Reaper of Souls

by Rena Barron

  I curl up on the ground, trembling, despite the warm breeze winding through the camp. My body aches from fighting and the sheer horror of everything that’s happened. I don’t want to sleep, but I weep until I wear myself out and fall into another dream.

  People whisper about me at Daho’s coronation. It’s easy to stay out of mortals’ chaotic minds, but it’s harder to practice selective hearing in a hall of so many people. Some of them intentionally come near me so that I don’t miss their words. I assure you, she’s just a plaything. Once he’s more mature, he’ll settle down with a girl of his own kind. She should at the very least comb her hair in a more acceptable way. Why didn’t he pick someone prettier? Is her name really death? These are comments from some of the demons, while the endoyans whisper other things. Who is she? What region is she from? Rumor is that she’s a farmer’s daughter. He’ll never marry her.

  Daho talks to the endoyan emissary who’d been friends with his father. Minister Godanya is much taller than him, with a beard that reaches his chest. His skin is pale with a press of black veins along his temples and forehead. “I’ve known your father since he was a boy,” the man boasts, his eyes warm. “He grew into a good leader and a fierce negotiator. I valued his friendship.” The man laughs at that. “It’s my hope that we’ll renew the strong bond between our people and restore our trade agreements.” There is doubt in his voice.

  “I’m looking forward to repairing the damage that Yaneki caused, Minister,” Daho says. His eyes find mine in the crowd, and there is a gentle tug between our souls. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

  The hem of Daho’s white robes sweeps the floor as he crosses the hall, and people move out of his way. Some clear their throats or call his name, but he ignores them. When he reaches me, he lets out a frustrated breath. His hands are shaking as he takes mine. “I have half a mind to strike down every person in this room who’s spoken ill of you.” His eyes brim with anger.

  I frown, knowing that I’m missing some social cue. “Should I be offended by their words?” I ask, unsure. “I’d dismissed them as petty and unimportant.”

  “They are petty and unimportant,” he says, “but I would address them if you don’t mind.”

  I shrug, though I am pleased all the same. “Address them, if you see the need.”

  Daho raises my hands to his lips and kisses them before leading us to the throne that sits high above the crowd. The room falls silent. “Hear me now, for I will only say this once in my lifetime. You may call me young, immature, or a fool.” He looks at each person who had uttered the words, and face after face blushes with shame. “But speak ill of Dimma, your soon-to-be queen, again, and you’ll find yourself at the end of my sword.”

  “Spoken like a true Daneer!” Minister Godanya shouts. The crowd erupts in applause, and the ones who were whispering insults only moments before clap the loudest.

  I wake with a start as someone clamps a hand over my mouth. I stare into too-big eyes shining beneath a black hood, relieved at seeing a familiar face. I look around for Rudjek and the others, but they aren’t here. Raëke presses a finger to her lips as she lets me go. The two demons on guard lie still in the night.

  “Where are the others?” I ask when she releases my mouth and turns to my shackles.

  “I’m alone.” She rushes her words. “I’ve been following you since the Barat Mountains.”

  “What do you mean, following me?” I remember the mysterious archer in the trees at Tribe Zu. “You’re the one who helped us fight the assassins?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “I’m sorry about your friend Sukar. I looked for him in the river after he fell, but I couldn’t find his body.”

  I shove down my tears, numb. Sukar is gone—he’s really gone.

  Once Raëke frees my hands, she removes the vest of craven bones from my shoulders. “We’d wondered why the demons had taken our dead after the fight in the Dark Forest. Now I know.”

  We come to our feet, but I can’t stop thinking about what it means that she’s been following us. “Did Rudjek send you?” Maybe the question is unimportant given the situation, but I have to know. Rudjek had hidden the news about the demons, now this. He doesn’t trust me.

  “He did—” Raëke cuts off midsentence as a blade pierces through her chest. She doesn’t have time to react before the demon pulls out his sword and cleaves her head from her body. Blood splashes on my face, in my eyes, on my tongue. I scream as my magic rushes to the surface. I’m relieved that I can finally call it again after exhausting myself earlier. I strike demon after demon with wind, shredding their souls into ribbons.

