Page 56 of Her Soul for a Crown
His thin nostrils flared. “Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Hurt flashed in his darkening eyes. The saffron smoldered to a deep brown, erasing the last sign of his shadow, as if he’d never been anyone else, as if he couldn’t be touched.
A finger of dread drifted down her spine.
Because he couldn’t be touched.
Not without her death first. She had no leverage, nothing to threaten him with, no way to force the bargain. She was trapped, the cage shrinking around her.
Anula placed a hand on her necklace, but where once she found security, now she found only the cold sting of failure. Perhaps Auntie Nirma had been wrong. Perhaps she wasn’t ready. She choked. What if she’d been wrong all along? Anula had never believed the Heavens had saved her for this, yet she’d grasped Auntie Nirma’s belief in her ability.
But…
What if it was false hope?
What if she couldn’t do this?
22
The converging clouds tightened Reeri’s shoulders and sent his shadow squirming.
Morning rang out in the inner city with the sounds of animals and humans alike. Courtiers lazed through stalls of fine meats, foreign fabrics, and breathtaking jewels. They hawked and haggled, for those with deep pockets rarely touched their seams. It should have felt inviting, the memories cheering, but the whispers following him set his teeth on edge.
“My raja.” The people bowed as Reeri made his way through the streets, Calu at his side. A contingent of guards followed a distance behind so the new raja could be seen by his courtiers.
It had been far too easy, the change in leadership. Usurpers, it seemed, were all too common, even ones who stole into the night without an army. The ministers swallowed the story Bithul and Viran, the former raja’s adviser, fed them and regurgitated it for the masses.
The Kingdom of Anuradhapura was brimming with half-truths.
Raja Siva the First was not a usurper but a senior gate porter at the palace—the closest guard Reeri could sense and direct his shadow into. That part was not so easy. When the poison had wrested him from Chora Naga’s body, his shadow attempted to return to the aether, while the tether chained him to the earth, to Anula, stretching his being in multiple directions. It was not something he wished to experience again.
IfAnula was to be believed and it in fact had been a mistake, then he had nothing to fear.
Anula was cunning. She had strategically told Bithul of the Yakkas and her bargain with them, a decision that indeed helped Reeri return to her when all was blood and shadow and near death. If not for Bithul’s knowledge, mayhap she would have died, the bargain and the freedom of the Yakkas disappearing into the blackness of the cosmos. Anula was also calculating. If her memory-nightmares and lists held weight, she had not bargained for the throne on a whim. She had mastered poisoncraft for a reason, met with ministers, and selected guards in support of it. She acted for her dead, for the loved ones she saw at night, for the blood she could not save them from. They were not dissimilar in that, and Reeri would not fault her for it. Yet he could not let the action go.
This was his only chance.
There was no room for failure, no choice to return to the Heavens empty-handed and try again next year. Anula might be many things, but Reeri needed to know if she was a true threat.
“Here.” Calu thrust a fish patty in Reeri’s face. “Eat while you brood.”
Reeri pushed his hand away. “I do not brood.”
“You have done nothing but brood for centuries. Your face is stuck like that.” Calu bit into the patty and groaned in a way indelicate for public hearing. “Heavenly wretches, I missed these.”
The longing in his voice pinched Reeri’s chest. He had stolen this from him, from them all.
“Anula has not been near these.” Calu cocked a smile, offering it once more.
Reeri leveled a glare.
“What? If you cannot laugh at yourself—”
“Then at least you will always laugh for me.”
Calu stuffed the rest of his patty in his mouth. “I see we are not in a humorous mood.”
