Chapter 38
Kasik watched the sunlight fill his room, the thoughts that had kept him awake all night no less agitated than when he lay
down, and considered what to do next. He was now in possession of another secret that belonged to Nina. Samaq was her brother. His friend who Kasik had known for almost ten years was Nina’s flesh and blood. The similarities were there. Their smiles,
their desire to trust, their propensity toward affection.
At least he wouldn’t have to tell Nina her brother was dead. If only Kasik knew where Samaq was, and why. He decided to think on that rather than the devastating news his tayta had delivered. There was nothing
he could do about that mess, and wallowing in self-pity didn’t help.
Struck with an idea, Kasik threw back the sheets and dressed in training clothes, determined to exert some of his anger in
the ring. When he arrived, he found he wasn’t the only one up so early. A few of his fellow walla lingered nearby, all of
them watching him with wary eyes. He looked behind him, wondering if perhaps Atik was hiding in the shadows, waiting to pounce
on him once again.
Then he remembered what his face must have looked like, and thought that was why they were staring at him. But nobody said anything, and he was beginning to think he was missing something crucial.
“What’s going on?” he asked the walla closest to him. It wasn’t someone he knew by name, and that made Kasik feel guilty.
The boy nodded his head in deference and then glanced at the others surrounding them. “Taruc is dead, Kamayuq.”
“What?” Kasik whispered the question through clenched teeth. “How do you know this?”
“The emperor tasked those two with cleaning up the body.” He nodded over Kasik’s shoulder to a couple of men cleaning their
hands in a trough of water that they usually used to clean their blades. “He was found stabbed . . . outside Nina’s door—”
Kasik was running back into the kancha before the boy finished his sentence.
Everything was a blur as he turned corner after corner, skidding across the stone floors and glancing off stone walls until
coming to a stop before Nina’s door, where a dark stain had been hastily scrubbed. There were no walla guarding her door.
No sign to tell him she was safely inside.
All he could do was imagine the worst. He didn’t bother knocking, simply threw himself into the room, chest heaving as his
eyes landed on the back of Nina sitting at the small table, the fire in her hearth down to embers. He rounded her small frame
and sank to his knees in front of her, relieved to see her beautiful brown eyes open and alert as they traced over him.
“Kasik?” she whispered. She reached out and ran gentle fingertips across his jaw, sending a wave of pinpricks over his entire
body. Kasik had forgotten about the run-in with his tayta, the bruise that darkened his jaw, the revelation about his mamay.
Nina’s fingertips brought awareness to the pain, but also to another feeling, one that eclipsed the pain and made his head
spin.
“What—” she started.
“It’s nothing,” he told her. And it was. Nothing but a distant discomfort now that he knew she was alive.
But her fingers didn’t leave his skin. They followed the path of his neck, down the slope of his shoulders, her hand coming to rest against his pulse. She moved closer until he was breathing in the scent of her, imagining it everywhere.
Then her forehead dropped against his shoulder and her chest rose and fell with a quiet, deep breath.
“Nina,” Kasik started carefully. “What happened?”
He felt her hand curl into a fist. Felt the tremble of clenched fingers and frustration as if they were his own. And then
she stood abruptly, pacing the floor in front of him with her hands in her hair.
“It’s my fault,” Nina said miserably. “I tried to seduce him. Gods, I was such a fool. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
Kasik pushed off the floor and stood. “What are you saying?”
“The achilla, I wondered if I could get him to remove it. And he almost did.” She finally looked at Kasik. “I didn’t know
how else to convince him, but then he found this,” she said, thrusting her bent arm at Kasik and showing him the small scab
on her elbow. “And he pushed me away. He denied me, and then he said he was going to teach me a lesson.”
The way she said the word made it sound as though she was hurt by his rejection. A flare of anger pulsed in Kasik’s chest.
“He was going to deny you regardless.” The words were harsher than he meant, and the hurt that passed over Nina’s face made
him falter. He ran his hands through his hair and cursed. It had to be done. She needed to know the truth.
