Page 157 of Her Soul for a Crown
Reeri nearly choked. “Live.”
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Anula touched the empty place at her throat and glanced in the gilt mirror.
Tendrils of jasmine laced their way past the blood-and-grime-soaked sari discarded on the floor and wove into her long tresses. The scent of smoke leached out. The anxiety did not.
Breathing deep, she wrapped her robe tighter and hunched over a bowl of water, sinking a cloth inside. With the inner city half-burnt, there’d be no cleansing ceremony in the Kuttam Pokuna bathhouse with oils and prayers. Mercifully. It wasn’t as though masking herself with perfumes would help her rule. She wrung out the water and began to scrub, her gaze fixed on her face in the mirror, not on the lack of mehendhi.
“You are going to take a layer of flesh off, if you continue like that,” a voice said behind her.
“A new skin for a new Age,” she scoffed, until the knowing spiked her senses. That voice—she’d heard it before. She dropped the cloth.
“I expected something less macabre for your first act as raejina.”
Anula spun. Before her stood not a specter nor a ghost nor a shadow.
Sharp chin and sharp jaw. A long, rounded nose. Wide, full lips. Thick, luscious lashes and heavy brows curtaining—
Saffron eyes.
Her heart sped as she took him in. His midnight hair, his bronze skin.
His. His. His.
Shadow made flesh.
“How?” she whispered. “I thought you were dead.”
“I was,” Reeri said, saffron ablaze. “You saved us. The cosmos was reborn, the Heavens rebalanced. It is the same and yet new, all it was ever meant to be.”
Anula’s heart squeezed. “And your Yakkas?”
A smile lifted the side of his face. It was vibrant. “Free. Alive. The new Lord has granted them permission to descend when they are called to Earth through a bargain. No tethering necessary. No human possession required.”
Hope flickered. “You can come whenever I call?”
“The Yakkas can, yet the Lord is bound by the balance of the cosmos.”
She held her breath. “And who is the Lord?”
Reeri’s smile slipped. “You may call me ‘Lord Reeri, the Blood Yakka, of the Second Heavens.’”
Anula’s hands numbed. “Then is this it?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Unless you wish it be.”
“No,” Anula nearly shouted.
Light returned to his saffron eyes. “Then this is not the end.” He shifted, suddenly nervous and awkward, clearing his throat and glancing at her through long lashes. “The Lord’s fetter rebalanced as well. I may return once a year, during the Maha season.”
Anula’s heart skipped a beat. She stepped closer, the scent of cinnamon and rainwater wafting over her. “The whole season?”
He nodded.
“You can stay with me half the year?”
“If you wish.”
