Blood & Fur

Chapter Thirty-Six: Before the Final Night

I left the temple with a heart filled with frustration.

My greatest fear was powerlessness, and I had lived through it all night. I danced to the tune of the Nightlords as I fed their sulfur flame. I kept my mouth shut when Yoloxochitl put her hands on Eztli’s shoulders and whispered in her ear. I supported the Jaguar Woman’s arrogant stare in silence. I played the dutiful doll, never complaining, never speaking out of turn.

I took some solace in the discovery of my Tomb’s keyword, but even the dawn provided me with little comfort.

At least this humiliation would soon come to an end. Tomorrow would be the last day of the year and mark the beginning of my ascent to Smoke Mountain. The New Fire Ceremony would start then.

But first, I needed to cast my Haunt. A task that would require many hours.

“I shall sleep all day this time,” I warned Tezozomoc as we walked back to my imperial chambers. “Between the next day’s rituals and the New Fire Ceremony, I won’t have a moment to rest. Do not wake me up until twilight.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” He offered me a polite bow. “Your concubine will see that you rest well.”

He meant to comfort me and did the complete opposite. I wasn’t looking forward to female company for once.

“She will,” I replied coldly. “Her life depends on it.”

Tezozomoc raised an eyebrow. He probably thought I meant to execute Necahual if she proved disappointing; while in truth, I sought to buy her time from more dangerous masters.

As expected, I found my mother-in-law waiting for me in my chambers. The servants had taken care to prepare her. They had dressed her in a white cotton dress edged with golden trim that gracefully draped around her form, a crimson sash wrapped around her waist like a ribbon around a gift. Golden earrings framed her face, while a golden headdress topped with a striking feather held her cascading hair. Black paint heightened her eyelashes and oil smoothed her skin. The poor farmer’s wife was unrecognizable. I could have mistaken her for a noblewoman who had stepped out of the capital’s richest districts.

Eztli inherited her looks from her mother, and Necahual remained an attractive woman. Many would have found her lovely in my place, had she done so little as to smile. She instead greeted me with silence and a sullen expression. She sat at the bed’s edge with her hands joined together, her eyes staring at the nearest wall rather than me.

She was about as enthusiastic about this chore as I was.

It doesn’t have to take long, I told myself. I only intended to do… this… for the sake of my plans and to practice Seidr with a trustworthy confidant. If I close my eyes, I can pretend she is Eztli.

I dismissed Tezozomoc with a glance. He closed the imperial bedroom’s doors behind me, leaving me alone with Necahual and a set of masked guards. They faded from sight when they lurked in corners’ shadows. It almost made their presence tolerable.

I walked up to Necahual’s side. She looked at me, her eyes meeting mine. Neither of us said a word. I waited for her to gather her breath and wits until she finally stood up. Her hands clumsily moved to my imperial robes. When she proved too slow in taking them off due to her hesitation, I untied her sash and our robes soon dropped to the floor.

It wasn’t the first time Necahual and I were both so close and naked. I had shared baths with her after all. However, the context somehow made our current situation deeply unpleasant. The way Necahual avoided looking at my manhood, the shame in her eyes, my own reluctance to touch her skin…

This won’t go well. I could already tell. Perhaps I should stick to kisses for now. Start slow.

I glanced at the bed, and Necahual reluctantly moved beneath the sheet. She laid on her back, legs tightly shut, her arms limp, her spine tenser than a bowstring. I would have to do all the work.

“You can imagine Father in my place,” I suggested as I crawled over to her. “Or your husband. Whatever works.”

Necahual glared at me in silence, then closed her eyes. Her jaw clenched tightly to stop foul curses from escaping her mouth. I assumed she did her best to imagine herself anywhere but here.

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I wish I could say I did any better. I started by kissing her neck, my lips making her shudder in revulsion. My hands moved to caress her hips, the sweat sticking between my fingers. I touched her hands and remembered all the times she had thrown stones at me. She didn’t say a word, didn’t help me. She simply waited for me to be over with it.

I couldn’t grant her wish.

No matter how much I tried, I could not imagine Eztli in her place.

Her skin was warm for a start. Sweaty too. Her breasts were fuller, her hips wider, her hands more calloused. Even the mother’s smell differed from the daughter’s. Whenever I attempted to lie to myself, a simple kiss jolted me back to reality. The dissonance made me nauseous.

She felt wrong.

This is bad. I clenched my teeth in frustration. My plan relied on convincing the world that Necahual had become my favorite. It would fail if I couldn’t even touch her. Servants and spies would share the word otherwise. Should I weave a Veil? Make it look like we made love?

