Chapter Sixty-Nine: The Price of Love

Chapter Sixty-Nine: The Price of Love

I brushed a scroll with fingers that weren’t mine.

The vellum felt so soft beneath my nails, even as the words I read carried little more than empty platitudes. I focused on the hidden patterns within the text, catching the first signs of each sentence and rearranging them in a sequence that revealed the hidden truth.

It had taken me so long to set this up without my captors noticing. I’d called upon favors from Mother’s network of spies and allies, obscured the delivery of these messages under countless layers of misdirection, and paid the necessary intermediaries with both gold and favors. Exhuming this codex had taken a long time, and translating Mother’s secret notes undetected even more so.

All so that I could be useful to him.

All so that he would notice me and free me from this lonely prison.

How could these stories possibly help though? They were mere tales; stories about a nameless magician descending into the land of the dead, seeking power and wisdom to defeat a great evil he couldn’t kill nor understand. Deeper he descended, beneath a kingdom of fire and ashes into the wind-battered ruins of a world that used to be.

There he met the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, father of mankind, who now watched over the degenerate children he failed to save. The ancient god congratulated his visitor on braving the trials required to reach him and enlightened him.

“The Teyolia is the essence of life, that which separates the living from the dead,” Quetzalcoatl said. “A Tonalli may take many incarnations, but the heart-fire is unique to each vessel.”

“What of darkness?” the sorcerer asked. “Why must the bat feast on fearful men?”

“Because it would starve otherwise,” the great serpent replied. “Though the bat may travel between the realms of the dead and the living at will, it remains among the latter; and life is consumption. So it is that men must die to fuel the sun that gives them life. For the flame to be nurtured and the chain of existence to remain unbroken, it must feed continuously. The gods who cannot sustain their flame fade away into the depths of the earth, the same as any man.”

The tale made little sense to me, since I lacked true understanding of such things, but I knew it would serve him well and so I engraved these words to memory.

The vision ended there.

The softness of the scroll under my fingers was replaced by the warmth of Ingrid’s sweating hips. She faced me, her arms coiling around my neck and her legs dangling in the void while I held her against her bedroom wall. Her warm breath blew on my face before her lips pressed against mine in a final kiss.

I had held true to my promise. I gave myself to her wholly and exclusively. Lady Zyanya and my other concubines didn’t hide their disappointment when I said I would carry Ingrid to her chambers alone after the spectacle in the bath, but it pleased my consort.

The Seidr ritual had worked better than I expected. I didn’t feel the same immediate connection I shared with Nenetl, but Ingrid had copiously studied her mother’s notes and methods. She held nothing back from me either.

I’d already considered using Seidr as a method of sharing information without being overheard by others, but Ingrid was the first to follow through with the idea on her own. She had begun to recover information about the First Emperor’s codex her mother gathered and gave me a peek of its secrets; she guessed, correctly, that I could make good use of them.

I couldn’t help but ponder about something else as we separated and caught our breath. I’d felt Ingrid’s love and dedication in every kiss and flash of memory. I’d shared the depth of her feelings for me, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t touch my heart.

I wanted to return at least a sliver of that devotion, and I could think of only one way to do so.

“I will show you Winland soon,” I said after putting my clothes on again.

Ingrid quickly caught on. She appeared deeply moved for a brief instant, until her sense of reason reasserted itself.

“My lord was kind to offer me my own private Winland, but surely imperial resources would be better spent elsewhere,” she replied, when she truly meant, “Should we waste a ritual on indulging me rather than destroying the Nightlords?”

“I can find no better use of them than ensuring your own happiness.” And I meant those words. “Ingrid.”

She looked into my eyes, her pale marble skin glittering like moonlight under the glow of nearby torches.

“I will never take you for granted,” I promised her. “Every kindness you give me, I shall return tenfold.”

I wanted her to be happy, not because it would secure her loyalty to me, but because I wanted her to know how much I appreciated her. Because I valued her as a person... and as a wife.

Ingrid pondered my words for a moment before offering me a warm, genuine smile. “Thank you, Iztac,” she said before draping herself in a bedsheet. “I never doubted it.”

Somehow, those four words—so simple in their sincerity—felt better than any of the many empty luxuries which I’d enjoyed today.

I kissed Ingrid goodbye one last time and then moved to visit my last consort.

