Chapter 53: Priya

PRIYA

Priya didn’t know what she was feeling at first. Hands on her waist. Arms. She almost flung them off, but she heard a murmur against her ear. Malini’s voice.

“Priya. Please.”

Still, she considered throwing Malini back. Malini’s grip was limiting her movement, and they were entirely surrounded. Priya needed to move—needed to protect her.

Priya could feel the pull and tug of her magic moving the soil, trees, the plants to her will. She could feel the unnatural strength of her own hands. But none of it was enough. She was surrounded by rebels who had drunk vials of deathless water. And Ashok was watching, pity and amusement in his eyes.

Eyes that widened, in the half second before she felt the press of a knife against her skin.

“I’ll kill her before I let you take her,” said Malini.

She’d positioned the knife in the concave area beneath Priya’s ribs. It was a good place to angle a weapon. Better than the neck. Here, at the angle she held the blade, she could slide it up into Priya’s heart.

The rebels stood, shocked into stillness. And Priya…

Priya did nothing. She could feel blood still trickling down her scalp and shoulders from the wound in her hair.

“Priya could kill you where you stand,” said Ashok.

Malini laughed—a glorious laugh like the sound of a blade unsheathed.

“She could. But she won’t.”

Priya’s breaths were shallow. She didn’t know if she was afraid or not. Sweat stood out on her skin. The wooden knife burned. She was not sure she even felt betrayed.

“I know Priya. Every inch of her heart.” The way Malini said heart, so savagely—it was as if she were truly talking of the muscle pulsing in Priya’s chest, and it made the breath seize in Priya’s throat. “She won’t touch me. She could snap my hand clean, but she won’t do it.”

This was a game of wills. Ashok, staring at Malini, staring at her straight in the eyes. And Malini staring back. Priya knew he was thinking: This is a ruse.

But it wasn’t. Priya could feel the steadiness of Malini’s hand and Priya did… nothing. Still nothing. Stood and breathed and breathed as if the knife beneath her ribs were a welcome friend. Maybe it was the shock of it. She didn’t know. She felt the warmth of Malini at her back. The beat of Malini’s heart, fast with terror.

“Step away from her, Priya,” said Ashok. Low.

“She won’t,” Malini repeated. “She’d rather I hurt her, rather I kill her, than give you what you want. It’s in your best interests, Ashok, to let us both go. Because I assure you, I can’t lead you to your deathless waters. If Priya dies, the knowledge dies with her. And I will be glad to die too, knowing I have kept my empire safe from you and your ilk.”

Something flickered in Ashok’s eyes. She saw the way he took Malini in, weighing up her skin, light enough to reveal she wasn’t accustomed to outdoor labor; the thinness of her, the lack of muscle in her limbs; the sari she wore, more expensive than anything he or Priya had ever owned. He shifted, just a little.

And the knife moved, just a little. Just nicking skin.

“You may be quick,” Malini said more loudly. “But I can be quicker. So. What will you do?”

Ashok took a step forward. Another. Malini held steady.

“What is this, Priya?” His gaze flickered over. “Will you let this Parijati whore murder you, to spite me?”

“You shouldn’t be so rude to women holding knives,” Malini said, holding Priya tight, tight. “It isn’t wise.”

He looked at Malini once more. Something ugly twisted his mouth. “Kill her, then,” he said. “Go on.”

“I would rather leave.”

“Well, you can’t. So kill her, or lower your weapon. I’ll wait.”

“You need her,” hissed Malini.

“And you,” Ashok said, eyes narrowed, “won’t kill her. Not a soft thing like you. I know your people. You’re more likely to cut your own throat than hers. I will not let you go. What will you do now?”

Ah, Ashok, Priya thought, despairing. You don’t know her at all.

Priya felt Malini’s wrist move, the muscles holding her knife steady tensing.

The moment stretched and stretched. Was she loosening her grip or driving the dagger up? In that moment, Priya wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure. She could only stand there and feel the green magic of life in the forest around her, in the soil beneath her.

The magic shifted. Lurched.

A rain of rocks was being thrown, slung by the hands of people hidden behind the trees. The ground shuddered, seismic, as figures appeared in the shadows between those trees. The rebels who surrounded them were now surrounded in turn by maidservants and cooks and gardeners that Priya had known almost her whole life.

And there, leading them, was Bhumika.

She had real soldiers with her, too. Soldiers, including some of the regent’s most loyal men. Priya recognized Jeevan, no longer in the colors of Parijatdvipa, though he still wore his commander’s armlet of curved and polished silver. Khalida, wielding a scythe like an extension of her arm. A glut of maidservants in armor, the head chef holding a huge mace.

Ashok spun wildly.

“Did you not hear me coming, brother?” Bhumika’s voice rang out, sweet and pure. She stepped out of the crowd, face flushed from the heat but smiling.

