Page 52 of Her Soul for a Crown
“The Heavens didn’t do this—I did.”
Bithul sighed and leveled a gentle gaze. The same he’d given Shahan. “I am your ally, Raejina Consort, but I won’t go against the Heavens. I’ve learned that things work out for the best when we focus on the most important thing in the moment. I don’t need to be commander to make an impact. Though the path looks different, the Heavens have granted me a way to accomplish thatpurpose. That is why I train soldiers on my days off. Perhaps you can do the same. Until the Heavens are ready to give you the throne, what can you do? What is the most important thing in this moment?”
Anula clenched her teeth.
A door swung open, and out emerged the Blood Yakka, mouth drawn in a frown. “There you are. I must speak to the others, privately. Feel free to return to your chambers or do whatever it is the raejina is meant to.”
“Excuse me?” Anula sneered. As if she’d waited with bated breath for him. She opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she was meant to do, but he rushed past. Anula stared at his back, a finger slipping across her necklace.
The most important thing was justice. Auntie Nirma knew it and believed the Heavens did, too—whether they did or not, Anula wouldn’t be hampered by a lack of allies.
She would threaten the Blood Yakka herself.
20
The sun glistened bright, the click, tick, buzz of insects swelling in the heat. A breeze ruffled the flowers hanging from the terrace and the bushes peppering the Pleasure Gardens below. Humidity was a mere memory of the last monsoon season. Time was still on Reeri’s side.
“We came across the tether earlier,” Sohon said, as he and Kama edged onto the terrace. “She looked quite displeased.”
“Sour,” Kama clarified.
The memory-nightmare surfaced in Reeri’s mind. He wondered at the detail.
“Have you not bedded her?” Calu jerked an elbow in Reeri’s side.
Caress her. He imagined his hand on her thigh, slowly running its length, his thumb teasing circles higher and higher. He imagined her hips bucking, wild abandon taking over them both, marking their connection, their communion—a facet of life Reeri had yet to experience, despite Kama’s and Ratti’s great efforts. He had never found the one who sparked his desire, who proddedat what Calu called his “walls,” who brazenly sauntered into his thoughts and dropped her robe—
O Heavens, what was he, an adolescent?
Reeri bristled at the unbidden image, missing the tendrils of his shadow, how they lashed and struck and all would back away, even his thoughts. It would not be right, the two of them, for a myriad of reasons: that the body he inhabited belonged to another and was not his to do with as he pleased ranked first; second, he could not experience any such part of life before his brethren were free and could do the same.
Palming the balcony’s rail, he said, “Might we stay on task for once? It is time for the next phase: gathering our essence offerings for the soul sacrifice.”
“Question,” Calu said. “How is it time when the relic is not yet found?”
“We must complete the soul sacrifice immediately before we wield the Bone Blade,” Reeri explained. “There is no telling what the Heavens or cosmos will do when we kill Wessamony. If our brethren are not freed first, they may never be freed.”
“Why do we not do that now, then, instead of in tandem?” Calu asked.
Reeri raised a brow. “You think Wessamony will allow us to steal back the Yakkas?”
“Ah, the Bone Blade is our protection, as well as our final freedom.”
Reeri nodded.
“I understand how the relic will work,” Sohon said. The Yakka of Graveyards and Memories closed a gold-lettered book—the prophet’s journal of visions that he was meant to skim for clues. “But how are we to use a soul?”
“We cleave it,” Kama responded, leaning far over the terrace edge, craning her neck to watch two lovers amid the flowers. “She is the ox pulling the cart. Yet it is the driver who steers.”
“Our souls are tethered to hers,” Reeri clarified. “We must only take control.”
Kama twirled around, tripped two fingers across Sohon’s chest. “Yank the tether, wrench and wring. Hollow her out and to Earth our brethren bring.”
A chill crept up Reeri’s shadow. She was not wrong. Just as Lord Wessamony could use a soul to create a new being, Reeri could use it to save his brethren, trading its freedom for the freedom of another. Each of them would pull the tether until Anula’s soul shattered. Then they would send the pieces with their true essence offerings to the cosmos in exchange for the sundered souls of the Yakkas, akin to humans offering to the Heavens. Balance would still be kept.
Kama whispered her song again, starry-eyed and swooning. “Love is such a tragedy, and sacrifice the ultimate beauty. All the great stories have both, do they not, Sohon?”
“Please keep me out of this,” he murmured, cracking open the book again.