Necahual scoffed at me.

My blood boiled in my veins. “What?”

“You can’t do anything right,” she replied scornfully. “You’re still a child.”

The condescension in her voice filled with fury. “You’re pathetic.”

Her dark eyes snapped open, both of them seething with scorn.

“You called me a monster, and here you are,” I taunted her. “Offering yourself to me for a taste of power.”

A flash of hatred passed over her face, as baleful as a thunderstorm. It pleased me. I moved my head closer to her and planted a kiss on her. There was no tenderness in it, no gentleness. Only possessiveness. My tongue tasted her disgust and shame.

It felt good.

A revelation struck me like lightning. My lips moved to her nipple next, but whereas I would have suckled it with another lover, I bit her breast with my bare teeth. Necahual let out a whimper of pain and surprise. A drop of blood dripped on her skin. I licked it, savoring the metallic aroma and the salty taste of her sweat.

My hands did not stay idle either. One grabbed her breast and squeezed it tightly; the other moved between her legs and forced them open like an oyster. I jammed my fingers into her lady parts. The sudden intrusion drew a grunt from Necahual. She closed her eyes and looked away from me, her skull resting on a pillow.

That wouldn’t do it. I changed my strategy, my fingers caressing her intimate parts, my lips kissing their way upward their neckline. Where I had inflicted pain before, I now sought only to bring pleasure. I listened to Necahual’s heavy breathing, delighting at how she struggled to keep her jaw tightly shut to deny me any satisfaction.

It was so much easier when I stopped trying to picture Eztli in her place.

Eztli loved me in her own special way, and I loved her back. I couldn’t say the same for Necahual. I wanted to beat her, to strangle her, to humiliate her. I only pleased her because I knew it shamed

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her. To admit that I, the son of the man who had forsaken her and the witch who cursed her, could pleasure her would be the height of humiliation.

Eventually, my efforts bore fruit. Necahual’s lips loosened and let out the most wonderful of sounds: a short moan of pleasure.

Encouraged, I crawled back and began to kiss my way down her thighs. My tongue played with her. I licked my way past her moist hair and her lady parts. Necahual whimpered and moaned softly. I felt her resistance waver. Truth be told, her reaction surprised me. Had she and Guatemoc never experimented together?

It suddenly occurred to me that Mother had cursed Necahual to never to find pleasure in coupling with a man; a restriction that applied for the entire length of her marriage.

When I was done, I rose up to my knees on instinct. Necahual was sweating heavily, her teeth biting her lips to stifle another moan, her cheeks flushed. Blood dripped from the breast I had bitten earlier and stained the bed sheet red.

It was then that I suddenly recalled who this woman was: the hag who had adopted me after my father died and made me resent that fact for years. I could have called her my mother had she shown me kindness. I had been married to her daughter and now carried her to bed. Our relationship crossed so many lines that it thrilled and sickened me all at once.

I loathed her. I desired her.

I desired her because I loathed her.

As my hands moved to grab her waist, I recalled all the times I had dreamed of taking revenge for her mistreatment. I had fantasized about beating her, stoning her, slapping her, and more. This didn’t quite fit my old expectations, but… it would do.

I hated being powerless. Now, however, I was the one in control. Necahual had offered me everything for the witchcraft she had long resented. She had sold me her body and soul, and it thrilled me.

“I own you,” I whispered softly.

I thrust with all my might.

Necahual’s eyes shot wide in surprise and stared at my intruding manhood with a mix of fear, shame, and apprehension. Her hands moved to my chest as if to push me out of her, but it was too late. I pulled back slightly and returned with greater force, pinning her against the mattress and burying her under my weight.

“Ngh,” Necahual grunted in pain and pleasure as I pulled her to me roughly and swiftly. “Uh…”

“I own you,” I repeated.

There was nothing smooth about our union. Being with Sigrun had felt like slipping a key inside a lock. This time it had all the gentleness of an assassin’s knife cutting its way into a target’s back. It was strange, visceral, and amazing.

And from the way Necahual moaned, she liked it too. Her shuddering cries only heightened my desire. I relished the sight of her face as she chewed her lip, struggling to hide her pleasure. Her hands pushed against my chest with all the resolve of a doubting soul. She wanted me out of her as much as she wanted me to stay where I was.

“I own you,” I repeated again, biting her neck like a vampire.