  A sharp pain catches me in my side, then another in my shoulder. I look down to see arrows stuck in my body. Anti-magic poisons my blood, but I keep shredding until I see an archer nocking another arrow. The next one hits me in the leg, then another in my thigh.

  “Bring her to me,” the Demon King demands as I fall to my knees, reeling in agony.

  The Unnamed Orisha: Dimma

  We’re close to the end now. It’s not the true end, but those final moments of joy and sadness that plagued the last years of my natural life. Daho and I have a blissful seven centuries together. At first, it’s hard for his people and the endoyans to accept that we are immortal. There are uprisings and claims of something called witchcraft.

  For generations, no one suffers; no one goes hungry; no one gets their wings clipped. No one comments on my hair. Our rule marks a new era of peace in Jiiek. It could’ve gone on for many more millennia if I hadn’t broken the universe.

  Although I’ve changed Daho, he still clings to mortal needs. Tonight, twin moons pour light through our chamber windows as he sleeps. I miss our mountain, the little cabin, the frozen lake, the clean smell of the air. It’s been too long since we’ve visited. I am thinking of these things when a spark ignites inside me. It’s small at first, and I gasp as it draws energy from me, from Daho, and from the universe itself. Daho bolts upright in bed. He looks down at me, his eyes shining bright under the moonlight. “Is this real, or am I dreaming?” he asks, his gaze traveling down the length of my slip. “How is this possible?”

  “It shouldn’t be”—I stare at my belly—“but it is.”

  “Dimma,” Daho says. I look up at him, and there are tears on his cheeks. His magic intertwines with my own, reaching and searching until he finds his answer. He laughs. “I’m going to be a father!”

  My brethren and I can’t bear children from our flesh, not like mortals. It’s why they’re driven by the compulsion to mold the raw material of the universe into some semblance of their own image. This goes against everything that I know about myself. Yet the spark grows inside me.

  “Let me be the first to tell our child a story.” Daho pulls me into his arms and rests his chin against the top of my head, inhaling my scent. “Once there was a broken boy who fell from the sky, and a goddess, both terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful, saved him from certain death. The goddess had eyes the color of night pearls and a heart bigger than the entirety of the world.” I sink against his warm body, listening to our story, and for the first time in my life, fall asleep.

  Daho is sleeping when Koré appears in the arboretum on the fourth floor of the palace. I am lying with my head pressed against his back, listening to the rhythm of his heartbeat. Soon there will be another heartbeat—that of our child. Koré must’ve sensed the change. I could shed my vessel and move more quickly, but the baby is much too fragile. I plant a gentle kiss on Daho’s shoulder and slip into a robe before walking to the arboretum.

  Koré perches precariously on the edge of a balcony, above a fall that would kill any mortal. I don’t approach her. Instead, I weave between the trees and beds of roses. She doesn’t speak for a long time as I make my rounds, grass sweeping underneath my bare feet.

  “I can’t save you this time, Dimma,” she finally says. “The Supreme Cataclysm is not an idle creator. It roars in pain at what you’ve done. You’ve stolen life f
rom it.”

  “I haven’t stolen anything.” I think about how we’d come to this moment. I changed Daho, but he retained his mortal gift—the one to sire children. Not to make them as my brethren had, but have them, flesh and bone, a thing that we could never do together until now.

  “You have evolved into something more than intended,” Koré says. “Because of this, the Supreme Cataclysm has become unbalanced. It stopped creating the moment you became with child. Now it only destroys. The outer worlds and our children are safe for now, but not forever. Eventually, the destruction will consume the universe.”

  I wrap a protective arm around my belly. “What will you do with me?”

  “For centuries Re’Mec and I debated that very question after you changed Daho,” Koré says. “We decided to let you live when we saw that his change had no impact on the greater universe. But your child is different. We asked Iben to travel the threads of time and tell us what this means.” Her face twists in anguish. “He would not give up his secrets, of course, but he didn’t need to. Your child will be the end of the universe. We can sense it.”

