EPILOGUE
PRIYA
Malini,
Would it have been better if I had left you answers? Written you one final letter, and folded it into your trunk, or in your bed, in the place where I slept beside you?
Would it comfort you at all to know that I wanted to love you forever? That I wanted to be yours for the rest of my life? That I chose hurting you over letting you and everyone I love die?
Maybe not. Maybe it’s better like this.
Hate me, Malini. Hate me and live. I can love enough for the both of us.
She walked alone. It felt like she was crossing the world.
It would have been easier if she’d felt more animal and less human. If she hadn’t felt like herself—like a heartbroken failure—when she walked until her feet burned or slept mosquito-bitten under a black night sky. But she was still Priya. Still an ex-maidservant. Still a temple daughter.
She did not know if Malini was alive or dead. But she knew flowers grew wherever she stepped. She knew the rot sang to her, sang of inevitable comings, of births, of life returning where life had been lost.
She knew that sometimes sap pearled on her skin instead of sweat. She knew she had hollowed herself out for the yaksa, and the first of them, the oldest, had named her their beloved. Their priestess.
“Mani Ara,” she whispered to the night. “Will you show me your face?”
The earth rippled around her and went still.
Not yet, then, Not yet.
She ate when she remembered to eat. She walked when she remembered to walk. She reached, in the sangam, for anyone and anything and found nothing. Echoes, rippling and never reaching her. No mask-keepers. No Bhumika.
Priya had never, ever been so utterly alone.
She made it to the edges of Ahiranya. Felt it calling to her, and stood upon the edges of its green. The sangam lapped at her feet. The green called out to her, watched her. The trees bent toward her at her approach.
At the base of the Hirana, she saw someone waiting for her.
Not Bhumika. Not Rukh. Not Billu, or scowling Khalida. Not straight-backed Kritika, or Ganam with his arms crossed.
Just one stranger.
Taller than any man should be, with hair wild, all leaves of silver, gold, green. The wind caught his hair and made it fly gracefully, made it coil around his face.
His face.
“Ashok,” she whispered.
He gazed at her with a solemn expression that was not quite her brother’s. Like her brother’s face carved beautifully from wood. Like a mask.
“Priya,” he said. “Sister. Welcome home.”
