A hand circled his shoulder. “We’re not in any danger,” Shayim said, her eyes on Nina. “Hatun, take care of the bodies and send someone to check on the children.”
Nina began to feel more like herself with every breath, whatever danger she possessed leaking away to leave behind a burning in her belly and a bone-deep exhaustion.
“You’re okay,” Kasik murmured, his hands slipping over her thighs. Shayim handed her a canteen, and she lifted a weak hand to take it. Kasik supported the bottom as she tipped it to her lips. The water was cool, but it did nothing to satisfy her hunger.
“What if there are more?” Kasik asked. Nina inspected his profile while he sent an accusatory glare at Shayim. “How did they get past your so-called power?”
There aren’t more, Nina wanted to say. She could see threads from every corner of her vision. All of them close, all of them bright and tempting. Beyond their camp, the forest was relentlessly dark. There was no one else.
In front of her, Kasik’s will began to glow like a timid animal that needed gentle coaxing. She reached out a hand to touch him, but the flap of the tent blew open and Hatun marched through.
“The bodies have been taken care of,” he said. Blood dripped from the tip of a blade in his hand and hit the earth with a thud that vibrated in Nina’s ears.
She blinked and the tent was gone. Another blink and the men wereon their knees in front of her, the sky stretched out above them like an all-seeing eye that watched as they fell, their bodies twisted, their will undone, extinguished within them.
Nina sucked in a sob and pressed her hands to her chest. Warm hands slipped over her cheeks. Kasik’s earthy scent filled her and his whispered words slithered beneath her skin, offering comfort she knew she didn’t deserve.
She had killed those men and had taken satisfaction from it. Worse still, she felt no guilt, no remorse. They would have exposed their secrets. She thought of Mika in her tent, the children who ran wild, the women who laughed and danced. Secrets worth killing to keep.
It struck Nina then, the weight of what she had to do. What she now knew shecoulddo.
Kill Emperor Maicu. Do away with the threat to her family, to Shayim’s ayllu, to the other girls and boys taken from their homes and forced to serve the empire. And then she could be free, her conscience clean. Her debt to the gods repaid. For this power was their gift to her, and even if she didn’t want it, she would have to pay the price.
Kasik gently brushed the hair from her face. “I’m okay,” she told him, and he blew out a breath. In the corner of the tent, Shayim and Hatun spoke animatedly until they felt her gaze on them. When Shayim met her eyes, Nina saw the pride and gratitude and determination there.
Rebel camp, Kuna had said, his teeth glinting like weapons in the night. But that wasn’t quite right. This camp, thesepeople, were a movement, and Shayim had been expecting her.
“Your attay failed,” Nina whispered slowly, working through the pieces she held in her mind. “You said the camp was hidden.”
“It was,” Shayim agreed. “But this moment needed to happen. The only reason why those men found this camp is because I let them.”
“Are you saying that you willingly put the lives of powerless andinnocent people in jeopardy,” Kasik said, his tone disbelieving, “to prove a point?”
“Why do you assume we are powerless? Because we are outside of your emperor’s purview?” Shayim tutted like a mamay scolding foolish children. “The only point that needs proving is the fact that you are blinded by your loyalty. You couldn’t see the truth if it slapped you in the face.”
Kasik’s hands fisted at his sides. Nina had the urge to defend him, but she didn’t have anything to say against Shayim’s words. “The truth ofwhat, Shayim? Of who you are and your supposed power? We don’t have time for your lies.” He grabbed Nina’s arm and gently lifted her to her feet. “We’re leaving, and so should all of you. It’s not safe here any longer.”
“It’s not safe where you’re going, either,” Hatun added with a scoff.
“We can’t leave.” Nina placed a hand over Kasik’s, hoping her touch would calm him like it often did Sacha when she was in the throes of a nightmare. “Not yet. I have to—”
“I will not stay here and see you suffer the same monstrous fate as those men.”
“I won’t,” Nina promised softly, “because I am the one who placed it upon them.”
24
Kasik turned to Nina and grasped her chin in one hand. “You cannot blame yourself. They made the choice to come here knowing the danger this forest holds. The Tuta Kulla is a thing all onto its own, and—”
“You misunderstand,” Nina interrupted, her eyes flashing. “It wasmewho killed them. This... this power I possess. The same power I healed you with.”
Kasik may not have known her well enough to be able to speak without words, but he peered into her brown eyes, at her face tilted up at him, her body leaned into him, her voice firm and clear, and knew she wasn’t lying.
“I am an Ikara,” she insisted. “I am the woman from your story, and a god’s power lives inside of me.”
Every interaction, every encounter they had, he now viewed it—her—through new eyes.
At the acllahuasi, when he had seen the grit in the set of her jaw. When she’d watched him murder a man without so much as a flinch. The way the achiyanga had simply stood before her. Had it seen in her something monstrous and kindred?
