Well, let him. Let him. She would not grieve.
She could make something new of Parijatdvipa.
She could make herself something monstrous. She could be a creature born of poison and pyre, flame and blood. She had told Aditya that when the opportunity to seize power came—to wield it—the opportunity had to be taken and held and used. If he would not wield it, she would.
If he would not take their brother’s throne, in that room of sweet falling jasmine where the sisters of her heart had burned, then she would do it.
She was going to build a new world.
All this she would do, when she sat on Parijatdvipa’s throne.
But first, she thought quietly, savagely, to herself, as the men around her kneeled and shouted her name. Malini. Malini. Mother Malini. Empress Malini. I am going to find my emperor brother. I am going to make Chandra kneel before his peers, humiliated and broken. And I am going to watch him burn.
PRIYA
After the coronation, Priya went to Rukh.
There was a makeshift sickroom, for all the people who had been injured protecting the mahal. Rukh had his own bed. It was by the window, under a fall of sunlight. He was lying on his side, and the leaves of his hair had all turned, seeking the sun.
She had waited until she was sure she would live—that the waters wouldn’t take her life. She had waited until she felt like the magic had settled in her blood, steady and strong. To delay any longer would just be cowardice.
She didn’t want him to know that she was afraid.
“Rukh,” she said. “Are you awake?”
When he raised his head, the leaves of his hair moved. The spines of wood on his hands shifted, moving with the fine bones of his fingers, as he turned his body to look at her.
“Priya?”
“That’s me,” she said with a smile. “Is there room for me?”
He shuffled over. She sat on the bed beside him.
“I want to try something, if you’ll let me,” she said. She cupped his hand between two of her own. “I want to try to help the rot.”
“I don’t want to wear any more beads,” he said, resigned.
“No,” she said. “Not that. I want to try something magical. Will you let me try, Rukh?”
He was silent for a moment.
“I’m so tired,” Rukh said in a small voice.
“I know,” she said. She rubbed her thumb over his fingers, careful to avoid the broken skin around the green. “I know, Rukh.”
He looked down at her hand on his.
“Will it… will it hurt?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I don’t know. But if it does, you tell me, and I’ll stop.”
“Okay,” he said. He opened his fingers, with an audible snap of joints. “Okay,” he repeated. “I trust you.”
Priya tried to project confidence as she held his hand tighter. Breathed deep. Closed her eyes.
All she had was Ashok’s words—his memory that the thrice-born had once been able to manipulate the rot. All she had was her own hope, that what she was could be used for something good.
She let the magic rise in her. Pour out of her.
As she held his hand, she felt the rot within him, a living, magical sentience—the same green life that lived in the forest, in its trees and its earth—and felt it respond to her.
Slow, deep breaths. That was what it took, to move her magic gently, to bid the rot as she would any other green and living thing. Do not grow, she told it. Do not spread. She tried to draw it back, wither it into nothingness, but it had made a place in Rukh; hollowed itself a home, and without it he would die.
She did what she could. Only that.
Then she opened her eyes once more, and smiled at him.
“Priya,” he breathed deeply, as if he hadn’t breathed fully in a long time. “I… Priya, what did you do?”
“You’re not going to die,” said Priya. “I’ve made sure you won’t die. The rot won’t hurt you anymore.”
He looked wildly at his hands, which were still bark-whorled, still strange.
“But you can’t fix me? I’m… not going to change back?”
“I can’t make you like you were before,” Priya said slowly, looking at the roots curling around his ears; the lines of sap, like veins, that showed through at his throat and in the shaded whites of his eyes. “But you’re okay, Rukh,” she said gently. “You’re okay.”
Rukh nodded solemnly. Then his lip trembled, and he placed his forehead against her shoulder, and she felt big, racking sobs break out of him. She clambered further onto the bed with him, holding him tight. She pressed her face to his hair, her own eyes wet, and was so horribly, brilliantly glad that she hadn’t lost him too.