Page 81 of Her Soul for a Crown
“They have not been gone that long,” Calu said, glancing up. Sweat drew a line from brow to chin. He fingered his empty neckline.
“Yet nerves rack you,” Reeri muttered. “Mayhap you should brood.”
Calu straightened. “I am not nervous for anything. The curry is just particularly spicy today.” He scooped in a mouthful of kiribath and swallowed, as if to prove it, but Reeri knew what he saw of his brother. “Besides, Anula has a trained guard and Kama.”
“I think the poisons would scare humans most,” Sohon said from the divan, coiled around a book.
“Exactly.” Calu pointed a curried finger. “The problem is not with them but your impatience.”
If Reeri’s shadow were free, its edges would be writhing. “I am not impatient. Have we not waited two centuries for this?”
“Technically, no. You only came up with the plan recently.”
Reeri growled, “They should have returned by now, unless…”
“Ah.” Calu smiled. “You think she has run off with her paramour again. I told you to bed her.”
Reeri flinched. Waved a hand through the images that came unbidden. The touches and whispers. The questions and desires.
Anula had offered her soul. And Reeri would cleave it. That was the extent of them. It was what they both wanted.
“Your jests are unappreciated.” He glowered, turning from the falling light of the night.
“I appreciate them.” Sohon smirked.
“Then you two can enjoy them alone.” Reeri marched from the room, phantom hackles raised to the Heavens.
The raja’s chamber held no more relief. The darkening sky darkened his mood with every movement of the clouds. The heat sticking and draining.
An ache started at the base of his shadow like the twinge of a bruise, a haunted memory. He shook out his hands, rolled his shoulders, ignored the fact Anula was not there. That he, mayhap, was wrong again. Ambition had a way of using others as steps. Mayhap she had taken his trust and run, her gifts to the others mere tricks—a trap set and sprung.
She had not shown she cared about their similar burdens, nor for those outside her list and her dead, especially him. No. Reeri cast the thought away. Let it wither in the heat of the night before it took root. It did not matter who she cared for, least of all him.
The relic and her soul—that was all that mattered. Freedom was within Reeri’s grasp. His brethren deserved no less.
He deserved no more.
***
As soon as Reeri’s eyes closed, blood flooded the village street, tinted the night sky.
A cacophony of screams drowned into the background. If not for the man lying face down in front of Reeri, he would have believed it to be his own nightmare.
Yet the tears shed for the soiled man were not his. Nor was the chasm that broke open his chest, the deep ache that shook his body. Panic flared, and the memory-nightmare opened his mouth, spewing forth Anula’s young voice.
“Great Divinities of the First Heavens, please save Amma. Save my village.” Words choked on tears. “Save me.”
The world shifted and spun.
Spears nestled into spines.
“Great Blood Yakka of the Second Heavens,” the child cried, ringing through Reeri’s shadow. “Hear my prayer. I offer the fields of my father, my whole inheritance. So please, please, please, save us now!”
The crack in Anula’s voice splintered and shattered his soul. Shehadturned to the Heavens, had prayed to—
Boom.
The sound rattled Reeri to the core, pitched Anula into a run. The red-tinted night blurred, until she skidded to a halt.
