Chapter 58 Malini
MALINI
Malini had never seen such a look in Priya’s eyes before.
Priya looked a little ragged. A little wild. Dirt on her clothes. Her face raised up, the gold of the mothers’ fire glinting in her eyes.
“I’ve trusted you, Malini,” Priya said. “I’ve trusted you so many times. I’m sorry. I’m going to need you to trust me in return.”
Malini took a step toward her. Stopped.
She knew that look. She knew it because she had worn it.
It was like… like gazing into her own past. Into a dark mirror, which showed the reflection not of her face but of her own terrors.
Priya looked like a feral thing caged, desperate to get out.
Some deep, inborn instinct held Malini very still.
“Priya,” she called out. Gentle. “If this is what you need from me, you have it.” Slowly, she lifted the chain above her blouse. Laid the needle-flower upon it against cloth, so that it was visible to Priya’s eyes. “Take it,” she said.
Priya walked over to her. In her hand lay a blade—a strange thing, narrow and whittled to sharpness, more thorn than knife. But it was as sharp as any steel, severing the needle-flower neatly from the necklace that held it. Malini felt the coolness, the lightness of its absence from her throat.
“This isn’t what she meant,” Priya whispered. Her voice, her eyes, were hollowed out, an emotion Malini could not possibly read.
“I don’t understand,” said Malini.
“She said she needed it back.” Priya swallowed, and met her eyes. “The yaksa.”
Malini stepped back. Reflexive.
A war coming. A war, and Priya before her, spilling a secret with barbs. A yaksa. She had been speaking to a yaksa.
“Will you ask me to trust you,” Malini said tightly, “now that you have spoken of yaksa? Now that you have claimed to talk to one?”
Priya stared at her. “No,” she said. “No. Though you’ve asked me for more trust than that. Asked me to trust that you’ll keep your vows to Ahiranya. Asked me to risk my life, my magic, everything I am—”
“You gave everything willingly.”
“You still asked. I won’t do the same to you. Because I. I…” Priya’s eyes closed, and she swayed on her feet. “My power,” she said. “Comes at a price. And if I had known… Malini, I wouldn’t have paid it. But now I have to do this. For my family. For Ahiranya. I can’t betray them.”
Malini tried to move forward, around her to the door. Foolish. The marble cracked with a sound like thunder. Something wrapped tight around her feet, holding her fast by the flickering fire pit, before Priya’s tired, tortured face.
“Priya.” She was breathing hard suddenly. Shaking. “Priya, don’t you dare betray me. Don’t. Don’t.” Please, she did not say. Please, not you. Not you.
Priya was breathing the pained breaths of someone trying not to weep. It was ugly. It made Malini furious.
“I gave you my heart. I need to take it back,” said Priya. “I need to hollow it, like everything else. Like the rest of me.”
“Whatever you gave me doesn’t live in that insipid flower,” Malini gasped, furious that she was crying, furious at the salt on her face, the way her heart hammered as she edged back, back, fighting Priya’s magical grip on her, as Priya circled her, the mothers’ fire flickering palely strange in the lamps, in the pit.
“Don’t say it,” said Priya. “Don’t.”
But it was too late.
“It lives in me,” Malini said. Furious. “It lives in me, and you cannot take it.”
Priya shuddered. The knife moved in her hand, sharpening as if of its own volition.
“I love you,” Priya choked out. “I really do. I don’t want to do this.”
“That doesn’t make it better,” Malini rasped. “Do you really think I haven’t been hurt by people who love me, who claimed I gave them no choice?”
“I know you have,” said Priya. “I know.”
“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 took a step forward. Took hold of her. It was almost an embrace; almost like being held tenderly, and it was so cruel that Malini could not stand it. She flinched back, and Priya’s grip tightened.
Malini snarled—a sound she had never, ever made—and twisted.
Wrenched. Priya refused to let go of her, and they were both stumbling.
Both falling. Both on the marble, the coldness of it jarring Malini’s back, her skull.
Priya was above her, fierce and breathing fast, eyes wet.
She was beautiful and Malini wanted nothing more than to fling her away, to be free of her.
She bucked, pushing at Priya with her fists, her nails.
But Priya was immovable. Speaking, her voice too close, too familiar, too much.
“If you hold still, I—”
“No,” Malini snapped, clawing at Priya’s arm, yanking her braid. Grasping that soft hair in her hands, wishing she could wrench it right out. “No, no, I won’t make this easy for you. Priya you fool, you fool, how dare you—”
The thorn blade met the marble at her side and Malini rolled. Grasped the edge of the pit.
“Don’t,” she said again. Pleaded. “Don’t, Priya, don’t.”
“I have to,” Priya snapped, in a voice that was wild. “Malini, I have to.”
There was wood, laid at its side, ready to be thrown on the flames. Malini grabbed a piece—unseeing, almost unthinking through the haze of her own fury and fear—and shoved it into the fire. And lifted it. And turned.
She thrust the fire at Priya, watching it arc from the blade, lash and bind itself against Priya’s skin.
Priya made a noise. Clutched her neck, as light flared in the room, as the ground shook, all those strange flowers bursting and dying.
Malini gritted her teeth and held the fire steady, steady.
Let it burn her. Let it burn her, then. All Priya had to do was run away, and it would stop.
All Priya had to do was stop trying to kill her.
And Priya leaned forward, leaned into it, said tightly, “Malini.”
And there—ah. Ever so gentle. Sliding in easily through flesh, through muscle, raw against bone.
Priya had stabbed her through.
She’s missed my heart, Malini thought distantly. I hope she has missed my heart.
The torch rolled from her nerveless hands.
“I had no choice,” Priya said again.
“You did,” Malini managed. She was afraid to move. The pain was finally registering: moving through her, setting new knives into her blood. “You—you did.”
Her body crumpled. Priya caught her, lowering her down gently. What a mockery it was, that gentleness.
“You won’t die,” Priya sobbed, miserable tears falling down her cheeks. “You won’t die. I didn’t cut out your heart. I didn’t. I only, I only…”
Her words dissolved. There was a white-edged silence, as Malini bled, and Priya scrubbed tears from her own eyes.
“It has to be enough,” whispered Priya, “that I’ve lost you. That we’re severed from one another. It has to be enough.”
Priya touched her own hand over her own heart.
“It has to be,” she said.
And maybe it was.
The fire twisted wildly. And there were flowers, blooming from Priya’s skin. Leaves feathering through her hair. Sap, pearling at her eyes.
Priya, she thought. Priya was not human at all.
It was awful to still love her.
“I’ll never forgive you,” Malini choked out, through a mouth of blood, salt. “I’ll never—I’ll never…”
One hand, twined with white leaves, touched her face. Wiped the blood away.
“Live, then,” said Priya. “Hate me. Just live.”
There was an awful noise. The lattices, entwined with flowers, were cracking. Splintering open.
Malini felt lips against hair. The faintest brush. The wound in her chest pulsed in response. Hot, livid, living. Her vision grayed as she was lowered. But she saw Priya walk away from her. Saw the marigolds rupture the ground behind her. A trail of gold.
Saw the shadow of Priya, vanishing through the broken lattice, a hollow to the night.