Chapter 12
Serpent mimicry is the only way to teleport from one location to another.
Feline mimics rule over their own bodies, enhancing strength, speed, or reflexes.
Ave mimics rule over communication, whether that’s creating projections or reading thoughts.
But it’s only serpent mimics that can move beings from one place in the earthly world, the Kay Pacha, through the inner world, the Ukhu Pacha, and back above again.
The Ukhu Pacha, the Serpent’s domain and that of the dead, is like the pressure beneath the sea and the dark inside a cave. It’s water. It’s drowning. It’s losing your orientation when beneath a wave, not knowing which way is up and swimming down instead.
It’s the domain of the Guardian who both heals us and claims us at the end.
In the void of the Ukhu Pacha, I feel the slither of the Serpent, wet and gliding through the water, a sea monster and a savior. I feel them so close I can touch their scales. Who am I to be so close to our Guardian?
My hero, the Serpent hisses out, and I recognize it as one of the three tones that have been whispering in my ear these last few days. You must help her, hero. You must help our child.
Our child? We are all children of the Guardians, but I know instinctively who they mean. The princess. That must be why I’m at her side, traversing the Ukhu Pacha and drowning when I’ve swum in the past.
Help her when we cannot. Help her because it’s our fault.
I choke, and then I’m breathing fresh air.
Mare drops from my left arm, and the princess’s wrist is no longer in my hand as I heave over the grass.
“Heavens damned… Serpent travel…” I say in between spitting up bile. I haven’t had a single bite of food, just coca leaves and chicha in preparation for the debut tonight. My spit tastes metallic, a sign of my fasting, and it’s awful.
My mind immediately turns to Mare, and I see the kid breathing heavily. He’s kneeling on the ground, but he’s not crying. He’s tough like that. “I’m okay,” he sniffs out. “I’m okay. Just need to-” he heaves a little. “Just need to throw up like you.”
He crawls further away after waiting for me to nod at him in agreement.
He can handle himself while I figure out what’s going on.
Serpent mimicry tends to be easier the younger and healthier you are.
After the insane amounts of healing I’ve experienced these last few days, I thank the Gods it hasn’t affected me more strongly.
The same can’t be said for the princess.
“Princess, you hear me?” I whisper, using my knees to crawl closer to her.
She’s in the same position from Lima with her head hunched down.
Her entire body trembles. Her normally brown skin is ashen, and she looks too close to death for me to keep my head on straight.
“Princess, please, you need to look at me.”
I need to see her eyes alive and well, or I’ll fight the Serpent myself. I’ll fight all the Guardians if I need to.
She looks up at me before I begin to curse. Her eyes are bloodshot and unfocused, but every blink brings her back to consciousness.
“Where are we?” she slurs, and I’m at a loss.
“Where are we?” I parrot back. “You brought us here.”
Her brows furrow, and she sways as she attempts to sit up.
I grab her bicep to stabilize her, and she jumps at my touch.
I almost let go, but she falls to my side with an exhausted sigh.
I wrap my arm around her, but that triggers a flinch.
She pushes against my hold and manages to just barely sit up by herself.
“No, it’s okay,” I say, and open my arms wide. She looks at me with those unfocused eyes, so different from the calculating ones in Lima. I hold my breath until she’s in my arms, slumped with her forehead on my left shoulder.
“What did I do?” she rasps out.
That’s exactly what I want to know, but something tells me right now isn’t a good time to interrogate her. It sounds suspiciously like Suyai’s voice in my head, and, oh Gods, Suyai. My arms tighten around the princess, and I have the need to hold Mare too, no matter how independent he can be.
I lost sight of Suyai.
“We need to save them,” I say, and the princess immediately pulls away from me. The fog blurring her eyes is gone. Her glare is as hard as our stone Gods.
She stumbles but manages to stand, forcing me to do the same. I look over at Mare again and see him sitting and ripping fabric from the bottom of his tunic. He’s probably doing it to dress his wound just like I’ve taught him.
The princess huffs and rolls her shoulders back, falling into an immaculate posture fit for the Inka.
This is what I’m meant to save. The princess, the empire, and what it all represents to the Inka.
Whatever calamity is meant to happen has started.
