Page 44 of Her Soul for a Crown

“I told you, we can feel a bargain!” Premala snapped. She stepped back. “The guruthuma, as soon as she met you, she knew. You didn’t just make a bargain. You brought them back. Who are they? How did you convince them to leave?”

Anula’s stomach plummeted. “You know about the tether?”

“We can sense them! The guruthuma has ways.” Premala’s voice pitched. “I told her you were different, that you were taken in by their lies. I convinced her to let you—”

Premala clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Let me what?”

Premala shook her head.

The blood oath and denouncement, the rules of mercy and worthiness… “What happens to the bargainers the guruthuma finds, the ones who didn’t seek you out?”

A squeak slid through Premala’s fingers.

“How does the guruthuma save them? Or does she save the people from their influence instead?”

Premala shook.

“The Yakkas may not be killed in a tovil, yet, but the bargainers are, aren’t they? You convinced the guruthuma that I was different. That I deserved to survive. Cursed Heavens, Premala, how can you not see the Kattadiya are eviler than the Yakkas?”

“They’re lying to you!” Premala broke. “What did they promise? The throne? The whole kingdom’s been talking about how you’ve managed to stayed married to not two but three usurpers.

For prayer’s sake, that’s it. It’s the raja, isn’t it?

He’s been possessed—that’s how he usurped so quietly.

Did they kill the others? Did you know?”

“I—I—” Anula tripped over the panic in Premala’s voice and the question it seemed to ask: whether she was a threat to the kingdom.

“Why? It’s bad enough you made a bargain for the throne, but you brought them back! Do you have any idea what our ancestors went through to be rid of them? Don’t you know how much pain they caused? Don’t you care?”

“Yes!” Anula snapped. “If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have kept your secret. I wouldn’t have checked on the kitchen maids. I wouldn’t have dedicated my whole life to get here.”

Premala startled. “A-apologies, my—of course you care. It’s just…look what you’ve done.”

Anula clenched her jaw.

“For prayer’s sake, you can’t walk away from the Kattadiya. Not now,” Premala whispered. “Not even as raejina consort. You took the blood oath, Anula. If you try to leave now, they will denounce you and perform the tovil ceremony anyway.” Premala wrung her hands. “Please. They will kill you.”

“Let them try,” Anula said, running a trembling hand through her hair, as if she could shake off the guilt nipping at her neck. “I didn’t take a blood oath.”

“Yes, you did. You gave your blood to Guruthuma Thilini that first day. That was the oath. You aligned yourself to the Kattadiya.”

Anula’s breath caught between her lungs and throat.

The first time she had touched the guruthuma’s portrait had been at Premala’s request. To prove she wasn’t aligned with the Yakkas.

There had been a prick, small and quick, like a mosquito bite.

And though she’d touched Guruthuma Thilini’s hand plenty of times since, she wasn’t pricked again.

“Haven’t you noticed the compulsion?” Premala asked.

“Outside these caves, you cannot speak the name of the Kattadiya. The oath compels you to keep us secret. And when Guruthuma Hashini deems it’s the right time, she will use the oath to call you here, and either you comply and become pure in the safety of her power, or you resist and are purged from our blessing.

Then you’ll be just another bargainer, your life taken along with the Yakkas during the tovil.

There is no leaving, Anula, not alive. So please, do as I say.

Stay far away from the Yakkas, give me a few more days, and let me cast them from you. Let me end them, permanently.”

For once, the girl didn’t stammer, didn’t falter. But Anula felt as though she’d tripped over a mountainside, and the fall was long.

“Have a good time with your not-paramour?” Kama asked as Anula emerged from the brush.

“I was with the—” Her voice cut off. The air not caught but stifled. Ripped from her mouth and carried away.

Cursed Yak—cursed cosmos . Premala had been right: She couldn’t speak their name. Which meant she couldn’t explain, couldn’t warn or protect the Yakkas. Powerless, once again.

Anula scoffed. “I don’t need a paramour to have a good time with myself.”

Bithul narrowed suspicious eyes. Could he see the panic beneath her veins?

The ocean rising over her head? She should have taken the first meeting with Nuwan as a sign, turned back and told Auntie Nirma that she wasn’t ready, that it wasn’t the right time.

Perhaps she would still be alive. Perhaps they would’ve honed the plan, made contingencies, uncovered more truths.

Storm clouds darkened the gardens. If Auntie Nirma had been wrong about who’d ultimately burned Eppawala and their family, did that mean her plans for justice were wrong, too? Had Anula chosen the right path?

Look away.

She clenched a fist. Of course she had. Murder was murder, both on Earth and in the Heavens.

Bringing justice to the guilty might have been Anula’s first and only good decision so far, but it wouldn’t be her last. She would find the Bone Blade and kill Wessamony, before the Kattadiya struck. She’d free Reeri and the Yakkas.

Then she’d free Anuradhapura.