Chapter 50: Priya

PRIYA

Priya told Malini curtly that they would head directly to the seeker’s path. When Malini suggested the bower of bones, Priya shook her head. “Your prince will be long gone,” she said. “Better if we try to catch up with him.”

She strode ahead, leading the way. For a time, they walked. And walked. The trees were thick around them, with heavy leaves that drooped over their winding path between the trunks and branches.

“So,” Malini said after a time. “Your elders live after all.” Priya could hear Malini’s careful footsteps behind her. “It was very strange in their home. They barely spoke to me.”

Priya actually bit down on her tongue. She was so—so angry.

“Priya, will you stop for a while? Or slow down.” Malini’s voice sounded strained. “You must be exhausted. I certainly am.”

Priya didn’t want to stop or slow down. Stopping meant thinking, and she didn’t want to think. Not of the tree with its faces of flesh and bark, or Chandni’s resigned, rot-riven face, or how all of it had made her feel. Scared and grief-stricken, but more than anything, angry.

“Priya.” Malini’s hand closed on her shoulder. Her voice was gentle when she said, once more, “Stop.”

Malini’s palm felt overwarm on her shoulder. Priya could have shaken off her hand. But she didn’t. She stood still and closed her eyes, calming her breath, and listened to the rustle of the trees. The faint rush of water.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Priya said tightly. She swallowed. “I can hear a stream. I’m thirsty. Come on.”

The thick maze of trees soon parted, opening to a slope of gray rocks that ringed a pool. The pool was fed by a silvery, snaking waterfall, pouring over the low, green-dusted rocks. The water rippled faintly as the waterfall rushed to meet it. It was clear, unmarked by anything resembling rot. Priya clambered down to it. She heard Malini huff out something that might have been a swear, and follow her.

Priya kneeled down on the edge and cupped the water, cold and clear, and lifted it to her lips. She drank. Then she splashed her face, blinking water from her eyes. Ah, spirits, she felt unclean, as if her own mind had stained her skin. The sight of Elder Chandni, Elder Sendhil, the tree—

“My elders,” she choked out. “I don’t want to talk about my elders.”

“I know,” murmured Malini.

“They—Chandni—said they thought… they thought we weren’t even human. That I’m not even human. She thinks I’m monstrous. My own—my own family. That’s what they think of me. Do you think I’m monstrous, Malini?”

Priya heard Malini’s footsteps drawing closer. But she didn’t really want to hear Malini’s reaction. She was afraid suddenly that Malini would say yes. So she spoke again instead, the words tumbling out of her. “Because I think you are. Or I’m afraid you are. Oh, you’re so lovely to me, you’re very good at being lovely, but you’re also the woman who organized a coup against the emperor. You’re deep waters, Malini. You’re so much more than you’re willing to show me, and that scares me. I think I’m always waiting for you to turn on me.”

“I’ve been myself with you, always,” Malini said. Her voice was careful. Steady. “But we all have more than one face. We have to have many faces in order to survive, don’t we? That’s natural. Normal.” Malini was at her shoulder now, kneeling also. “This face you know didn’t abandon you in the forest when you collapsed. I carried you when I was weak, to people who frankly frightened me, and I stayed with you. That was all me.”

Priya knew that was true. But how could she trust Malini? How, when she couldn’t trust herself?

“But the rest of you,” Priya said unsteadily. “Your other faces—”

“Some parts of me are monstrous,” Malini said, and when Priya turned to look at her she saw that Malini was clutching the needle-flower cask at her throat. “You know why? A woman of my status and breeding, Chandra told me, should serve her family. Everyone told me I should be obedient to my father and my brothers and one day, my husband. But Aditya and Chandra made their choices, and I didn’t simply accept those choices. I didn’t obey. Because my brothers were wrong. But more than anything, Priya—more than that—I’m monstrous because I have desires. Desires I have known all my life that I should not. I’ve always wanted things that would place me in danger.”

Her voice shook, a little, as if she trembled on the same edge as Priya. “I’ve avoided marriage. I’ll never willingly beget children with a man. And what is more monstrous than that? To be inherently, by your nature, unable to serve your purpose? To want, simply because you want, to love simply for the sake of love?”

Their eyes were fixed on each other. Priya couldn’t look away.

The gap between them was so small.

For so long the void inside Priya had been between her past and her present. But this… Priya could cross this distance. It would be simple. The thought made her breath catch and her skin feel too small, hot and prickling.

Instead she turned away and lowered her legs into the pool, sliding into the cold water. When she stood, the water reached her knees.

“I’m going to wash,” she said. “I… I’m going to.” She swallowed. “Who knows when we’ll get the chance to again.”

There was sweat, blood, and dirt all over her, so the water was actually very welcome. She waded deeper, until she was in the wake of the waterfall, submerged to her waist. She dunked her face under the water. Raised it, tugging her fingers through the damp snarl of her braid.

“Here,” said Malini. Abruptly, her voice was in Priya’s ear. She was right there, standing in the water alongside her, the folds of her sari billowing around her. “Let me help.”

Malini touched her fingers to the end of the braid, tentative. There was a question in her eyes. And Priya… nodded. Turned her back.

Malini took up the sodden weight of Priya’s braid and began to unravel it, working her fingers through it with care.

“My hair is easier to manage than yours,” Priya managed to say. “No curls.”

Malini worked slowly, sliding her fingers gently through the tangles. “I know you’re trying to avoid talking about us.”

Us.

“Will you let me?” Priya asked.

“Do you really want me to?”

She could feel the tug of Malini’s hands—the tingle of it in her scalp. She shook her head, and knew Malini could see it, feel it.

“I was never lying about wanting you,” Malini said in a low voice. “Never with my eyes or my words. Never when I touched you. All of that was true.” Another tug. Priya felt the last of her braid uncoil, the pressure on her scalp releasing. “You’re already helping me. You’ve saved my life, Priya. I’m free. There’s no benefit—nothing I gain for the empire, for my goals—by telling you this. Do you understand?”

Malini placed her hand flat against Priya’s back. The water was cold and the heat of her skin—of her outstretched fingers—burned. She’d placed her hand against Priya’s blouse, under the drape of her sari, between her shoulder blade and her spine, where her heart thumped inside the cage of her ribs. It was like she was trying to hold the frantic rhythm of Priya’s heart in her palm.

“Why?” Priya asked. “Why would you…?” She trailed off. She didn’t know how to ask, Why would you want me? Why would you follow me into the water, and hold my heart and speak to me in a voice like that, like you’re yearning for me?

As if Malini had heard her, she said, “I thought you might die.” A small, hitched breath. “I thought that it might be the end, when you collapsed in the forest. And I…”

Priya turned. The water moved around them.

“Priya,” said Malini, and her voice was dark and hungry and drew Priya in like gravity.

“Malini,” she said in return. She pressed a hand to Malini’s jaw.

And then Malini’s hands were clenched in the seams of Priya’s blouse and dragging Priya forward. There was a moment, a single moment, when Priya was looking into Malini’s eyes, and Malini was looking into hers, and finally, finally Priya stopped thinking and simply moved. She leaned in.

Malini’s mouth was on Priya’s then, punishingly sweet, a bruising warmth that made everything vicious and hungry rise up in Priya with a swiftness that devastated her. Somehow, Priya’s hands were in Malini’s hair—that ridiculous, tangled hair that would never be unknotted—and they were stumbling back, back, until Priya could feel cold stone against her spine, the falling water around them, and Malini’s hands now upon her shoulders, her throat, her jaw. And Malini was tilting her face up, kissing her with a fury that melted into sweetness, with a tenderness that was strong as lifeblood, and burned. Burned.