Chapter 73 Priya

PRIYA

Shyam, dead. She’d felt it when Malini’s saber had gone through him. She’d felt it when some of her mask-keepers had died, broken on heart’s shell.

Shyam had told her the yaksa had let him drink; let them all drink. She felt dizzy with grief and with rage, and guilt for her own failures.

This had to end. The sooner the better. She needed the yaksa to be gone.

She and Malini walked together, side by side through the path Priya had carved. Malini’s surviving guards and soldiers and priests followed behind them in a narrow line. The path—and Ahiranya itself—were not built to welcome the broad swathe of an army. At least within the path they could move more swiftly than they would have beyond its tree-lined borders.

Priya looked through those trees. The world beyond was blurred, soft and strange. She could see no one. Not the Ahiranyi warriors she’d left behind, and no new enemies. That was some good luck.

The only enemy they needed to face lay ahead of them on the path.

She was conscious of all the people behind her. Some wounded, some limping forward, using one another for support. Cira Ara was ahead of them, waiting on the path, crouched patiently in the green and soil.

“I’ll go first,” said Priya. “I have to.” She turned to look at Malini. “I’m not leaving you behind,” Priya vowed. “But a yaksa is… different. I should face her.”

“I’m not arguing,” Malini said. Her gray eyes looked deep into Priya. It was as if she saw and felt what Priya did: the vibrant, green life of a yaksa ahead of them. That call in the sangam.

“Go,” Malini urged, and Priya straightened her shoulders and walked ahead of her.

Cira Ara was crouched in a ring of leaves. Cira Ara wore her long-dead temple sister Riti’s face, carved into a new shape by soil and stone. She straightened when she saw Priya, and held one hand out to her.

“Little one,” Cira Ara rasped, her voice a rough-hewn stone. “Mani Ara is waiting for you.”

“Why have you come for me, Cira?” Priya asked. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve come back for Mani Ara. You didn’t need to seek me out.”

A creak of her neck, a low noise from her throat, a grating laugh.

“Lie,” said Cira Ara. “Arahli told me you lie. Look at your army of mortals. Shall I make the soil swallow them?”

“No,” Priya said sharply. She stretched her magic, touching all of the people behind her that she could. Holding them, in case Cira turned on them. Oh, if only she could have escorted those priests here without a wall of guards. The soldiers were more a hindrance than a help. “I need them. Leave them be.”

The yaksa began to walk toward her. Still unsteady on her legs, coltish and new—or as if she lacked an understanding of the joints she needed for seamless movement. There was too much stone in her, and too much deep ore.

“The others should come and collect you,” Cira Ara said. “But they could not.”

“Why?” Priya asked. She could feel Malini not far behind her, more strongly than all the rest. “Were they too busy?”

Bared teeth—pearling gray and sharp. “They grow more mortal,” said the yaksa. “They fear it. Terror runs in them. But I am still freshly born to this world—still green and strong. You drew me from the ground and I can feel my power running through me, no blood at all.” Her eyes flashed, malevolent. “Come with me, Priya.”

“No.”

Cira Ara lurched toward her. Roots erupted from the ground and caught her arm before it could touch Priya. Behind her, Priya could hear a sword being unsheathed once more.

“Don’t make me fight you,” Priya said, voice hard. “I will if you stand in my way.”

“As you fought the mortals we sent to find you?” Another movement of her head. Her eyes, the most human part of her, fixed on Priya. They were Riti’s eyes—brown, wide, soft-lashed. “Poor poisoned soldiers. They tried. But I am not like them. You cannot kill me, little Elder.”

Priya gave an ugly laugh. “Are you sure?” Another step closer. “Do you understand how you’ve changed? Mani Ara dragged you into this world long ago. Made you one with the trees, the soil, the flowers. The earth was yours. But you died , Cira Ara. And now you grow more and more like humans were—are—before they’re touched by rot. You’ll soon be meat, gristle, bone.” Priya took a step closer. “Your kin are right to fear it. Meat can die so easily, after all.”

A hunted look flickered over the yaksa’s face.

She opened her mouth to speak—and looked, suddenly, beyond Priya’s shoulder.

That was when Priya heard the screaming begin. A panicked tumult of noise from within the seeker’s path, all howling and begging—and behind it, the crackle of fire.

No.

The people behind them surged forward, panicked. Priya was forced to grab them with her power to stop them from crushing one another.

“Priya.” Malini was striding toward her, blade drawn, the guardswomen ringed around her. Her gaze darted from the yaksa to Priya, her face taut with tension. “We need to run.”

“Did the priests…?” Priya shook her head, shock holding her fast. “Did they choose to die? Did they make this?”

“It doesn’t matter where the fire comes from,” Malini said tightly. “What matters is that it is coming here .”