I closed my eyes and focused on this new sensation of power over another. I knew it was sick and no different than what the Nightlords put me through, but after all I had been through I relished it nonetheless.

My Teyolia burned within my chest. As our bodies became one, I began to sense Necahual’s heart-fire as well. It was a paltry flame, a shriveled candle that had grown fat on bitterness and disappointment. Still, I sensed a strength in her. A strong resolve buried deep inside her.

“Focus on the flame,” I whispered in her ear.

“I…” Her breath grew short. “I don’t… I don’t understand…”

“Your heart,” I explained. “Don’t you feel it?”

Her silence confirmed my first impression. I sensed her Teyolia. It was there, within my reach but beyond my grasp. An invisible barrier stood between our heart-fires and prevented their union.

I suddenly realized that the Seidr demanded more than the exchange of body fluid or magical awareness to function. It connected the Teyolias of two partners; the very core of their souls.

Our flames needed to resonate with each other. Sigrun had focused on desire and arousal to build that bridge, but Necahual shared little to no passion. We needed something else; an emotion we could easily bond over.

I could only think of one.

“Guatemoc never took you like this,” I taunted her.

I regretted the words the moment they left my lips, but they had the expected effect. Necahual’s Teyolia flared with the same purple light as mine. When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at the darkest of glares.

“He could never satisfy you,” I pushed on with a condescending chuckle. “Now I know why you threw stones at me when I approached Eztli. You wanted to be in her place.”

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Necahual slapped me with all her strength, as she used to back when I was younger.

The masked guards mistook the gesture for an attack and were roused from their slumber. “Stay back,” I ordered. Thankfully, they obeyed. “She likes it.”

Necahual answered by spitting on my cheek. I ignored it, a hand holding on to her thigh and the other squeezing her breast.

“Perhaps I will put another Eztli in here,” I taunted her as I caressed her belly. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

Her body and soul shuddered with rage. The flame inside her burst, the barrier between our hearts shattering. Our heart-fires connected through our hate.

Necahual’s eyes widened in shock and confusion. She had sensed it too, but couldn’t understand yet.

“Do you feel it now?” I asked her. When I sensed her hesitation, I gave her a little push. “Focus on it, slave.”

That did the trick. She bit my neck with such strength I thought she would tear out my throat. I interlocked her hands into mine to pin them against the bed, then bit her back. We settled on a furious, wild rhythm, groaning and grunting hand-fighting. Rage, scorn, lust, pain, and pleasure… all blurred until I couldn’t tell one from the other.

My Teyolia was the seed of a sun and dwarfed her own. The flames of my soul swallowed her whole. I could have devoured her in an instant, drained her of life the way Sigrun emptied her lovers of vitality. Instead of taking, I gave. Not too much or she would have burned, but enough to give her a taste of true magic.

Enough to cast a spell.

The scene changed around me in an instant. I was no longer on top, but under. A balding man was crawling atop me, the imperial crown of feathers sitting atop his head. I grunted and cried, but his hands held onto me with a vicious grip. In the background, I saw a younger Guatemoc watching with despair and disgust. I was scared and ashamed. I closed my eyes trying to escape, to bear it.

It won’t be long, I told myself. I tried to picture another man, but failed. Itzili would have been gentler.

The vision lasted a mere few seconds, but it was more vivid than any Veil. A small cry returned me to my senses. I sensed a wave of heat and moisture washing over my manhood, my seed spilling with a pulsating gush.

Necahual was under me, tears of pleasure and shame forming in her eyes. She gasped for air as I did, our connection closing as our muscles relaxed.

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“Get out,” she ordered me suddenly. Her hands freed themselves from mine and pushed against my chest. “Get out.”

I clenched my jaw and slowly pulled out. Our eyes lingered on the spot where our bodies had joined, at the light sheen of sweat and seed dripping from her thighs. Necahual stared at the latter as if it were a terrible poison.

My throat felt sore from the place where she had bitten me, and her nails had scratched at my chest. Necahual bore a few scars of her own too. A wave of shame immediately followed my grim satisfaction.

“I am…” I cleared my throat. “I am sorry I hurt you.”

“No, you are not.” Necahual avoided my gaze. “Neither am I.”

Now feeling slightly guilty, I moved to the side of the bed and pulled the bed sheet closer. Necahual turned her back on me and stared at the wall.

After a moment’s hesitation, I leaned against her. I half-expected her to push me back, but she did not. I supposed it felt inconsequential after we had crossed such a big line.

“How do you feel?” I asked her. The concern in my voice surprised me.

