Aditya flinched as if he’d been struck. Rao ran a hand over his own face. “I—need to rest,” he said raggedly. “Aditya. About your sister…”
“I have men, watching the seeker’s path,” said Aditya. “Watching for lights, or strangers. If Malini comes, we’ll know of it. I promise you.”
“She was trapped in Hiranaprastha. On the Hirana,” said Rao roughly. “Dead, perhaps.”
“Ah, Rao.” Aditya sounded pitying. “We both know she isn’t dead. Now rest. You’ve had a terrible journey.”
We do not know, thought Rao, his thoughts sharpened by a hysterical edge of fury and despair. We do not.
But I do.
MALINI
They lay side by side on the bank of the rockpool, letting their saris dry out in the heat. There had been no rain, which was a relief. Just the day’s sunshine, and a faint breeze that mingled with the coolness of the water below them.
After all that Malini had been through—the burning of her heart sisters, her poisoning and imprisonment, her escape with Priya through a city aflame, and Priya’s near death—being here felt like a blessing. Kissing Priya in clear water, holding her arms, her warm skin—lying beside her here in the quiet warmth of sunlight—made Malini feel closer to happiness than she had been in a long time.
Maybe the foolishness of her decision to enter the water with Priya, to act on her want, would strike her later. But right now she felt no shame or regret. She wanted simple things: to savor this moment—stone digging into her hip and all—as long as she could. To have the time to memorize the shape and feel of Priya’s mouth, to learn her skin by blind touch. To laugh with her and talk with her and learn her, no pacts or painful debts between them.
“You know this doesn’t make you a monster,” Priya murmured. She lay facing Malini, sun on her deep brown skin, her hair a loose sheet of darkness around her. “Wanting me. You know that, don’t you?”
Malini wanted to explain that being monstrous wasn’t inherent, as Priya seemed to believe it to be. It was something placed upon you: a chain or a poison, bled into you by unkind hands.
But that wasn’t what Priya needed to hear.
“I know,” Malini said simply. “This part of me isn’t anything I’m ashamed of.”
She felt much greater shame at her own rage: the cold iron weight of it, ever present and ever steady in her heart. It shamed her, all the things she dreamt of doing to Chandra, but only because of how much pleasure the thought of his suffering brought her. He deserved to suffer. But to enjoy the thought of his pain made her more like him than she wanted to be.
“I think you may be a good person after all,” Priya said slowly.
“Oh?” Malini smiled. “You change your mind so swiftly?”
“Parts of you, then,” said Priya. “Parts of you want the world to be better. You want justice for yourself and the people you love, because your rights have been denied. You think the world owes you for that.”
“You need to work on your love talk, Priya,” Malini said dryly, and Priya laughed, a warm sound. “And I hope you realize you could be speaking about yourself, temple child.”
Priya shook her head. The laughter faded from the shape of her mouth, her eyes, as her expression turned contemplative.
“I’ve never wanted justice. Maybe I should have, but the thing I truly wanted was myself back. And now I just want to know—to prove—that the temple elders were wrong. Parijatdvipa was wrong. My brothers and sisters and I, we were never monsters. We didn’t deserve what was done to us. I want to believe that. I want to know that. I want that to be true, and if it isn’t, I want to make it true. But you, Malini,” she said. “You want to remake the world.”
“I just want to change who sits on the imperial throne,” Malini replied. But that didn’t feel entirely like the truth, even to her own ears.
Priya reached out, tracing Malini’s jaw with her fingertips. Priya was gazing at her with clear eyes and a furrow between her brows, reading her bones as if they were a map.
“This face. This face right in front of me. The face you’ve shown me, the fact that you kissed me. I know it. I know you,” said Priya. “I know exactly who you are. There are other versions of you that I don’t know. But this one…” Her fingers were against Malini’s lips. “This one is mine.”
For a moment, Malini felt as if maybe this was all that she was. There was nothing more to her, no princess of Parijat, no politician, no royal. She was just this, just herself, under Priya’s sure hand. Someone content.