As usual, Eztli chose to share a room with her mother. I immediately sensed the distance between them the moment I walked in, both physically and emotionally. My vampiric consort rested in the only bed available, nude and smirking in anticipation. Necahual otherwise stood in front of the obsidian window, staring through it with a deep scowl on her face.

Most importantly, she was fully clothed.

“Haven’t you heard?” I asked while embracing Necahual from behind, my arms closing on her waist. She didn’t resist my pull. She knew that she was mine. “No one is allowed to wear clothes in my presence. You have disobeyed me.”

Necahual ignored me.

“What’s going on?” I inquired.

“I have been asking myself the same question,” Eztli replied while lying on her back. The marigold placed in her hair sent shivers down my spine. “Mother has been in a foul mood all day.”

“Is that so?” I kissed Necahual on the neck. “What bothers you so much?”

My favorite stopped watching the window just long enough to glare at me. “Your mother.”

“Ah.” I should have expected as much. Of course, learning of her survival rattled Necahual to the bone after what Mother put her through; doubly so since she came into contact with her own daughter. “Yes, learning about her survival came as quite the shock.”

Necahual didn’t believe me. I could see it written all over her face. She knew that I knew and that I’d kept it to myself. No wonder she gave me the cold shoulder.

“She was quite the sharp woman,” Eztli commented. “I could smell the scent of danger around her.”

“She still hasn’t been found?” Necahual asked coldly. “Nor has Astrid?”

“Not yet, but they will be caught in time,” I replied without really meaning it. This only served to deepen Necahual’s scowl until she turned back to gaze at the world beyond the window while sulking in silence.

Necahual’s jealousy of Mother’s gifts was half the reason she threw her lot in with me. She craved the magical power her romantic rival wielded. Hearing how Mother managed to swoop in and steal Astrid from the Nightlords while Necahual failed to protect her own daughter no doubt infuriated her.

Eztli, who had been observing us for a while, crossed her legs in the bed. “Mother saved him.”

“Whom?” I asked.

“That sick refugee child. Teyok, I think his name was?”

“Teiuc,” Necahual said sharply, her arms crossing beneath her breasts. “His name is Teiuc.”

“That is great,” I said with sincerity. That child was within a heartbeat of death when we found him, and I felt some responsibility for him. I did order his father murdered after all. “How did you do it?”

Necahual gathered her breath and then showed me her palm. A small scar marred her smooth, beautiful skin. I immediately recognized the leftover trace of a slashing wound.

“You fed him your blood?” I muttered in disbelief.

“Since you saved Nenetl by giving her yours, I assumed I could do the same.” Though Necahual continued to scowl, I detected a brief flicker of pride in her eyes. “You visited my bed so often I thought... that your vitality would rub off on me, I guess.”

“Being my mother must have helped,” Eztli guessed. “You are blessed in many ways.”

“Mayhaps,” Necahual conceded with a shrug.

I knew better. Necahual and I practiced Seidr so often she could transfer her Teyolia to another through her blood. Of course she could. If Sigrun could steal the vitality of others without being a Nahualli, why couldn’t someone else give it away?

I finally understood what put her in such a foul mood. Necahual achieved her first feat of witchcraft by saving a child wavering on the brink of death, only for it to be overshadowed by Mother’s much more daring and spectacular return. It reawakened so many old wounds.

“Fulfill your promise,” Necahual muttered under her breath.

I tensed up. She didn’t say which promise, but there was only one oath I had sworn to her: that I would share in my sorcery in exchange for her full assistance and servitude.

And after being forced back into Mother’s shadow once again, her patience was running thin.

“I gave you everything. My soul, my body, my daughter...” Necahual grit her teeth while her hands moved to her belly. “Even this. Now give me what you promised me in return.”

“Not yet,” I whispered back into her ear. I couldn’t put her through the Mometzcopinque ritual without testing it on Lahun first. The risk of losing her was too great.

Necahual wouldn’t listen. “I want it now.”

“The child?” Eztli asked with enthusiasm.

Necahual froze in my arms. As for myself, I was used to hiding my emotions enough not to show surprise.

“Sorry for eavesdropping,” Eztli replied without meaning it, her gaze lingering on her mother’s belly with the thrill of hunger. “I can’t help but feel you’ve finally decided to... commit.”

“You are right,” I said, both to deflect suspicions and finally address the trihorn in the room. My grip on Necahual’s waist strengthened slightly. “Your mother and I are trying to conceive.”

