Page 17 of Her Soul for a Crown

“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 her husband and sitting on her throne.

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 Mahakuli Mahatissa, 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.”

The boy looked lost between child and adult. He rolled his eyes. “This is a waste of time. Let us get on with it.”

A finger of dread slid down Anula’s back. What had she done? The keys to the kingdom were no longer in the hands of an evil man, but in the clutches of four deadly beings. Ones who ignored faithful prayers and stole the faces of men.

Anula clenched a fist, felt the nails dig into her palm, imagined them ripping apart the shadow ink.

Auntie Nirma had believed her ready, chosen.

Anula’s lungs seized. No, she wouldn’t succumb to tears.

Auntie Nirma had raised her better, stronger, and whether or not the Heavens had set her path, Auntie Nirma had paved it.

Anula wouldn’t let her life be for nothing.

She wouldn’t let her parents’ deaths go unanswered.

“—we could all—”

“Where is my crown?” Anula spun on the Blood Yakka. She dug her nails deeper.

The Yakka, in the usurper’s skin, leveled a guarded gaze. “I have yet to complete my business here.”

“I tethered you—that was the bargain.”

“The terms are for our business to be completed, then you will have your crown.”

A nail broke flesh. “How long?”

“With luck, no time at all.”

“And without it?”

The Blood Yakka glanced over her shoulder. “Mayhap you would like to retire to the bedchamber. It has been a long day for you.”

“Oh, has it?” She laughed hard, swatted away the last image of Auntie Nirma and her cold eyes, as though it were a fly and not a jagged stone burrowing into what remained of her heart.

“I hadn’t noticed. Yes, why don’t we retire to the bedroom, where you can make me forget my miseries with the gentle touches of a husband.

Or do you prefer it rougher? More deception and dominance.

Perhaps that’s your business here, to get off on—”

Calu snorted. “Apologies. If I had a kahapana for every sexual thought Reeri had, I would be poorer than a fisherman with no net.”

Anula grimaced. “How comforting.”

A vein in the Blood Yakka’s forehead throbbed. “I only meant—”

“You made a fool of me once already,” she seethed. “It won’t happen again.”

Her sari flared as she strode out of the throne room, fingers finding her necklace.

Perhaps she should rid herself of them and be done with it.

But the title of raejina consort held even less power than a married raejina; it was barely a step above concubine.

If she were to kill him now, she couldn’t guarantee advancement to the throne, not with all her allies gone. Not without Auntie Nirma.

Cursed Yakkas , she was stuck.

Unless—

She didn’t need to wait until she was on the throne to do everything they had planned.

Though the right like-minded political allies probably wouldn’t be open to making connections now, she was in the palace; surely that was close enough for the next step.

If the Yakkas were busy, perhaps they wouldn’t stand in her way.

“Raejina Consort.” A guard bowed, halting her outside the grand doors. “I’m Tahan. I’ll be your personal guard. It’s an honor to serve you.”

The name worked through her memory. A young guard hailing from a village on the outskirts of the kingdom. His allegiance lay with the crown, but he found friends wherever he went. Eager to please and easily swayed, he was a potential threat, even a potential enemy.

“You.” Anula nodded to the guard stationed to the left of the doors. “What’s your name?”

The guard quirked a gray-streaked brow. “Do you speak to me, my raejina consort?”

“No, the man behind you.”

The guard cleared his throat, refusing to glance at the wall at his back. “My name is Bithul Perera, my raejina consort.”

Anula filtered through the lists. Bithul was a soldier turned guard. A servant to the kingdom. A true ally to the crown. He was also rumored to have been maimed. But the man before her was strong, arms as thick as her head.

“You will be my guard,” she commanded and turned to leave.

Tahan blocked her way. “My apologies, Raejina Consort, but he can’t be. He’s injured.”

“I see no injury.”

“It’s true.” Bithul moved swiftly, revealing scars scraping down his calf to his heel. “Polonnaruwa tried to take my legs.”

“What happened?”

“I took their hands instead.”

“If that doesn’t instill confidence, I don’t know what would.”

With a swish of her bloodstained sari, she glided past Tahan. Bithul kept pace a step behind her. A thud sounded every other step.

“I don’t believe the raja will agree to this, my raejina consort,” he said, deftly walking with an unusual cane. “You must be properly protected.”

“If you aren’t up to it, why are you stationed as a guard within the palace in the first place?” Anula led them past dozens of rooms, none of which brought them closer to the raja’s chambers. There were more important places to be.

Bithul squeezed the top of his cane. “Because I was once the best, destined to be commander. Now, though, my body isn’t suited for skirmishes in the jungle. By the Heavens’ grace, I’m still able to stand guard and serve my kingdom.”

Anula tucked the information away. “I didn’t choose you for that,” she said, halting at the end of a hall. “Your reputation says you’re loyal to Anuradhapura. All I ask is that you continue to be.”

He bowed. “Of course, my raejina consort.”

Anula turned to proceed with her plan when a flash of flame outside a window caught her eye.

She rushed toward it, pressing her nose close.

A throng of servants cleaned the inner city.

Chora Naga’s destruction was a clear blazing path from the palace door to the gate and out into Anuradhapura, where the people would be putting out fires, patching thatch roofs, tending to the injured.

Things they’d become practiced, even skilled at.

“How many did we lose?” she asked.

“Only a handful in the city, by early accounts. Most were our own guards,” he said gruffly.