Horror ran through her.
“No, yaksa,” Priya whispered. “Please. No.”
“You already promised me this,” said the yaksa. “You promised me your heart.”
“I didn’t think you meant this,” Priya said, horrified, helpless. “If I had known I would never have agreed.”
“I know,” the yaksa said, soothing. “You have done so much for her sake, after all. I have seen it all, sapling. Left your people. Bowed before her gods. Fought her wars. Lain with her. Made promises with your dreams you cannot keep. All you needed was the flimsy excuse of a message—a vow, an alliance—and you let yourself be entirely hers. But you made a promise, and you cannot break it now.”
Priya could only shake her head in mute denial.
“Did the women who burned to destroy my kin know how it would feel to die? Did they know the pain the fire would inflict upon them? No.” The yaksa shook her head. Golden petals fell to the water around her; swirled and faded into darkness. “They chose their sacrifice with a warm cloak of heroism, of goodness, of virtue, draped around their foolish shoulders. They did not know how unutterable the pain of such a death is until it was too late. They chose their path unknowing, just as you chose yours—with no way back, only forward.”
Does a sacrifice have the same power if you don’t know what you are sacrificing? If you cut out your heart so flowers could grow, so magic could wind its roots in your yielding lungs, without understanding that you would end up here, kneeling before a thorn-mouthed god, being told you must kill what you love? Surely not. Surely the way of things couldn’t be this cruel.
“I… I won’t,” Priya said. Everything in her rebelled. She thought of Malini—the reverent touch of her hands, and the shape of her smile when she was unguarded, vulnerable, lying by Priya on a bed in a spill of soft shadow. “Iwon’t.”
“My kin and I are the source of all your strength. You are just meat, flesh, a vessel for a higher power. That is all mortals are—and it is a blessing, a beautiful thing, but it also makes you nothing without us, nothing of consequence, nothing worthy of love. I cannot take what you refuse to give,” the yaksa said, with utter merciless kindness. “I cannot turn your knife upon her. I cannot make you cut out the heart you gave her. But I can use you as the vessel you are. I can wear your skin like my own. I can murder her. Perhaps under your hands she may live. But not under mine.”
A shudder worked its way through Priya—unnatural, strange, like an insect working its skittering way over skin. She lifted her shadowy hands before herself and watched the not-flesh of them split open—ashoka blossoms, blood-red and saffron, worming their way free. The yaksa inside her. The yaksa showing her exactly how much of Priya belonged not to Priya, but to the spirit she’d given herself to.
“Your loved ones are waiting for you in Ahiranya, sapling,” the yaksa said. “And I do not need them as I need you. I can kill them all, and splay their entrails beautifully before you, and accept your tears as my due. That is your choice to make. You have shown time and time again that you love them less than her. You can be my weapon, empty, and lose everything. Or you can take up your knife, and act as you must.”
Priya shuddered again. Quailed.
It wasn’t true. She did love her people. She thought with sickening, terrified horror of Bhumika demanding that Priya return home; Padma’s weight, solid and warm in her arms; Sima holding a shield up to protect her; Billu laughing, and Ganam lifting her out of the marsh, and Rukh hugging her fiercely, all sharp bones and awkward affection. They werehome, and she could not lose them. Could not.
How do you stand against a god that lives inside you?
“Please,” she whispered.
“This has always been inevitable,” the yaksa told her. Priya’s hands moved, as if of their own volition, to take the blade. The hilt bloomed under her hands, seeking her skin: great flowers, red as blood, gold as a rising sun. “I would always need you completely. I would always want you completely. And you’ll be mine. With me, you will find wholeness.”
“But not my beloved,” Priya whispered. Malini. Beloved and betrayed, although she did not know it.
“Do not worry,” the yaksa said, smiling, smiling. “I’ll be beloved enough for you from now on.”
The kiss the yaksa placed on her brow rippled through Priya.
“I am Mani Ara, sapling,” said the yaksa, framing her face in hands of flowering gold. “And you are my priestess.”
Priya woke beneath the earth, in a hollow she’d carved with her own magic, her own hands.
Someone was calling her name. A small voice through the dark.
“Sima,” she called in return, weakly. “Are you okay?”
“I am.” A pause. “I think we both are.”
She heard the groan of their charioteer, with some relief.
There was a burning ache between her ribs. She shifted under the soil, moving, feeling it hollow to accommodate her.
The knife had existed in the sangam. The knife was not here in the world. The knife—
A certainty settled into Priya’s bones.
She touched her own ribs. Felt her skin part, strange and unnatural, a softness that should not have been there.