I knew from experience how thrilling the vampire’s kiss felt for both its victim and perpetrator. Neither Eztli nor Necahual were exceptions. The former sucked and drank with feverish excitement, while the latter let out soft moans and sighs of pleasure.

“I love you,” Necahual whispered in her daughter’s ear. “I love you. I love you.”

The scene was about as unnerving as it was arousing. I watched on with concern and focus, ready to intervene and forcefully separate them should the worst come to pass. I’d seen Eztli drink her father to death in a minute’s time in a frenzy. Each gulp rang like the horn of incoming death.

Yet Eztli slowed down once the first few seconds passed. She continued to suckle her mother’s breast and drink her blood, but more gently, more kindly. Necahual kissed her daughter on the forehead, her mind clear like the morning sky, and then plucked the marigold in her hair and tossed it aside. Eztli paid it no mind.

As astonishing as it looked, Necahual’s plan appeared to work. Eztli was calming down.

“I asked the seer to read my future,” Necahual told me, her hand stroking her maddened daughter’s hair. “After an hour’s worth of rituals, she came up with three sentences.”

I braced myself for what would follow. Lahun warned me that the prophecies would benefit Necahual at the expense of everybody else.

“Which ones?” I inquired.

“Cruel widow becomes the mother of witches. Slave to the demon emperor flies on borrowed wings.” Necahual’s jaw clenched as she looked at her daughter with concern. “The parent buries the child.”

The last sentence rang inside my skull for a while before I could muster a response. “Burial can mean many, many things.”

“Or one.” Necahual locked eyes with me. “Fulfill your promise.”

That was more of a prayer than a demand, but one that I considered nonetheless.

I carefully considered my options. Both Necahual and Eztli were quickly reaching a breaking point. The former was sick of being powerless as the latter underwent a mental breakdown. Her patience was wearing thin.

I’d planned to put Lahun through the Mometzcopinque ritual first in order to test it because of the risks involved. Switching her with Necahual presented some danger, but now that I’d learned how to heal with my blood... It should make it safer. Empowering her would both secure her loyalty and reassure her that we were making progress.

Eztli concerned me more. If she struggled to remember her own father’s name, then how long until she began to think like Yoloxochitl? The Razor House had given me a taste of that fear. I didn’t want to experience it once again.

I wouldn’t allow it.

“Very well,” I replied without elaborating.

Necahual appraised me for a while, then gave me a small nod of assent and gently let go of Eztli. My consort slowly emerged from her post-feeding daze, her mind recovering. Her mother had grown a little paler from the blood loss, but didn’t seem in any danger.

“Eztli?” I asked.

She looked at me without a word. I took her hands into my own, knelt in front of her, and then stared straight into her crimson eyes.

“Everything will be alright,” I said without emotion.

It wasn’t an attempt at reassurance nor empty words, but a statement.

I knew what I had to do now.

I thought back to the information Ingrid decoded from the First Emperor’s codex about how the Tonalli and Teyolia intertwined. From my understanding, Eztli lost the latter once she became a vampire and required feeding on the heart-fire of others to linger among the living.

Meanwhile, her Tonalli, the very source of her identity, was slowly being transformed by the occult weight of the Nightlords’ ritual until it matched that of Yoloxochitl.

The Ride spell already proved that a foreign Tonalli could temporarily possess the body of someone without requiring a Teyolia, since it worked for the Burned Men that Mother unleashed around Smoke Mountain. If the vampiric curse clung to the hungry pit that replaced the victim’s heartfire instead of their own, then I could see a way to save Eztli’s soul.

I would require Chindi’s ‘assistance’ to pull it off however; something I thought I would only force if she proved too much of a liability to use any other way, but which I now believed to be an inevitability. I also needed Mother’s wisdom and secrets.

In the meantime, all I could do was to lessen Necahual’s burden. Feeding Eztli my burning blood directly might do her more harm than good in the long run, but I could replenish her mother’s lifeforce after every feeding session with Seidr. This ought to dilute my sunlight and lessen the risk of Necahual suffering from blood loss.

I wouldn’t let Eztli waste away any further, even if I had to break a few rotten eggs along the way.

My confidence seemed to reassure my consort. One of her arms grabbed me, while the other caught her mother and pulled us both into a tight embrace. Eztli hugged her only remaining family with a series of pained sobs.

I returned the hug, as did Necahual. Eztli felt so weak and fragile in our hands in spite of her inhuman strength, but I think we offered her a brief moment of respite amidst the fear and madness.

