They walked together into the darkness. Priya could smell the deathless waters growing closer, fresh and sharp as a cold night. The liquid cosmos of them, almost within their reach.
And then, quite suddenly, there they were.
The deathless waters lay before them, incandescent blue in the darkness of the hollow temple. Priya took Ashok from Bhumika’s grip; guided Ashok to the edge and released him. He kneeled down by the water, palms flat to the ground. He breathed, long ragged breaths, heavy with blood, and touched his forehead to the soil.
Next to Priya, Bhumika was staring at the pool, her hands in fists at her sides. The rebels milled behind them, terror and wonder on their faces.
“Should we be saying some special words?” Priya muttered to Bhumika. “To make them feel better?”
Bhumika sighed, tipping her head back as if to say, Spirits save me, then said, “Or we can enter the water and be done with this.”
But some of the tension had unfurled from her hands. When Priya reached for her, Bhumika laced their fingers together. Squeezed, once.
“Come forward,” gasped Ashok, and the other vial-poisoned rebels stepped forward, standing at the edge of the water. “We enter the water,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we emerge. And then we protect Ahiranya. We do our duty.”
There was a murmur of agreement. Ashok looked up at Priya. His eyes were wet.
Priya looked at him in return and chose not to think of all he had done. She thought instead of the fact that she and Ashok and Bhumika were the last survivors of their family, a family not of blood but of history and suffering, love and the kind of hurt that only love can breed.
She held her hand out to him. He took it and stood with care.
She looked at the water ahead of her. Forced herself not to think of anything, not to hope for anything, as she clutched her siblings’ hands tightly, and entered.
And sank.
Falling and rising are alike, in water, when you’re deep enough, and the deathless waters were a thing without ending. They were a cold, brilliant blue—the blue of the universe. The blue of stars enfolded in skeins of sky that contained all things. Priya was deep within them, eyes open, lungs burning. She wondered if she would drown.
She could not remember this. Had this happened the last time she entered? Had it happened the first? She kicked her feet and did not know if she was rising to the surface or dragging herself deeper.
She raised her arms in front of her. In the wavering water, to her panicked eyes, her skin was like shadow—the shade thrown between great trees, deep darkness blurred to the charcoal of light beneath dappled leaves.
She couldn’t breathe. She kept kicking, kept struggling to rise when she didn’t know what rising was. But eventually she could hold out no longer. She opened her mouth, and sucked in a burning breath, and drank in the waters. Drank, and was consumed.
She lifted her head, gasping for air. It took her a moment to realize her lungs were not burning. The water around her was dark, but within it floated the roots of lotus flowers, swirling and twining. Within them were bodies.
And there, before her once more, was the yaksa.
It did not wear her face this time.
“Ah, sapling.” It sounded fond. “You like this face better. I knew you would.”
“You’re not her,” whispered Priya. “Please. Don’t be her. That isn’t what I want.”
The yaksa shook its head. Malini’s dark curls floated loose around its face, with its elegant bones and fathomless eyes.
“But you do,” the yaksa said. It touched her cheek once more. Drew its fingers back, and wound about the tip Priya saw a thread or a root—a thing of blood and green twined. “I know you. We’re bound, you and I. So I know.”
“Please,” Priya said again.
The yaksa shook its head once more, and Malini’s curls blurred into a halo, and the yaksa… changed.
Deep marigold eyes. Hair of coiling vines. Rose-red mouth.
A smile that was all thorns, sharp as points of light.
It was both beautiful and like a woman deep in the throes of rot. Its head was tilted, gold-petaled eyes fixed upon her chest.
“What is worship?” the yaksa asked.
She knew this.
“Hollowing,” she said. “It is…” And she trailed off, looking down at where the yaksa gazed. Her shadowy chest was a cavity, a blown-open wound. The wound was covered in a profusion of petals; the bones were angular striations of wood, the blood a clean and sweet sap of leaf. Within it lay a pulsing heart of… flowers.
She looked at what had been her heart. Thought of Ashok’s words, when he had called the yaksa a cuckoo in the body. She remembered the tree behind Chandni’s hermitage.