The yaksa raised a hand. Neatly, it snapped a finger free and breathed upon it. The finger was wood, and it curved and sharpened, neatly carved by the yaksa’s breath. Even before the yaksa held the knife out to her, Priya knew it was sacred wood, a thing born from the sacrifice of a yaksa’s flesh and blood. And she knew—with a horror and hunger that shook her—what she was expected to do.
“Hollow yourself,” the yaksa said.
“I can’t,” she said. “How can I?”
“Every time you come here, you do this,” it said, in a voice both gentle and unutterably cruel. “Every time, the water fills you from head to toe, and you ask yourself the question: Shall I allow the water to obliterate and remake me, or shall I hold all my mortal flesh tight? Shall I keep this soul contained, in the vial of my flesh, this poisonous body bound to death, or become one with the waters of the universe?”
Was this why the others had died? Because they’d been unwilling to make the sacrifice—to be less or more than human?
She’d fought to be here, over and over, and now she was. And yet her shadow of a hand trembled, as she reached for the knife. As she placed her fingertips upon it, they burned.
“This is the only way I can be strong enough to save Ahiranya,” she whispered. “This is the only way I can save my family.”
The yaksa said nothing.
Priya took the blade. Held it against her own skin of shadow, her skin of soul. And cut a place for the magic.
There was no pain. Only a feeling like air leaving her lungs, like water rushing in, and then fire, and then a clear light, green and pure.
In her throat, something caught. Something of the mortal soul. Something of lifeblood.
The flower she’d given Malini. A needle-flower.
She’d placed a bit of her heart inside that.
“I can’t give you everything,” she gasped out around the drawing wound of it. “I don’t have it any longer.”
“No matter,” the yaksa said gently. “No matter, sapling. We have enough.”
She thought of heart’s blood, of love and fury and the sweet place in between, where thoughts of Malini dwelled. And the bloom—the sapling—that was her own magic grew and grew, until she knew she was not exactly Priya anymore. Perhaps she never had been. Perhaps from the moment she’d arrived on the Hirana as an infant, the deathless waters had been remolding her from within, making her a vessel for their magic and their voices, discarding all the parts of her that made her a mortal woman with a simple mortal heart.
“This too,” she heard the yaksa say, “can be hollowed away in time.”
And then Priya was in the water once more, cold and brilliant and blue, and she was kicking her feet. She knew the way now. She was remade and whole, and she knew how to rise.
She rose, heaving for breath, coughing water from her lungs even as she struggled to stay on the surface, legs kicking through heavy nothing. She swam to the shore and dragged herself up, up.
Bhumika was already there, her hair sodden, her face mottled with cold and relief.
“Yaksa,” Priya gasped out, and Bhumika turned her head with firm hands. Another rebel—a fellow temple child, now—thumped her back hard once, twice, and then Priya was vomiting water on the stone, no more words spoken.
She couldn’t remember what she intended to say. But her cheek burned with a cool fire and she could not forget the feeling of roots and flowers rising up where her heart should have been, unfurling their way to her soul. A hollowing.
But it had felt right. It had felt glorious. And she had learned something, in that moment of change; something about what it meant to be a temple elder. Something about what it meant to serve the yaksa.
Something that was already fading.
She clung to it tight, and felt a pain, sharp, in her cheek where the yaksa had drawn its nail across her flesh. The pain held fragments of the memory down, like a stitch through cloth.
“I thought you wouldn’t rise,” Bhumika said through chattering teeth. “Priya, you took so long. So…” And then to Priya’s shock, Bhumika was embracing her, breathing hard, unsteady breaths against Priya’s wet hair. Priya clung back reflexively.
“Ashok,” she whispered. “Where is Ashok?”
Bhumika said nothing. One of the rebels was wailing, a low keening cry.
“You can’t go back in, Priya,” Bhumika said finally. “You can’t.”
Priya shook her off. Turned, back toward the water, still on her knees. And Bhumika was tackling her to the ground, but Priya was stronger, she could throw Bhumika off without even trying—