Page 67 of Her Soul for a Crown
“I have been ready for an hour.” Reeri’s voice darkened. “Where is—”
Anula sauntered in, long tresses bouncing. The tether sighed in comfort, and an urge to meet her in the center of the room rose high. He would not soon forget the ire and passion that set her aflame—or how it stoked the cinders within his shadow. Yet when her dark lashes lifted, hesitation bloomed bright in her eyes.
Mayhap after all the pain and death in their shared memory-nightmares, she too saw their similarities. Perhaps the bargain could finally function in its natural state now, with the two of them working together toward the bargain’s completion: a relic and a crown, for the price of a soul.
No passion or flames to speak of.
Anula broke their gaze. Reeri’s shadow pinched, as if he might miss the fire. She turned to Sohon, a small book in her hand. “Here.”
“Oh,” Kama squealed. “A gift.”
“A loan,” Anula corrected.
Sohon flipped the pages open. “Poetry?”
“Best read alone.” She winked.
Kama squealed again.
Sohon snorted. “Dirty jests. Why give this to me?”
“Stories for you to remember,” she said. “And enjoy more than once.”
As the three bent to read, Reeri considered their exchange, the ease with which Anula spoke to and jested with the Yakka with the sharpest edges.
“What, nothing for me?” he murmured.
She raised a brow. “I thought you only wanted my help and for my poisons to stop finding your lips.”
His eyes flicked to her mouth. Plump and red and deadly,smirking at him.
As though she knew his thoughts. Knew how he liked the press of bee-stung lips, the taste of them. Knew he wanted to try again, linger and play. He swallowed. She probably did. A window opened into their minds and hearts each time they touched. Yet did she see what he had seen? When she had pulled him from the raja’s last body, he had careened through the cosmos before finding Vatuka and saw a small shadow creature cowered in the aether. Her soul.
Alone and frightened in a vast dark nothingness.
He had reached out, knowing from two centuries of experience how it must ache, but the distance was too far.
“Are you ready, my raja?” Bithul repeated, grounding Reeri.
He shook himself, adjusted his clothes, and glanced at Anula’s. “Where is your disguise?”
“No one will recognize the raejina consort,” she said, leading the way out the door. “I won’t even be in a rendering until I bear children.”
“Why?”
“Because”—Anula paused, meeting his gaze—“a consort can do nothing else.”
He held it, knowing to what she alluded. “Then let us not waste another minute.”
“I have never agreed with you more.”
***
Not all was the same as it had once been in Anuradhapura.
The tang of curry and sharp turmeric were eclipsed by a shadow stretched across the outer city. The wide irrigation reservoir sat in the city center, a sentry against the ominous dry seasons, when once the people merely had the Heavens toprotect them.
Yet not all had forgotten that fact. Anula led the Yakkas down stone paths, past structures built to withstand monsoons, to the dense population sifting through the night market. Pilgrims in varying states of poverty and finery marked the festival’s nearness. If the humidity had not slapped Reeri with the reminder, each of their faces would.