There’s no denying that. We were arrogant to believe we had time to tour the provinces on the way to the Sun Staff, as if this were a show.
I was arrogant to believe that, I know, but I still feel robbed of my moment.
I only needed a week for everyone in the empire to know my name, but I got this instead. No time, no debut, no Suyai by my side.
Bile rises in my throat again as I think of the last seconds before we disappeared, of Suyai’s wide, terrified eyes and desperate lunge for us, of her trust in me potentially broken.
As I spit out the acid, I’m so angry at myself I can barely breathe, so disappointed it crushes my windpipe.
I should’ve reached back. I should’ve tried harder, fought stronger, been better.
But I shake my head and recoup, forcing myself out of a spiral I refuse to go down. What’s lost is lost, but glory is my fate, and that hasn’t changed. I need to get the Sun Staff and return to Suyai.
“You really have no idea where we are?” I ask the princess, her moment of vulnerability buried in my mind for later.
“I don’t need to repeat myself.” She sounds so much like her mother. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but Mare steps in before I can respond.
“Rei,” he says, over and over as he stumbles into my arms and holds tight. He’s limping. He has a blood-soaked, torn piece of tunic wrapped around his leg. That bird pecked at his flesh like he was a carcass up for the taking. “Rei, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say, and the relief that floods through him is palpable. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
If anyone should be apologizing, it’s me. I’m the one who didn’t get us to Suyai in time, but I can’t think like that. Once I return with the Sun Staff, once I save them all, that won’t matter.
“I should’ve fought back. I know I can! I promise I can, but I got, I got–” he stutters and doesn’t finish his sentence.
“You’re a tough kid, Mare. You’ll get it next time,” I say, running my fingers through his curls. They’re identical to Suyai’s.
He wipes snot off his face and nods. That’s my boy.
“Why are we back home?” he asks.
I squint my eyes in confusion and copy his study of the sprawling landscape.
I feel like a fool for asking the princess for answers when I could’ve just taken a look around.
Home. Yes, that’s where we are. Not exactly, not in the warm house my aunts live in, but close.
We’re high in the mountains, and there’s a town below us.
Ollantaytambo. It has to be it. I’d recognize stonework anywhere.
We’re in the Sacred Valley, days away from the palace.
Suyai, Mare, and I grew up a week’s walk from here, deeper in the mountain sierra but close enough to have visited towns in the Sacred Valley for their markets.
Mare is too young to remember that, but he must recognize the landscape.
To him, the mountains are home, no matter how long we’ve lived in Lima.
“Home?” The princess says, looking at us with suspicion.
My defenses flare at the look. There’s a growing desperation climbing up my throat, a gnashing mix of separation anxiety and fear of failure, that transforms into the need to fight.
“We’ve done nothing to warrant that glare, princess. You’re the one who brought us here.”
In the familiar territory of my homeland, the dynamic between the princess and me feels different. She feels human. It’s both thrilling and terrifying. A real human princess I can touch, a real human princess I can break if I’m not careful.
“I don’t know where here is,” she spits out every word.
“How is that possible?” Now that I know where we are, days away from Lima, I can’t believe she would have the power to take us so far without a point of reference. With that much unfocused power, she could have gotten us lost in the Ukhu Pacha.
Yet, a part of me trusts that would never happen, not with her strength. Envy is hot in my stomach. I swallow, and it cools. I try to look past the legend to see the girl. The girl is shaking.
“I wasn’t going to drown, not again. I didn’t know that was the last push I needed to get out of there but it was.
I’ll be damned if I’m going back.” She’s shaking and backing away from me as she speaks.
Her words make no sense, but she talks to me like I not only understand but am ready to fight her on it.
I have nothing but the phantom image of a bruise on her cheek to give me context, a context that makes me want to fight for her not against her.
“Are you scared, Miss Princess?” Mare asks. The princess and I break eye contact to see him standing between us, staring at the princess head-on and waiting for an answer. It’s amazing, he’s half our height, yet his genuine tone and open demeanor make him the strongest of the three of us right now.
“You’re with me and Rei, and she’s the Guardians’ Hero,” he ends his sentence with a nod of his head, like that’s all that needs to be said, like fear is that easy to banish.