Priya started to laugh again. She couldn’t help it. She was twice-born, she’d found the waters, she was strong. She felt invincible. She felt as if she could turn around right now and dive back beneath the water, take on all the power of the thrice-born.
But no. That had never been done. For a reason, surely? She didn’t know. She knew nothing. But it didn’t matter what she knew or didn’t. She had this. A gift, living inside her.
She remembered that some of the children who rose from the water had died… later. But if that was to be her fate, it wasn’t something to think of now. Through the invincible glow of power she could feel Ashok rattling in her skull, calling for her, furious.
He wanted what she now had. And she knew—with the bone-deep assurance of a woman who’d felt his fist around her heart—that she could not give it to him.
She made her way up, up, up. And when she rose to the Hirana’s surface, she turned back and looked at the entrance to the deathless waters. She leaned forward. Touched her fingers to the stone. With the same bleeding, lacerating power, she drew the rock together. Sealed the way shut.
Ashok would not be able to find it without her now.
She crossed the Hirana: the empty corridors, the triveni. The air was cold and soft, the ground strangely warm—as if the Hirana came alive, sang, at her presence, at a twice-born crossing its surface.
The corridor to Malini’s room was quiet. She pushed open the door softly, expecting to find Malini as she’d left her, sleeping on the charpoy. Instead Malini was sitting up, clutching her cheek. Even between her fingers, Priya could see the dark shadow of a bruise.
She felt a movement behind her, from the corner by the door. There was suddenly something sharp beneath her chin. She felt something hot. The wetness, not of water, but of blood, as Pramila’s hand trembled around the blade.
MALINI
You poisoned me first.
Malini did not say it, of course. But she thought it. She sat very still, her hands in fists in her lap, her eyes wide, and thought it with all the fury in her. She had not had to feign softness or weakness when Pramila had first confronted her and slapped her, accusing her of poisoning Pramila in secret, of being an impure and evil creature down to her core. Malini’s tongue was thick with the taste of metal, the clinging memory of needle-flower, gently administered by Priya the last time Malini had briefly awoken.
The second—and third—time Pramila had hit her she’d refuted everything Pramila had said. No, she had not poisoned Pramila. No, there was no plot against her. Malini had been consuming her wine obediently, taking her medicine as was expected. No, Priya had not betrayed Pramila. Priya was loyal.
And yet. For all her lies, spoken with all the earnestness she could muster, here they were: Pramila, red-eyed and furious, her hand trembling around a knife. Priya, with her head slightly raised, a thin rivulet of blood winding its way down her throat.
“Why are you holding a knife to my maid’s throat?” Malini asked, letting a quiver shake the last words. It was not difficult. It was amazing, really, how close a tremor of fury sounded to a tremor of fear. How dare Pramila. How dare she. “Pramila, I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? What have I done to offend you?”
“Oh, don’t try that with me, you sly bitch,” Pramila said. Her voice was savage, and her hand twitched a little with the force of her feeling. “It may have taken me time, Malini, but I know now. You used this maid to poison me, didn’t you? You want me dead. Well, I can’t kill you. I…” A shuddering breath. “But this one is a traitor.”
Priya was soaked. Her hair was plastered to her shoulders. Water was dripping from the hem of her sari, and the blood at her neck had turned from red to a washed-out pink. Where in the world had she been? Malini had been trapped in a haze of sickness for mothers knew how long, and clearly much had passed in the time she was in a void. Curse it.
Priya looked strangely calm. She met Malini’s eyes. What did she want to tell Malini? What did that calmness mean?
Malini could not understand it. She was tired, hollowed out by grief dreams and poison.
“Priya has been a loyal maidservant,” Malini managed to say in a wavering voice.
“Loyal to you.”
“She’s a good girl,” said Malini, even though she knew it was useless to continue the lie. Still. The knife. “A simple girl.”
“I don’t even know if you’d be sad to lose her,” Pramila said thickly. “You probably didn’t even weep over my Narina, did you? And she was meant to be like a sister to you. Oh, but you let her die happily enough. What will a simple, stupid maid matter to a monster like you?”