The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 37 Malini

MALINI

“Malini. Don’t.”

Her hand froze on Priya’s arm. Under her fingertips, Priya’s dreamt skin was cold. There was dirt on her, and the veins under her dark brown flesh shone faintly, the iridescence of leaves under a spill of light.

Water roiled around them both. There was something exultant in Malini’s blood—a singing brightness. Priya was close. In flesh, in dreams. But the pain in Priya’s voice gave her pause.

“What do you fear, Priya?” Malini asked. She lowered her arm slowly, curling her fingertips to her palm, resisting the compulsion to touch. “Do you think I’ll show you the kindness you showed me?”

Priya turned to face her, water swirling.

“I know what you’re capable of,” Priya said. She smiled, but she was crying, face wet. Her lip wobbled. “I know what I’m capable of. Hurt me if you like, Malini. It doesn’t matter. I’ll dream you and I’ll dream you, and I’ll never see you in the flesh again in my whole life.”

“You cried when you stabbed me too,” Malini observed, unable to look away from Priya’s face. She wanted to brush those tears away with her fingertips. She wanted to murder that tender instinct inside her, that soft wanting. Her own eyes ached.

“I did,” Priya said. “I did, of course I did.”

Priya covered her face with her hands.

“You don’t understand,” Priya said, choked, “how alone I am.”

Alone. Malini on her throne, her heart sisters dead, her brother burned, and Rao shot with an arrow of grief, gone somewhere in Dwarali; Malini, with her empire, and the promise of a pyre ever at her feet, with allies aplenty and no one she could trust entirely.

“You would not be alone if you hadn’t betrayed me,” Malini said, angry again. I wouldn’t be alone.

“I did it to save you. I told you I don’t regret it. I did it for you.” Priya dashed her own tears away and raised her face up, eyes bloodshot. “It’s awful, but it’s the truth, Malini. The only thing I have ever done with these hands is love you.”

“If you’d acted with love, you wouldn’t have taken my choices from me,” Malini said, voice shaking. “If you’d loved me, you wouldn’t have stolen yourself from me. You wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“I don’t regret it,” Priya said, as she’d said so many times before. But this time…

This time Malini took a step closer. Softened her voice.

“Why did you do it, Priya? Why did you betray me?”

Priya met her gaze, head tilting up.

“So you would live,” Priya said simply.

Explain , Malini wanted to command. Tell me why. Tell me everything. But Priya was drawing closer to her. Malini tensed instinctually, waiting for a knife through the ribs, that moment of pain that she had dreamt of over and over, like a wheel that never stopped turning. But Priya only curved her hands around Malini’s arms and pressed her face to the crook of Malini’s throat. She bowed into Malini, like a woman at prayer before an effigy, like a creature taking shelter from the storm.

Malini should have shoved her away. But she pressed her forehead against Priya’s hair instead. She closed her eyes and let her lips touch Priya’s forehead.

“This isn’t real,” Malini lied. To herself, to Priya. If this wasn’t real, she could allow herself to have this: Priya in her arms. Priya loving her.

“I said I’ll never see you in the flesh again,” said Priya. “But I know this is real. All our dreams are real. They wouldn’t hurt so much if they weren’t.”

Priya rose up and pressed her mouth to Malini’s. Unbearably gentle, unbearably tender. Her mouth tasted of salt, of life. She was cold like she’d been swimming—like she’d been wading through water, laughing with her sari knotted to her knees, then climbed onto the bank to press a kiss to Malini’s mouth. It was like an image plucked from another life they would never live, sweet and bitter all at once.

Malini touched her hands to Priya’s back, palms flat, and drew her closer. Priya was thin, all corded muscle under soft skin, and she came to Malini’s hands easily, wrapping her arms around Malini’s shoulders. She made a thin noise—an almost soundless gasp—when Malini’s hands moved over her body. Her hips, her buttocks, her waist, the softness of her stomach. The hollow of her thighs, warm under her river-tangled cloth. Her nails dug into Malini’s shoulders. She tipped her head back, and her eyes were brilliantly bright—shining brown under gold-hued lashes, full of want and wonder.

