Chapter 24: Priya

PRIYA

Flung back into her body. A moment when she felt the waters of flesh and immortality and soul rising in her throat choking her and she grasped her own neck gasping, gasping. Her flesh burned—she did not know where the earth began or the sky ended, she did not know the way up, out. It was drowning, this feeling, or something so close to it that it did not matter if water surrounded her or if part of her lay ensnared in the sangam still, rended by Ashok’s fury.

“Priya.” A voice. “Are you injured? Speak to me. Quietly.”

Priya’s eyes cracked open. Malini kneeled by her. She was not once-born or twice- or thrice-born: She was entirely mortal, gaze focused on Priya, her lips pressed tightly together. Priya was no longer in the sangam, then, and Ashok was not here. He could not harm her.

Ashok had tried to harm her.

Her hand went to her chest. He had harmed her. The place where he had hurt her was like a burning star within her center, and she could not breathe around it.

“Priya,” Malini said again. Her voice was calm, utterly calm, but it was a serenity that Malini wore like armor. Her eyes held Priya’s steadily. “You need to stop this.”

Stop…?

It was only then that Priya realized they were surrounded by moss and flowers, vines twisting across the stone of the walls, unfurling through the cracks. In fact, the stone almost seemed to have moved, reshaping itself to let the greenery twine around it.

“Pramila,” she gasped. “If she sees—”

“I don’t know where she is,” said Malini, “or when she will return, and that is why you must be quiet.”

“I’m sorry,” Priya gasped out, even though she had nothing to be sorry for, and Malini had everything. She tried to concentrate, to lift her head, but she could feel Ashok’s fury as though his fist were still in her chest. She breathed—and faded into blackness.

Malini’s face, cold and resolute, was the last thing she saw.