“I want you to use your closeness to her, if Ahiranya requires it,” Bhumika said calmly. “I want you to remember, always, where your loyalties lie.”
“Here?”
“Yes, Priya. Here.”
Priya shook her head.
“You think strangely,” she said.
“I think like a ruler,” Bhumika said, resignation in her tone. “I have to, now.”
“I may never seek her out. I may…” Priya shrugged, helpless beneath the weight of want and duty both. “She may not want anything to do with me. But if I go to her, if she does…”
“You shouldn’t lie to yourself,” Bhumika said gently. “Believe me. It does no good.”
Priya nodded. Pressed her knuckles lightly to her ribs, where Malini’s knife had touched her.
“You’re right,” Priya admitted. “I will go to her. But not right now. Perhaps not for a very long time. And if I do—if she will see me, if she…” Priya paused. Swallowed. Said carefully, “I won’t forget where my loyalties lie.”
“Thank you,” said Bhumika. She touched her shoulder to Priya’s. “More wine?”
“Absolutely.”
Priya drank, one deep swig, and lowered the bottle again. “I meant it, when I said I’m no politician and no warrior.”
“I know that, Pri.”
“But there is something I can do,” she said. “Something useful. Something good.”
“What is that?” Bhumika asked.
Priya looked out at the Hirana again. She thought of how long she had kneeled on the bed with Rukh. Rukh crying, devastated and full of hope.
She and Bhumika were finally the cure they were always intended to be. The destiny they deserved lay inside them, belonged to them alone.
A cure. The thought made her skin burn.
She touched a hand to her cheek, feeling the line of warmth that lay there, a stitch of throbbing fire. She breathed through the hope and her chest took in air, hollow to it like a thing carved open. For a second, one dizzying second, she felt as if she lay under water still, something growing in her lungs, her heart, something blooming, something she had forgotten— Then the moment passed, and she lowered her hand. She was Priya again, and she knew what she needed to do.
“The rot,” she said. “I’m going to destroy the rot.”
EPILOGUE
Chandra kneeled in the ruins of his mother’s garden. Around him the flowers lay in rotten heaps, their roots exposed, the flies and ants climbing over their remains. When Chandra had ordered that the garden be prepared for his use, a mere handful of weeks ago, he had made it clear that the flowers were to be left here to die.
There was a sweetness to the scent of dying vegetation that soothed him.
His mother had loved her Dwarali birch trees—the pale bark, the proud spires of the branches, laden with leaves.
Servants had cut down all the trees in one morning, years of growth instantly obliterated. The roots had been levered out of the soil, the wood dried, then axed and carefully arranged into individual pyres. Women had been led to the pyres; the pyres had been lit; the ash had been cleared and piled high again, until all the wood was gone, put to good use in service of a higher purpose.
Chandra had watched it all.
Today, only one pyre still burned. Its fire had reduced to glowing embers, pulsing under the blackened weight of the wood. The woman upon it had long since died, and the garden was blissfully quiet once more. A maidservant had brought Chandra refreshments: sherbet laden with crushed blossoms and pearly basil seeds, pink and white. A clay cup of tea, covered with a cloth to maintain its heat. She had arranged these neatly on the low table beside him, bowed, and departed, her pallu drawn over her mouth and nose, her eyes red from the miasma of smoke.
The light of the embers faded further, choked by the weight of burnt wood. Chandra looked closer, through ash white and black, through birch and bone. And there it was.
One ember—only one—had brightened. Grown. It lay in the dark, pulsing like a heartbeat. The small fist of light shuddered before Chandra’s astonished, hopeful eyes, and began to uncurl. A molten gold bud blooming into a flower of fire.
Chandra breathed in, a deep breath to give him the air for the joyous laugh that left him then. His mouth was full of the smoke of human char; the sickly perfume of dead jasmine. He had never tasted anything so sweet.
He sat and watched the fire burn. And he thought of his sister with a smile on his lips.
The story continues in…
BOOK TWO OF THE BURNING KINGDOMS