“Malini,” she gasped. No tears now. “ Malini. ”

Malini saw light ripple over her own arms—a green lattice glowing under her skin, a flowering of want in her chest, her belly. It felt like worship. It felt like coming home.

She leaned forward and slotted her mouth over Priya’s again.

She woke. Aching, between her thighs, with want. Tears in her eyes.

Some instinct grasped her. She struggled out of her own clothing—sleep-soft cotton parted easily and there was her own bare torso. Her stomach, her breasts—the knot of the scar at her chest. In the dimness of her sleeping she touched her hand to her chest.

She felt the sting of it when her fingers met ruptured skin over her heart. Not her scar, which stood untouched, complete—but a new wound. And through it…

A flower. A single flower, black in the dim light and lustrous and alive , growing from her own flesh.

Her heart lurched. She heard, through the rush of her own blood in her skull, a distant noise, and saw a light.

“Empress,” said Swati, setting the lantern down. “It’s time to wake.”

Malini saw her move through the curtains that surrounded the bed. In a moment, Swati would peel the curtain back, and then she would see.

She could not see.

“Leave me for a moment,” she ordered, forcing her voice to remain even. She felt like an animal searching for human speech—her mouth better suited for the scream that wanted to rear out of it. “I’ll rise on my own.”

It was an unusual request. But after a heartbeat of hesitation, Swati obeyed. “I’ll bring your breakfast, my lady,” she said. Malini heard the sweep of the tent’s curtain, a slice of birdsong—then silence.

She covered her mouth with her hand, struggling for breath. In, out. In. Out.

There was no time, and no one she could turn to. Alone, she drew on her blouse and dressed, and prepared to meet the world.

The mahal of King Lakshan, ruler of Srugna, was a squarish, colonnaded set of buildings set on different tiers hewn into a cliff face. An easily defensible home for a king. Once, every tier of the palace had been decorated with flowers, or so Prakash told her as they approached its entrance. But the fast spread of the rot had made the king cautious, and he had ordered all vegetation to be hacked away. Without it the mahal looked severe—cold, with its bare stone unmarked and lacking in beauty.

Inside the mahal, his court was little better. The courtiers were tired and frightened, and King Lakshan had the exhausted look of a man who had not slept in months and did not expect respite to ever come. One feast of welcome was all it took for her to judge that the rot, the new unnatural paths that had carved their way through his lands, and the constant threat of the yaksa had drained his resources and his will. He spoke anxiously about his army. “It is not that we lack men, Empress,” he said. “It is that they are cowardly and run from their duty. They fear the rot and they fear death.”

“I have brought soldiers to help you,” she said soothingly. “You have not been abandoned. The empire does not forget your aid in the war against my brother.”

A little of his tension eased at that, but it returned with a vengeance when she delicately dipped her hands in attar and wiped them clean, leaving her plate of appam, and said, “I do have questions about the treatment of the rot-riven on your lands. I have heard troubling reports…”

All through it her chest ached. A sore wound.

When she was alone once again in her rooms she refused the offer of a bath or the assistance of her maid, and opened one of her trunks herself. She withdrew from it everything she thought she’d need: bandages, thread. Liquor of a high enough potency to be used on a wound.

Then she lit her oil lamp, sat upon her bed, and removed her blouse.

The flower was still there.

Malini closed her eyes. Breathed with her mouth open, sucking in air. Her lungs felt tight, and horror had left her cold.

Then she closed her mouth. Gritted her teeth. Curled her fingers around the flower and with a wrench tore it free.

Blood under her fingers and clear, clarifying pain.

Without thought or feeling, she reached for the liquor and the bandages. She cleaned and wrapped her chest clumsily, relieved she would not have to sew her skin shut. She was sure, in a strange way deep in her bones, that by morning the wound would have closed again, leaving nothing behind.

Kissing Priya had been a mistake. But.

She could use this. She would have to use this. She would find a way.