Of course, there was always a shadow to ruin the moment.

“Quite the touching sight, songbird,” Iztacoatl said. “If I could, I would cry.”

I had been too focused on Eztli to notice the rotting snake slithering in.

Eztli let go of us, mother and daughter staring at the Nightlord with fear. I was the only one to gaze at her with cold, unfeeling eyes.

“Alas.” Iztacoatl’s lips stretched into a carnivorous smile. “The likes of you do not get happy endings.”

As befitting of a self-proclaimed goddess, Iztacoatl both decided to ignore and mock my proclamation. While she visited me in her splendid robes, she also dragged in a naked slave by a leather leash. It was a pretty woman around my age with deep brown skin and long black hair, with cheeks marked by fresh tattoos representing crimson chains traveling down until they reached her throat and then her heart. An unbearably tight bronze slave collar covered in complex Yohuachancan scripts bound her neck. A black blindfold obscured her eyes and her skin bore countless marks which I attributed to a strenuous whipping session.

I immediately recognized her from Chindi’s memory.

“We have completed our preparations,” Iztacoatl said before tugging her captive’s leash. The woman was forced to step forward, her fingers bent like claws and her jaw frozen in an expression of seething hatred. “Let me introduce you to your new consort and our new sister’s replacement, Anaye. Quite the splendid pet, don’t you agree?”

Chindi obeyed me by hiding within her sister’s stolen skin.

“Is this the Skinwalker?” I said while pretending to discover my new consort, grabbing her mouth and examining it. She didn’t resist me. She was smart enough to feign powerlessness. “Does she bite?”

“We kept her teeth and tongue to pleasure you,” Iztacoatl replied. “But you may notice a few missing bits. If she behaves, she may even get them back.”

It was a lie, since the Nightlords never rewarded their service. I quickly guessed which ‘bits’ Iztacoatl referred to when I pressed my hand against Chindi’s blindfold and sensed thick scars where the eyes should have been.

The Nightlords had blinded her.

I would have been horrified once, but now I could hardly muster the strength for surprise or annoyance. Of course they would blind a creature capable of manipulating others with her gaze. I suspected the slave collar would also prevent Chindi from changing her shape.

This reduced my options when it came to exploiting her gifts... but convinced me to go forward with my other plan for her.

“Does my new master enjoy what he sees?” Chindi asked me with a half-feral smile.

“You will suffice,” I said, though mostly to myself. “If you never forget who holds your leash.”

“I can hear your lack of enthusiasm from here, Iztac,” Eztli said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She had chosen to hide her pain and unease behind a mask of impish insolence, as usual. “Be reassured, though, that I will continue to visit you.”

“I am sure he will find his dear Nenetl more appealing than either of you,” Iztacoatl replied with stifled laughter, her hand moving to cover her lips.

Something about her behavior sent chills down my spine.

“Does it bother the goddess?” I inquired.

“Not at all,” she replied with a stifled chuckle. “You have my congratulations for finallytying the knot. You have made my sister Ocelocihuatl a very happy goddess, and filled my heart with joy. I very much needed a reason to laugh in these trying times.”

Her expression boiled the blood within my veins. I’d come to loathe that unbearable, smug conviction that she knew something which I didn’t.

I apparently didn’t hide my frustration well enough, since it encouraged Iztacoatl to laugh at me.

“You don’t know?” She taunted me. “Of course you don’t. What a prophet you make, not to see the moon to your sun.”

I knew the wording was meant to be a cruel hint of some kind, but I drew a blank at what it referred to. A wolf totem’s association with the moon and my own with the sulfur sun, mayhaps?

Whatever the case, I refused to let her scramble my mind. “If the goddess is pleased, then so am I.”

“Of course,” Iztacoatl replied, unmoved by my utter insincerity. She surrendered Chindi’s leash to me. “Now, bind that animal somewhere and come with us. You too, my new sister.”

Eztli froze in place, as did Necahual. I alone refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing my fear.

“What does the goddess have in mind?” I inquired.

“Well, I did promise you a reward for winning my little hunt, didn’t I? So I will share a little secret that none of your predecessors ever learned.”

Iztacoatl’s hand grabbed my shoulder, her fingers growing scales and pressing against my naked skin.

“I shall show you firsthand,” she whispered into my ear, her fangs turning into that of a snake, “How I murdered my father.”