The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

This was her last hope.

The monsoon rain was pouring. The woman rode through it on horseback, without the cover of a parasol, letting the water soak her through. The trees of the forest loomed around her, black in the fading light.

She missed, with a sudden and knife-sharp grief, the flower gardens of home. White jasmine and needle-flower, and her pink roses. There were no trees to loom over her there, and no parched battlefields underfoot, seeded with nothing but dead flesh to draw scavenging birds.

The only flowers she had seen in months had been on the skin of her enemies. The yaksa who had killed her father had been flower-haired—a glowing, smiling girl-like thing with pits for teeth and arms sharpened to fine points. She had skewered him through, and laughed as she did it.

The woman shuddered at the memory, and shuddered again from the cold. She should have traveled in a chariot instead, but she loathed to be contained.

The monastery loomed out of the darkness ahead of her. Its gray stone shone silver in the shafts of dull light that broke through the trees.

Her army halted as the priest emerged, and bowed, and offered to lead her to the lake. She dismounted and followed him, boots heavy on the wet soil.

She thought of her sons. Her eldest three boys, at war. Her youngest, still in the care of a wet nurse. She wondered if she would see them again. Sikander, her oldest, had promised to meet her on the road from Alor with news from home. She had carried sweets for him just in case. Dried mango. It was the fresh he loved the most, but that she couldn’t easily provide. They’d burned all the orchards in Harsinghar to keep the yaksa at bay.

The lake was black. Although the rain fell fiercely, the lake was untouched, a disc of glossy stillness.

She kneeled by its side. Her salwar kameez grew wetter at the knees.

“Look,” the priest said. “Gaze into the water. Pray for the nameless to speak.”

She looked. The darkness showed her nothing. Nothing for a long time, as she shivered and the night drew in.

She had been foolish to come here. What could she see that a priest of the nameless could not? There were no answers to this war. They would fight the yaksa until their last breaths, and they would be defeated. There was no hope anymore.

Something flickered in the darkness. She leaned closer.

It grew. First, an ember. Then a lamp. Then a blazing fire, swallowing up the water, swirling in screaming light.

Let me in , the fire said. And the woman said, without hesitation, Yes .

The fire was gone. The lake was black again.

“My lady,” the priest said hesitantly. “Have you returned to yourself?”

He had seen nothing. She pressed her tongue to her teeth. Searched for her voice.

“Yes.”

“Did the nameless speak?” the priest asked, eager and terrified.

She raised her head. Her vision swam, golden as fire. Despite the rain she felt suddenly warm—lit like a lantern from within.

Not the nameless, she thought. But it did not matter. They were saved.

“I know how to kill the yaksa,” Divyanshi said.