Page 28 of Her Soul for a Crown

There were so many ways to stop a heart…and once again, this wasn’t supposed to be one of them.

Thrice-cursed Yakkas. The measurements in Uncle Manoj’s journal must have been wrong.

A face made of shadows rose from the dying Raja, dark and insubstantial.

Saffron eyes flashed. A bright pain pierced Anula’s chest, tearing through her rib cage as the shadow spun in circles.

The tether raged for it. A gust licked her hair into writhing tentacles, as the Blood Yakka’s shadow ripped from Chora Naga’s body and pitched over the terrace railing.

Anula’s arms flayed in dark strips, shredding onto the wind to chase the shadow. The room shivered at the edges. She screamed.

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,” the real Chora Naga whispered again, frail and fearful.

The Blood Yakka had told the truth: All this time, he’d been alive 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, never do 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 found her 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 see your blood 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?”

His thin nostrils flared. “Yes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Hurt flashed in his darkening eyes. The saffron smoldered to a deep brown, erasing the last sign of his shadow, as if he’d never been anyone else, as if he couldn’t be touched.

A finger of dread drifted down her spine.

Because he couldn’t be touched.

Not without her death first. She had no leverage, nothing to threaten him with, no way to force the bargain. She was trapped, the cage shrinking around her.

Anula placed a hand on her necklace, but where once she found security, now she found only the cold sting of failure.

Perhaps Auntie Nirma had been wrong. Perhaps she wasn’t ready.

She choked. What if she’d been wrong all along?

Anula had never believed the Heavens had saved her for this, yet she’d grasped Auntie Nirma’s belief in her ability.

But…

What if it was false hope?

What if she couldn’t do this?