Page 21 of Her Soul for a Crown

A sharp wind tangled Reeri’s hair.

“Are you ready, my raja?” Prophet Ayaan stood by a painting in the throne room.

Reeri shuttered the window against the cloudless sky. He need not watch for the Maha season monsoon to arrive, counting down his days. He had done enough of that—two centuries worth. Time enough to prepare. “How do we get in?”

“I thought you were here to tell us of the Bone Blade.” Anula scowled from her perch on the consort’s dais. If looks had the potency to kill, she would have had no reason to study poisoncraft.

Prophet Ayaan bowed deeply, the pendant of gold and rubies kissing the floor.

“I am, my raejina consort. There are many stories about the relics and why they were hidden. The Divinities, in their great knowledge of man’s proclivity for gossip, left us with the truth. ” He waved a hand at the painting.

A small landscape revealed a hilly region with a narrow path winding around three huts. Storms gathered around each, darkening to rage over the last. Reeri frowned. The blessed gifts were not meant for Yakkas to experience, and after last night, he had no desire to witness them again.

Caress her.

The thought slithered up his back, along with the image of a water lily robe slipping off Anula’s bare shoulders. Reeri shook it away.

“If you’re going to use a blessed gift, why not one of the fortune-telling statues?” Anula asked. “Can’t you ask them where you will find the Bone Blade?”

“The gifts only speak what they see,” the prophet explained. “Answering specific questions is outside their bounds. The Divinities were gracious with their love, but they did not hand over the keys to the cosmos.”

Despite Reeri’s aversion, he knew he must do as the prophet said, else why save him from choking to death on Anula’s poison? “You do not have to go, only be sure to stay within the room.”

Anula jumped from her seat. “If you’re going, I’m going.”

“There is no need.”

She cut her eyes to the prophet. “And leave my future in the hands of two men? I think not.”

“As you wish,” he sighed.

Dipping his head, the prophet gestured for them to follow. “The gift is like a door. You need only to push and walk through.”

The canvas stretched beneath the prophet’s hand, swallowing it whole. He lifted his foot and stepped inside, disappearing without a sound. It was as if he had climbed into a cupboard. Nothing more, nothing less.

Anula let out a breath, a worry line etched betwixt her brows. Reeri’s fingers twitched as he repressed a desire to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder, to whisper encouragement. It was daft. She was an aspirational murderer. And a willing soul to be sacrificed.

Still, the desire hovered, pulsed.

Reeri lifted a hand to help her, but Anula grimaced and pushed her way into the painting. Rejection stung, sharp as a mosquito bite.

With clenched teeth, he placed his hand on the bumpy ridge of the hills and went after the blade. The fabric stretched thin as he pushed, suctioning his hand, his arm, his elbow. It was all he could do not to fall forward as he stepped through—and landed outdoors.

The painting was alive and moving, as if he had merely walked out the palace gates. Noise from the huts drifted on the cutting wind. He braced his shoulders as gray clouds roiled up the path. At least here, there were no lewd rajas and distasteful prompting.

“It doesn’t feel like paint,” Anula said, bent at a bush, rubbing a leaf betwixt her fingers.

“Why would it?” Prophet Ayaan asked. “These are blessed gifts, as real as our own world. It is merely a shortcoming of our minds that prevents us from understanding all that the cosmos is capable of.”

A scream swirled on the breeze, chilling the skin along Reeri’s arm. It reminded him that he did not belong here. Not in this body and not in this painting. Whatever truth lay here, he wanted it to be known swiftly so he could leave. “The Bone Blade.”

“Yes, come.” Prophet Ayaan started down the path, sarong billowing.

“Long ago, before the Divinities created the blessed gifts and the palace to hold the in-between, they created the relics. Each Divinity had an object imbued with their power and used it to answer prayers. They were a connection made solely between Divinity and humanity. The relics ranged in form: intricate staffs, clothing, blades, and more.”

The sun peeked through thick clouds, casting the first hut in jagged light. Prophet Ayaan beckoned them to cluster at the window. Inside, a woman slumbered. Iridescent dust glittered across her chest as a breastplate of pure gold formed, sinking into her skin.

“The great Divinity Motherhood gave her relic to those who prayed for progeny. As the women fell pregnant, they’d dream of Motherhood fitting it upon them, feeling the weight upon their chest until the child was born, safe and healthy.”

