The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 44 Arahli Ara

ARAHLI ARA

Priya was the one to build the path. He could feel her in the sangam—as she could likely feel him, if she dared to reach out. But she had no interest in him. She guided the way, walking forward as he followed.

In Srugna, they kneeled on the earth and watched a yaksa peel their way from the dirt. A yaksa, baring her teeth, breathing as if she had mortal lungs.

Distantly, he knew that Ashok would have known the face that rose from the soil—that face that tipped toward the sunlight, catching its fading rays like a flower in bloom. But it also felt wrong to think of Ashok in this moment. Riti , Ashok’s voice whispered in him. He banished it. A mortal had no place in this, the birth and return of one of their own.

“Cira Ara,” Priya said tenderly. “You live again.”

“There was fire,” the yaksa whispered. “And then a long sleep, where I saw nothing and dreamt nothing. If I thought, it was of soil and darkness.” Her eyes were all strange sclera. “What did I give up in order to return here?”

You will become more and more flesh , thought Arahli. Your heart will beat strangely in your chest. You will feel, as you have never felt before. Small, encompassing emotions, born of the body, but so vast they could have drifted with us out of the cosmos.

But Priya said none of the ugly things drifting through his head.

She held Arahli’s sister with her hands. Cradled her. A hand to the skull. A hand to the cheek. She looked at Cira with all the infinite love and strangeness of Mani Ara.

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “You’re here now.”

She glowed as darkly as his mother, as if her skin were a paper lantern to the starlit void of Mani Ara. It was like a cold hand passing over him, witnessing it. Ashok grieved, horrified. But Arahli felt something sharp-edged and beautiful. He felt hope.