Malini was silent. She had never been given the impression by anyone, not least her subdued mother, that such knowledge was for princesses.
“When I was a girl, my father arranged for a female sage to educate me,” her mother continued. “I will try to provide the same to you, my garland child, but until that day, I can give you what I have. Such things will help you survive as a daughter of Parijat. A blossom with a thorn heart.”
“I am not thorny,” Malini said. “I cried.”
“Weeping does not make you any less yourself,” her mother replied. She touched her fingertips to Malini’s shorn hair. “Be careful with your tears,” her mother added, in a voice of cultivated restraint. “They’re blood of the spirit. Weep too much, and it will wear you thin, until your soul is like a bruised flower.”
Her mother had been wrong, though. Weep enough, and your nature becomes like stone, battered by water until it is smooth and impervious to hurt. Use tears as a tool for long enough, and you will forget what real grief feels like.
That was some small mercy, at least.
The walls were breathing. When she’d left the cloister room, slow in the guttering dark, she’d seen vines force their way through the walls, moss unfurl through the spiderweb cracks in the floor. Now those roots and leaves pulsed along with Priya’s breath. Priya lay unconscious on the floor. Malini could see her eyelids flicker, restless, but never quite opening.
The catlike tilt of her eyes; the crooked nose and the sharpness of her bones. You couldn’t dress this one and make a highborn woman out of her. She was unlovely and strong. She was exactly what Malini needed. Malini had known that, the first moment she’d laid eyes on her through the lattice in the dark.
She’d been sure of it when she’d heard screams from across the corridor, pressed her hand to her cell door, and felt the lock release as if it had been waiting for her touch. When she’d slipped free and watched Priya take the rebel’s life.
Priya was a possibility, a hope. The only one Malini had.
“Priya. Wake up,” Malini said firmly. She looked beyond the vines to the end of the corridor. All it would take was one guard seeking her here—or mothers forbid, Pramila turning the corner.
“Priya. Wake.”
With a groan, Priya opened her eyes once more.
Malini’s own eyes were dry. She thought of feigning tears again, of being soft and softening Priya in turn.
But no. She’d failed to play the game adequately. The fire below had made her good sense lapse, and she’d revealed herself too quickly. All that carefully cultivated trust, the vulnerabilities she’d revealed—all of it, wasted.
Either she’d need to find a new ploy to win Priya, to snare her into service, or she would have to resort to honesty.
But first…
“Priya,” she said. “Put an end to this. Your—magic.”
“I’m trying.”
She watched the rise and fall of Priya’s chest, the way her hands curled as she rose up onto her elbows.
“What happened to you?” Malini murmured.
“Stop talking,” Priya said, “and let me think.”
Priya’s gaze was distant, fixed on a point far beyond Malini. She breathed slowly, deeply. Malini remained silent and kneeling. She did not touch the green around her—only watched as it receded, withering back into the floor and walls.
Priya looked down at her own hands with wonder and fear. “Soil and sky,” she whispered. “It worked.”
Then Priya raised her head, pushed herself up straight, and looked at Malini. Her expression was ugly—thin-lipped, jaw tight, narrow-eyed. Priya looked like she’d happily choke the life out of her.
“I have long known that I can’t trust anyone,” Priya said. “Known how the world is. But you. I was foolish about you. I thought I understood a little of what you were. I watched you sicken. And weep. And I was afraid I’d have to watch you die. But everything you said and did… it was all a lie, wasn’t it?” Priya shook her head furiously and held a hand before her. “No, don’t answer. I know it was a lie.”
I did not lie, Malini thought. She knew how to lie, of course. She did so often. But the value of a truth, carefully carved to meet the needs of her audience, was much greater, and far more difficult to disprove.
She liked Priya. Liked the steady grip of her arms; the way muscle dipped and curved just so; the way she smiled, always oddly guarded, no more than a flash of white teeth, a dimple etched into one cheek.