“We are diligent with our offerings to Pachamama, and she has favored us in return,” she said, the words heard so often that she repeated them without thought.
Their home by the ocean should not have had fertile land. It was said that their ayllu had survived on nothing but fish until Nina’s mamay made the first offering, hoping for healthy children, and for abundanceto feed and love them. Their fields sprouted overnight. It was the women of Limac who continued to carefully cultivate their crops, paying the chani but always giving to Pachamama first.
“Indeed,” he said, a curious glimmer in his eyes that set Nina on edge. “And it seems that her favor has extended to me, and led me to you.”
From where she sat, she could have sworn the man’s eyes were darker than they should be, the black in the center bleeding into the whites. When his attention shifted from her to Sacha, Nina scooted her body to the side as if that could convince him to look away, but it only made him grin and crouch so that they were almost eye-to-eye.
The blade finally left her neck, but Nina knew she had made a grave mistake.
“Restrain her,” he commanded.
“Yes, Kunay,” a voice responded.
The kunay, the emperor’spersonal adviser, was there to collect. None of it made sense, but before Nina could so much as form a thought, hands clamped around her upper arms and dragged her back.
Nina twisted her body against the viselike grip. “Letgo,” she screamed, watching with dread as the kunay knelt before Sacha and gently removed the hair from her face.
“Don’t touch her,” Nina spat. He paid her no mind.
If only she could force him onto his knees like she had the boys who had touched Sacha a fortnight ago. If only she could find the golden threads that always taunted her, and put them to use.
But the kunay was devoid of all light. She saw in his eyes that his soul was darker than night, and Nina felt weaker and more delusional than she had ever been.
“She’s perfect,” the kunay whispered reverently, scanning Sacha from head to toe, drinking her in as if in a drought. “The emperor will be pleased to have her.”
At his words, Nina thrashed against the bruising grip that held her.“No,”she screamed, spittle flying from her mouth, her simple blue dress riding up and exposing her lower legs. “You cannot take her.”
The man unfurled to his full height and turned his attention to Nina. It was where she wanted it, but it didn’t soothe the terror that spiked in her chest with the weight of his gaze.
A hand slipped into her hair and yanked her head back. The force of it made her eyes burn. Still, she kept them pinned to the kunay. “Leave her alone,” she begged. Her voice was ragged, barely a whisper, but she knew from the amusement lining his mouth that he heard her.
The kunay stepped closer and bent over her, forcing her head farther back to hold his gaze, now hidden by his own shadow. The curved blade at his side caught Nina’s attention. All she had to do was snatch it from his hand and swing it across his throat. How difficult could it be to kill a man?
A hand shot out and grasped her chin. Fingers dug into her cheeks and squeezed. “Your thoughts are written all over your face,” the kunay said. His eyes narrowed, and he moved even closer. Close enough that she could see the hunger in the black depths of his eyes, so dark she could see herself in them. Tiny cracks bled into the whites like jagged paths in shattered stone.
“What do we have here?” he asked, his voice intimately quiet. Danger lurked behind each word, but Nina’s focus boiled down to his hand on her face, the way his eyes ate her up, the way his touch silenced something vital within her, as if the darkness in him had bled out and consumed her. The feeling of inexplicable loss sent her reeling.
“Ah, so it was you I felt,” the man whispered with glee. He brought his left hand to cup the back of her neck and pressed his forehead against hers. Inside, she was screaming. On the outside, Nina heldperfectly still. Her shoulders throbbed with the effort of it. “You are favored, indeed.”
The words were a vibration against her forehead, and Nina suddenly understood that nothing she had been taught had prepared her for this.
Emperor Maicu and his men didn’t commune with Pachamama. They made no offerings to the land and showed up without invitation. They took what was not theirs to serve an empire that Nina and her people had been forced into.
They felt themselves above the rules. Above the gods.
“There’s another in the fields. Should we grab her as well?” the man behind her asked.
The kunay inhaled sharply and pulled away. Nina surged upward. “No,” she raged, fully breaking the one rule her mamay had given her.
Do not let them see what you love.There was so much Nina loved, her sisters above all else, but her mamay wasn’t there and her guidance wouldn’t serve her well. Perhaps it never had, for Nina was scared and soft andangry. So angry that she could feel it bubbling within her, rising from her stomach into her chest, where it sat like a fist around her heart.
The man only smiled. “These two will do. Leave the other be.”
Nina finally glanced at her sister, her failure thick between them. She could no longer feel her like she had always been able to. In its place was a dark unknown, a gaping hole of uncertainty. Nina wasn’t one to pray often—there had to be a balance, a give and take, and Nina had always felt she had nothing to give—but she found herself praying then.
She begged the gods for their divine intervention. She prayed for her parents to return just in time to save them. Or, at the very least, to save Nina from doing what she knew she needed to do.
It wasn’t as if she expected the sky to open and rain salvation, butthere was no sign and no savior. There was only her, and her love for her sister.