“My heart burns. My thighs and stomach too.” Necahual’s voice grew no louder than a whisper. “I saw… I saw things.”

After ensuring the guards wouldn’t hear anything, I leaned closer towards her ear. “What did you see?”

“Skulls.” Necahual scowled grimly. “A dead land of ashes and burned men.”

My heart skipped a beat for an instant. She had seen Tlalocan?

“What of you?” she asked while briefly looking over her shoulder.

“I saw a man,” I confessed. “An emperor, I think. Guatemoc was there.”

Necahual pulled the bed sheet over her shoulder as if to protect herself. “You saw my wedding night.”

A chill ran down my spine. I didn’t need more to understand the details: an emperor was entitled to a new bride’s first night, after all.

Necahual must have caught the eye of one of them during a visit near Acampa. The fact no one among the Parliament of Skulls remembered Necahual meant such things were commonplace.

Had Mother’s Curse caused this?

“I… I am sorry,” I apologized.

“I didn’t ask for your pity,” she all but spat. “Keep it to yourself.”

I didn’t fault her reaction, though I resented it slightly. My stomach lurked as a possibility crossed my mind.

“Eztli…” I dared not utter that thought. “Is she…”

“My husband and I had been intimate before.” Necahual took a deep breath and stared at the wall. “We… we couldn’t tell.”

They couldn’t tell whose daughter Eztli was, so Guatemoc eventually decided that she was his and never raised the subject again. I admit it surprised me. I had never been too close to the man—civil would have been the best term—but I would have expected doubt to torment Guatemoc. Other men would have distrusted Eztli’s potential paternity.

I supposed Guatemoc had been a good man under his rough exterior. It only further motivated me to protect his family.

“Was that witchcraft?” Necahual whispered. “What we saw?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. Our souls had melded through Seidr. We had both glimpsed at the other’s memories. “That was your first step on a long journey.”

Necahual finally looked at me. Her thoughts were written all over her conflicted expression. I would need more than one night to mold her Teyolia in preparation for her transformation. This night, however rough and unpleasant, would only be the first of many.

After a moment, Necahual returned to staring at the wall. A tense silence settled between us, and we fell asleep each on one side of the bed. I wished her a good rest.

My Tonalli still had much work ahead of it.

I exited the palace and made my way to Smoke Mountain.

I had never flown outside the capital before, so I half-expected my Tonalli to weaken over time. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that distance mattered little for Spiritual Manifestation. The cost of maintaining the technique remained the same.

I wondered if I could ride the winds all the way to Winland with time. Cross the sea and finally lay eyes on the eastern lands far beyond Yohuachanca’s grasp. Alas, I knew it was little more than a feeble dream for now. The Nightlords would wake up my body long before my soul could reach the ocean.

“Everywhere there is beauty,” the wind whispered in my ear. “But no sea may stop the tide of human greed. It shall crash on your shores one day.”

One day, I told myself as I fled the capital for the farmlands and forests. One day.

Smoke Mountain arose before me, a squat, mighty throne of stone that reached all the way to the clouds. Forested hills gathered around its base like how the weak flocked to the strong, but no vegetation would dare to approach the peak. A crown of jagged obsidian stone surrounded its smoldering crater. The smoke that gave the mountain its name drifted from the summit in a beautiful trail of white and ashen gray.

I could feel the lifeblood of the world stirring beneath its skin of stone. Boiling fury slumbered in the depths of the earth, waiting to be unleashed. Waiting to burst out and burn all life to cinders. Smoke Mountain hadn’t erupted in centuries, but only fools would think it dead. The magma never slumbered forever.

It couldn’t wake up any sooner.

A single sacred road led to Smoke Mountain’s summit, its gentle slope housing a set of small altars honoring the Gods-in-Spirit and the Gods-in-the-Flesh. Pilgrims already gathered around them in preparation for the New Fire Ceremony. They offered food, gold, and tributes to the heavens in the hope of being forgiven for this year’s sins and blessed for the next. Tlazohtzin’s men should be hard at work placing tumi and other Sapa items among them. I expected priests to notice these unusual oddities, but ignore them until after the New Fire Ceremony so as not to disrupt it.

I doubted Mother would have struck at people on this well-treaded road, so I scouted the mountain for smaller settlements. It didn’t take me long to find a wide brow of rock overhanging a cliff-top village halfway to the summit. The settlement housed less than a dozen huts huddling away from the sacred road. I made my way to it with haste.

“Do you hear them?” The wind asked me softly. “The whimpers of the dead?”

