“It doesn’t make it any less true,” Alori said. “Believe in it or not, fate will find you. As it found me. You were named long before you were born, princess. Your tale is written.”
Was it written that Malini should live when Narina and Alori burned? Was it written that she should live and be reduced to this? She had tried so hard to build herself an impenetrable armor of power. She had learned classic texts of war and rule and politics, reading by moonlight when everyone else in the mahal slept. She had made fast friends with the wives of kings and the sisters of princes.
“And now you have nothing,” said Narina, in a voice of wood sap and ash. “Not even us.”
No sisters of her heart. No one to turn to.
“I have Priya,” she forced out, and through the haze she heard the press of a voice on her ears. Yes, yes, I’m here, please—
A laugh.
“A maidservant with monstrous gifts, who doesn’t even particularly like you?”
“Oh, she likes me.”
“She liked a false you.” Croon of a voice. “A you that you created for her. You crafted yourself into something warm and hurt, like a fat hare in a trap. I don’t think she knew if she wanted to save you or consume you whole. But you’re no hare, are you? You are a night flower if anything, precious only for a brief time before you decay.”
That was not Alori’s voice, or Narina’s. They wavered and…
There was… herself. Princess Malini, daughter of Parijat, crowned in a profusion of flowers, pale jasmine radiating into marigold, to mimic the rising sun. Princess Malini, a sari of peacock-green silk, with a chain of knot-worked gold roses around her waist, a string of fat pearls around her throat.
She was everything Malini was not anymore. And she was smiling.
“You,” said Malini raggedly, “are not real either.”
It seemed easy—easy and correct—to push her old self away, to shove and then beat with her fists, as something ugly and furious rushed up into her lungs and her eyes and her mouth as she thought of Narina and Alori curled up with her in her bed, or her mother’s funeral, or her father’s, or Aditya leaving her behind with nothing but a letter and a kiss upon the forehead. The ugliness grew into a wail, and she was screaming and laughing, even as Priya hushed her and caught her fists, a furrow in her brow, and it was Priya she was fighting against after all—
“What is this?”
Pramila’s voice.
“My lady, I don’t know. She simply—turned on me.” Priya’s voice was frantic. She was gripping Malini’s hands, forcing them still.
“She needs her medicine,” Pramila said. “Do you have it? Give it to me, and—”
Malini laughed. And laughed. She could barely breathe through it, but she forced herself to, and bared her teeth into a smile, and thought of Narina.
“Your daughter,” she said to Pramila, “your Narina, whom you mourn and mourn… the morning she died—did you know?—when she drank the opium wine and waited for the priests to come for us, she pressed her head to my arm, and told me, ‘I want my mother.’ Did you know she said that? I don’t know if I ever told you. I think perhaps I wanted to spare you. I don’t know why.”
Pramila gave a full-body flinch, as if Malini had struck her. Had she struck her? Pramila’s hand was on the wall. Was she weeping?
“I should get the guards,” muttered Pramila. “I should—they can force her to drink, see if they don’t—”
“My lady—”
“I don’t deserve this,” sobbed Pramila. “I…”
“I’ll make her drink,” Priya was saying. “I swear it. I’ll deal with her. Please, Lady Pramila.”
“I can’t. I can’t. I—”
“Please, Lady Pramila,” Priya pleaded. “Please spare yourself.”
Pramila gave another sob. She nodded, her face blotchy, unlovely. She turned. Left.
Priya exhaled, and Malini gripped her by the arms as her own body shuddered against her volition.
“You need to drink now,” Priya said. “And as you’ve seen, I can make you, if I have to.”
Malini turned her head.
“You’re not yourself,” said Priya gently.
“You’re not the first to tell me so today.”
“What?”
“I’m hallucinating,” Malini said impatiently. “Do keep up, Priya.”
She did not want to explain that when Narina and Alori had appeared before, she’d needed to speak to them. It did not matter if they were immortals or hallucinations. It only mattered that the loss of them burned, sore and powerful, and she had wanted to pick at the soreness, feel the fresh blood of them again.