Page 32 of Her Soul for a Crown
It receded, slowly sinking into her skin. The smoke cleared, and where Anula’s wedding mehendhi had once curled and swirled, a new design bloomed. Red and dark as blood.
Anula glanced up, questions racing along her tongue, but the Blood Yakka had vanished. The whipping wind caught her skirt as it tumbled through the room, knocking over candles and slamming open the doors. It blew down the hall and out into the palace.
Where the singing abruptly cut off.
And a great cry erupted.
Part Two
13
“Peace!” Chora Naga bellowed from the dais.
Anula skidded to a halt at the throne room’s entrance. Black shadows swirled around his form, clung to his bare chest, his war breastplate discarded at his side. The room was no longer in chaos. Soldiers and courtiers alike had stopped fighting, stopped fleeing. They paused on bent knee, weapons discarded, eyes transfixed on the new raja as if in a trance.
Shadows snaked through the great hall, circling like a crested hawk-eagle. They dove at three courtiers, covering their arms in black smoke tendrils that sank into skin.
Bright daylight streamed across the red-marred floor, glinting in the puddles of death. Chora Naga heaved, his burgundy mehendhi rising and falling, giving the look of life to the elephant stretched across the planes of his chest. Patterns of swirls and soft geometric shapes dripped down the length of his stomach, fanning around his navel and dripping below his pants. He swept his hair aside and lifted his hooded gaze.
Saffron eyes stared out.
“My reign has begun,” the Blood Yakka declared, his voice reverberating from Chora Naga’s mouth.
The courtiers snapped awake.
“I am Raja Chora Naga.” He reached out a thick arm toward Anula. “Behold your raejina consort, Anula of Anuradhapura.”
Every head bowed in synchrony. It chilled Anula’s bones.
The shadow-inked mehendhi chafed Anula’s arms as the court was ushered out. She refused to examine it. It wasn’t part of her bargain. Neither was this Yakka claiming to be herhusbandand sitting onherthrone.
The raja had demanded a private audience with his new wife and the family of his adviser. As the doors closed, Anula marched to the tall, thick man. He was nothing of the Blood Yakka she’d met in the shrine, the shadow nowhere to be seen. Gone was his sharp jaw, his ruby eyes, his handsomeness.
“What in the cursed Yakkas’ names have you done? Where is my bargain?”
She shouldn’t speak to the Blood Yakka in that way, she knew. All the stories of old cast them as reveling in blood and pain. But she was the one who had called them. She was the one who’d bargained. She was in control. She wouldn’t let them see the fear that snaked up her spine and coiled around her heart.
The Blood Yakka straightened to full height. “You will have your bargain, as agreed upon. First, I thought it best you were introduced to those you tether.”
Anula blanched. Did he expect her to spend time with them? The deal was a soul and tether for a crown. Not an ally.
A man with peppered hair cleared his throat. Anula recognized him immediately. Viran, adviser to Raja MahakuliMahatissa, loyally dedicated to Anuradhapura. A potential ally, or so Auntie Nirma had thought.
“I am Calu, Yakka of the Mind.” The man reached out his hand. A red tendril of mehendhi curled around his wrist and dove underneath his long tunic sleeve. “Do not worry, we are not all as sour as Reeri.”
Anula’s eyes flashed. “Where’s Viran?”
“Still in there.” The Yakka Calu tapped on his chest. “Akin to asleep, until I am…finished.”
Relief settled like a balm. Her bargain hadn’t killed an innocent. That, at least, the Blood Yakka had been truthful about.
Calu pointed to the woman next to him, Viran’s wife. But from the mehendhi on her hands, Anula knew she was held captive, too. “Let me introduce you to Kama, leader of the Ladies of Love, patron of lust.”
Long legs and a willowy frame set off large round eyes, giving her the look of innocence. A contradiction to every story of old, every vicious depiction of the Yakka. Kama smiled, her gaze penetrating. “You have blood on your lip, just there. What does it taste like?”
Anula smashed a hand across her face, rubbed at her lips until they were raw. Her stomach curdled.
“Pay no mind to what she says. Manners evade her,” Calu said, now pointing to the boy scowling behind him. “This is Sohon. His bark is worse than his bite.”
