“You want to understand why I resist the path you think I must follow. To understand that, you must understand the knowledge the nameless granted me,” said Aditya. He hesitated. Then spoke again. “Malini, in truth, I need you. I need your insight.”
“You already have my guidance,” she said. “You know exactly what I think is best.”
“No,” he said. “I need you to see. I need you to understand what holds me here, and why I cannot leave until I know what I must do. When you see, you will.”
“I told Rao once long ago,” said Malini. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“And yet there are forces greater than us,” Aditya said. “Forces we cannot control, that carry us whether we will it or no. The greatest lesson the nameless has taught me is the strength it takes to recognize when there is no fight to be won, when there is no war of equals. Only the possibility of surrender.”
Surrender. It was an ugly word, a burning word. She jerked her hands from the basin’s edge.
“I don’t accept that,” Malini said sharply. “That isn’t my way.”
She took a step back.
“Malini,” said Aditya. “Please. If you don’t look, you will never know why I struggle.”
“Tell me, then,” she said. “Tell me, so we may move beyond your struggle and return to the real world.”
“You think I can reduce a vision of the nameless to words you’ll understand?” He laughed, a tired laugh. “Malini, be reasonable.”
She had been reasonable. She’d been more than reasonable. He had left his crown, his empire, for the sake of serving his new faith. And she had, very reasonably, begged him to return. Now she was here before him, with blood on the monastery’s doorstep, reasonably asking him to act.
No more.
She couldn’t look away from him, this brother she loved, who had rejected all the privileges life had given him, walking a path she could not understand. She let something rise inside herself then—something iron hard and angry.
“I am not asking for anything unreasonable,” Malini retorted. “I never have. But if you will not explain yourself, let me explain something to you: You and Chandra both believe the right to rule is something that must be given to you, by the mothers of flame, by blood, by the nameless. I’m no such fool. I know there is no higher power that sanctions a king or emperor. There is only the moment when power is placed in your hands, and there is one truth: Either you take the power and wield it, or someone else will. And perhaps they will not be as kind to you and yours.” She leaned forward. “You had your choice, Aditya. And when you relinquished power, Chandra turned on me and my women. Alori’s death. Narina’s death. Every single moment of suffering I have faced—they all lie on your shoulders. You must do better now.”
He flinched. She forced more words from her throat, more poison and truth, pressing her advantage as his stubborn passivity began to crumble.
“If I had the ability, I would obliterate Chandra,” she said slowly, deliberately. “I would cut off the trade routes that carry him rice and grain. I would burn his fields and destroy his mines. I would take every ally from him—by bribe or violence. And I would kill him. Slowly, and dishonorably. That is what I would do if I were lucky enough to be you, Aditya. To have your privileges. But I would never be you because I would never have rejected my birthright as you did.”
“You, my own gentle flower of a sister, dreaming of war,” he murmured. “I thought you of all people would understand my need to be free of such things. You were the most spiritual of the three of us as a girl. Do you remember that? No devotee of the nameless, certainly. But you used to make me take you to the mothers’ shrine so you could lay jasmine blossoms and kiss their feet.”
“That was before the first time Chandra hurt me,” Malini said crisply. “That ended my childhood fancies abruptly.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “When,” he said, “did he hurt you, as a child?”
She sucked in a breath. He didn’t remember.
She wanted to lift her hair and bare her neck. She wanted to show him how she had been hurt; to show him not simply the physical scar but the way Chandra’s cruelties large and small had flayed her sense of self, until she was raw, a furious tangle of nerves, until she was forced to build herself armor, jagged and cruel, to be able to survive.
But he would not understand. He had never understood. Her hurts and her terrors, which had consumed her all her life, had always been small to him. He had either never truly seen them or simply, easily forgotten them.