Page 13 of Her Soul for a Crown
“No!” Calu reached out, his fingertips an inch from hers when the Great Sword swung wide, severing them from the joint. They thudded to the ground.
“Please!” Reeri bellowed. “They did not know. It is not their fault!”
As quickly as it had begun, it halted.
The Great Sword snicked back into Lord Wessamony’s hand. “And yet that does not rectify the wrong, does it, Reeri?”
He shivered as the breeze touched his flayed skin. “No, my Lord.”
“You have ruined it all, Reeri.”
He bowed his head. “Yes, my Lord.”
“For that, I hereby banish the Yakkas from the Earth.”
As one, they rose into the sky.
“Damnation is your punishment. Your place is in my court, in eternal purgatory,” Lord Wessamony judged. “This, Reeri, is your penalty: to watch as they suffer for your actions.”
Breath stalled in Reeri’s lungs. “Please—”
“Yet I am not without mercy!” the Lord boomed. “Atonement is also yours. Your place shall be the shadowlands, your powers bound by my decree, until you find the relic I seek and repair the wreckage you have wrought of my plans. Do you accept these terms?”
“Please, Reeri,” Ratti sobbed. “Help us.”
O Heavens. What had he done?
“Yes, my Lord!”
“Then so shall it be.” Lord Wessamony nodded. “For my sake, I grant three of your clan as aid.”
With another flick of his wrist, the Lord let loose his power, and in a blink, the Yakkas’ bodies fell to the jungle floor. Yettheydid not. Phantoms now, they rose into the Second Heavens. All but Reeri, Calu, Kama, and Sohon. They stopped in the gray-black aether betwixt the Earth and Heavens. Into the nothingness.
Reeri touched his shadow face, only for his fingers to slip through vapor.
“Purgatory will end when you present me the Bone Blade.” Lord Wessamony’s voice echoed, the sounds of torment and torture rising from his faraway court. “The fault lies entirely with you, Reeri. Never forget that.”
5
Anula’s second life began with a party.
It was not for her. In fact, the house staff nearly forgot about Anula’s arrival until the moment she was on the steps, waiting in line with the others to get inside. Her first glance at her new home was stolen between pressed bodies. A short woman in a bright sari spun fast words around her guests.
It didn’t take long for Anula to understand that parties were a weekly ritual at Auntie Nirma’s estate, typically ending with the women disappearing through a hidden door.
“It’s a gathering of like-minded individuals,” she corrected when Anula confronted her about it, after their first year together. “Hidden because one must always keep one’s allies safe.”
A flash of names seared across Anula’s mind. “What about enemies?”
“Those”—her auntie smiled shrewdly—“are handled individually.”
Nirma was Anula’s fourth or fifth cousin on her mother’s side, a widow who mysteriously owned land and a large house in thevillage center of Kekirawa. Childless, she’d taken Anula in when Thaththa’s closest male relative wanted to inherit only the estate, not the girl. But this was as far as their relationship went. Auntie Nirma was too busy with secret business meetings with her allies, hosting kingdom officials for dinners, and handling her enemies.
Anula had taken to snooping, her goal the hidden door.
The early-morning light broke through the slats on the window coverings as Anula pushed her way into another room of the house she’d yet to explore, her late Uncle Manoj’s office. A layer of dust covered every surface, including the wooden floor. Every step she took would be seen. She didn’t care.
How was it a woman had such power, such influence? Auntie Nirma merely said a word and sashayed into a room, and every man prayed to the Heavens to be the one to grant her wish. Male and female suitors lined the street for her favor, yet she held them aloft, close enough to do her bidding, far enough away to receive more than she gave.