It didn’t take me long to see the flies.

My beak lacked a sense of smell in owl form, so I didn’t detect the blood until I laid eyes upon it. A puddle of dried blood littered the dusty ground, its previous owner slumped against the village’s heart with his skull caved in. A vulture already feasted on the entrails, while a couple of coati raccoons cleansed the fingers of flesh.

I phased through the huts’ walls and confirmed Mother’s warnings: that the Burned Men loathed the living with the fury of a burning inferno. I saw a child split in two inside his bed; a woman eviscerated; a man stabbed to death with such brutality that his bloody face had become indescribable.

Death had visited each of the village’s houses. Flies gathered around empty skulls. Blood tainted the stone walls red. Dismembered limbs hung from ceilings. Mother had fulfilled her promise: the Ridden hosts she provided to the Burned Men slew all souls within reach of their cursed hands before killing themselves.

To cast the Haunt and counter-ritual, we required sacrifices that represented either the Nightlords or Smoke Mountain itself. Mother settled on targeting the latter category. Who would better represent this sacred land than the families who had lived on its surface for generations?

Sad as it sounded, I had grown desensitized to such gory spectacles. It would have made me vomit once. Now? I felt a pang of sorrow for the victims, but my hateful heart remained unclouded.

“I am truly sorry,” I apologized to the cadavers. “I wish I had found another way.”

This earned me a taunt from the wind. “Are these words for the dead, or for yourself?”

“Both,” I replied before plucking feathers from my plumage and planting them inside the fleshly-killed corpses. Within them, I placed all of my malice and resentment. “I curse this land to bring forth a disaster upon the masters of Yohuachanca.”

I used the Doll spell to dig open up a mass grave to fill them with fresh blood.

“I curse the Nightlords to suffer their ritual blowing up in their faces.”

I buried the cursed corpses of the dead inside the bowels of the earth.

“I curse my captors to suffer calamity the kind of which they haven’t suffered from in centuries. I curse them with pain, loss, and despair.”

Finally, I closed the tomb to hide my family’s crimes, leaving the spirits of the dead unavenged and full of resentment.

“I curse them to witness an abomination of desolation as all their hopes and prayers are rewarded with death and failure.”

Once I departed from the village not a single trace of the massacre remained above ground. The dead lay under its foundations, their rotten wombs bearing a vile Curse of my own creation.

I visited three more mountain settlements after this one. Three more times I found them silent and filled with corpses; three more times I Cursed these unholy grounds with the stain of my black feathers.

As I carried on with my gruesome work I sensed a subtle shift in the air. The sun was high in the sky, yet a dark cloud seemed to obscure it; one invisible to the naked eye but that nonetheless dimmed the light. My Teyolia ached with foul power even as an aura of dread weighed on my wings.

I noticed other signs by the time I cursed the fourth village. Dozens of worms infested the flesh of the corpses I buried, although they hadn’t been there before. Birds flew out of the forested base of the mountain and fled north. Snakes and centipedes crawled out of their holes to slither down the harsh cliffs.

The final sign struck me when I closed the last tomb. The earth shook beneath my talons, quickly and almost imperceptibly. The empty huts’ walls trembled to the point that some of their stones cracked. The ground stirred for less than a minute, but it sent a few rocks falling down the slopes.

“The earth boils with anger,” the wind warned me. “The lock rattles and its prisoner stirs in the pit. Beware the silent dark. His gullet swallows all.”

I could hardly make sense out of the Yaotzin’s prophecy, but I understood its spirit: a veil of calamity had fallen upon this land.

I had brought doom to all of Smoke Mountain.

How long until the Nightlords noticed? They had spent six hundred years preparing a ritual in this exact location. I suspected the priests would quickly notice the disappearances. Mother hedged her bets by targeting isolated communities, but it only delayed the massacres’ discovery. If animals detected the danger ahead, experienced sorcerers would certainly do the same.

And yet… and yet I doubted the vampires would abort their plan. The ritual could only take place on a specific date at the end of a cosmic cycle. The Nightlords were mad enough to replace the sun. They would gamble it all despite the risks of sabotage.

My eyes turned to the birds fleeing away in panic. They sensed the coming of a great disaster. A storm of death that would cleanse this land bare.

Would it claim me too? Mother said I couldn’t suffer from my own Curses, but if I set a forest on fire and survived the flames, a collapsing tree could still end my life. If the beasts of the land showed such fear, then my counter-ritual would bear devastating consequences for everyone near Smoke Mountain.

