Page 55 of Her Soul for a Crown
Death—this was what death felt like. But she wasn’t supposed to die.
“Help.” A voice rasped.
Anula blinked back the night. That voice wasn’t hers.
“H-help,” therealChora Naga whispered again, frail and fearful.
The Blood Yakka had told the truth: All this time, he’d beenalive in there. And now he was before her, choking on her poison. She still had the remedy clutched in a flayed hand, but he’d stolen Auntie Nirma from her; he didn’t deserve to survive. As if hearing her judgment, he convulsed and fell silent, the light seeping from his eyes.
Anula slumped over, pain thrusting her beyond the black curtain of consciousness, blood dripping from the rivers that were once her arms. An unnatural cold caressed her cheek, she sighed into it, knowing at least one of her family’s murderers had been dealt justice by her own hand, and let the darkness take her.
***
“Anula!” Bithul’s broad chest swam into view. “She spoke the truth, you are Yakkas.”
“I believe the more important detail here is that she is dying.” Kama coughed blood on his shoulder.
“No.” A new face surfaced. The man jostled Anula into his arms. She winced, but only once, for the pain disappeared as he touched her.
The man let out a shaky breath. “Please,neverdo that again.”
Anula blinked up at saffron eyes, down to her arms stitching back together in nets and florals, an elephant in one palm, a lion in the other. The tether jerked between them.
“How?” she croaked, his hands cradling her like a blanket on a cool night. Her body sank into him.
“A bargain is sacred, Anula.” The Blood Yakka spoke from newly stolen lips. “You can only break it when you die.”
A sickness twisted her stomach. “I wasn’t trying to break it.”
The Blood Yakka’s thumb traced a slow circle on her wrist. Worry mellowed the bite in his saffron eyes, and she saw it: his thoughts. Thoughts about her and the pool of blood he foundher in, the lifelessness of her body, and the jolt of fear, cold and clawing, that he’d lost her, that he’d brought death to her doorstep.
But…he only cared about finding the relic, didn’t he?
Calu scoffed, rubbing his neck tenderly. “It definitely looked as though you were trying to break it.”
“I didn’t mean for the poison to kill, or whatever it did.”
The Blood Yakka’s arms stiffened around her, concern crumbling. “Yet you meant to use it.”
“I was going to give you the antidote.” Her eyes flicked to his hands. A desire rose for the softness to return.
“Yet you did not.”
“Because it happened faster than I expected.” Anula ignored her ridiculous want, struggled out of his embrace and made a shaky stand.
“If that is true, then be more careful with your poisons.” Sohon wiped sweat from his brow, his hand quivering. “Death does not feel good.”
“You felt that?”
“What you feel, we feel.”
Anula regarded them, shaken but none the worse for wear. “I don’t seeyourblood on the floor.”
“It is an echo,” the Blood Yakka said, his new body lean with muscle, face narrow and tight. “Painful nonetheless.”
An echo. Anula scoffed. The tether demanded proximity, publicized her nightmares, and ripped her skin limb from limb. Yet they complained of an echo.
“Oh, poor Yakka,” she said. “Did it hurt?”
