Page 62 of Her Soul for a Crown

The netting and vines tore first.

Small heaps of powdered skin stacked at Reeri’s feet, sizzling to nothing as blood drowned them.

It was not until the elephant detached inch by inch that Reeri’s heart began to stutter.

When the last of his marking fell, their bargain would be null, making way for Wessamony to call upon his own: the one where the Yakkas met their final end and Reeri became their torturer.

And if Wessamony had the slightest hint that Anula carried the Bone Blade—if he heard it, if he saw—a crown would not be in her future. There would be no future at all.

Reeri lifted his head. “ Please .”

Yet before the guruthuma or any of the Kattadiya could answer, the door to the amphitheater banged open.

Anula rushed in, soot-stained and a challenge forever set in her eyes. Without pause, she took the stairs two at a time, elbowing Kattadiya on her way. “Reeri!”

His name on her lips was a downpour in the midst of a drought.

She was alive. And she had come for him. Shadow and body yearned to reach out of the pit, to brush her cheeks, to cup her face, to know that she was whole and hale and safe.

Yet she was not. Not while she was with him. “No,” he murmured beneath broken flesh. “Go.”

Anula ignored him, anger setting her jaw. “Cursed blessings, are you all right?”

“Restrain her!” the guruthuma commanded.

The Kattadiya did not move from the bottom tiers.

More bodies had filled the amphitheater, men, women, and children, half-terrified and staring at the blood coating Reeri’s body.

Their own clothes were marred and torn, as if they had only just escaped torment.

Yet three faces were missing from the crowd.

Reeri swallowed. Mayhap they did not make it, or they were separated, or—

Kama flitted in first, Sohon right behind, and Calu brought up the rear. Relief drenched Reeri. Premala had listened. She believed. But as quickly as his heart had lifted, it sank. All whom he loved were in one room, easy targets for his Lord.

“Restrain her!” the guruthuma repeated, pointing to Anula a mere four stairs away. “She is dangerous!”

Not a muscle moved.

“What is she doing to him?” Bithul asked.

“Tearing apart his soul,” Anula seethed.

“I am not the evil one here,” the guruthuma snapped. “Kattadiya, restrain her! Get the Bone Blade! Do your duty!”

That whipped a few back in line. They reached for Anula—

“No!” a man shouted. “She saved us. She is no danger.”

“It matters not what she has done now,” the guruthuma growled. “She bargained with the Yakkas and brought them all back!”

The room caught its breath.

“Her rajas have been false. They have been mere masks worn by the Blood Yakka, bent on watching Anuradhapura bleed to death. They let in the Polonnaruwa Kingdom—they let you be assaulted!”

“No!” Premala shouted.

But it was too late.

Betwixt the pit now soaked with the dying tether and the enemy kingdom’s forces outside, the people of Anuradhapura saw only death. The stampede began. The guruthuma shouted for the relic, for Anula, but her voice was drowned by screaming.

Reeri’s screaming.

The bindings on his hands caught fire and sizzled into ash.

Boom.

It was not a drum nor war cry that shook the earth and rattled loose the stones. It was Heavenly thunder.

“Reeri.” A voice roared.

The elephant on Reeri’s chest shivered, the last vestiges of the tether holding on tight. He lifted his gaze not into the face of the guruthuma, but into the face of his first tormentor.

His voice shook. “Yes, my Lord?”