Prophet Ayaan continued down the path. “Most relics brought peace to households and healing to the sick. It was no wonder people sought and prayed for them. But there was one that our ancestors became infatuated with.”

Rain pattered on the second hut, which brimmed with the whispers of a family. The crowd opened, revealing an old man on a sickbed, pale as the dead. All gathered bowed their heads. “We call on you, Fate, gracious Divinity. Save our father. Give him life to see another grandchild.”

A bright light flashed above. The sound of a blade slashed the air, and the old man sucked in a deep breath. All gaped as their father woke, cheeks rosy with life.

“A simple bone blade,” the prophet said, “imbued with Fate’s power, able to cut off the Hand of Death.”

“And once the taste of immortality was on their lips, they thirsted for nothing more,” Anula murmured, repeating the words of the stories of old. A flicker of something crossed her gaze, too fast for Reeri to place.

Prophet Ayaan gave them a bland smile. “Who wouldn’t want to live forever with their loved ones?”

A memory of the Yakkas, happy and free, twisted Reeri’s shadow.

Thunder rumbled over the third and final hut.

Lightning burst with torrential rain as they rushed to the bottom of the hill.

Mud streamed around dead plants and half decayed carcasses.

They rounded the corner to a cacophony from within, the door flying open and expelling a large man.

Without second thought, Reeri reached for Anula and spun her into him, away from the man tripping across their path and falling face-first into the mess.

“Blessed Yakka Calu,” a man shouted from the doorframe, “hear my prayer. Strike my neighbor with madness. I offer my last kahapana.”

Anula blinked up from Reeri’s chest, her eyes wide at his tight hold around her waist. Soft curves and ample bosom crushed against him. Heat flared in his cheeks and beneath his sarong.

“Fool!” the man in the mud yelled. “I have already been granted the Bone Blade!”

A fist flew, and out tumbled another three men, screaming threats, arguing over the blade, over immortality, jostling Reeri and Anula to the side. The movement caught all their notice, and as one they turned on him.

“You dare try to steal the blade?” a man charged.

“We must go,” Prophet Ayaan said, creating a seam of light by pulling at the air.

Anula pushed out of Reeri’s grasp. An empty echo rippled down his arms as she leaped through. He followed, and as they fell back into the throne room, the prophet stitched the seam up in one blink.

“Cursed Yakkas, what was that?” Anula spat.

“All inside a painting are held in the emotional state in which they were created,” Prophet Ayaan said, straightening his pendant before looking over the raja. “Truly, I apologize for their behavior. I did not think they would attack. Though rare, it does happen.”

Reeri shook off the tension, whether from nearly catching his first punch or the ghost of Anula in his arms, he dared not question. “Why show me this, then? Where is the blade hidden?”

The prophet shifted. “In all their great wisdom, the Divinities saw the hold the Bone Blade had on the people and decided it was not worth the corruption of souls. Fate forsook it, and as one, the Divinities used their powers to hide it, never to be used again. To ensure history did not repeat itself, the Divinities declared, ‘All relics must be cast down to Earth, where all eyes are on them but none can see them.’”

The words sent a ripple through Reeri’s shadow.

“Soon after came the blessed gifts to remind us that though the relics be gone, their love was not. But not all were satisfied with that. Seekers of the relics emerged. If you believe the rumors, some have been successful. But those relics found and sold have not been proven real. They could merely be blessed gifts stolen from the palace or, even more dangerously, falsified artifacts imbued with a bargain from the Second Heavens. Many have died in their search for a relic or in use of a cursed imitation. So, you see, my raja, I do not want for you to find yourself on a similar path.”

Reeri nodded, mind working the Divinities’ riddle. “Your worry is heeded, yet unnecessary, Prophet. I will not fall. Until the Maha Equinox, your only duty is to meditate on the First Heavens and ask for a location.”

Prophet Ayaan frowned. “But there is much to do before the Festival of the Cosmos, my raja.”

“I do not doubt your ability. Find the location, and then you may focus on the festival.”

The prophet bowed deeply and took his leave.

Anula crossed her arms. “Now what?”

The prophet’s story was a fine one, yet filled with half-truths.

Reeri remembered watching from the aether.

Indeed, humanity’s thirst for immortality was unquenchable, yet each time Fate saved a life, they cut the hand of their twin, Destiny.

Insulted and demeaned, Destiny confronted Fate.

The siblings quarreled endlessly. Unwilling to yield, Fate finally turned the relic on Destiny—not in the earthly realm, but in the Heavens.