Chapter 22: Priya

PRIYA

Priya whirled without thinking, running toward the doors. Down the corridor. Beyond the lit lanterns. Then the guards caught her, shoving her back into the temple, slamming the gates behind them. One swore, fumbling with his blade—if he’d reflexively been trying to knife her, he’d done a piss-poor job of it—and the other held her by the upper arms and murmured urgent nonsense at her. It took a moment for the sound of his voice to become more than white noise.

“… no one can leave the Hirana. Our orders haven’t changed. I know you’re afraid, but you must be calm.”

“I’m calm,” Priya forced out, stilling her body. “I’m calm. I won’t run again.”

The guard released her and she edged back. Away. Walking until the guards and the gates weren’t in sight any longer.

She couldn’t escape via the doors.

Another hand grabbed her arm. Priya was already on a knife edge. She whirled, pinning the owner of that hand against the wall.

Malini gave a quick exhale. She met Priya’s gaze without flinching.

“Let me go,” she said. “We’ve no time.”

“Where is Pramila?”

“I don’t know. I ran after you. Come on. I want to talk to you alone.”

In the end, Priya was the one to lead the way, dragging Malini down a rarely used side corridor, and from there into a cloister room. The room was small, intended only for meditation and prayer, but once the door was shut behind them, Priya tried to pace back and forth in the limited space afforded to her anyway. She thought of everyone in the mahal, panic gripping her lungs.

“I need to go,” said Priya. “I can’t remain here. I—”

“The guards stopped you,” said Malini. “You think you can get beyond them?”

Priya shook her head, but it was no true answer. She could only think of Sima and Rukh and Bhumika, of the smell of fire, and her own blood seemed to sing a song in her veins: run to them, run to them, run to them.

“Priya,” Malini said. Her voice was slow, deliberate velvet. “Listen to me. Calm yourself. Do you think you can get beyond them?”

It took a moment for Priya to realize that Malini was not trying to reason with her. She was genuinely asking if Priya could force her way past the guards. Priya’s racing thoughts paused. Malini took her by the hands, threading their fingers together, grounding her to stillness.

“I don’t want to ask this of you now,” Malini said. “I truly don’t. I thought perhaps in time… but there won’t be a better opportunity, and we must seize it while we can. You could kill the guards, if you wanted to. You could remove Pramila. You could release us both. Couldn’t you?”

“You overestimate my power,” Priya said carefully. “I’m not—like that.”

“You’ve done so much for me,” said Malini. “I know you’re attempting to save my life. Do you care for me enough to do more?”

Priya thought of pulling away. She tried to untangle her fingers from Malini’s and felt Malini’s grip tighten, drawing Priya in closer until there was no distance between them, and Priya was looking up into Malini’s face—into the shadow gray of her pleading eyes.

“The guards likely won’t obey their normal routine under these circumstances, but they all traveled with me from Parijat. I know them. The one with the thick mustache—he complains that his right knee pains him whenever it rains. And it rained a great deal on the journey here. The youngest of them is better with a long-range weapon than close physical combat. He prefers a chakram or bow if he has a choice. But if you attack his senior first, cut him at the knees, the younger one won’t think to retreat, and once he’s in close combat with you, you’ll find it easier to manage him.” Malini’s fingers brushed back and forth over her own; a steady, almost hypnotic rhythm. “You can get us out, Priya. Right now, while they’re distracted and there is chaos below us… You can. And I can help you.”

Priya stared back at her. Numbly, she shook her head. She thought of the consequences for the mahal, for Bhumika, if the princess escaped the Hirana. “I… I can’t. My lady.”

“You don’t need to kill them,” Malini said quickly, still holding Priya close. “I don’t ask that. I only ask you to consider what will happen to me if I stay here. My only hope is beyond the Hirana’s walls. You could come with me, Priya.” Her voice lowered. “Wherever I go, you could go.”

Malini’s expression was pleading, her voice was cajoling, wounded—but there was a hardness to her jaw, a desperation in her eyes that was at odds with her tone.

Her hands on Priya’s were a light weight, fingers curled. Everything about her was a vulnerable entreaty. So perfectly vulnerable, that Priya could only think of festival plays, of actresses wearing theater masks painted saffron and vermilion, expressions fixed—stricken or joyful, sharp-toothed or soft-mouthed—to match their roles in the tale.

Priya felt as if her racing pulse, quick with panic, tripped over itself for a moment. Frozen, she felt her understanding of the princess—of this—shift upon its axis.

She thought of Bhumika’s words from the sangam, suddenly. I must use all the tools in my arsenal, she’d said.

The princess was a daughter of the empire. The princess was trapped and desperate.

And Priya was… useful.

She’d been a fool.

“And what shall I get in return for helping you escape here?” Priya asked, rage and humiliation surging through her. “Were you hoping I’d risk my life for you just out of the goodness of my heart?” All those gentle touches, all those smiles—Malini’s hands on her own, and shared breath that could have been a kiss. All of it, no more than a careful leash placed around Priya’s neck, ready to be drawn at the right moment. “Maybe you thought I’d do it for a kiss? Do you really think so little of me?”

An expression flickered across Malini’s face, too quick to decipher. “Priya, whatever you think, you’re wrong.”

“Pramila told me not to trust you. She told me that you make people love you. That you’re manipulative.”

Malini said nothing.

“You’ve wasted your energy on me,” said Priya. “I’m not capable of what you want.”

“You are,” Malini said. “Please, Priya. If anyone can help me escape the Hirana, it’s you. There’s no one but you.”