But he was momentarily distracted by the dress she was wearing, gossamer and gilded, just barely grazing the curves of her
body and floating around her bare feet to the floor. She had worn it to see the emperor. To seduce him. Gods, he hated that word. Hated himself for the burning rage he felt whenever he imagined the way her hands had touched
the emperor.
Even with his achilla around his neck, her attay drew him in and drowned him.
Focus, he told himself. “You could not seduce the emperor because he does not intend to marry you,” he stated.
Nina’s head snapped back. “Of course he does,” she said angrily. “That is the entire reason you forced me here.”
He shook his head. “That’s only what they told me. You have to understand that I knew nothing of this—”
“Of what, Kasik?”
Finally, Kasik faced her fully. “You’re here as a sacrifice.” The words felt like an omen on his lips, as if saying them aloud
would bring them to fruition. He pushed on despite the foreboding in his gut. “They believe the gods offer them favor and
protection from the kukuchi in exchange for your life.”
Nina scoffed. “A sacrifice?” She searched his face, but when she found no hint of jesting, her brows furrowed. “Why me?” she
said slowly, her eyes trailing off to the side, her face shifting from disbelief to disgust in a matter of heartbeats. “Shayim
was right, then. About the kukuchi.”
“It seems so,” Kasik said.
Nina turned sharply and pinned him with her eyes. “When?” she asked, voice dangerously low.
“They only mentioned waiting until Inti Raymi. They didn’t tell me—”
“No, Kasik. When did you know?”
It was then that he realized he had mistaken the softness of her words and the distance in her eyes for acceptance when truly,
it was the feeling that she had been betrayed by him that lined her mouth and tongue and the fires of rage that lit her eyes
from within.
Kasik swallowed the lie that sprang to his mind and opted for the truth, consequences be damned. “Maicu told me the night
we arrived.”
“You’ve been holding on to this secret for four days? All this time, and you knew my fate.”
“I wanted to tell you.” He took a hesitant step closer, but she moved away, the backs of her knees hitting the bed behind her. “I tried so many times, but there was never a good time and I was afraid of what you would do.”
“Because I’m a monster—”
“No, Nina, that’s not what I—”
“—and this monstrous attay inside of me is terrifying, right? More like terrifyingly useless.” She hastily pulled her hair to one side and began braiding it, her movements quick and angry. “I was going to kill him.
That’s why I threw myself at him. Like a fool. I wanted to remove the stone and then rip his will apart.”
The jealousy and anger simmering in his chest left with a sigh, replaced instead with a deep, sorrowful remorse. She had been
planning this alone for gods knew how long, and he had been selfishly worried about himself.
About a tayta who cared nothing for him.
A mamay who was dead.
A friend he thought was gone, who was also Nina’s brother. Kasik was reeling, his mind fractured into a handful of directions,
but the clearest path sat before him like a pitahaya ripe for the picking.
“Leave with me,” he finally said, striding forward and sliding his hands onto her cheeks, covering the bloody mark that was
there with the heat of his own. As he should have the moment he knew the truth of Maicu’s plans. The moment his tayta had
confessed what he had done. “The first night of Inti Raymi, all the guests will have arrived and there will be plenty of distraction.
We can leave this place and never look back.”
Nina tore his hands away. He felt the loss of her keenly, knew he was losing her even as he betrayed everything he knew. “You
said the emperor would come for me. That he would never stop looking for me until he had me. Did you lie about that as well?”
“I never lied, Nina. He will come, but we can prepare. We can go to your family and take them to Shayim’s. We can—”
“We cannot do that.” Her words were like tiny knives that lodged themselves into the soft parts of his body and burrowed with
every breath he took. “How can I trust you with that stone around your neck? You fear me. You believed your tayta when he
said I manipulated you. You lied to me. How do I know that you aren’t doing the gods’ bidding even now?”
Kasik reached up and tore the achilla from his neck. It fell to the floor with a thud. “Search me, Nina. Reach inside of me
and find what you are looking for. I have nothing to hide.”
The hunger in her eyes was sharp, its teeth scraping against his mind and soul in a way that took his breath away. The pulse
beneath his skin slowed. The room around him narrowed to a point, and at the center was Nina, her soft brown eyes thinned
in concentration. Her full lips parted in thought. The tops of her cheeks red with effort. Her chest heaving with the thrill
of the hunt.
