The words hung in the air long after the voice that carried them had gone, and for three full heartbeats Sekar could not make herself move at all. Her daughter's eyes were still open, still fixed on nothing, the silver blue in them pulsing once, twice, like something breathing behind glass.
Sekar had heard that voice before, in a manner of speaking. Not this voice exactly, but the shape of it, the way it borrowed her daughter's mouth the way a hand borrows a glove, filling it without asking whether the glove minded. The shrine had done something like it once, months ago, gentle and apologetic even then. The mound sibling had done it too, grief soaked and reluctant. This voice had asked for nothing and apologized for nothing, and that absence, more than the cold or the guttering lamp, was what told Sekar this was not kin to anything she had already learned to be afraid of.
