghar she beheld now smelled of flames held upon swords.
It was fitting that she wasn’t sure if today she would live and succeed, or die.
She had surrounded herself with some of the strongest warriors in her army. But the press of men around her ebbed and swelled as Chandra’s forces pushed forward, forward—all their strength aimed at getting toher.
Men fell around her, caught in the press of boots and weapons. She heard so many voices crying out that it was like a roar. She tried not to listen to it. The wind was sharp on her face. Her back was straight, her hand clenched against the chariot’s edge.
She’d been right not to allow Raziya at her side.
Her men did not know how to respond. They had expected Chandra to behave by reasonable rules of warfare—to defend his city, hishome, before all else. But his army was pressing toward her with single-minded focus, and Malini could only hold herself steady on her chariot, as the thing jerked with the movement of the bodies around her, caught in a violent sea.
Either Malini would be captured as the priest had told her—or soon an arrow would go through her throat, or her chariot would be upended, and she would be dead.
I have Priya, she reminded herself, through the cloying haze of her own fear. What use was fear? How could she face what came next with anything less than all the bravery she had in her?
Her chariot was as carefully defended as she could have made it, ringed on all sides with soldiers and cavalry. But Chandra’s men cut down the foot soldiers. They barreled forward with their horses. Sabers wreathed in flame cut a swathe through the men around her, and the smell of fire and dying struck Malini sharply, like a blow.
Raziya had spoken, sometimes, of what it took to hunt prey on Dwarali’s mountains. As Malini’s chariot ground to a halt within the press of bodies—as her charioteer begged the men around him to take the empress, to carry her to safety—Malini thought of that tale and did not move.
You must close in on the animal. Circle it with a dozen men, drawing in closer and closer, ensuring that it has no means of escape. If it finds a gap, it will take it, Empress. That is the way of things that want to live.
But once you have it caged, a simple net is enough to contain it. And then, the knife.
She wasn’t prey, born to leap into the crush of the battle below her chariot and be felled with a horse’s hoof to the skull, or a sword of fire to the chest. She would not run. She would—despite every instinct in her—have faith.
