“You told me you were impure,” Priya said. Flung the words out as if they were an accusation.
Impure. Yes, Malini had implied it—that her wants had been the thing that condemned her. It was not… untrue. But Malini had always hidden her desires well. If Chandra had known her true nature, her otherness, the fact that she preferred women to men, perhaps she would have ended up on the pyre sooner. But he had not known.
“I am,” she said simply. Watched the way Priya looked at her—the flinch of her, the disbelief. “But it was what he called treason that brought me here.”
“And was it not treason, to try to depose the emperor?”
“If I had succeeded, it would not have been,” Malini said. “And I may still achieve my aim. The kingdoms of Parijatdvipa do not forget the Age of Flowers, or the sacrifice of the mothers. They made a vow to our bloodline, to unite around the rule of a son of Divyanshi’s line. By their honor, they will not break it. But Chandra’s vision places them not at his side but beneath his feet. I have offered them an alternative that provides them the status he wants to take from them. No more.”
No more. As if building a coup against the emperor of Parijatdvipa, grand empire of city-states and forests and seas, were a small matter and nothing of consequence. It was a thing she had worked herself bloody for—risked everything for. And she had lost so much in the process. Her heart sisters, her Narina and Alori. Her standing at court. Her freedom. And her health and her mind, slipping from her, bit by bit. If Chandra had his way, her efforts to depose him would also cost her life.
“And you truly think this—this feckless brother who left your empire in the hands of someone everyone hates is fit to rule?”
Malini had to work to not flinch. She thought of Aditya—his morality, his goodness, the way he looked at her with fondness. Feckless, yes. She couldn’t deny what he was. But he was a better man than Chandra. He had never held a knife to her. Never tried to burn her alive.
It was not, admittedly, a high standard to judge Aditya by. But ah, by the mothers, if the vow between the nations required a male scion of Divyanshi on the throne of Parijatdvipa, who else was there but him?
“Let me simply say, the men of my family have a problem with overindulgence in religion. But Aditya is still a good man. And Chandra is not.”
“What makes him a bad man?” Priya asked.
Malini swallowed. “Is it not evidence enough, that he burns women? That he wants to burn me. He is—driven.” She would not tell Priya about her childhood. All the years of creeping, terror, that no one had seemed to see or understand. She would not talk about all the Srugani and Dwarali, Saketans and Alorans he had angered, long before he even had the opportunity to sit upon the throne. “Chandra is a man with a vision of what the world should be. It’s a horrible vision. And he will cut the world bloody to make it fit.”
Something flickered in Priya’s eyes.
Malini pressed on. “Chandra will destroy Ahiranya as you know it,” she said. “But Aditya would not. And in return for you helping me… I can ask him for more than you have. More than this.”
“Tell me.”
“The same power all city-states of Parijatdvipa possess,” she said. “Your own rulers. Places at court, to assist in the administration of the empire. A level of freedom, within the empire’s hands.”
“You can’t promise me that,” Priya said immediately. Her eyes were wide.
“Aditya has strong support,” Malini countered. “And he has the element of surprise. Chandra does not know what forces have been amassed against him. He does not even know where Aditya is. He only knows that I betrayed him, stirring up ill feeling against his reign. I, and my ladies-in-waiting. And what could I, his whimpering child of a sister with her two simpering women, do to truly compromise his throne?”
“All that,” said Priya. “For all that, what do you want? To no longer be poisoned? To be released from the Hirana? I won’t free you. Not when it would put the regent’s household in immediate danger. You need to ask for something else.”
“I want to be free,” Malini said. “You know that.” She folded the want away. Let it sink, deep down. “But there are other things I need. I can’t escape the Hirana, but—will your gifts allow you to?”
“Perhaps,” Priya said. Guarded.
That was as good as a yes.
“A man loyal to me waits in Hiranaprastha,” said Malini. Or so she hoped. “He waits for word from me. All I ask in return for Ahiranya’s future is for you to take him a message and give me his response.”