Chapter 39 Malini
MALINI
“I’ve told Swati to keep her distance,” Lata murmured, voice low.
She placed a steaming pot down and two bowls.
Lifted the lid, releasing some of the steam.
It was kichadi, cooked slow to a yellow, creamy thickness, likely taken from the communal pot shared by the entire camp.
“She’s boiling bandages for the physicians.
I’ll make sure the other women don’t come either. ”
“Good,” Malini said. She should have looked up at Lata—read things unsaid in her face. But she could not.
Priya was so quiet. She’d wiped some of the river murk from Priya’s skin with a cloth, but her hair was still snarled and wet, leaving blotches of water on the pillow.
Her eyes were closed; her gold lashes darkened to the same brown as her skin.
There were gashes on her arms, and on her collarbone. They were bleeding petals.
“Your generals are looking for you,” Lata said quietly.
She’d spoken to Prakash already. But oh, what a strange conversation that had been.
Once he had realized the battle was truly over, he had followed her and bowed to her.
Apologized, for all the times he had allowed her strength and her rule to be tested without interfering.
“I did not treat you as what you are,” he said.
“Chosen of the mothers. Prophesized by the nameless. Empress. I will never falter again.”
Usually, that confession would have brought her no end of joy.
But not now.
“Rao should distract them,” Malini said.
“Shall I tell him so?”
“Please, Lata.”
Malini couldn’t stay away long. She knew that. They had to keep moving. They had to take advantage of this win and make their way toward Harsinghar before news of the defeat reached Chandra and he could send more men to face her own. Her path lay before her. She could not falter now.
But Priya hadn’t woken.
“Lata,” Malini said. “Tell him I’ll join them within the hour. Please make sure no one comes to seek me out.”
Lata inclined her head. She hesitated as if she wished to speak. But then she turned and walked away, the curtain of the tent swishing behind her.
Malini had thought she would struggle to stay still; struggle to keep her body unmoving. The battle felt like it was still racing through her, every roar, every shout, the hiss of every saber withdrawn. The slick, raw noise of cleaved meat.
But Priya’s stillness had stilled her in turn. Malini had faced her brother’s army. She had watched a river turn and a bridge grow out of nothing. Priya had saved her, as Priya always saved her.
She thought of the time they had been alone together in Ahiranya’s forest. The way Priya had bled and almost died.
The way they had lain next to each other by a pool of clear water, mouths bruised from kissing, and spoken of knowing each other.
Of the monster Malini would have to become, for the sake of power.
Malini carefully plucked the flowers away from Priya’s arms. Then she lowered her face to the crook of Priya’s elbow and closed her eyes. She could smell the river—algae and soil and salt.
She felt a hand in her hair. Trembling.
Malini raised her head sharply up. Priya’s eyes were open and watching her. The whites were run through with darts of green, like veins of discoloration through gemstones.
“Malini,” Priya whispered. “Are you here?”
“I am,” Malini confirmed. She resisted the urge to press her fingertips to Priya’s cheek, or the palm of her hand to Priya’s forehead—to feel for fever, or simply touch. “Have you been hallucinating?”
“I’ve been traveling,” Priya said, which sounded like a yes. “I’m not myself. I think—I think you can probably tell.” A laugh left her then, a laugh that was half a sob. She smiled, and the smile fell immediately from her mouth, as if her flesh refused to carry it. “What happened?”
“You drowned a swathe of my brother’s men,” Malini said.
Hushed. She wanted to run her fingers through Priya’s hair—smooth it down, pluck the green from it until it was pure and dark again.
“Saved my soldiers. Allowed us to win the battle.” This time she couldn’t help but touch, resting her hand against Priya’s own.
The skin was water-chilled. “You’ve saved me once again. ”
“That’s what you summoned me for, isn’t it? My magic. Me saving you,” Priya said. “I did it. My duty.”
Malini stared at her silently. She hadn’t been prepared to feel guilt. She had no use for it. But there it was, coiling up in her chest, filling her lungs so there was no room in them for air.
“It’s okay,” Priya said with a laugh that was all wild, sharp edges. “I wanted to do it.”
Priya sat up suddenly, drawing her hand free from Malini’s. She moved to stand, legs shaky under her. Buds bloomed under the soles of her feet as she took one stumbling step, then another. Malini rose swiftly in alarm.
“What are you doing?”
“Losing myself,” Priya gasped out, which meant nothing to Malini at all. “Every time I go further—I become more her—not myself. She said.”
“Who said?”
Priya shook her head.
“Priya.”
“I need to. I.” A shaky exhale. Priya took another step. “My skin. I look as if I have rot. Shit.”
“You can stop this,” Malini said. “Make it go away.”
“Can I?”
“Of course you can,” Malini replied, trying to pour all her conviction into her voice.
“Don’t look at me in that way,” Malini went on, when Priya gave her a look that was unmistakable even through the flush of green in Priya’s eyes, the dull light of the tent.
“I may not understand the depth of your magic, Priya, but I’ve seen you control it before. ”
“What if I can’t? What I’m stuck like this? What if I’m not human enough anymore?”
“We can argue about this with you lying down,” Malini said. “You’re going to fall.”
“I threw a river,” Priya laughed. “Threw it—and you think I’m going to fall over?”
“Yes.”
Priya froze, limbs trembling.
She bit off a curse as she fell.
