The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 10 Priya

PRIYA

Dawn light was threatening beyond the lattice windows. Khalida hovered as Priya dressed and hastily knotted her hair into a low bun. “Let the children keep on resting,” Priya murmured to Khalida’s anxious face. “They don’t need to see what’s coming.”

Khalida’s eyes darted to Rukh and Padma.

“They’ll wake when they hear the noise,” Khalida replied. As if in response, there was a rhythmic thud of a dozen footsteps outside. The noise swelled, then vanished.

Priya shook her head.

“Don’t worry about that.”

They wouldn’t wake. All three of them had slept badly. Rukh and Padma often shared a bed with her now, the two of them curled up together like kittens. Rukh was still adamant that only he could care for Padma—but when Padma had woken earlier that night, crying and fractious as she so often was in the darkest hours, he hadn’t fought too hard when Priya pressed a hand to his hair and hushed him. “I’ll get her back to sleep,” Priya had said. And he’d protested once, only once, then fallen into a dead slumber.

There were deep shadows under his eyes. He was too young for the burden he carried.

Priya had told Padma a nonsense story to soothe her—something about birds wearing boots. Padma was too young to give a shit if the story didn’t make sense, surely? Priya had hoped so.

When that had failed, Priya had distracted Padma by growing flowers on her own palms and letting Padma examine them, her clumsy little fingers seeking the shape of petal and root. Padma had frowned seriously over them, comically studious under her mop of sleep-mussed curls. Then she’d started ripping them up, stubbornly pressing what was left into pulp.

“Destructive,” Priya had murmured fondly, and felt an echo of Bhumika’s love for her child in her own voice.

The wave of grief that had crashed over Priya had kept her awake long after Padma had fallen back to sleep on her lap.

The Parijatdvipans were coming. And for all that she and Ganam had built patrols and rationed out weapons, drained the mahal’s stores for anything with a sharp end and anything that could be thrown, Ahiranya was not prepared for the might of an empire.

They needed power only Mani Ara could give them.

The thought of fire and arrows touching her people made her sick.

She plucked the crown mask from the high shelf where she’d concealed it.

“If any of the fighters come looking for me, tell them to go to Ganam or Kritika,” said Priya, as waves of the mask’s power lapped at her fingertips. “I need to go to the Hirana.”

While the stone of the Hirana yawned open at her bidding, Priya put on the crown mask. She stretched her awareness into the green, feeling every inch of her home: each root and swaying branch, the worming and scuttle of insects under the dirt, steadily churning it into new shapes.

The deathless waters lay ahead of her. Priya stepped onto her own dark road and walked toward them.

On the soft soil that edged the deathless waters, Priya kneeled and prayed. She did so silently, hands clasped. Breathing slowly, she sank into the sangam in her mind. She reached through rivers of green and red gold for Mani Ara, always for Mani Ara.

She didn’t know how long she remained there.

Pain rustled through her skin. She bit her own tongue reflexively at the sharpness of it—the way it erupted over her in a wave, radiating from her skull outward.

She wrenched the crown mask from her face and watched a spill of flowers tumble to the floor. She touched her face and felt new blooms threatening to rise under her skin.

Shit.

What did she look like? She didn’t know anymore. Oh, she’d seen the horror in people’s faces, and the awe too. And she’d been able to ignore it all, more or less, until now. But if she was growing stranger still…

It was a foolish impulse, but she didn’t resist it; she knee-walked to the edge of the deathless waters and peered in.

The water shone blue. It shouldn’t have reflected her like a mirror, but when she pressed her hands into the glowing surface, it stilled and dimmed, rippling into a sheet of silver.

Priya met her reflection’s eyes.

She wasn’t vain. She never had been. She knew her nose was crooked, and her face unremarkable—that she was small and strong and not particularly pretty. But she’d never needed or wanted to be pretty. She’d been comfortable in her own skin.

She thought she had accepted how changed she was. After she had—after Malini —she had walked home to Ahiranya with flowers growing at her feet and sap bleeding from her skin, and shed petals from her hair. But the woman she saw in front of her…

She did not have rot. That was clear. There was something cruel and twisted about the rot. What had become of her looked—natural. Like it belonged.

Her hair was still straight, but there were strands of dark leaves twined through it. Her eyes were still her eyes, but flecked in the whites with green—shards like algae blooms that dissipated when she blinked hard, then returned again.

On her face, at the places where bone sat closest to skin, lay a thin tracery of flowers—small blooms in pale rose and deep red alike. They shifted when she tensed her jaw, withering and then bursting into richer life when she forced herself to smile.

She looked almost like one of the yaksa. Almost.

She touched her fingertips to the side of her neck. The burn mark there was still a livid, bright slash of color against her dark brown skin. Perhaps her skin gleamed like bark or earth, and maybe her mouth was the deep color of a bruised flower, but that scar was all flesh, and all human.

She’d dreamt, a few times, of what it had been like when Malini had burned her. The scrabble of desperate hands. The pain, and the smell of her own flesh. Now when she touched the scar she felt nothing. The skin was nerveless.

Her reflection blinked away marigold petals, golden tears. But Priya’s own eyes were dry. She touched fingers to her cheek and felt nothing.

Sapling , her reflection mouthed.

Priya took a deep breath and put the crown mask of sacred wood on her face, blotting her skin out once more.

Yaksa , she said in return.

Mani Ara.

Priya emerged from the Hirana to bright sunlight and a sea of pilgrims. They parted as she walked. Many bowed.

She did not look at them. She had no desire to. They were nothing to her. A sea of faces. A sea of flesh.

She was not like them.

Some of the guards from the mahal had gathered, waiting for her. Ganam was at the head, dressed for battle with a scythe hooked at his back. His eyes widened at the sight of her. He gave no other sign of shock. Swiftly, he lowered his head and bowed as the pilgrims had.

“Elder Priya,” he said. “We’re ready.”

She swallowed. It was hard to find speech.

“I will fight from here,” Priya said. Her voice was a rasp.

He nodded in understanding. Her weapon was her power. Not a blade, but what lay inside her.

“We’re relying on you, High Elder.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. She knew there were more words she would have said, if she’d felt more like herself and a little less hollowed.

She stood still, the soil under her curdling like milk as her Ahiranyi soldiers walked away. She drew a perimeter around herself: a thorny carapace, sharp enough to keep the watching people at bay.

She reached into the green and felt what she’d known would come, and feared.

Parijatdvipan soldiers. Coming closer.

And among them—

Something tugged beneath Priya’s breastbone. A phantom ache. A loss.

Abruptly she was herself again, not hollow but overfull, heart pounding and lungs aching, fear and anger crawling up her spine. She was the ugly, human creature that loved Malini, and had to stand against her forever and always.

She knew who was coming. She knew who stood achingly close to Ahiranya’s soil, and who had come to kill her and all she cared for.

Malini , she thought. And felt herself reach, through green and earth, an awful yearning and horror gaping inside her.

Malini. You’re here.