“Of course you think I can,” said Priya bitterly. “You saw me after all, with Meena. You watched me kill her and you didn’t even look afraid. Don’t you know that you should be afraid of me? Don’t you know how easily I could kill you?” She gripped Malini’s hands harder in return, holding her fast. “I have so many reasons to hate you. You, with your imperial blood and your father and brothers who were happy to see Ahiranya’s temple children piled onto a pyre and burned.” Priya was surprised at the venom in her own voice, the way heat rushed to the surface of her skin, furious and prickling. “I have no reason to help the child of an imperial family that ordered my own family dead. I could break your neck, here and now, and you couldn’t stop me. I could fling you from the Hirana. If you think I have the power to kill all the guards, then you know I could just as easily end your life and free myself.”

“I’m not afraid of death at your hand,” said Malini.

“And why is that?”

Some of the vulnerability faded from Malini’s face. Leached away.

“The night you saw me, in my chamber, on the ground—I had convinced Pramila to leave the wine with me. I’d been nice to her. Sweet, biddable. For days. You know something about how that works. She left the wine. And I drank, and drank, and drank. I weighed up my choices. I thought: either I will grow sick enough that she will have to seek help, allowing me access to a physician who I can beg for aid to escape this prison, or I will simply die.” Malini’s voice trembled a little. “But then I grew afraid, and I flung the wine to the floor. I didn’t know what was real any longer. And I did not want to die in a pool of my own vomit, after all.”

And then, Priya knew, she had appeared. She remembered Malini’s eyes in the dark. The rasp of her voice, her words—Are you real?—with a shudder.

“Does that disturb you?” Malini asked. Her voice hardened. “I like you, Priya. But I am afraid that I’m running out of time for the niceties of our relationship. If General Vikram is dead—who knows where my brother will send me next, or what will become of me?”

There was no distance between them and yet somehow Malini took a step forward, tugging her hands free from Priya’s. She touched her fingertips to Priya’s chin instead, so close to Priya’s mouth, her fingers warm and steady, impossible to ignore.

“Kill me or save me,” murmured Malini. “But do something, Priya. My brother wants me to waste away here, or beg him for the sanctity of an immolation—but I will not. I have been able to do nothing to change my circumstances apart from obtaining you, so please do me the kindness of ending my suffering, one way or another. Surely you’re humane enough for that.”

Priya wrenched back from Malini’s hand.

“If you speak of what I am to anyone,” Priya said angrily, “I’ll force that needle-flower poison down your throat myself.”

“I have never,” said Malini, “threatened to tell anyone your secrets, Priya.”

“You know nothing of my secrets.”

“You know that I do.”

“I am not ashamed of wanting you,” Priya blurted out, even though she was ashamed of wanting Malini, because it made her a foolish love-addled thing unfit for the task her sister had set her. A failure. “But I don’t appreciate you using my wants against me, and I won’t let you do it anymore. Tell whoever you like that I want you. But if you speak of what you think I am—”

“I told you,” Malini cut in. “I haven’t threatened to reveal you. I could have long ago, and I have not. I won’t.”

That pulled a choked laugh from Priya’s throat. “How generous of you! But you want to keep me on your side, don’t you? Without me, you have no one here. No one.”

Malini said nothing to that. The vulnerability was gone from her face, and now her expression was nigh unreadable.

“Hide here from Pramila if you want,” Priya added, as she turned. “I’m not going to help you.”

“Would you really condemn me for doing what I need to in order to survive?” Malini asked. When Priya didn’t answer, Malini said swiftly, “We could make a deal, you and I. There are other things I could offer you in return for your help.”

Priya stopped. Turned back. “Like what? You have nothing.”

“Tell me what you need and want. Bargain with me. So I am not as tenderhearted and naïve as you thought—so I want to live and I am willing to use you to do it—so what? Don’t let that anger you, Priya. Use that. You will never have this kind of power over a royal of Parijatdvipa again. I am a princess. I know the heartbeat, the innards of the empire. Beyond this prison I have allies waiting for me. You have things you want, Priya. You told me. I know it. Use me.”

Priya looked at Malini. At her pale brown, dark-eyed face surrounded by knotted curls, a face thin with sickness, and thought of how much of a fool she’d been to not see that Malini could read her like a book.

“You are useful,” said Malini, when Priya continued to stare at her, heart pounding with fury and shame. “What you are—you have use. But so do I, to you.”

“I make a good weapon, I suppose,” Priya said faintly. She thought of Meena again—of rage, and Meena’s body falling, and the smell of fire and cooked flesh that had haunted Priya for years.

Oh, spirits, thought Priya, with a kind of despair. What am I choosing to turn myself into? What am I becoming? Is remembering myself worth this?

As if summoned by her thoughts, a new memory came over her. A spill of water on the floor. The smell of ghee and resin in the air. One of her temple sisters turning to her, eyes wide, clutching her own throat. An elder, mouth curled downward, sorrowful, lighting a flame—

She didn’t want to remember this.

“Priya.” Malini exhaled. “Please.”

Priya realized she was shaking.

“I can’t,” Priya said abruptly. “Not now.”

“Priya—”

“Not now.”

She left the room abruptly.

She didn’t make it very far.

Away from the guttering lantern light, away from Malini, she kneeled alone, crouched with her head on her knees. She was shaking.

She needed to know if Bhumika was safe. If the general’s mahal—if Rukh and Sima and Gauri, if all those people who made up the mahal—if they were all safe.

If she could not go in person, she would take the only way out of the Hirana that she had available to her.

Ragged breaths. One after the other, and the other, winding deeper. Deeper.

She sank back into the sangam. The river water rose to meet her.