Page 145 of Her Soul for a Crown
“Is that…?” Anula couldn’t find the words.
“Death.” Fate found them instead. “Death and its Hand.”
Anula’s fingers flew to her throat, only to slip against bare skin. A shiver racked her spine.
“It will not linger long,” Fate said, “afore it moves to the next.”
It was a command, as much as a warning.
Tightening her hold on the Bone Blade, Anula stepped forward, only to find her feet never touched the ground. Her soles lilted on the air, her sari softly swirling, a hushed song catching the edge. Heavensong. It filled her, invigorated her, and the relic began to glow. Anula squared her shoulders. As she closed the distance between her and Death, its light grew tenfold.
A sizzle sounded. Smoke twirled on bone-white fingertips. Death’s Hand flinched and drew away from her and the pure light she carried, away from the blessing.
“Now!” Fate urged.
Anula raised the blade high and brought it down quick.
The Bone Blade, made not of ivory but bones sacrificed willingly, cut through the Hand of Death like a knife through a mango. Swift and clean.
One by one, the fingers fell.
The mangled hand curled back.
Bithul flipped right side up, body unmarred and intact. He slowly blinked awake.
The white specter winked out, only to appear by another’s side, new fingers finding their next victim.
“Go.” Fate nodded.
Anula followed the specter. Cut once, twice. Every time Death moved, its Hand regrew and reached for another. But Anula moved, too, persistent in her purpose. Fingers fell, eroded, turned to dust and ash. People flickered slowly back to life. Minister, maid, concubine, Kattadiya. It didn’t matter; Anula worked for them all.
When the last human was rescued, the seam grew darker, screeched along with the heavensong, and out it spat the Yakkas.
Kama. Calu. Sohon.
Reeri.
Anula’s heart quivered.
The hole in Death’s form widened into a lopsided grin. The Hand flew out and multiplied. Not its fingers, as it had before, but another hand grew from the first, another set of fingers reaching. And another. And another. Death aimed for all four Yakkas at once.
Anula’s breath stalled. She couldn’t cut them all at the same time. One bone stretched to Reeri’s chest, lit the contours of his shadow, writhing as though locked in a cage of flame. Another cut across the room to catch Kama under her chin. Anula glanced at the relic and back at the specter, panic setting her hand and heart tremoring. Nothing in the stories of old spoke of this. She looked to Fate, but the Divinity was quiet.
Was she supposed to choose who to save? Would she be able to turn back time again, save another Yakka, over and over until they were all safe? If not, how was she to cut them all at once?
Then it dawned on her: She wasn’t. She couldn’t. Because shewaslooking, notseeing. If she shifted her perspective, there was more to the specter than fingers and hands. And therein lay the answer.
Anula spun, arced the blade and cut through not the Hand but the Wrist of Death.
One, two, three hundred fingers fell at once. The black hole receded into a small circle, a silent scream on Death’s lips, rage strobing like a dying star.
Bang!
The seam imploded; darkness and light funneled fast, sucking the Yakkas back—Kama, Calu, Sohon.
“No!” Anula grasped Reeri’s arm, but she slipped right through.
Tall and sharp and devastatingly handsome, Reeri’s shadow blinked.