“Don’t come any closer, Bhumika,” Ashok said. “Or I’ll be forced to deal with you, and I have no wish to.”

“Will you fight me, as I am?” Bhumika asked, placing one hand on the curve of her belly. She quirked an eyebrow in challenge.

“I’ll fight you if it comes to it,” Ashok said roughly. “But I don’t want to.”

“It’s odd how you never want to fight, and yet you always do.” Bhumika continued walking forward with a pointedly calm air. Some of the rebels edged away from her, as if they did not know quite what to do. She soon stood inches from Ashok, staring him in the face. “And when we were children… well. You remember. I always won.”

“We’re not children anymore,” he said.

“No, indeed,” agreed Bhumika. Her hand at her side, visible to Priya, who was still held frozen at the point of a knife, twitched a little. It was a small motion, but one Priya had learned early on as a maidservant, back when there’d still been hope she’d develop the fine manners and demureness to serve at feasts and functions, at the beck and call of highborn women. The gesture meant, Watch me. You may soon be needed.

“You won’t defeat me,” said Bhumika. “You have your vial-poisoned followers, the taint of the water in your veins. But I am not the only twice-born in opposition to you today.”

Priya placed her own hand over Malini’s. She felt Malini flinch like a hound used to the lash. Malini’s hand was trembling now, where it gripped the knife, hot from the sacred wood and damp with sweat.

“Let me go,” Priya whispered.

“I can’t allow him to take you,” Malini said roughly.

She could have broken Malini’s grip. She could have broken Malini’s fingers. She could have bound her with vine and thorn and stepped easily to freedom.

“Let me go,” she repeated.

She had never needed strength to break away. Only this. The gentlest shadow of a touch, the barest press of her fingertips, on Malini’s arm. Only her own voice. She leaned back into Malini, letting Malini take a little of her weight.

“Please, Malini,” she said. “Trust me.”

Malini released a shuddering breath. Released her.

Bhumika’s hand moved in an arc. And Priya moved a hand too—moved it as if through water, and drew on the power that lived inside her, just as Bhumika did the same.

The air was a shower of glittering, deadly thorn shards.

She had never seen anything like it before. She had never done anything like it before. She felt the roots beneath the soil—every deep root and every shallow curl of green—and drew them out. The ground crumbled unevenly, sinking and lashing tight around the feet of the rebels, throwing them to the ground and swallowing their weapons whole.

Priya grappled clumsily with her new strength, pouring it into the task. She wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without Bhumika. It was Bhumika’s skill that broke those thorn shards into razor-edged fragments; Bhumika who coiled the earth around limbs.

Priya understood for the first time the sheer power Bhumika had concealed all these long years. She saw the rebels try to draw on their cursed abilities and falter, under the strength of the thing she and Bhumika wielded. Their gifts seemed to feed on one another, a rush of water all the stronger for its weight, all the stronger for their shared power.

Ashok stumbled back. He reached for his own gifts, but it was like moving against the tide. She felt him in the sangam. The flicker of him.

“We are stronger than you, brother,” Bhumika said, and her sweet voice was a vicious kiss.

The ground roiled beneath him, knocking his feet from under him. He fell to the ground.

Imagine what the thrice-born could have done, Priya thought wildly, if they’d known what their powers could do together. It’s like a song, a howling song—

Ashok drew his mask down over his face to protect himself. The other rebels did the same. She saw his shoulders rise and fall. His chest heave.

He slammed his hands down, the grass rippling under him in a wave. Where Priya had used the momentum of her fall to fling herself back to her feet, he used it to launch forward, all brute strength. When Bhumika flung a heavy vine at him—thicker than his torso—he caught it, winding it around his arm. Drawing it like a lash, he whipped it back at Bhumika.

Bhumika broke it into halves in the air. The two pieces crashed to the ground.

Slowly, Bhumika walked between the cleaved halves toward him.

“Will you hurt me, then?” Bhumika asked, voice mild. “Your own temple sister?”

Priya saw his hand curl into a fist. Saw him raise it. Priya moved forward, her own hands upraised.

He doubled over, clutching his chest.

His mouth parted, and a rush of blood and water poured from it. Two of his rebels who had fought free from the earth’s prison ran to him, gripping him by the shoulders as he forced his head up, touching his fist to his mouth.

“Perhaps not,” he said, voice thick.

Bhumika took advantage of his lapse in control. Her eyes narrowed, and she broke the earth beneath him again. He fell forward, and the two rebels grabbed him.

“Retreat!” one yelled, and as the soil churned up around them, the trees collapsing, they stumbled back and began to run, Ashok held unsteadily between them.

“Let them go,” said Bhumika, and the people behind her, who had begun striding forward, came to an abrupt stop. She touched her own knuckles to her mouth as Ashok had done, a calculating and almost sorrowful look in her eyes.

“We have what we need,” she said. “Priya. Are you well?”