Malini managed to catch her, leaning her back against one of the tent poles. And Priya lolled back in her arms, smiling, weeping flowers from her skin.
“I told myself I wasn’t doing it just for you,” she said deliriously, flowers writhing from her fingertips, her scalp. “I told myself I was doing all of this for Ahiranya—my family’s sake, my country’s sake, my sake—but I was lying to myself, lying, lying—”
“Priya.” The name came shakily to Malini’s lips.
“It was for you. Maybe all of it or maybe part of it but you, you—I can’t—” A flutter of broken words, little shards of words, blooming as the roses twined from Priya’s skin onto Malini’s steadying hands.
“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—”
“Priya. Priya.” Malini pressed her face against Priya’s. Felt the changing skin—the rhythm of her breath, the promise that Priya was here and alive. “I should never have asked you to come,” she whispered against Priya’s cheek. “I should never have let you go into battle.”
“But you need me. You needed me here.”
“I needed you,” Malini agreed. “Need you still. But not just for your gifts. Never just for your gifts. Surely, surely you know.”
“I do, I do.” And their faces were turning, not quite touching, sharing breath.
Creeping ferns coiled out from Priya’s hair.
She blinked her green-struck eyes. Strangeness, horrific strangeness, and yet somehow Malini could not bring herself to let go of her.
Priya’s mouth parted. Words, again. Words, always cleaving distance between them.
“I think there must be a scale somewhere in your head, where you weigh out how much my gifts matter to you and how much the rest of me matters, and I think—the scale is tipped, isn’t it?
Listing to one side. You don’t have to nod or agree or—I already know, Malini. I already know.”
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.
“Do you hate me for it?” Malini asked, framing Priya’s face with her hands. “Are you angry that I don’t love as you do?”
Priya laughed. A breathless sound, oddly sweet.
“Were you afraid I’d die?” Priya asked.
She took hold of Priya’s hair. Heavy, dark hair, slippery as silk, riven with things flowering.
Malini moved her fingers through it. She pressed her lips against Priya’s neck, feeling the heat of her skin, the warmth of it.
She smelled of—sweat, salt, and rain-washed soil.
It should have been unpleasant, too human and too strange all at once.
But Malini could do nothing but press her teeth to the tendons of Priya’s throat, and breathe her in, and think with helpless hunger, I want to taste her, taste all of her, hold her in my mouth. I want, I want, I want.
Priya made a hitched noise—half surprise, half something else. Her head tipped back. Her fingertips traced Malini’s jaw, trembling.
“As if a simple battle could kill you,” Malini whispered against her skin.
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.
“If I truly feared that battle could kill you, I would never have held back my army until you drowned Chandra’s at their flank,” she said.
“If I truly feared that you could die, I wouldn’t have trusted you to rise from the water and destroy them.
But I trusted you. I would trust you again.
As I trust you now, to find your way back to your human skin.
“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—”
A hand tightened on Malini’s jaw.
“Try,” said Priya.
Malini raised her head and looked into Priya’s eyes.
“Try and break me,” Priya said. “If I’m—I’m so much, if you think I’m so much more than any other person, then—then bring me back down to just skin. Make me human. Try and break me. Try.”
Malini did not need to be asked again. She tangled her fingers in Priya’s hair, dragging her head further back, kissing her way down Priya’s throat.
Her pulse, her tendons, the salt of sweat; the dip and swell of her collarbone, as Malini peeled aside the river-stained collar of her tunic so that she could set her mouth on skin unmarked by the sun, skin still water cold.
Priya’s arms came around her—and then Priya was brushing her mouth over Malini’s forehead, her hairline, her own curling hair, achingly sweet.
There was a crash of noise somewhere beyond the tent and Malini thought distantly of her responsibilities: her generals, waiting to meet her. Lata, no doubt standing stiffly outside, waiting impatiently for Malini to emerge. Her body froze.
“I guess there’s no time to try right now,” Priya said after a moment. “Is there?”
Malini closed her eyes. Opened them. Straightened up.
Priya was flushed, warm blood darkening her face, the petals gone, but the strangeness still lingered in her hair and her eyes. There was still a wildness about her.
“I’ll remain with you until you’re yourself again,” Malini said. “Entirely of your own flesh, and then I’ll leave you to rest. But you will have to do so without me—breaking you.”
Priya laughed, the same want and embarrassment and twisting hunger that Malini felt in her own body flickering across her face. Then Priya closed her eyes and breathed, and breathed, and Malini held her steady. Waited.
She watched the leaves wither from Priya’s hair. The flowers curl to dust.
In the place of flowers lay nothing but skin—lacerated and bruised from the battle, but all Priya’s own. Warm brown and alive.
Priya opened her eyes. Brown, framed by lashes more gold than dark.
“Oh, Priya,” Malini whispered, tracing the shadow of a bruise beneath Priya’s left eye with her thumb. “Oh. Look at you.”
“You’re looking,” Priya agreed, with nonsensical tenderness.
“You’re back. You’re here.”
“I’m here.” There was relief in her voice. As if she really hadn’t known what she was capable of. “I’m here.”
Malini had generals to meet, and an army to move—but there were flower petals scattered all over the ground, and Priya in her arms.
This yearning, this want, was a force like a rising tide. It couldn’t be stopped. And Malini did not want to.
“Later,” Malini said, a tentative hope unfurling in her chest. “We can try again.”
“Later,” Priya echoed. “Yes.”