“That’s a no, then,” Priya said.
“Iam. But. Priya…” Hesitation. “In the eyes of my men, Ahiranya is not yet free,” said Malini. “Ahiranya is still subordinate. And you will be—unwelcome.”
The fragile thing in Priya’s chest splintered, just a little. Malini’s words were a reminder that there was so much more at stake than her soft feelings for Malini, or Malini’s for her. Politics and war and history all stood like a chasm between them.
“You summoned me,” Priya pointed out.
“Yes,” Malini said. “I did. Because I am on precarious ground. Because I need someone I can trust. And because…” She stopped, and then said, carefully, “Because you are you. To me.”
Priya felt a pang.Ah, Malini.
“But you are going to need to trust me in turn, Priya,” she went on. “You will need to do what I guide you to do, and trust that I will not harm the interests of your people. That when this ends you will have what I promised you. That I wish to give you—all that is rightly yours.” A hitch in her words. A stumble. “Can you obey me?”
What was rightly Priya’s?
Are you rightly mine? Can I keep you too?
“Do you ask all the kings who serve you to obey you?” Priya asked.
“Not so directly,” said Malini. “With them I play the necessary games and niceties. I write pacts and bargains. I flatter and dole out power as required. But you—you are not them. And I am asking you.”
“Will you believe me if I say yes?” Priya asked.
“You’ve placed your life in my hands before,” Malini said softly. “The deals we have struck between us have always held true. I’ll trust you again, as I always have, and always shall.”
“Don’t say such things,” Priya said, voice smaller than she wished it to be.
Malini’s response was silence. She stood tall, elegant and untouchable in her green sari, her flowering crown, her eyes pinning Priya through the heart.
This isn’t how I thought it would be, Priya thought. She had the absurd desire to reach out and unspool Malini’s hair—to trace her eyebrows, her jaw, her mouth, with a fingertip. To feel her skin—to touch her—maybe that would make Malini real. Maybe it would knot them back together again.
“I wish,” Malini began. And then she caught herself—almost visibly. A slight sway of her body. A flicker of her eyelids. As if she felt it too—the urge to move closer to one another. The urge to touch. The urge to sayYou’re here, you’re here and I’m here, at last.
Priya swallowed, steadying herself. She pushed her shoulders back. Straightened herself, grounding her feet against the soil. If Malini could wear a mask, then so could she.
“Empress,” she said. Louder, clearer, drawing the eyes and ears of the men around them. “Ahiranya is loyal to you. That has not changed.”
Malini straightened too. Inclined her head.
“I am glad, Elder Priya,” she said. “So glad.”
Priya and Sima both worked together to make something presentable out of Priya. A salwar kameez, in the Aloran style that better suited horse travel, with the chunni knotted neatly at her hip. Priya’s hair bound back in a long braid that Sima hastily wound in place using a long, deep blue tasseled paranda. By the end, Priya at least felt presentable. It would have to do.
They rode to join the army.
When they entered the camp itself, Priya tried not to allow herself to be overwhelmed by the size and sheer scale of it: the milling swathes of soldiers in their bright armor. Saketa’s great maze fort, looming over everything, dark-stoned and austere. The canopied tents, the elephants, the weapons.
The waiting highborn. Their cold, watchful eyes. The way they stared as Priya rode forward on her horse, and alighted, her braid whipping behind her as she hit the soil.
Let them stare. She was a temple elder. She had more power in her bones than any of them had in their titles.
Priya walked forward. Awaiting her, beneath a canopy of gold, on a dais that clearly served as a throne, sat Malini. Empress Malini, in all her glory, legs crossed and hands upon her knees. The softness in her was all gone. What remained was hard and beautiful, as bitterly sharp as a blade.
I wanted you to see.
Malini had shown her a little of this mask: the edges that made an empress out of a woman. And here, now, was the rest of it.
Yogesh stepped forward first. In a clear voice he announced Priya, Temple Elder of Ahiranya.
