The gods have chosen you, Nina thought. But they had chosen wrong; not because she wasn’t capable, but because she refused to heedlessly follow their path.
His dark eyes searched her as she took a deep breath and placed her hand in his. He didn’t let go when she landed on her feet, and he didn’t pull away when she took a step. If anything, he leaned closer, enough sothat if she took a deep breath, her chest would brush his. Close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his eyes. Close enough that she saw the way his gaze darted over her face and landed on her lips.
“Ask me to stop,” he begged, so quiet she hardly heard him. “Ask me to forsake every vow I’ve ever made so that neither of us has to see this through.”
It was then that Nina realized that he would turn his back on his duty for her. That she could ask it of him and he would willingly comply. But she would not, because doing so would mean that she would have to forsake her own vow. “No,” she said. Kasik’s eyes closed, and his exhale tickled the top of her head. “I have made my choice, and you have made yours. We are both loyal to our word.”
Kasik moved away from her, and a cold wind replaced the space that he abandoned. The desperation in his eyes shifted to acceptance in a blink. “The emperor is waiting,” he said again, an echo of the time when they were strangers, the meaning clear in every word.
They left Capac with a walla and took the steps up to the doors. They opened with a groan, and then Nina was swallowed in darkness. Their steps echoed in the vastness of the chamber-like room. In the distance, she heard a shuffle that was carried on a phantom breeze so that it sounded like it was right beside her, but when she whirled to the side, no one was there.
It was quiet enough that she could hear each of her ragged breaths, and dark enough that she could only see a few arm’s lengths in front of her, and beyond, squares of light cut into the stone walls that looked over what she assumed were the kancha grounds.
The room was empty, which lent to the eeriness and cold. Not what she had imagined for a place that was meant to represent the gods. It didn’t feel divine, but forgotten.Forsaken.
They walked up another set of steps and over another flat expanse ofstone. Nina glanced behind her but found nothing but shadow. She could have sworn that the windows ahead were growing smaller instead of larger, that the room was expanding even as they forged on. But after another set of steps, they were there, outlined in daylight. The doors to her fate.
They opened without touch, and when Nina glanced at Kasik for reassurance, she found none. His attention was forward, his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck strained. He was fighting his own battles, and she was left to face hers alone.
The sunlight was harsh after the bleakness of Qorikancha. The first thing she saw was grass, a green so vibrant it hurt her eyes. When she lifted her face, she next saw people in red milling about. Walla young and old, with achillas on their wrists or their necks, and what she assumed were attendants in blue scurrying between buildings with baskets full of textiles and food piled high.
From a distance, she could hear the clashing of metal and grunts and cheers. There was subdued chatter and other sounds of life that were as familiar as they were foreign. The air felt thinner, and colder, and it did nothing to ease her racing pulse.
Directly ahead, standing between small peaked buildings and in front of a larger stone structure, stood a man in red, his long coat flapping around his legs, the shape of wings in flight embroidered along the edge. At the center of his chest was a large golden disk that she knew depicted the sun god. His fingers were adorned with rings that he tapped together with each step she took.
It sounded like a death march, and when she finally looked up at his face, she saw her demise in the fathomless shadows of his eyes and the wicked curl of his lips.
The dread that coated her mouth tasted like blood.
The guiding hand at her back slipped away, and then Kasik was in front of her, his hair swaying as he lowered into a deferential bow.
“Tayta,” she heard Kasik say with such loyalty, such desperation, that she felt it like a plea on her own soul.
See me, that word said.Love me.
“You’re late,” the man responded curtly.
Nina hated that she was intimately familiar with the set of Kasik’s shoulders, enough to see that they fell slightly with his tayta’s words. That she wanted to reach around him and yank the man’s threads from his chest and send him to the floor in a puddle of blood and gore and—
Kasik moved aside and turned to face her. Both sets of eyes watched her expectantly, but she didn’t know what they wanted, hadn’t heard their words over her murderous thoughts and the sudden, chilling realization that the man across from her, Kasik’s tayta with the black eyes, had no light at the center of his chest.
Unlike Kasik, whose burned brightly in comparison, his tayta possessed no threads. Nothing but a void where his will should have been.
If Nina hadn’t been standing in front of him watching his lips move and his chest rise and fall with each breath, seeing his pulse pound in his neck, she would have thought him a walking corpse. A puppet held up by strings she couldn’t see.
It was then, with a scourge of emotions pushing at her skin, that she placed the man. She saw him touching Sacha’s face. Remembered the hem of his patterned cloak brushing the dirt. Felt his fingers digging into her skin. Heard the words he had murmured so that only she could hear.
It was you I felt.
As if she were outside herself, she saw the man’s hand reach for her. It landed on her shoulder with a thud and shook her from the past with a gasp. She was solidly back in the present, aware of every part of her body, from her toes curled in her slippers to the hair that blew back from her face on a chilly breeze. She was especially painfully aware of the sudden silence that throbbed in her chest. The beat of her heart thatechoed in her ears. The abrupt disappearance of Kasik’s light.
“We meet again. I am Kunay Atik,” he whispered, and she could have sworn that the black lines of his eyes swirled as he watched her, that his nostrils flared as he breathed deeper. His fingers curled into her flesh and dug into her bones. “Welcome to your new home.”
The words were gentle. Perhaps they could have been construed as kind, but she heard them for the threat they were.This is your final resting place. You belong to me.
And in that moment, Nina believed him. Something vital had been hidden from her, and it left her feeling vulnerable but eerily calm. Less worried about her convictions and the secrets she held close.
The kunay’s head tilted as he watched her breathe through her thoughts. “Your power is strong.” His hand released her, and Nina fell forward with the loss. “The emperor will be very pleased.”
