Reaper of Souls

by Rena Barron

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” Sukar admits, mistaking my shudder for something else. “I’m a rotten friend.”

  I let out a frustrated breath. “Considering that I almost killed you once and you almost died a second time on my watch, you get to be rotten once.”

  “I am starting to sense a pattern,” Sukar says, his voice laced with his usual air of cynicism. “Whenever you’re around, I’m fated to die.”

  If Essnai were here, she’d thump him on his head, and it would be like old times, the three of us together. But I’m not so sure I want things to go back to the way they were between us. I don’t know what I want exactly. I brace myself as I call my magic. It’s still sluggish under my skin, but I remember what the Aatiri woman said. Grow a scab over them, and they’re easier to bear. I resist the impulse to breathe deeply, which only makes the pain worse. The magic inside me rushes to the craven bone, but it stalls and peters out.

  “It’s not working,” I say, frustrated. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “I could always try digging out the bone with a knife?” Sukar raises an eyebrow. “At least I won’t leave you with some ugly tattoos.”

  “You really have the nerve to crack a joke right now?” I wince as more pain blossoms around my wounds. “You are absolutely the worst friend there ever was and ever will be.”

  He cradles me a little tighter against his chest. “And you’re truly the most stubborn girl I have ever known.”

  He’s trying to cheer me up, but I can feel his heart racing. He’s scared, too. I need his humor right now. I cling to it.

  I take another deep breath and try again, nudging the magic closer to the shards. “If I survive this gods’ awful mess, I’ll conjure up some magic to beautify your new tattoos. How about that?”

  “That would be marvelous,” Sukar says.

  When the magic finally reaches the shards, I close my eyes, exhausted again. Now, the hard part. The Aatiri woman had said to grow a scab over the shards, but what if I surround them with magic? That would lessen their effect on me and the damage they can inflict on the way out. I wrap the shards in a shield of magic, then begin the laborious task of moving them. I bite back a scream as the magic tucks the shards through my flesh. The process goes well into the night. Soon the first shard emerges from my thigh covered in gore. “One down, three to go.”

  When I’m done with all four, sweat streaks my brow and I can’t keep my eyes open. Sukar asks me questions, but when I try to answer, my words jumble in my head. He lifts me into his arms, and I curl against him as he takes me to a cot on the other side of the tent. “Rest now,” he says, his voice choked up again. “You need to heal.”

  I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. I don’t know how long I drift in and out of consciousness. Sometimes Sukar is by my side when I wake, and sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes it’s night, sometimes it’s day. He presses a cup to my lips, and the water tastes sweet. He talks as he washes my skin with a warm rag, but his voice is too distant to make out his words.

  I wake again in the middle of the night, and I’m so cold that my teeth chatter. Sukar sleeps balled up in the corner of the tent, far enough away that two people could fit between us. “Sukar.” His name comes out as a croak, and I shouldn’t, but I ask, “Can you hold me again?”

  I hear his sharp inhale at my words, his trepidation, his need. He doesn’t answer as he crosses the tent and pulls me into his arms. His skin is warm against my own, and I sink into him.

  “How long have you known?” I ask, hoping he’ll know the real question. How long have you felt this way about me?

  “I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you,” he admits.

  I am so overwhelmed by the emotions that flood into my body that for a moment I can’t bring myself to speak. I turn over and lie on my back. I look into his eyes, shining brown gems in the night, and I know it’s a mistake I can’t take back. I reach up and stroke his cheek, and it’s smooth in the way Rudjek’s never quite is. He turns his face, and his lips tremble against my palm. Gods. They’re full and warm and so soft.

  “You deserve better, Sukar,” I whisper, my words heavy now as his lips light a fire inside me. You deserve better than to be the second choice of some girl with a treacherous heart.

  “Yet I still want you,” he says, his eyes hooded with desire.

  This is a line we can’t uncross. It’s not like when we were children at the Temple when he kissed Essnai and me. That had been pretend, make-believe. This is very real. “Kiss me,” I breathe, and he smiles, the moonlight dancing in his eyes. His lips draw close to mine.

