“Maybe,” Priya admitted. “Maybe if I’d been raised gently by people who taught me to be kind and good, I’d know how to do it. But I was taught goodness and kindness, or what passes for it, by other damaged children, so I can’t.” She came forward. Sank to the ground by the tree stump where Malini sat. “My own brother ripped my heart out in a vision. That part doesn’t matter,” Priya said hastily, when Malini’s mouth began to shape an alarmed question. “What matters is that my own brother hurt me, horribly, and I don’t think I can hate him, even now.”
Malini pushed the obvious questions aside. “When my brother hurt me, I made it my life’s purpose to destroy him.”
Priya laughed softly. “Maybe that’s the better way.”
“I’m not so sure.” She couldn’t smile. Her heart felt like a howl. “You need to forgive less easily, Priya. You need to guard yourself.”
Priya looked up at her through those eyelashes like strange gold, those clear eyes pinning her soul.
“You couldn’t use the knife on me,” Priya said. “Do you think one day you’ll turn yourself into someone who’ll be able to? Who’ll carve out my heart with no regrets?”
Malini thought of Alori and Narina and burning. “Priya,” she said finally. Her voice was choked. And in it were all the splinters of her, all the things frayed by loss and fire and prison, isolation and fury, by the tenderness of Priya’s mouth on her own. She did not know. She did not know.
Priya’s expression softened. There was something knowing about that look—knowing and fond.
“Malini,” she said. “If you do, if you change—I won’t let you do it. I may not be canny or clever or—or anything you are, but I do have power.” The leaves around them, as if in response to her words, rustled and drew closer. The trees were a wall around them. “I’ll stop you. I’ll turn any blade to grass, or to flowers. I’ll bind your hands with vines.”
“Will you hurt me?” Malini demanded. “You should, to save yourself.”
Priya shook her head. “No.”
“Priya.”
“No. I’m sorry, but no. Because I’m strong enough not to need to.”
“Don’t be sorry,” said Malini. “Don’t—”
Her own words left her. Her own words broke. This was what she had needed. Not forgiveness, not a balm for this strange writhing fury inside her, but the promise of someone to care for—to love—that she could not harm. Even if she had to. Even if she tried.
She leaned forward, and Priya took Malini’s face in her hands, as if she’d been waiting to trace Malini’s cheeks with her thumbs, to look up at her with that utter, terrifying softness.
“I’ll never understand your magic,” said Malini, as Priya gently stroked her brow. “And I’m glad. So furious, and yet so glad.”
Priya made a noise—a noise that meant nothing and everything, and raised her head, and kissed Malini once more. This time there was no fury in it. Only the warmth of Priya’s skin. Only her soft breath, and the pin-straight fall of her hair, brushing Malini’s cheek like the flat of a wing. Only a feeling like a deep dark well, a feeling like falling without the desire to rise.
Bhumika went into labor the next day.
Malini was standing near the lady’s palanquin when a gasp came from within it. She turned and was suddenly surrounded by a throng of people as the palanquin was hurriedly lowered.
“We’ll need to stop,” said Bhumika tightly. “For a time. Just for a time.”
“Someone set up a tent,” barked her maidservant.
Malini stepped back, back. She watched Priya crouch at her sister’s side. After a moment, she slipped away. She wasn’t needed here.
As she walked, she glanced around. She’d expected the soldiers to come running the minute the lady cried out, but they were disturbingly absent.
Malini walked farther up the path, still alone. She hadn’t been alone in a long time.
I should be afraid, she thought. She’d seen enough of the strange tree behind the hut where Priya had recovered to give her a healthy terror of this forest—of its waters and its soil, and most certainly, its trees—but she was not.
She finally saw Bhumika’s Ahiranyi soldiers in a clearing ahead. As she approached them, their commander whirled. He turned the sword on her. Aimed it, with instinctual swiftness, at her sternum.
She didn’t flinch. To flinch was to invite the first cut. Chandra had taught her that. She simply met his eyes and waited. She could see the moment when he realized who she was—and saw, too, the moment that followed, when he considered skewering her through anyway.