Chapter 68 Malini

MALINI

Nowhere.

Priya’s hazy, sleep-soft voice echoed through Malini’s skull. In Malini’s arms, Priya was a comforting weight. Her dark hair shone in the light of a single oil lamp by their bedside. Her gold-brown lashes were closed, a line like firelight against the dark skin of her face. Malini could have stared at that face for hours—that crooked nose, and that mouth that smiled so easily, and that stubborn chin. She stroked a hand through Priya’s hair, feeling the weight of it, that pin-straight softness.

Malini had never understood Priya as she should have. She’d seen Priya’s soft heart and her strength and never considered how Priya’s strength and softness could lead her to lie to those she loved—for their safety, for their comfort. To defer grief.

But she understood Priya now.

Nowhere.

Priya was not planning to return from Ahiranya. She was planning to die.

Malini did not want to leave their bed. But her heart was a leaden weight in her chest. She pressed a kiss to Priya’s forehead—simply for the pleasure of kissing her, of knowing Priya was hers to kiss—and then she slipped out of the bed. She dressed and left her tent.

Sahar was outside, head bowed, arms crossed. She raised her head, and Malini said, “Come.”

Lady Bhumika had her own demesne, carefully protected by a handful of Malini’s own guards. She recognized Sanvi, yawning into her hand—then suddenly straightening when she caught sight of Malini approaching.

“Wait here,” Malini said to Sahar. “All of you: We are not to be disturbed.” She entered the tent.

It did not surprise her that Bhumika was awake. She sat on her own pallet, with an oil lamp burning, as if she’d been waiting for company. She met Malini’s eyes gravely.

“Empress,” she said.

“I need to speak with you.”

Bhumika inclined her head.

Malini had no room in her for artifice. Not when it came to this—to Priya .

“Tell me,” Malini said. “When you spoke alone to your sister in my mahal, what did you speak of?”

“How to kill the yaksa.” A mirthless smile curved her mouth. “It is all I speak of, Empress.”

Malini walked to her and found she could not loom over Bhumika. She could not stand and tremble with rage and fear, and she could not sit as calmly as Bhumika did. So she walked, carefully measured steps, back and forth in the narrow tent. She did not care if it revealed her agitation.

“And Priya,” she said. “Who shares her nature with a yaksa. Who must lead my priests into Ahiranya—why does she believe she will die?”

“It sounds as if you have all the pieces of your answer,” Bhumika said quietly. “But it is simple. Mani Ara must be destroyed, and Priya is Mani Ara.”

“She is not,” Malini said sharply.

“She is not,” Bhumika agreed. “And she is.”

Malini forced herself not to falter or show weakness.

“So must Priya die,” she said, “for the deathless waters to be destroyed? Is her life the price?”

“You can ask and ask again, Empress,” Bhumika said. “It will not change the truth.” A pause. “I am sorry.”

That, more than anything, confirmed to her that Lady Bhumika had truly become a ghost of herself. The woman she had known would have grieved Priya. It made Malini suddenly furious. Strange, how the fury made her want more than anything to weep as if her heart were broken.

Unbidden, her mind conjured up images of her heart sisters. Alori, Narina. Gone. Aditya. Gone. She had loved them and lost them, and nothing could return them to her. And Priya—she had loved Priya. But now what she felt for Priya was something beyond love. It was the tether of magic between them. It was hatred, and it was the most joyous and sacred thing she’d ever felt. You are life , she’d told Priya, and it was true. Priya was her life.

She would not let Priya enter Ahiranya. She would keep her in the camp. She would bind her. She would not care what Priya said, she would—she would—

No. Those thoughts were foolish. She could not yield to them, no matter how much her heart wanted to.

There was no one else who could allow the priests safe passage, and no one else who could carve the way to the deathless waters. Priya had to go to Ahiranya, and Malini could not stop her.

“As long as Priya lives, the yaksa will never be truly gone from the world,” Bhumika said, into Malini’s silence. “But if you will let me go with her. If I can do anything to spare her pain…”

“No.” She spoke before thinking. “ I will go with her.”

And I will bring her back alive.

The sacrifices made in this war would have to be enough. Malini was monstrous enough to seize a throne and murder a brother. She was monstrous enough to continue the glorious, bloody cruelty of empire. She had made herself so.

She would choose now to be monstrous enough to let an enemy live, for the sake of keeping what was hers. She would choose love over goodness.

Let future generations face the yaksa once more. Let the rot continue. Only, let me have her.

Rao and Lata were the first to hear her decision, and the first to beg her to change her mind.

They both met with Malini alone, without the interference of courtiers or administrators. In the predawn dark, in the privacy of Lata’s own tent, Malini told them what she would do. Lata looked as if she wanted to weep, and Rao refused to look at her at all. He bowed his head as Lata kneeled down beside Malini. Lata’s eyes were shadow-rimmed.

“You can’t go into Ahiranya,” she said, her voice hoarse. “My lady. Please. You know what will happen. If the yaksa or the Ahiranyi don’t land a lucky blow—if the rot does not touch you—your own priests will turn on you eventually. There are still many who want you to burn, you know this!”

“Sahar will be with me, and she is trustworthy,” Malini said. “Rao has vouched for the priests of the nameless. I won’t be harmed.”

“I vouched for their faith,” Rao said roughly. “But I don’t trust them with your life.”

“Empress—Malini. You’re far too clever to truly believe that. If you leave now, Empress, you will destroy your own legacy,” Lata said slowly. Her voice was bleak. “The priests will make your brother’s son into a puppet emperor. They will erase any memory of you—or make a mother of flame of you. You will not be remembered as Empress Malini, ruler of all Parijatdvipa. You will be forgotten.”

That cut deeper than the rest. She had done what no daughter of Divyanshi had ever done. To imagine her legacy erased and discarded was infuriating.

But ah—what did she truly care about the tales that would be spun after her death? It was the tales told now that mattered. It was the life she lived inside them. And if her life, this life she had fought tooth and nail for, had to be empty of Priya, had to leave her with nothing but her grief, a knife scar—no. She could not bear it.

“Come now,” said Malini lightly. “I will be a gold statue, at least. Perhaps the priests will place me next to Divyanshi, wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Don’t make a joke of this,” Rao snapped. “You can’t choose to die. Not now.”

“I’m not choosing death. I promise you, I’ll return.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Rao.

“We both will,” Lata said.

“No. You will remain beyond Ahiranya’s borders. That is my command.” Her tone brooked no argument.

Lata shook her head, affection and sorrow in the shape of her mouth.

Rao turned his face away.

“Don’t be like him, Malini.” His voice cracked. “Don’t.”

Her own heart ached.

“I’m not Aditya,” she said. “And I will return.”

“At least let me die with you,” he said. “Don’t leave me behind.”

She shuddered out a breath. She would not weep over him, this fool who had loved her brother. This fool whom she loved.

“Aditya was looking for a reason to die, Rao,” Malini said. “Perhaps he convinced himself that the nameless god and the mothers wanted his death from him. Perhaps they did. But he wanted to end in self-abnegation and sacrifice, and I know you do too. Your grief isn’t a voice you can trust. Do you understand, Rao?”

He found his voice.

“I think you are the one acting from grief, Malini,” he said. “You fear for Priya. You fear—”

She slammed her hand down on the table.

“No more,” she said. “I am empress, Rao. Lata. And I will do what I know is right.”