Vikram looked through her. He barely seemed to hear her voice. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I can’t. It’s almost as if…”
He fell silent. She knew then that he was thinking of the temple children.
“I’ll seek the aid of the emperor,” Vikram said eventually.
“He’ll have you removed from your post,” said Bhumika. “Or killed. And then you will have nothing.”
“I have connections,” said Vikram. “There is nowhere in Parijatdvipa that would give me a throne, certainly, and I have no heart for military campaigns any longer, but there is always work for a man who knows how to tend to power.” A pause. “Saketa, perhaps. It is a green place. Beautiful. It would make a good home for children.”
“I don’t wish to leave Ahiranya. This is my home.”
“You know nothing but Ahiranya,” he said dismissively. He tried to sit up. Gasped in pain. “You’ll learn. Where is the damnable physician?”
“I won’t leave Ahiranya,” said Bhumika. “I intend to remain here. My apologies, husband. You cannot make me leave.”
He was gray-faced with pain, his lips pinched a mottled purple.
“You’re my wife,” he said harshly. “And you carry my child.”
“Yes.” Simple words. “But I do not belong to you. And the child is still mine, my flesh and blood, and body and milk. One day that will change. All children outgrow their mothers. But for now, they remain with me, as they must.”
“No more of this, Bhumika. Call me a physician. I have work to do, if we hope to survive.”
She shook her head.
“What do you mean, no?”
Vikram had not been prepared for what those touched by the deathless waters could do. And those rebels of Ashok’s had not been prepared for her. But then, Ashok had always underestimated her. Just as Vikram had. Just as Priya had.
Fortunately, Bhumika never underestimated herself.
You should have listened to me, she thought of saying. You should have avoided escalation with the rebels. You should have known better than to throw your lot in with the emperor who burns women, who dashes down his allies, the emperor who dreams of a world purified by faith and flame.
You should have trusted the woman you married.
“I never wanted this,” she said instead. That, at least, was true. “I wanted peace. I was willing to pay the price that peace demanded, however broken that peace was. But now it’s gone, husband, and now that the rebels and your men have torn Hiranaprastha between them like dogs, I will do what is needful. I will take up the role that was once mine.”
Finally, he looked at her and saw her. The flush of her face, suffused with power. And behind her…
The thorns, coiling through the window with unnatural, winding sentience.
She saw the realization dawn in his eyes. It was a cold, pure horror, a horror that told her he had never suspected her, never feared her. Never known that his Ahiranyi highborn wife, married for politics and for her beauty, for the possibility of the child she now carried, was the kind of monster he had once sought to burn.
“You will not return to your emperor,” she said. “I am sorry for it, Vikram. But there are lives I value more than yours. And truly…” She swallowed. “Truly, I tried.”
She rose to her feet. He grasped at the hem of her sari. She stepped away before he could touch her.
“A physician,” he called after her. “Bhumika. At least that.”
He was trying to rise to his feet. She heard him groan once more in pain.
She shut and bolted the door behind her, without looking back.
Everything she had built had shattered.
Her safe identity. Her marriage. Her nation of fragile peace. She could no longer use the strength of Parijatdvipa to protect her own. It was Ahiranya’s strength she needed now. The strength of the deathless waters and their magic of root and vine.
She needed Priya.
Many of the survivors in the rose palace were very old, or very young. But some were Jeevan’s men, or guards who’d run to safety. Some were strong-armed gardeners, or cooks from the kitchens with burn-scarred and callused hands. And some were maidservants, used to the hard work of hauling water and firewood, of climbing the Hirana. And these were the people she spoke to.
She told them that not all the temple children had died.
She told them of Priya’s gifts, so like her own. She told them that the way to the waters had been found. She told them there was a chance the power that had once existed in Ahiranya could be restored. She gave them more honesty than she had ever afforded Vikram.