The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 59 Priya

PRIYA

No one seemed to realize that she had stolen a key from a guard. She pulled it from where it had been tucked in the braid of her hair. She held the skin-warm metal in her palm.

It was impressive what you could get away with when you were wounded and stumbling, a small thing being carried between two men terrified that the empress was going to gut them. They’d said as much. Did you see her face? I think she’s going to kill those Saketans by slow inches until they’re begging. A shudder. I wouldn’t want that for me.

Her path forward was no longer as clear as it had been. Leaving the others, leaving Ahiranya… it had felt like the only good choice she could make. Like Malini had appeared in her dreams, with those coaxing hands and gentle words, and offered her the only way to escape her fate as Mani Ara’s carapace. Malini had been her only way to cobble together a third path.

The heart’s shell had been placed around her wrists again, but there were no guards in the sickroom with her. The benefit of Malini terrifying everyone into submission, she supposed. She traced those cuffs with her fingertips, set the key in their lock, and watched them click open.

She’d broken their power. Her lacerations were already healing, fed by her magic. But it was pleasant to have her wrists free, to feel like her hands were her own.

And yet disappointment curdled in her heart.

The heart’s shell had been a promise of hope. If Malini could hurt Ganam—could contain Priya—she could fight the yaksa. There was still power in the heart’s shell, but not enough.

Priya stared down at her bare wrists, thoughtful.

She thought again of Malini’s hands on her arms. The sharp, visceral sting of strong liquor against her cuts. The gentleness of Malini’s grip, and then the harshness. She thought of their shared dreams, and the way it had felt seeing Malini again at the caravanserai—the yearning she’d felt for her, the tug under her breastbone that wasn’t magic; that was nothing but desire.

I’m a better weapon than the heart’s shell could ever be, Malini. I’ll prove it to you.

Could her own yaksa-given power be used against the yaksa themselves? Could Priya fight them with the Parijatdvipan army behind her?

It was more than want or desperation that urged her to stay. It was a hope like a lamp she couldn’t snuff out. It was the string and sinew of magic that bound her and Malini together.

She couldn’t go yet.

And she had no interest in returning to her cell, either.

There were guards outside her sickroom, but they would be no trouble to deal with. There were so many green things in the imperial mahal—so many flowers, so many falling leaves. And if all else failed, Priya had the strength of her own hands.

She didn’t need her magic to move quietly down corridors. To knock a guard unconscious, and grasp the knife at his belt. Those skills she’d learned as a child without a drop of water-blessed strength in her.