The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 27 Malini

MALINI

She was holding an audience when a rider arrived. He was announced and strode in still in his traveling clothes, stained with dirt. He prostrated himself, then gasped out, “Empress. There’s danger. Near the border with Saketa—”

She raised a hand and quelled him to silence. Behind him, Deepa slipped in and gave Malini a wide-eyed look. All Deepa’s looks were nervous, but Malini had learned to read them all, and this one made her say, crisply, “I will speak to this man alone. Immediately.”

She rose to her feet and swept from the public court toward a private audience chamber. Her lords and princes bowed as she passed.

The rider, with Deepa’s gentle urging, stumbled through an explanation. A cadre of guards near the Saketan border of Parijat had found something they could not understand. Something that had changed the landscape, cut through the rice field they were guarding like a sickle. It was not rot—he was sure it was not rot. One of his fellow soldiers on patrol had investigated and said it seemed like a path.

“He vanished into it and returned in hours,” said the rider. “But, Empress—he said he had been gone for days. He was thin and thirsty. We could not understand. We took lots, and I left with my horse to come to you immediately.”

An image reverberated through her like a plucked string. One of her terrible, restless dreams. Cracked walls. Priya’s voice behind her. A path, opening.

Certainty settled in her blood. She’d seen a true thing once again.

Once it was clear the rider had no more to say, Deepa’s gaze darted up to meet Malini’s. Malini nodded.

“Thank you, soldier,” Deepa said, wringing her hands together, smiling. “You have done well. If you’ll come with me, there is a place you can rest…”

Her own soldiers investigated. By the time they returned, other riders had made it to Harsinghar. They had come from all corners of the empire with news of strange paths, where time coiled and bent. The worst news came with a lord from Srugna, who informed her heavily that Srugna was riddled with such paths.

“From end to end, Srugna is infected,” he told her. “Our king has sent you a request for aid, Empress, written in his own hand. He…” He hesitated. “He fears that our proximity to Ahiranya has placed our country in great peril. There is rot all over the land. No matter the guards sent, it cannot be stopped. And people claim, now, to have seen the yaksa among the trees, and faces hidden under masks of wood.”

A murmur ran through her advisors. She read the request. Handed it to one of her officials.

“There was one such path in Ahiranya called the seeker’s path,” said Malini, trying not to recall Priya and their journey through that path—that moment of both terror and the purest joy she had known. “Carved, I was told, by yaksa hands. It led to Srugna. I am unsurprised, but deeply sorry, to know that Srugna has suffered so greatly from yaksa magic.”

She met the eyes of Lord Prakash. Her Srugani general looked tense and deeply worried.

“I will go to Srugna to witness these new paths directly,” she said, and saw relief cut through Prakash’s fear. “To face these enemies and offer King Lakshan my aid. Lord Prakash, as my Srugani advisor you will travel with me.”

“It will be a balm to visit home,” Prakash replied. “Even in such dark times.”

“Lord Narayan—I would have you and Low Prince Ashutosh also. If we face yaksa, his rot-riven liegemen will be safe from further infection.”

Narayan inclined his head in understanding.

“I will inform him, Empress.”

“Good,” she said. “We will not let any of our lands suffer at the hands of Ahiranya. We will protect our own.”

“I don’t like you traveling without me,” Lata admitted later.

They stood in the nursery, over the crib where Prince Vijay slept. Varsha was walking in the gardens with her maids. In her absence, a physician had examined the child again and assured Malini, his eyes respectfully lowered, that the prince was healthy and growing as he should be.

Now Malini and Lata stood alone. Lata was stroking the child’s hair gently.

“Sahar and the guardswomen will keep me safe,” Malini said. “Swati will make sure I eat. There’s no need to worry. I value your mind, Lata—but I will be clever enough to manage this foray into Srugna without you.”

“You’re a cunning woman, my lady,” Lata said, tucking the blanket around the sleeping infant with care. “But no one can know everything.”

“And you can?”

“I am a sage still,” Lata said, staring down at Vijay. “I would prefer to guide you, but if you leave me here… I will care for Parijatdvipa. And I will continue to try to find a way the yaksa may finally be dealt with.”

Without you burning. She did not say it, but Malini heard it all the same.

She thought of the magic worming through her own heart, unwanted and strange. She thought of her dreams.

This was the moment to tell Lata. I dream of Priya, and not the dreams of a betrayed lover. I dream of her and her power, and I dream true. Perhaps the answers lie there. Perhaps it is in the power and knowledge of my enemies that I can save myself.

“Thank you,” Malini said softly, instead. “For all you’ve done.”

She left Varsha’s rooms. With her guards trailing her, she headed to the imperial mahal, lost in her own thoughts.

She’d known about the paths before the rider came. She hadn’t understood what the dream meant until he spoke, but still. She’d known .

She could see Priya. Reach Priya. Whatever the dreams were, they held some truth. Truth she could use.

Perhaps more than truth lay in her dreams.

No one questioned her desire to pray in solitude again. She banished her guards, and she went to the room where the yaksa’s arm lay on its plinth; she lit an oil wick lamp and looked at it.

The lamp flickered. Shadows congealed on the arm’s length—the overlong fingers, the gold-green veins at the wrist. Her chest, her healed wound, throbbed.

Without allowing herself to flinch, she stepped forward and touched the arm.

The moment her skin touched wood-flesh, something rushed through her. It raced through her veins, her muscles, her bones. It was a pure burst of energy, stealing her breath and filling her with something greater than air.

Power.

She snatched her hand back. She clutched it to her chest, fingers tingling on the verge of pain.

“Turn to me,” she whispered to the arm on the plinth. “Toward me.”

The wrist… twisted. Fingers splaying toward her. Then it shuddered and went utterly still.

The air smelled of flowers under rainfall, and Malini’s chest throbbed, and Malini covered her mouth and laughed, and laughed.