  I can’t explain it. It’s irrational. But, gods, I want this so bad. I moan as his lips graze my earlobe. His teeth send a shiver of pleasure through me. I remember another time and sharp teeth that teased and tantalized. Daho’s teeth. And a time underneath Heka’s Temple with Rudjek’s mouth hot against mine.

  “Arrah.” Sukar sighs. “I can’t, not like this.” He pulls away from me, looking as flustered and overwhelmed and hungry as I feel. I sag against the cot. I’m breathing hard, too, from his embrace and because it’s left me exhausted. Sukar brushes his hand across my cheek, hope filling his eyes. “Rest.”

  His word is a subtle command, and I’m so very tired. I close my eyes, and this time, I dream about him.

  Part V

  The Unnamed Orisha: Dimma

  I become obsessed with clocks. Tracking time is easy enough on my own, though I could never grasp its importance. Clocks add a sense of urgency, the way their song hums of some unknowable future. If I’m to believe them, I will soon see the end of my life.

  My brethren have the experience of living before Iben crawled from the womb and fathered time. They’ve shaped the universe out of the raw material the Supreme Cataclysm gifted them. They’ve made children, mourned their deaths, and made new ones. They’ve hidden in the labyrinth of our creator when they needed a reprieve from eternity. I want none of those things. I wish only to see my child born and thrive in his own right.

  Daho and I invite my brethren to our summer palace in Zöran to, what he calls “talk some sense into them.” I send a message through the threads that bind everyone and everything, even the likes of my kind. It’s difficult to say how many of my brethren dwell in the universe, for some hide themselves well.

  The palace sits at the top of a mountain in Zöran, bathed in sunlight year-round. As my brethren arrive, the mountain shakes, rocks crack and splinter, and the last of the winter snow melts. They sweep into the palace—cloaked in shadows, bathed in warm light, swathed in flames, awash in rain. They are cinder and stardust and wind—some corporeal, some not. They cling to windowsills, perch on the rooftops, hang from the walls, and sit on divans. I can taste their natures, sweet and bitter, and strange. Many do not speak. They only listen.

  Fram, Iben, and Kiva are the oldest in attendance, and they present themselves in the salon in mortal vessels. I do not know Kiva, but I like him. His appearance reflects his nature. He is a child with wild green curls, brown skin, and golden eyes, who plops down on the floor and plays with his toys. Fram stands in front of the window, staring out at Zöran, their twin bodies, light and dark. Iben, who sits opposite Daho and me on a divan, is a shadow that flickers in and out of our reality. I am disappointed that Re’Mec and Koré did not come, but I expected as much.

  Daho hasn’t left my side since my brethren started to arrive. He squeezes my hand—and his fear is a flame that wraps his soul in a blanket of doubts. “Thank you for coming,” he says after clearing his throat. His words crack on the edges, making him sound so very young. “Dimma and I—”

  One of my brethren hisses, and every beast and fowl on the mountain descends into chaos.

  “And I thought that I was one to act like a child,” Kiva says in a voice as bright and sweet as dove bells. He doesn’t look up from the blocks that he’s stacking one by one to build a tower.

  The hissing drops into a chastened growl, the
n abruptly stops, and the animals grow calm.

  Daho tries again. This time agitation cuts through his words. “We hope that you’ll see reason. Our son is a gift, a blessing. How could he not be? Dimma couldn’t be with child if the Supreme Cataclysm did not want it.”

  “A gift,” one mocks.

  “A blessing,” taunts another.

  “Silence,” Fram says, their voices at once a sharp blade and a warm embrace. “Our sister and our new brother requested our audience with great respect, and we must show the same.”

  Daho collects his thoughts. “How could you ask us to give up our child?”

  Darkness falls over the salon, and desperation crawls across my vessel. For one brief, horrifying moment, Fram’s faces lose their balance of light and dark. They become stark white with hollow black eyes. “You wouldn’t be the first to give up a child,” they say, as their balance returns. “I know that better than most.”

