“Don’t you recognize what you worship?” her reflection asked. It smiled.
Priya flinched—a full-body flinch of surprise—and the yaksa laughed. The water was blood hot, the yaksa’s form carved wood and flesh, its eyes a bloody bloom.
“You’ve cut out your heart to meet me,” it said. “Won’t you ask me a boon?”
Priya said nothing. She couldn’t. She was silenced by awe and wonder. And the yaksa only shook its head, black petals falling from its shoulders, and kept on smiling.
“I want to go back,” Priya said finally. “Please.”
The yaksa nodded. Its fingers drew back—but not before one fingernail sharpened, fine as a needle, and drew a line of blood from her cheek. It held a hand that was like her own to its face. Touched her blood to its lips.
“Oh, sapling,” whispered the creature. “We’ll meet again, you and I. One way or another.”
And the creature reached for Priya and kissed her, square on the mouth.
For a moment, she saw the whole world.
She saw the ocean roiling at the edges of Parijatdvipa’s great subcontinent. She saw the mountains capped with snow at the border of Dwarali. She saw Dwarali’s Lal Qila, a fort that stood on the edge of the known world. She saw Parijat, and the imperial mahal in Harsinghar, surrounded by flowers.
She saw the rot. She saw it everywhere, everywhere. And she saw it grow, and change; saw it was not rot at all, but a flowering, a blooming; saw a dozen creatures with river water seeping from their fingers and carnations for eyes lift themselves from the world’s soil, and breathe—
She woke, not with a gasp or a start, but slowly. As if she’d only been dreaming. As if she had not been in the sangam at all. She lay on a sleep mat on the floor of a house that was squat and cool, smelling sweetly of damp. Malini sat next to her, on her knees.
She flung herself over Priya, embracing her.
What…？
“What is this place you’ve led us to?” Malini asked, voice dangerously low. “The woman won’t let me leave this room. And the man—”
Malini went abruptly silent. Priya felt her pull back, her face calm again, her eyes demurely lowered.
And there, behind her, was Elder Chandni.
Priya’s heart gave a sharp thud.
She’d felt the presence of a sibling, or so she’d thought. Someone like family, a sharp needle-thorn in the tangle of the forest. She had not expected this.
Childhood. Chandni at her writing desk. Chandni’s hand in her hair.
The feast. The blood. The fire.
Chandni stepped farther into the hut, into its semidarkness. But Priya could see her. Her face, with its angular cheekbones, and hair that had gone fully gray, bound back in a bun low at her neck. She had new wrinkles, and a way of walking that spoke of pain.
“Your companion brought you here,” said Chandni. Her voice was soft. It took a moment for Priya to realize she was speaking in classical Ahiranyi, excluding an uncomprehending Malini from the conversation. “She said you asked to be brought to this place.”
Priya swallowed. Her throat was dry. She felt a little like she was still trapped in some terrible fever dream.
“I did.”
“And yet I don’t think you knew you would see me. Did you?” Chandni’s eyes tracked every movement of Priya’s face—every tic and twitch of muscle in her body.
Priya wished she had Malini’s ability to leach all feeling out of her own expression, but she didn’t. Still, she wouldn’t flinch. Not here. She stared at Chandni unblinking until her eyes burned as fiercely as the thing knotted in her chest that she had no name for.
“I sensed someone like me was here,” said Priya. “But no. I didn’t expect—you.”
“Did you think me dead?”
I hoped you were, thought Priya. But in the next beat, she knew it wasn’t true. However, neither answer was going to help her or leave Malini unscathed.
“All the temple council are dead, elders and children alike. Or should be,” Priya said.
You killed us. You should have had the decency to die with us.
“Some of us chose to die with the children,” said Chandni. “And some of us chose this.”
This. Priya looked around. Mold upon the wooden walls. The scuttle and worm of insects through boards decayed and speckled with damp. The drip of a broken roof.
Malini was watching her with hooded eyes, apparently indifferent. But Priya knew better.
“It isn’t much of an exile,” Priya managed to say. “You’re still in Ahiranya.”