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It was a voice made for mantras, for song, for guidance. For pouring faith, like wine, into the cup of a waiting heart.
Nothing i just like the writing here
Respect did little good if she could not grasp control of his loyalty and bind it to her permanently.
“They say, when a statue is first wrought, it shines so brightly, any man may look upon it and see a mother divine. But all things tarnish, when the rain falls upon them.”
“Oh, maybe not, but it’d be very funny if you did,” Sima replied. “Aren’t you meant to be exuding holiness and authority? It’ll be very hard to do that if you’re felled by a branch.”
Sometimes Priya would return to her room and find sachets of herbs to perfume her clothes, or a meal wrapped in cloth, and she knew it was Bhumika trying to take care of her, even as their responsibilities kept them so often apart, like two ghosts haunting the same space, never quite crossing paths.
And yet you dream them regardless, Malini thought. You have so much and you want more still.
“But I wonder: Why dream of power for him, and not for yourself?” “Empress,” Lady Raziya said. “I love my husband. What greater love is there than wanting to lay the world in your beloved’s hands?”
I made you a promise once. Say my name, and though it makes me a fool—and I know it does—I’ll find my way. I’ll come.
For a time, he had believed it—had hated himself for being unworthy of his blood and his status and power.
Idk why he stopped
Don’t you realize I want to know everything about you? That even now, when I should have forgotten you, all I desire is to know your heart better than my own?
Experience had taught her that the most successful battles were the ones won by words. Phrases, carefully chosen, could be like a knife: threatening, promising, wounding.
I miss you, she wrote to Priya, and to herself. But not as you miss me, I think. I miss you because I let myself care for you. For a brief time, I let you into my heart. And I find now that I am empress, now that the world lies at my feet, my heart is a closed door. I am meant to be someone beyond mortal feeling—someone shaped by fire and prophecy into more than flesh and bone and want. What I was with you, I can never be again.
Her own general had gazed upon that fire and felt his faith in her crumble.
Malini thought of the power of a tale—the way it could splinter into shards and cut the throat of its own maker. The tale of a crown prince turned priest, a firstborn son, still held more sway than the myth she’d wound around herself from prophecy and fire and her own sheer ambition.
She needed a weapon no one else had. She needed—she wanted—someone she could trust. Someone who had loved her even after a knife to the throat; who had held Malini’s face in her own two hands, warm and alive, and said, I know you. I know this face, and it is mine.
Didn’t she understand that his fate was still tied to her own? That the nameless god had made him like this, and he could not change his nature, his purpose?
As if, in worship, there could be a future.
Her faith, like her temple siblings, was at best a ghost—a shadowy thing that fluttered in her head and heart, half-remembered. She held the wisps of it tightly, forcing herself to feel it.
Perhaps all lives became brimful of pain, eventually. Well, then. Let her daughter’s start painlessly, in joy. Let her have at least that.
The highborn of our country were better served under Emperor Chandra.” His gaze bored into her. “Many of us would rejoin the empire if we could.”
Such is always the case. People with wealth and power would always benefit more by siding with their oppressors, even if it meant betraying their own.
And you did not think on how we would survive then, she thought with a savageness she did not allow to touch her face, her voice. You merely played at rebellion. You liked the sweetness of the idea, and never considered the bitterness that reality would bring.
There had been no real glory, of course. But the empire had assured the highborn of wealth and security, and now that that promise was gone, they were faced with a shadow of the same realities all Ahiranyi faced—of hunger and of instability, of an unkind world.
As a child, Bhumika had prayed because it was a task woven into her life as a temple daughter, as essential as breathing or eating or sleeping. Now, she prayed because it was what was expected from her as the High Elder. But she could not deny that there was comfort in the act
It makes me happy to see you, she almost said. But that wasn’t quite right. Seeing Malini made it feel like there was something fragile in her chest. Something that could wither or flourish at a single word, a single touch.
Are you rightly mine? Can I keep you too?