  Iben pages through a tome with a tan leather binding that Daho left on the divan. He looks up when he feels my gaze upon him and smiles. “I’m only here to bear witness. I will not take sides in our family squabbles.”

  “It’s not enough to bear witness.” I feel my child form his first impressions of the world through me. It should be a joyous moment, but the tension in the salon mars it. His thoughts are a tangle of emotions—confusion, curiosity, and wonder. Several of my brethren gasp when they sense the child’s newfound awareness. Some hiss, some recoil.

  “What is it?” someone asks, their voice a low growl. “It is not like us.”

  “It is our end,” answers another.

  “We’re here because you deserve to know why we sided with Re’Mec and Koré.” Fram’s voices cut through the chatter. “Your child draws strength from the Supreme Cataclysm. We do as well, but unlike ours, his relationship is parasitic. The universe has become unbalanced and unstable because of him.”

  “They mean to say that the universe is dying,” Kiva explains in his high-pitched voice. “In time, the Supreme Cataclysm is going to eat us all, including your little one.”

  I laugh, the sound a bitter shriek. Iben looks up from the book. Kiva’s tower of blocks collapses. Fram raises their eyebrows. Daho and the rest of my brethren go still. “You’re afraid.” I look at each of them in turn, the corporeal and the incorporeal. “You’ve lived so long that you fear death. You’re willing to sacrifice my child so you don’t have to face your end.”

  “We are eternal!” someone hisses.

  “You’d like to think you are.” Malice curls around my words. “But you don’t know for sure.”

  “Nor do we intend to find out,” replies the hissing voice.

  At that, my brethren abandon me. One by one, they retreat from the salon, the palace, and the mountain. Daho pulls me into his arms, his wings trembling at his back. “It’s going to be okay, my love,” he whispers, his lips brushing my forehead. “We’ll fight them.”

  I nestle my head against his chest. Our path will only lead to suffering and our end. I do not need Iben’s gift of traveling the threads of time to know this.

  The doors to the salon burst open, and four men storm into the room, drenched in blood and sweat. Yacara, a general in Daho’s newly raised army, leads them. They smell of death and desperation and despair.

  “Your Highnesses,” Yacara breathes, stepping forward. “The endoyans attacked Jiiek.”

  Daho frowns, not believing what the man is saying. “Attacked? What do you mean? We’ve been at peace with our familiars for generations upon generations.”

  “They’ve killed millions,” Yacara explains through sobs, ignoring Daho’s question. “We barely got through the gate to warn you.”

  “We’ve only been away a month,” Daho says, still in shock. “How could this happen?”

  “It’s the abomination’s fault.” One of the soldiers points a shaky finger at me. “It was one of her kind that led the endoyans.”

  Yacara slaps the man hard. “Don’t speak of our queen in that tone ever again—she is not her brother’s keeper.”

  The soldier lowers his gaze and whispers an insincere apology.

  I cradle my belly, realizing the truth of it. This was the reason Re’Mec and Koré hadn’t come today. My brethren attacked the demon people as a warning to me.

  Thirty-Three

  Arrah

  Sukar holds me through the long night like I’m some fragile thing on the verge of breaking. In truth, I’ve already shattered more times than I can remember. I’ll never be the girl I was before, now that I know about Dimma. Most of her mortal lives, after her first death and before me, are vague impressions. They remind me of sitting in the assembly, listening to the mundane grievances of the rich. They don’t hold much weight or substance and blend in as background noise.

  While Sukar sleeps, his breathing steady, my treacherous heart betrays me. When I let myself think of Daho, he’s no longer the Demon King. He’s the boy who told me stories, the boy who made me a cake slathered in buttercream. The boy who explored countless worlds at my side. The boy who, after a century, still woke in a cold sweat from nightmares about his parents’ death. He’s not a monster in Dimma’s memories, but I can’t forget that he became one after I—after she died. I dig my nails into my palms, anger and frustration turning my blood cold. I hate that one day, when I die, I will only be another faint memory that pales in the shadow of her life with Daho.

