The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 83 Priya/Mani Ara

PRIYA/MANI ARA

Once, she had been starlight. Once, she was a fish in a great river. Now she was flesh. Ugly, and heavy, with death written into its very nature.

Her heart was beating. The weight of it hurt. Her lungs were a fragile weft. Blood and breathing were a compulsion. Her fleshiness was monstrous. The world was changed, rot-riven, green and sweet, and yet it made her retch. It did not want her. She did not want it.

Mani Ara had wanted to take the world for her kin. That part of her keened in horror for what she had lost, for the kin she had carried over cosmic waters who were dead and lost to her. She had felt them die—the pain, the fire, and the utter nothingness that followed.

If they could not live in the world, then she would tear the world apart. Rend it to shreds. For so long, she’d shaped it tenderly for them, and now. Now, now—

Now the part of her that was Priya was being overwhelmed. A human life was so small. No more than a flicker—swiftly born and swiftly lost.

Stars raced over her. She dreamt, in a blink of an eye, of her temple siblings. She dreamt of Bhumika and Ashok and Sima and Rukh and Padma and Malini, Malini, always her, always all of them.

She could not overcome Mani Ara. She had been a fool to hope. Even if Mani Ara did not want to continue. Even her not wanting was a tide, as strong as her hate.

She tried to speak their names. Tried to suck in a breath. The waters filled her lungs. She had no room left in her, nothing left to hollow, and nothing left to give.

She drowned.

A voice was calling her. A light.

Priya.

Golden light. Fire and starlight. The fierceness of the sun.

Tender hands, reaching for her own.

The sangam was not truly a river, and yet—she saw her. Malini, on the shore, with a light in her hands. Malini, with her tangled hair and her eyes like wells of gravity, like the darkness that light could be stitched upon.

A part of Priya remained human. A part of her remained in the world. She had left it there, even though she had been told to cut it away, to hollow it.

Sometimes a hollowing was a space where the echo of you remained. It was a place where a new thing could grow, take root. A vine, tying Malini to her, and her to Malini.

Priya reached for it.

Sleep , she said to the rest of herself. That great, endless, grieving strength that roiled inside her. Sleep until the world crumbles, until the stars welcome you home.

Sleep. All you love is gone, and there is nothing in the world for you here.

The part of her that was ancient clawed at the waters. The part of her that was ancient bared its teeth and wept—because it no longer remembered how to be only stars, and had lost too much.

But Priya knew who she was.

She had one last task to do.

She crumbled the sangam around herself. Broke the banks of its rivers. Reduced its churning waters. Destroyed the way, until only the smallest flickering sliver of water was left. Just enough to keep alive what the sangam—and the yaksa—had already made.

People with rot. Once-born. Temple elders. Ganam. Bhumika.

Her Malini. Malini should have been dead, drowned and burned, but Priya’s immortal magic was shot through her like gold. She was a yaksa’s beloved now, because she was Priya’s beloved. They were wound together like two halves of a whole. As long as Priya lived, so would she.

It was just enough.

She woke in her own body. Flowering, and no longer strange. A weight filled her arms, as Malini settled in her grasp, wreathed in light.

She kicked her feet and rose to the surface of the water. Walked, with the weight of Malini in her arms, across the ground. Around her the soil flowered. It knew them both.

My beloved , Priya thought with all the wildness and tenderness of a mortal woman over the woman she loved. And with the abstract vastness, the emptiness, of a yaksa loving a mortal who was part of her. A mortal with a piece of a yaksa forever in her heart.

My Malini.

I’ll come back to you. I promise.

The Hirana opened, a dizzying kaleidoscope of light—and Malini slipped from her arms, onto the safety of the earth, onto the welcome of new blooming flowers. And Priya…

Priya closed her eyes and let the Hirana—the falling Hirana—close over her.