I nested atop a cliff overseeing the region. My location gave me an impeccable view of Yohuachanca’s heartland, its capital, and its farmlands. My old village of Acampa looked no bigger than a speck of dust from my rookery. I couldn’t tell how, but I knew all of them would suffer greatly from my actions today. Countless innocents would bear the brunt of my malediction.

“Well,” I told myself. “It has to be done.”

King Mictlantecuhtli asked for an ocean of blood once. I would shed another if victory required it.

I had spent the better part of the day cursing the land and the sun would soon set. Before I returned to the palace, however, I focused on my Teyolia and called upon the so-called strongest spell of all.

“Powerlessness,” I whispered. “Open, my Tomb.”

My spirit erupted all around me as my heart unleashed the fear at the root of my heart. The world fluctuated around me; its air, its soil, its very essence bending to my will. Ephemeral images formed around me. The bars of a birdcage built with whispering skulls. Strings of shadows held by invisible hands. Walls of gnashing beaks.

For a brief instant, these illusions born of my soul threatened to come true. For a second, my will alone determined my reality. Alas, the images swiftly faded away with a terrible pain striking my heart-fire. The world returned to normal. It had rejected me once again.

“The gate is unlocked, but the owner lacks the strength to open it,” the wind taunted me.

As the Lords of Terror warned me, I needed to reinforce my Teyolia with more sun embers before it could sustain my Tomb. A pity. I would have loved to trap the Nightlords in a prison of my own.

I put these thoughts aside and flew back to my jail. I had done all I could at this point. Now I could only pray that my Haunt and preparations would disrupt the New Fire Ceremony.

I hoped the true gods would smile on my enterprise.

I woke up alone.

I only saw Necahual again when she joined the servants in clothing me. We didn’t exchange a single glance, let alone a word. It would take us both a short time to process our new relationship and its consequences.

As expected, word of our union had already spread. Yoloxochitl didn’t hide her joy when she and her sisters welcomed me back at the temple for the nightly rituals. Her uncanny smile never failed to unsettle me.

“I am very pleased, my child,” she greeted me after lightly kissing me on the cheek. Her lips had all the warmth of lifeless metal. “You have finally taken the steps needed to pass on your blessed lineage.”

“If it pleases you, Mother Yoloxochitl,” I replied, playing the part of the obedient son. I glanced at the temple, searching for Eztli to check for her reaction. My heart sank when I noticed her sitting on a bench in a daze. Yoloxochitl’s black blood stained her lips.

Eztli suffered as much as her mother.

“However I may dislike that wrench, her womb has borne a purebred daughter once,” Yoloxochitl said. I somehow managed to hide my nausea. “It will see that it does so again. Necahual failed to be a mother to you, but she will not fail with your child, I guarantee it.”

A purebred daughter? I squinted at the wording. Did she mean that Eztli was indeed an emperor’s bastard daughter? I assumed the Nightlords would know. Considering their breeding program, they probably kept tabs on all the women who underwent the first night. The doubts about Eztli’s paternity might have been the only reason why she hadn’t been abducted to a temple earlier.

Purebred… I had heard that expression before, but I didn’t recall the context. Purebred.

A shiver traveled down my spine. I couldn’t explain why yet, but I had the feeling that I had put my finger on a very important detail. That information mattered somehow. Did it relate to the mystery of what happened to the emperors’ sons?

I had too much on my mind for the moment. I should explore the matter further once I’d foiled the New Fire Ceremony.

“Enough indolence, sister,” the Jaguar Woman said. Her cold eyes settled on me. “The time has come.”

Banishing my suspicions from my mind, I knelt as the Nightlords gathered around me. I avoided their gaze to better fake submission, but I could almost taste their satisfaction. Their cursed flame had grown fat on death and sacrifices.

“At long last, the New Fire Ceremony is upon us, Iztac Ce Ehecatl,” the Jaguar Woman declared. “Your efforts shall soon be rewarded.”

“You will observe many rituals tomorrow, Iztac,” Yoloxochitl said. “You shall begin your journey to the top of Smoke Mountain once the night swallows the sun. We shall join you in your ascent.”

The Jaguar Woman forced my chin up with her finger until I met her gaze. “There, once all flames across the empire have been snuffed out, you shall lift the holy flame to the sky, light the last and first bonfire, and beckon our dark father to grace us with a new dawn. Do you understand your duty?”

“I do, goddess,” I replied, my heart burning with anticipation. “I do.”

Tomorrow, everything would change.