  “If it’s destined for the universe to end, then so be it,” I spit out. “Nothing is eternal.”

  “Tell me, Dimma,” Koré asks. “Have you found your nature yet?”

  “Perhaps it’s to create life in a way that we never have before.”

  “I bet your nature isn’t as benign as that.” Koré’s soul burns in her eyes, like flickering flames consuming everything. “We have consensus among our brethren. You must give yourself and the child to the Supreme Cataclysm to be unmade.” I hear her words, but they don’t make sense. She can’t think I could ever agree to that. “You were a mistake that must be corrected.”

  Our kind cannot die. The thought has never crossed my mind that we could be unmade.

  “I wish there were another way—you and Daho have achieved something extraordinary.” She glances at my belly. “I’m a grandmother, aren’t I? Daho and his people are my children.”

  When I don’t answer, Koré stands up, her feet balancing on the thin railing. “Don’t force our hand, sister.” At that, she steps back and drops over the edge. There is no sound as she changes into a wisp of wind.

  Daho wakes in our bedchamber, and I open my mind. My anguish and dread and fear spread to him, and he’s at my side in moments, cradling me tight against his chest. “I won’t let them take our child,” he says. “I will protect both of you until my very last breath.”

  I know that he means it, but Daho alone can’t stop my brethren when they make a decision. They will kill him if he gets in their way, and I can’t allow that. I won’t take my child to the Supreme Cataclysm, despite Koré’s threat.

  “I’ll raise an army and have them stationed on the palace grounds,” Daho says, then his voice falters. His people haven’t needed an army for a very long time, and none of them could stand against my brethren.

  “An army, whatever for?” asks Minister Godanya—not the first Godanya, one of his descendants. We turn to face the man, who bears little resemblance to his forefather. He frowns, and his fear is palpable. As the ambassador between Endoya and Jiiek, he spends much time at the palace with his staff.

  Daho winces in annoyance that the man has interrupted our private moment. But he quickly explains what’s happened. “We’ll fight alongside you if it comes to it,” Minister Godanya offers. “We can’t risk losing everything our people have built together.”

  “I don’t care about what we’ve built together, Godanya,” Daho snaps. “I care only about Dimma and our child.”

  “Of course.” The Minister shifts uncomfortably. “That’s what I mean.”

  “No, you meant your precious trade agreements,” Daho says.

  Minister Godanya lowers his head, sputtering, “My offer still stands should you need it.” At that, he excuses himself.

  “We’ll speak to my brethren,” I say. “There may still be time to change their minds.”

  Daho buries his face against my shoulder, his whole body shaking. He reminds me of that first day on our mountain when he thought that I was Death.

  If I can’t convince my brethren to spare our child, I will not submit to them. I’ll fight at Daho’s side. I may not know my nature, but that does not make me weak. My brethren will soon discover that it’s quite the opposite.

  Twenty-Nine

  Arrah

  With the craven bone poisoning my body, I see Dimma’s memories for the truth. They pour into my mind like rain flooding the banks of the Serpent River during Su’omi. Most are blurry images of people, conversations, and contraptions that caught her eye. Something ticks in my head, the counting of time, a sound without rhythm or pause. My lip press around the word: clock.

  I’ve spent so much time running from her memories, denying them, and now I’m too tired to fight. I resent them, yet I can’t deny how right it feels to have her memories. I don’t know where mine end and hers begin. I can’t push them into a corner like I’ve done with the chieftains’, to recall and forget at will. They make space to live alongside my own. How could it be that my whole life I’ve been missing a part of myself and didn’t know it? I remember dying after killing Efiya and talking to Fram, the orisha of life and death. I spoke to them as Dimma. I was Dimma.