  I fall asleep with him on my mind, but it’s Rudjek in my dreams. He peers at me from behind a curtain of velvety lashes, his obsidian eyes curious. “You didn’t know that Sukar was in love with you?”

  We’re sitting beside the Serpent River with our feet digging in the mud. Crocodiles sunbathe along the banks, watching our every move. A cloud drifts across the sky, blocking out the brunt of the sunlight, but it’s still another blazing hot day in Tamar. Our only reprieve is the breeze rustling through the grass that keeps the mosquitoes away.

  “How could I know?” I say, annoyed to no end at how unaffected he is about the whole thing. It’s like he doesn’t care. “Sukar flirts with everyone.”

  “You did look quite comfy with him in the garden at my Coming of Age Ceremony,” Rudjek reminds me nonchalantly. “I should’ve realized then that something was going on between the two of you.”

  “How could you even think that?” I snap, glaring at him.

  “Oh, don’t give me that look.” Rudjek laughs, and it’s a deep rumble in his chest. “I’m not the one kissing other people.” He narrows his eyes. “How far would you’ve gone if he hadn’t stopped?”

  I cross my arms, my jaw set. Two can play his game. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business. We can’t touch without one of us almost dying.”

  “I can’t change what I am, Arrah.” Rudjek turns back to stare at the river. His face is perfect in profile, the curve of his cheek, the tilt of his chin, the smooth skin of his throat, soft as gossamer. “I can’t be anything but what I am.”

  His words shatter the illusion that any of this is real. I can’t be anything but what I am. He would never be so dismissive about me almost kissing Sukar. That’s only wishful thinking.

  When I open my eyes, weak sunlight streams into the tent. I’m alone on the cot, and for one brief, blissful moment, I convince myself that it was all a dream. Almost kissing Sukar, him holding me, his body arched against mine. I haven’t betrayed Rudjek. But as soon as the sleep fog lifts from my mind, I know the truth. I did almost kiss Sukar—I ached to feel his mouth against my own. I ached for more. His scent clings to my skin. I breathe him in, steeling myself for the aftermath of what I’ve done.

  I’m worried about what other nasty surprises my sister has left in her wake, Tyrek being the first. I want to believe that the Demon King is still in his prison, but if he is, then I am back to the same predicament: keep my magic and risk letting him manipulate me, or let go of the chieftains’ kas. I can’t consider the latter, not with the tribal people still somewhere
beyond the crossroads and the threat from these new, more powerful demons from Ilora. The chieftains gave up their lives so I could stop Efiya and protect the tribes, and I intend to finish what I started.

  My feelings for Daho have become complicated. I haven’t heard his voice since the night the demons attacked, but I still sense his presence. It’s stronger now that the craven bone is away from me. I don’t believe he would’ve let Tyrek hurt me if he could stop him. As for why he hasn’t spoken to me again, that should be obvious. When I thought he was Tyrek, I had every intention of killing him. I have complicated feelings about that, too.

  “You’re awake,” Sukar says from somewhere in the tent, his voice a familiar lullaby.

  I want to pretend that I’m still sleeping so I don’t have to face him so soon, but it’s too late for that now. My head spins as I sit up, and I squint against the morning light. Sukar perches on his haunches in front of a fire, lit where Tyrek had lain dead. The blood and his body are gone. “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “Four days,” Sukar says.

  “Four days?” I struggle to get up. My legs don’t cooperate.

  “Take it easy,” Sukar says, abandoning the fire.

  He helps me to my feet, and I sway before collapsing into his arms. His palm is warm against the small of my back as his gaze travels to my lips. All I have to do is lean in and let it happen, take the dangling fruit he’s offering. Instead, I force strength into my legs and pull away from him. “Have you found Essnai yet?”

  “No.” Sukar grimaces. “We’ve gone out twice already and no sign of her.”

  “We?” I ask, my eyes going wide.

  “Me and some of the tribespeople.” Sukar runs his hand across his head. “The ones strong enough. Most are still too weak.”