An arm slid around her middle and braced her. It was Kasik, his jaw clenching as he spoke through gritted teeth. “You knew?”
The moment she was stable, Kasik let go. She pressed a hand to her chest, prodding at the pit of raw hunger in the center of her. Had she always felt this empty, this powerless?
“Of course. I sensed her the moment she used it for the first time. Across such a distance.” Atik’s eyes sparkled with delight as he spoke. “Impressive, really. It is why we went through all this trouble to bring her here.” Gentle fingers traced the edge of her jaw. A shiver of repulsion lifted the hairs on her neck.
“I don’t understand,” Kasik said, despair laced through each word. “Youknewshe was dangerous, and you sent me without the information I needed to protect myselfandher. Did you want me to fail?”
“You’re letting your emotions get the best of you,Son. I gave you that achilla. So long as you kept it around your neck, you would have been aware of her influence.”
Dread filled her belly as Kasik glanced at her, a quick flick of his eyes that Atik saw and grasped on to like a hound on a scent. “Did you remove it? Did she fill your mind with her power and make you believe that youwanther?” He took one step closer and lowered his voice. “Oh, Son, how foolish you can be.”
Kasik was turned fully toward her now, betrayal lining his mouth and between his brows, but Nina was filled with her own rage beneath the pressure of emptiness that filled her. “I did no such thing,” she argued tensely.
Atik gripped his son’s shoulder and shook once, twice. “This is what they do,” he said harshly. “They use our will to deceive us into loving them, but who could love such a monster? They are not meant to be loved. Their purpose is so much greater than that.”
If Nina had been thinking clearly, she would have stopped to consider whotheywere, but she was lost to his lies, too close to her greatest fears and insecurities, too overcome with outrage to control herself. She launched at Atik, satisfied when she felt the flesh of his cheek fill the crevices underneath her nails.
Before she could relish the small victory, there were hands on her, bruising her arms as they pulled her back. She kicked out to no avail. Screamed her threats to the sky.
It was the Harvest all over again. No one was going to come to her aid. There was no one to save her.
Hands gripped her face and held her steady. She glared into the kunay’s eyes as he pulled her face close enough to see every crack in the whites that gave her a peek into his dark and sinful soul.
Then he leaned forward, pressed his cheek to her cheek, and whispered into her ear. “Should you forget your purpose, I will bring Sacha to remind you.”
28
Whatever Atik whispered into her ear, Kasik couldn’t hear it over the aching realization that he had been so utterly and cruelly deceived. By his tayta, but also by Nina.
He remembered the part of the story he told Nina, where the Ikara controlled and manipulated the man into loving her. Where her powers had drawn him in and held him captive until he was forced to kill her.
Kasik thought back to all the times he had felt an unexplainable pull toward her despite his unyielding loyalty to Maicu. Her stubbornness as she worked to light a fire. Her fearlessness as she threw the rock at the achiyanga. Her carelessness and whimsy as she danced under the full moon.
It had been against his nature, against his will. The essence of her had sunk beneath his skin and burned like an infection in the blood. Had it taken root when he was nearly dead and unconscious, when she had used her power to stitch him back together? Had he been so easy to poison?
Even then, he could feel her lure, feel the sundering in his heart as she looked past Atik, arms pulled behind her, and seethed. “I will never forgive you for this.” The walla pulled her backward without care. “One day, I will kill you both,” she screamed, her promise echoing off the stone buildings and beating against his heart.
They watched her go, Atik beside him, the hem of his ceremonial red robes fluttering in the breeze. Kasik despised the color. Loathed this place. Begrudged that he had been born to this man.
“You lied to me,” he said to the now-empty space before him. Herefused to turn and look at the man who had helped give him life. Who had kept so much from him and given him so little.
Nina disappeared through the main doors of the kancha and with her, all unfamiliar sound. Whoever had stopped to watch their interaction were back to their duties as if nothing had happened. The sounds of walla training filled the silence, the lack of explanations from his tayta.
“You sound like a child.” Atik lifted a hand and pressed it to his cheek. He smiled when they came away with a thin line of blood across his fingers. “There was no need for you to know more than you did, and now you understand the truth of her.”
“I understand the truth about a lot now.” Kasik turned to face him, fists at his side. He dug his nails into his palms to hold back this anger, this misery he felt bubbling in his chest. “Like the fact that mamay’s family is not dead.”
It slipped out before he could stop it, and once the words were between them, Kasik realized what a mistake he had made. He had given up his hand, exposed a secret that he had promised he would keep. And, once again, shown how little control he had over his emotions.
“And where,” Atik started, his body preternaturally still, his dark eyes swirling with hunger, “did you learn that?”
What a fool he was to give his tayta this power over him. “There is no need for you to know more than you do,” Kasik said, throwing his words back at him and barreling on with his own. “Did you keep her against her will?” His tayta turned away from him, without so much as a flicker of emotion, and began walking toward the kancha doors. Kasik followed, feeling like the child his tayta ridiculed him of being. “Was she only here to serve a purpose, like Nina? If I am such an inconvenience, why keep me? Why not send me away to live withthem? It’s what mamay would have wanted.”
Atik stopped and turned suddenly, hands behind his back as hestepped close enough that Kasik could feel the moisture from his breath. “Do not believe for one moment that your mamay spared a single thought for you. The circumstances of your birth were as unavoidable as your very life. It is the gods who brought you to us, and it is the gods who keep you alive.”
Kasik couldn’t understand what it meant, couldn’t parse the expressions on his tayta’s face. “You are here to do as you are told,” Atik continued. “That is youronlypurpose. If you cannot do that, then there is no reason tokeepyou.”
“I will embrace the day that I step into your role if it means that I am free of you.”