And then, just as suddenly, he was free. As if a tether holding him up had been cut, Kasik stumbled back, the ground tilting
beneath him. He steadied himself with a hand on the small table, which creaked beneath his weight.
Nina bent and scooped the achilla from the floor and shoved it at him. “Put it back on,” she said, shaking it for emphasis.
“Nina, I told you that—”
She shook her head. “Nothing can be amiss,” she said. “No one can know that you have placed your loyalty elsewhere.”
His hands shook as he reached out and took the achilla, Nina’s attention on him like a weight rooting him to the spot. The
moment it was back in place, that pressure lifted, but it wasn’t relief he felt. It was dissatisfaction. As if a hole had
been carved into his soul and left empty.
Nina watched him closely, her eyes darting over his features, looking for something he hoped she could find. “You would leave everything you know, everyone you love, risk everything you have”—she gestured to the room and the space beyond—“for a stranger?”
“You are no stranger, Nina” he said gently. The truth of it tasted exquisite on his tongue. He stepped closer. He ached to
reach out and press his words into her chest. “My soul recognized yours the moment I laid eyes on you. I don’t know what it
is, if it’s your attay, if it’s fate or a cruel joke, but I know that it does not matter. You have become a part of me, and
I cannot bear to lose any more pieces as it is.”
There was a moment when Nina placed a hand over her mouth and turned away, where Kasik was certain he’d said too much. That
everything he felt was his own delusion, a life-altering mutation of his soul that had begun the moment he saw the stubborn
set of her jaw and the careful hope in her eyes.
Nina would deny him. She would swallow his words and spit them back out because she didn’t need him. She had made a plan that
didn’t include him. She had found a way to save herself.
Kasik would accept her decision regardless. It wouldn’t change the fact that he would help her, that he would rather die than
watch her die, that he would do anything just to ensure that what had happened to his mamay would not happen to her—
“All right.” The words were a whisper through her fingers but a knife through his spiraling thoughts. A sliver of hope among
a sea of uncertainty, and he held on to it for dear life. “I’ll go with you. But you have to promise me that—”
“Anything,” he gasped, striding forward, desperately closing the space between them.
Thrilled at the way she lifted her head to meet his gaze, her neck exposed to him, the pulse there fluttering quickly.
He was glad to know that he was underneath her skin just as much as she was underneath his.
“I will make any promises you ask of me. My will is yours.” He slid a hand to the back of her neck to support her head, felt the moment she fully let go and saw the way her eyes fluttered with relief.
If she let him, he would carry all her burdens, no matter how heavy.
For now, he was grateful for this small measure of concession. The feel of her breath coasting across his lips was like the
sweetest surrender he would ever have the privilege of knowing.
“Once you’re safe,” he murmured into her lips, “I’ll find Samaq and my men and—”
“Samaq?” She slipped out of his touch, the loss of her like a bucket of cold water over his head. Her hands were fisted in his tunic
as she held him at arm’s length. “What do you know of my brother?” she asked sharply, bewilderment lining her brows.
Her question was cut off by knocking at the door. They flung apart just as it opened and Empress Chaska breezed through. The
smile on her face fell the moment she laid eyes on them. She looked at Kasik’s jaw, then Nina’s bloodied cheek and the dress
she wore.
“Well,” she said after a moment, arms folded against her chest. “If you’re going to sneak around, at least wait until the
cover of night.”
“A lot of good that did you,” Kasik replied dryly.
Kasik felt Nina’s questioning glance, but Chaska practically rolled her eyes at him. “We have things to do,” she said pointedly.
“Right.” Kasik reluctantly turned to Nina. “Empress Chaska is going to escort you to Master Wara. I have a few things to attend
to, but I’ll see you tonight.”
It felt wrong to leave her; everything else felt trivial in the wake of what they planned, but it was important to keep up
appearances. To continue to be the obedient walla they knew him as.
Soon enough, the bars of his cage would no longer contain him.