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“An act of love does not require asking,”
She wanted her brother as he had never been. A brother who had seen how she had been hurt and had shielded her when she had been unable to shield herself. She wanted a love from him he’d never been able to give and never could, because it was a love she had needed long ago. She did not want him to die. There was no possibility, in death. Only an end.
“You are bound to us. We carved a place out inside of you and made it our home. You are no more a creature of this world than we are.”
What price must my flesh pay, when I’m already hollow for you?”
“I barely understand it, the way I would willingly kneel for you, anywhere, for anything. The way I would fight for you. The way I want to be at your side. Is that what love is, Malini? Is that how awful love is? Because if it is, then I love you, the way that roots love the deep and leaves love the light. It’s—the way I am. And no matter how much I try to be good, to do right—I’m all flowers in your arms, for your war, for you—”
Malini wanted to say—Your gifts are you and you are your gifts, I don’t love you in pieces, I don’t separate you into parts. But Priya would have heard the lie in that. Malini broke everyone into parts—sifted through everyone she met for strengths and weaknesses, desires and loyalties.
She did not want to love Priya the way Priya loved her—that devotion, that terrifying gravity that took a person to their knees. But some things were not in her control.
“You may think you break yourself on loving me,” Malini whispered. “That it makes you bow and makes you—you serve.” A hitch, a stumble. She pressed on, still curved, her head against Priya’s throat. “But you cannot be broken by my demands. You cannot even be broken by your own. I could try and break you a thousand times, with all my weapons, with knowledge of your every weakness, and still I—
“Soldier, if a maid may be so bold as to give you some advice…” “Go on,” he said, putting his own arm forward. “It’s never wise,” Sima said, taking his hand, “to bet on arm wrestling against an ex-laundress.”
You want so much, and all I want is for you to have whatever you desire.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Malini said, low. “I know how to break you now. Let me show you.”
“Priya,” Malini said. Laughter in her voice. “You’re here, aren’t you? I’ve already won.”
I will remember that we are not what is done to us. We are, and always have been, more than that.”
He couldn’t stand not to feel her, her soul in the waters with him.
that there had been nothing pure about the fury that had led him to see her heart sisters burned; that framing a violent hatred in the flesh of faith did not make it any less brutal or monstrous. That her hurt had been far greater, and of far more worth than whatever paltry excuse for a heart lived inside him.
“That’s the problem. Faith doesn’t allow for negotiation. Only—obedience.
How can you look at me so tenderly, and ask me to die for you?
What could the yaksa—who lay beyond this world, who were gone—want from Priya now, in return for the strength to win Malini’s war? And was Priya willing to give it?
“I can’t believe we’re having this kind of conversation like this,” Priya said eventually. “Like what?” “With you clinging to me.” “I’m not clinging,” Malini said. “Really?” “‘Clinging’ doesn’t sound very dignified.”
“If I can’t hold on to you, then I can hold on to no one,”
How lonely it was, to have power. How lonely.
“I’ve dreamt of garlanding you,” Malini confessed. A small, secret thing. “Flowers around your throat, and you garlanding me in turn. The two of us making our own promises to each other. I’ve dreamt of naming you my own. My heart. My wife.”
“Oh, Chandra,” another said pityingly. “We are not the mothers. The mothers don’t wait to greet you with glory. You are no one’s chosen. A tale you tell yourself is not a true thing simply because you say so. Do the tides obey you? The waning of the moon? No. Then why should pitiless fate garb you in glory, simply because you believe you should be glorious?”
Faith was submission. Faith was obedience to a higher power, a baring of the neck to a knife, a step into absolute darkness with no light but the heart’s own foolishness.
“You cannot alchemize me into your glory. I will not allow it. My glory is my own.”
Malini. It was with Malini.
Does a sacrifice have the same power if you don’t know what you are sacrificing? If you cut out your heart so flowers could grow, so magic could wind its roots in your yielding lungs, without understanding that you would end up here, kneeling before a thorn-mouthed god, being told you must kill what you love?
How do you stand against a god that lives inside you?
“This has always been inevitable,” the yaksa told her. Priya’s hands moved, as if of their own volition, to take the blade. The hilt bloomed under her hands, seeking her skin: great flowers, red as blood, gold as a rising sun. “I would always need you completely. I would always want you completely. And you’ll be mine. With me, you will find wholeness.” “But not my beloved,” Priya whispered. Malini. Beloved and betrayed, although she did not know it. “Do not worry,” the yaksa said, smiling, smiling. “I’ll be beloved enough for you from now on.”
“The Parijatdvipans think they know what it means to sacrifice,” she went on. “Grand gestures of self-destruction, they think. They glorify it. But it’s not so. The slow way, fighting even when you know it may have no worth… that is sacrifice.”
“Whatever you cannot mourn, I will mourn for you,” Jeevan said quietly. “And when your work is done, I will bring you back. I vow, as long as I’m living, it will be done.”
Oleander, a piercing yellow, a warning and welcome, a poison.
“A magic born from an imperfect sacrifice,” murmured Aditya, “will never be anything but a mimicry of what the mothers accomplished for us.”
“What kind of god would demand this from you?” Rao wanted to yell but he couldn’t; could only dig his fists into Aditya’s clothes, drag him closer. “What kind of god would demand this from anyone?”
Had Hemanth ever truly loved him? When the High Priest had told him he was destined for greatness—when he had given Chandra hope and purpose—had he known that one day he would betray him?
I dont like him but banger
whatever is in Ahiranya—it’s dangerous, Sima, and it doesn’t love us. It doesn’t love anyone.”
Love and love. Like two opposite points she was forever reaching for, stretching her thin. Love for Malini and love for home. Love like a future, and love like sacrifice.
“Don’t you know how I love you?” Malini asked. Those were not soft words. She threw them out like a lash. “Don’t you know that I hold everyone at bay, that I cannot stand to love anyone and yet I love you utterly? Don’t you understand?”
Priya was not human at all. It was awful to still love her.
There was a vicious satisfaction in knowing that nothing ended, that all griefs in the world came back over and over again, spinning like a terrible wheel.
“What use is begging for pity from the pitiless?”
There was always a choice.
Thoughts
If you are told your whole life that your greatest worth is as a sacrifice, inevitably there must come a day when you believe it. Perhaps this was finally Malini’s day. She had fought so long and so hard for power and even now—even beyond the point of success—it had been taken from her.
Perhaps all his loved ones would be nothing but effigies for Rao to gaze upon, and remember what he had lost.
Hate me, Malini. Hate me and live. I can love enough for the both of us.