“Is that a joke?” Priya sounded delighted. “Is the Empress of Parijatdvipa joking with me?” “I would like to think I’m flirting with you,”
“I don’t really think you want a brief kiss from me,” Priya said lowly. “And that’s not what I want from you either.” “Perhaps we should both stare at opposite walls,” Malini muttered, and Priya laughed again.
She had to believe in her power, to hold all those lies steady. She could not think of the day her heart sisters had burned. She could not think Your righteousness is liable to kill me, if I let it.
“No temple child truly dies,” said the yaksa with Sendhil’s face; with his earthen hands and budding things rising through his throat. “We carry you with us. We hold you inside us, as you hold us within you in turn.
Moon over Malini? She could do that as easily as breathing.
“I am going to kill you for this,” Sima muttered a little while later, as they stood in a Dwarali practice yard, curious horsemen watching as Raziya strung her bow. A few maids had gathered to the side, and a group of Dwarali women were milling about. They carried bows of their own, and one of them had set herself the task of setting up the target. “Or shave off your eyebrows. Something unpleasant, you wait and see.” “Think of it this way. You never would have done this as a maidservant.” “Both eyebrows. And your hair,”
There was no way this was going to end well. Priya was absolutely going to lose her eyebrows.
“When you are a people who serve another people, your options are narrowed. You are never quite given the tools to rise. And when you do rise, why—it is hard to build a palace from subpar stone, with the help of half-trained masons.”
Give me a purpose, Aditya. Give me a path. Tell me what the nameless wants from me now. Tell me what you want from me.
She didn’t have Bhumika’s clever care with people, or Malini’s silver tongue. She just had her callused hands. Her magic. Her gift with the rot. And that was enough, usually. That was enough to be proud of.
“But choices so large must be made and remade over and over again. That’s how paths are carved, Lady Deepa. That is how you decide your future.”
He had thought that eventually it would stop feeling as if he were trapped in a strange dream, his skin hollowed out and uneasy over his bones, his consciousness tripping numbly through it all: the arrival at the mahal. Reuniting with Bhumika. Seeing her face—the look upon it—as if through water. Everything distorted. There were things he was meant to feel. And yet somehow, he could not. He’d felt things very strongly, once.
He’d been under the water for so long. It wouldn’t come easily.
“A fair exchange,” she murmured. “The humans who worship us hollowed themselves—sacrificed their humanity—for power. And now we wear their flesh and their bones and their hearts like garb.
“The whole world is ours to hollow, Ashok. And ours to grow into—to wear and remold. Rot isn’t a good name for it. Call it new life. Call it blooming, if you like.”
“You acted to exert your own power,” she said deliberately. “To prove yourself wiser than me, and greater. You have been whittling at my power, Lord Mahesh. Did you think I failed to mark your slights against me?”
Power was a pleasure with many forms. To see a powerful man—a man who had betrayed her—brought low was one of its headiest.
He had followed her for the prophecy she had garbed herself in, then immediately sought to abandon her when the gold shell of it had cracked.
You are like ink, Malini thought helplessly. Ink, and all I want is to make poetry of you.
“And when you have a child,” Chandni said, a gentle smile curving her mouth. “Bring them to us. Let us see if they are worthy of rising to our temple. That is the only offering I demand of you.”
Thoughts
The rot comes from the waters, the old voice in his heart said. The waters fill mortals with magic. The waters fill them with us. Our gifts. Our knowledge. When waters ebb, they leave their mark behind. The memory of water. The hollow. When waters leave, they demand their price.
“What if I stay here with you?” Priya asked. She gave Malini a watery smile, a teasing edge to her smoke-strained voice. “Just like I did when we were Ahiranya, and I was your very own maidservant? I could sleep on the floor. You wouldn’t even notice me.”
Girl get up
You were not so spellbound by love for my brother then, Malini thought. And not so led astray.
Strange, she thought, how compliments from his lips so often sounded like despair. As if he looked at her every success—every battle won, every highborn enemy circumvented, and felt fear. Sometimes—often—she wanted to pry that fear apart and see its working.
She wanted to ask him: You, who named me and gave me the opportunity to seize my crown. What do you fear? Is it me and my choices? Is it what will become of me? Or what will become of men like you?
