Page 148 of Her Soul for a Crown
What was left of Hashini’s lips quivered, until she choked. Purple veins turned into a purple face as the poison stole her last breath. Premala turned away, her doe eyes meeting Anula’s. Not wide with fear, but knowing. Seeing. “Thank you.”
Anula raised a brow. “What are friends for?”
This time, she didn’t squeak.
***
“What do we do now?” Bithul asked, eyeing the amphitheater’s now-open door and darkness beyond.
Everyone else eyed Anula.
Even Fate. A smirk played on their lips, puckered like a fish, and Anula briefly wondered if the Makara had existed first or if Fate had, if one had always been both, or if banishment had melded them together.
“Yes,” the fallen Divinity said. “Will you act again?”
“As my curves would suggest, I am not the raja,” Anula said, tugging at her sari, brushing away the image of the last one’s face. “I hold no power. Without a husband, I’m not even a consort. Besides, there’s a foreign prince on the throne, and you said I couldn’t go back any further.”
“Action must not always initiate from the same place. You need not the Bone Blade. You have far greater powers at your disposal.”Fate nodded to all gathered. “There is a hand of death hovering over your kingdom. Will you not stop the usurper and save your people? Is that not the path you chose long ago?”
Anula narrowed her eyes. “I would ask how you knew, but it seems you’re not particularly fond of answers.”
Fate’s braid flicked like the tail of a fish. “Revelations are more useful than answers.”
Anula snorted, but Bithul caught her eye. She knew his question without him asking.
Despite herself, Reeri’s shadow face flashed in her mind. The ache echoed hollowly. A great chasm into which she could easily fall, as she had once before. Clenching a fist, she drew herself back. She wouldn’t fall again, but she would survive again. Her path was not laid out before her, but chosen. The answer was as simple as it was difficult: she’d search for Reeri, for years if she must, but right now, it was the lives of those in her kingdom that were most important.
Less than a hundred were safely in the caves. They could flee, but to where, another kingdom? That still left the majority of her people behind. If she were the raejina, if Auntie Nirma’s plan had unfolded without a hitch and she held the throne, she would fight back. End the Age of Usurpers and finish the war with Polonnaruwa once and for all.
But it hadn’t. She didn’t.
Besides… “We aren’t a large enough army here to win against them.”
“Anuradhapura has never had a large army.” Bithul grunted. “Yet we have still prevailed.”
“How?” Premala asked.
Again, Anula’s fingers flashed to her throat. To the space where vials of tinctures and poisons had once hung. “Usurpers prize physical prowess, but we need only to be intelligent enoughto use that against them.”
“What do you have in mind?” Bithul asked.
Anula shook her head. “We would need a way back into the palace without being seen, which we don’t have.”
A collective sigh gripped the room.
“I do.” Clearing his throat, Prophet Revantha emerged from the back, round-faced and unwrinkled, holding aloft his pendant of gold and rubies.
“The key,” Fate lilted. “You have guarded it well these past centuries.”
Prophet Revantha took the stairs. “Yes, my great Divinity. The order has kept their task well. It has been passed down to every prophet, as instructed.”
“Mind sharing why with the rest of us?” Anula asked.
“Of course, my apologies. The pendant unlocks the doors inside the blessed paintings, the ones the Divinities closed after so many people lost their way in the cosmos when venturing to walk between them.”
“The stories of old were true,” Bithul breathed.
Half-true, Anula corrected silently.