Malini grasped Priya’s arm fiercely. “Take us to the Hirana, Priya. Take the priests and me now, before—”

Too late. Malini’s words were swallowed by a roar of fire. The fire was quick, too quick. There was no time . Flame raced through the trees lining the path, setting them alight. With horror, Priya felt the people she was holding with her magic turn to kindling in the blaze. She released them, but it was too late for some. The smell of burning bodies filled her nose.

The rest surged forward, moving toward Priya and Malini and the guardswomen in a wave. Sahar grabbed Malini, shielding her, even as Malini’s grip on Priya tightened and she tried to draw Priya close to her.

They should have been crushed by the press of bodies, but Priya was using all her focus to carve a defense around them—a wall of stone and soil and raised roots to force the wave of soldiers and priests to part around them. The trees were golden, as good as bars on a cage, pinning them onto the path. Her head pounded. The fire hurt. It felt her yaksa magic, the green in her blood, and it hungered .

“I don’t need to be protected,” Priya protested, struggling to breathe. “Let me go, I need to carve a way out—another path, a way free of this—”

Malini’s hand spasmed. She released Priya with obvious reluctance, teeth bared, terror in her eyes. “Do it,” she commanded.

She tried. Oh, she tried. But her magic was like tangled thread between her fingers, impossible to unknot. Run , she thought wildly. We should just run. But they could not run between the trees, slipping from the seeker’s path to the embrace of the forest. The trees of the path were burning, burning, and they would not part at her command.

There was nowhere to go. The fire was everywhere.

Cira Ara stepped back from the flames, wind and motes of ash brushing her hair into a dark flag that streamed behind her. The flames were moving intently—rippling through the air in a scythe aimed squarely at her. Holy fire seeking out a yaksa. Marking her for death.

Cira Ara flinched. Her human eyes were wide in her face as she met Priya’s gaze.

“They were right to fear,” Cira Ara said tremulously. The fire consumed her.

Priya felt her die. The pounding of her skull intensified, and something in her chest began to pulse. A foreign heartbeat. Malini’s magic tangling with her own, panicked and powerful. She drew upon it. Too late for Cira, the trees tore open into a crooked arch before them, cutting through the path. Providing an exit.

“With me,” she yelled, and grasped Malini’s arm and dragged her through.

Bodies followed her. Malini, and the guardswomen, and a handful of priests. The gate was not enough. The fire was following them. So Priya ran, and ran, carving paths and exits with speed and finesse only fear could give her. She tore through the green, struggling to outpace the fire, as heat and pain nipped at her heels. She drew on every part of her strength, every green and water-drenched part of her—until finally she could go no farther.

One last archway. They tumbled together to the ground. The fire was coming for them, but Priya had strength enough left to shut the path brutally behind them.

One last gout of flame spiraled through the door as it vanished. Exhausted, she watched the fire turn, rippling toward them.

Toward Malini .

Priya did not think. She was breathless from the feel of the yaksa’s death—from a god’s agony stretching hands inside her rib cage. The sangam was wild and churning, a blackness between her eyes. But even if she had not been shocked to numbness, if magic hadn’t been rising in her like a mist, she would have done what she did then. It was in her nature, written into her like ink on paper, or stars upon the sky.

She leapt in front of Malini.

The fire hit her square between the shoulders. Heat, so much heat. And then it stretched, arcing like vast wings, and she felt her pain stretch with it. She was burned skin, flayed open—she was in agony so black and vast and formless that it was like tumbling through the sangam, through its rivers and stars, and drowning, drowning. She felt her hair singe and her legs give way.

She saw Malini’s mouth move, through the halo of flame surrounding her own body. Priya. Priya. Priya—

Please, no, no—

Something knocked against her. There was a thump and a sizzle of flesh.

Priya stared, uncomprehending through her agony. Sahar was in front of her, panting. Sahar’s arm was burnt from the fingers to shoulder. She was still holding her heart’s-shell blade in front of her in that burned hand, wielding it like a shield. Her grip trembled. Priya’s ears were ringing, and there was blood in her mouth, and as if from a great distance she looked at her own body. Burnt, blistering. Wounded beyond her comprehension.

I will not survive this , she thought. And that, too, seemed distant. Strange. Was this how death felt, all lightness and horror?

Someone reached for her. She screamed, or thought she did, as she was raised from the ground. Her face against a shoulder; hands on her, holding her still.

Malini’s palms, cool against her unburnt face.

“I was always destined for the fire,” Malini was saying, her voice wild and trembling and broken. “N-not you.”

“That’s a lie,” Priya whispered. “A lie you were told. You don’t—believe. There’s no magic in that. The fire never wanted you,” she managed to say. And then her vision wavered and went, in one breath, dark.