Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

Glory surged through him. Rage. Red-gold light. And for a second, as he held the makol ’s heart aloft, he felt like a god.

He did the other one’s heart, then both heads, and roared victory when the bastards puffed to nothingness. Then he sagged and took two shuddering breaths as Red-Boar’s footsteps approached, moving fast.

Leah, he thought, his heart tearing in his chest. Gods, Leah.

Straightening, he grabbed Red-Boar by the throat, spun, and slammed the traitor into the nearest stone wall, hard enough that rocks tumbled and broke free. ‘‘Why?’’ he grated, fury twisting inside him. Despair. ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Don’t play a bigger fool than you already are,’’ the older man spat, his voice rasping against the choke hold. ‘‘I’m trying to stop you from making the worst mistake of your life.’’

‘‘No.’’ Strike tightened his grip as betrayal and killing rage washing his vision red. ‘‘You’re punishing me for my father’s choices.’’

But Red-Boar’s breath rattled in his constricted throat. ‘‘At least he made his choices. You’re acting like a spoiled brat, sitting around and waiting for a godsdamned miracle.’’

‘‘I’m—’’ But Strike broke off when the accusation resonated too close to what Leah had said to him that morning, when she’d called him an arrogant prince who wanted everything his way. Was that really what was going on? No, he thought. That wasn’t him, wasn’t the man he wanted to be.

But maybe it was what the darkness inside him had made him become, he thought, loosening his fingers and letting Red-Boar slide down the wall.

Kulkulkan’s influence had shaded Leah’s brother toward easy living and self-justification. Was that so different from what his most trusted advisers were warning him against now? Or was that explanation in itself too easy? Was it more comfortable to blame the darkness on the god than himself?

In the end it didn’t matter where it came from, he realized. Because he knew what he had to do about it. He owed it to his people to give them a ruler, owed it to Leah to make choices not just for them in the moment, but for the hope of a future.

It’s time, his father’s voice whispered in his mind, though he couldn’t have said whether it was a message or a memory. But either way, the whisper was right. It was time. Avoiding the scepter hadn’t stopped the prophesied events from coming any more than avoiding Leah had stopped him from falling for her. And turning away from his people now would only cause more destruction.

He was his father’s son, which meant more than a fondness for dreams. It meant the blood of kings ran through his veins, and the duty, the responsibility wasn’t his to set aside.

It was only his to take.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Leah swam in and out of consciousness, sick and sore and feverish, her brain fuzzed with drugs. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction before her vision went red-gold and blurry, but she didn’t need to see that far to know where she was. The stone slab beneath her, the echoes, and the hum of power told her everything she needed to know.

She was back where it’d all started—strapped to the chac-mool altar in the ritual chamber that guarded the intersection of the earth, sky, and underworld.

Worse, she was alive, and so was Zipacna. And the clock was ticking.

Eventually her fever broke, or the drugs wore off, or both. Her brain cleared and the pain lessened, and she was able to take stock. She was still dressed in her combat clothes, but the weapons belt was gone. That wasn’t a surprise, but it was definitely a problem. Without the jade-tips and knives, she’d be powerless against the ajaw-makol , even if she did manage to escape. The spell was no good without a knife, and even at that it was going to be a long shot.

Which left her bound to a sacrificial altar with no hope of rescue until too late, because Strike and the other Nightkeepers weren’t due at the intersection until the equinox, and she doubted Red-Boar was going to fess up to what he’d done. For all she knew, the bastard had lied and told Strike she’d gone to Zipacna willingly.

Tears filmed her vision, and grief tore at her. Regret. She should’ve left a note, should’ve told Strike what she was planning so he’d have a place to start looking at best, a warning at worst. Because the way it was looking now, he was going to zap into battle and find her there.

After everything they’d done to get around it, he was going to have to kill her and fulfill the thirteenth prophecy. If he didn’t, he’d be signing a death warrant for all mankind.

When a tear broke free and trickled down her cheek, she swiped her face against her shoulder, brushing it away. And froze.

The place on her right shoulder where she’d been been shot, which had been covered beneath a four-by-four bandage the last time she’d regained consciousness, wasn’t bandaged anymore. Instead, her captors had left the wound open. Only it wasn’t a wound anymore. It was a scar.

A faint shimmer of excitement worked through her. She seriously doubted the makol ’s magic ran to healing spells . . . and if she’d healed herself, maybe she could do other tricks as well. Maybe the equinox magic was strong enough to give her a slim chance of escape.

She closed her eyes and focused inward, and thought she detected a trickle of power within. Without conscious decision, she touched the thin stream of magic and thought, Hello? Strike? Can you hear me?

Footsteps sounded outside the arched doorway leading from the ritual chamber.

Leah jolted, her heart bumping at the expectation of seeing Zipacna, the faint hope that it might be Strike. But it wasn’t either of them.

It was her brother.

‘‘Matty?’’ Her breath whistled in her lungs as emotions slapped at her: disbelief and excitement, suspicion, and a longing so intense she could barely suck in her next lungful of air.

I’m dreaming, she told herself. He’s dead. This is all in my mind .

His footsteps sounded real as he stepped inside the chamber, though. He was wearing the same sort of preppy shit she remembered from his college days, and his tousled hair fell over his forehead just so. His eyes seemed real when they locked on her, his smile was the one she remembered, and his voice was the same when he said, ‘‘Hey, Blondie.’’

‘‘You’re not really here.’’ She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling for sanity. ‘‘It’s the drugs. You’re a flashback or something.’’

But he laughed. ‘‘I can live with being a flashback. You’ve called me worse.’’

He was still there when she cracked her eyes open, standing next to the altar looking down at her, his eyes clear and blue like she remembered.

‘‘Magic,’’ she said before she could stop herself.

He nodded, and held out his hand to show the slash across his palm. ‘‘They brought me back for you, Leah. To show you what you can have if you join us.’’

Horror sang through her, alongside awful temptation. ‘‘I won’t become a makol . It’s wrong.’’

He chuckled, sounding so much like himself that her heart shuddered. ‘‘That’s my sister,’’ he said with fond tolerance. ‘‘Black and white. Right and wrong. But what’s right in this case? Is it right that your boyfriend is going to have to kill you to let his precious god go free? What if I tell you there’s another way? A way for you to have it all?’’

‘‘Impossible,’’ she whispered, telling herself not to listen, that it was the same self-centered rhetoric she’d accused Strike of only that morning. ‘‘There’s a balance. You’ve got to give something to get something. You have to sacrifice.’’