  I curl up in agony and desperation in the tent. My heart aches for Raëke—another friend dead because of me, just like the twins Tzaric and Ezaric . . . just like Sukar. Morning light filters through the canopy. I’m no longer in shackles and chains. The craven bone inside me tames my magic and keeps me in so much pain that I move as little as possible. Voices echo around me, and hands tear away my clothes. I open my eyes long enough to see two tribal women—one Kes and one Aatiri—peering down at me. The thought crosses my mind that I’m naked in front of strangers, but the pain makes it impossible to care.

  The Aatiri woman pushes back my braids from my face and presses a warm rag to my forehead. “Hush now, blessed one,” she says in a raspy voice.

  I weep, tasting blood in my mouth. Pain blossoms around my wounds, but it’s nothing compared to knowing the truth of who I used to be. Dimma didn’t want to die and be born again, but Fram trapped her soul in a mortal body. It’s hard to accept that I am only a reincarnation of someone else. I am her, yet I am not. She can exist without me, but I can’t exist without her. I squeeze my eyes shut again. It’d been love that led her to make Daho immortal, but it was the orishas’ punishment that turned him into a monster.

  “Don’t cry,” the Kes woman whispers as they break off the wooden shafts of the arrows. Every break sends a new shock of pain through my wounds. “The sun always shines for those who are willing to look up.”

  “Well, not in the North, they say,” the Aatiri woman remarks begrudgingly. “It shines on this world, though.”

  The North, where Rudjek is, hunting demons. Gods. He’d sent Raëke to keep eyes on me.

  “Hurry up and get out,” commands the Demon King, his voice lazy and distant. I imagine him sprawled out on pillows, drinking from a wineskin. It’s still hard to believe that it had been him, not Tyrek, all along, taunting Sukar, pretending to be our friend.

  The two women flinch and make quick work of cleaning and bandaging my wounds. “The arrows,” I groan, feeling the sting of the craven bone still inside me.

  “Don’t mind that, blessed one.” The Aatiri woman has a twinkle in her dark eyes that reminds me of Grandmother. “They’re like any wound. Grow a scab over them, and they’re easier to bear.” She stares at me intently, and through the fog of pain, I know she’s trying to tell me something.

  The women help me into a coarsely woven shift of thick fabric that itches against my skin. When they’re done, two guards drag them out of the tent. The Aatiri dares a glance over her shoulder, giving me a meaningful look.

  I’m still lying on my side, struggling to sit up, when the Demon King kneels beside me. He smells clean, like citrus and tree bark. “You’re almost a
s beautiful as she.” He brushes his fingers across my forehead. “You don’t have her spark, her ambition, her fire.” He sits back on his haunches and places the dagger wrapped in red silk between us. The light reflects against the exposed tip, honed to a fine, deadly point. “Unfortunately, since I can’t trust you, the craven bone must stay to keep you docile.”

  “I can’t figure out if you’re trying to convince yourself or me that you love my sister. Perhaps you’re afraid that she’ll reject you for someone prettier.” I peer down my nose at him, but lying on my side, it doesn’t come off half as dignified as I would like. The body he’s taken—Tyrek’s—is beautiful. Ebony skin, brooding dark eyes, regal jaw, but it’s nothing like Dimma’s memories of Daho. He’d been tall, like all demons, with eyes that sparkled like starlight, silver skin, and sharp teeth. I gamble that his vanity is as big as his mouth.

  The Demon King reaches across the dagger and yanks me upright. With the sudden jerk, pain flares around the arrowheads, and I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. My words apparently hit their mark.

  “You have a wicked little mouth, don’t you, Arrah?” he says, an eagerness burning in his eyes. He looks exactly like Tyrek did when he sat high above the assembly on the second tier with the royal family. He’d been fervent as he watched his father and my mother’s petty bickering. “I would very much like to cut it open from ear to ear to see you bleed some more.”

  My breaths come out in hiccups from the pain. “Go ahead.”

  His face turns sour, as the real Tyrek’s would’ve done when things got boring at the assembly. Though it’s not long before he breaks into a lazy smile. “Your sister is very impressionable.” His words curl around him like a crown upon his brow. “When she told me that you’d hurt her by running off to be with Rudjek, I told her how to hurt you back.”