Page 16 of Queen Takes Rook
I quivered with rage. Great One. That was Isis’ name. Not mine. The sky darkened. Clouds boiled on the horizon and thunder rumbled. Lightning tore across the sky, opening it up for a deluge of rain that hammered the crowd, drenching us all. But Isis’ rage could not be cooled by rain.
Bianca found her pride and stiffened her spine, raising her voice to be heard over the storm. “You’re unharmed. Xochitl is fine. Besides, you can always have another heir. I was trying to save us all.”
“You would damn a child to Ra’s hell to save your own skin.” My voice echoed with Isis’ thunder. Wind whipped across the plaza, overturning tables, chairs, and even a few potted plants. “There can be no forgiveness for worms like you.”
“There will be no Fire Ceremony tonight.” Mayte didn’t sound like herself any longer. As I gazed at her, I saw a different shape overlaid on her familiar features, like a blurred photograph of someone caught in motion, or old-fashioned double-exposed film. Her goddess hovered over her, long black hair waving around her down to her knees.
No. That wasn’t hair. They were snakes. They hung around her legs, almost like a skirt.
“Perhaps in sacrifice, this worm can find some way to atone for her sins,” Mayte said.
Bianca’s bravado faded quickly. “No, please. We don’t sacrifice any longer.”
Staring at Coatlicue’s avatar and heir to Her power, I felt certainty shifting inside me. Sacrifice was needed. A great deal of blood. But not all of that blood had to be shed in retribution. I wouldn’t interfere with what Mayte needed to do…
But I had a brutal, bloody task to accomplish, too.
The pressure inside me rose, dragging my head to the side. My gaze collided with Itztli’s and I remembered the obsidian blade he’d shown me last night. As soon as I thought of it, he strode forward and knelt in the mud before me to lay the blade on the ground at my feet.
“My queen. Use me as your blade. I’m yours.”
7
Itztli
Icame to my queen as willingly as my brother, but not as easily.
My pulse hammered frantically in my throat, and my stomach churned with the sour taste of fear and uneasiness. In the joy of coming into my power last night, I’d managed to suppress the dark stains in my memory, but soon, she would know the truth. Tlacel had already proven exactly how precious he would be in her service.
Now I would prove how monstrous I would be.
Shara looked down at my obsidian blade a moment, and when she met my gaze again, the same blackness filled her eyes, a glittering icy darkness of faceted glass. Hairs rose on my arms. The goddesses walked among us tonight. Coatlicue had already doomed me. If Isis turned me away too, I would beg to be sacrificed along with the consiliarius who’d betrayed my family.
My queen tipped her head back, letting the blanket slip from her shoulders to the ground. Rain sluiced down her cheeks like tears. She let out a soft sigh and met Mayte’s gaze. “Would it be terribly inconvenient if you had a large tree in this spot?”
The sound my sister made might have been a laugh, but it hurt my ears. Last night, they’d laughed and splashed each other in the grotto like two maiden goddesses, but tonight, the earth mother’s killing devastation roared in their power. “Not inconvenient in the slightest, especially if it’s large enough to provide some shade for the courtyard.”
“Oh, it’ll be large enough, I think.” Shara dropped her gaze back to mine and I flinched. She stripped me bare. In a single look, she weighed my heart and began to sift through my mind. All too quickly she would find the poison that remained.
I didn’t pull away. I didn’t try to hide. I let her have it all.
She cupped my chin, her fingers hard on my jaw. The pressure stirred something inside me. It lifted its head, the monster’s interest piqued. Not my giant dog. No, this was something else entirely. Something I loathed with every fiber of my being.
She whispered inside my head.:What are you protecting me from?:
She could have pushed that cracked door wide open and dragged my filthy secrets out one by one. Gratitude that she didn’t, that she allowed me to face those truths one by one in my own time, clogged my throat.:It’ll be easier if I show you, my queen.:
Tales of twin gods were common to my people, which made the reality of growing up as a twin much more difficult. In ancient times, when twins were born, it wasn’t uncommon for one of them to be killed. Sometimes it was easy to see which twin should be sacrificed, because one would be born with a deformity. For others, like me, the deformity wasn’t apparent immediately.
I was the gigantic black dog, like Xolotl, Quetzalcoatl’s monstrous twin, and Tlacel was the beautiful feathered serpent.
Thus it had always been since the day I was born.
She slipped deeper into my mind, past my conscious thoughts to actual memories. Reading them like a book, watching flashes of my childhood like a movie.
Our mother had delivered us during the bloody time of Tenochtitlan’s invasion and the crumbling of the mighty Aztec civilization. Grandmama and Mayte often said our mother died when Tenochtitlan fell, but that wasn’t entirely true. She lived, long enough to deliver Mayte hundreds of years later.
But Mama was never the same after she left Tenochtitlan. After she delivered me.
