Iztacoatl’s crypt reeked of blood and songs.

The former was expected from all places associated with the Nightlords, but the latter took me by surprise. A haunting melody of windpipes and exotic instruments resonated from my palace's depths. I quickly identified a few tunes from my visits to Ingrid's quarters.

Someone was playing a Winland harp.

When Tayatzin came to fetch me this morning on Iztacoatl’s behalf, I expected to travel to the temple or the Nightlords’ abode. My new vampiric overseer had instead decided to invite me to her private quarters under my palace. I suspected all of the Nightlords maintained special areas in my prison’s basement. If I was allowed to leave my room, then it meant they believed the place safe from Sapa spies and assassins.

I tried to memorize the path towards it, but my guards guided me through too many stairs and turns. I walked between sinister sculptures of stone feathered serpents under the soft glow of brasiers. The stench of death permeating the corridors would have made me vomit once upon a time.

When did I grow so used to it?

“I must leave you here, Your Majesty,” Tayatzin said as he abandoned me in a corridor alongside my guards. “I bid you good luck.”

He wasted his breath. Luck held no sway in this place.

I already knew what to expect as I walked into the darkness. With the eruption calming down, I would be expected to make a speech tonight and reassure the population. My jailers no doubt wanted me to rehearse a performance to ensure I would not disgrace them.

My journey ended in a lofty chamber deep below the earth, dimly lit up by statues of coiling snakes holding green and blue flames in their mouths. I detected incense in the air, sweet and enticing. Mosaics of skeletons with ruby eyes adorned the walls, staring at the most sinister part of the room’s architecture: a rectangular marble bath in its center, around nine feet wide and filled with steaming blood.

“Welcome, my songbird.” Iztacoatl languished inside her gruesome bath, her shoulders against the stone, her breasts half-sunk inside the blood, her naked legs peeking above the rippling surface. “You are right on time to enjoy the show.”

To my surprise, the Nightlord shared her chamber with a set of attendants. A group of young men played instruments for her, all of them unnaturally pale, forever young, and unnaturally beautiful. Their crimson eyes stared at me with a predatory look and the few who acknowledged my presence sported smiles full of sharp teeth.

Nightkin faking humanity.

Their presence came as a surprise to me. I knew for a fact that the Nightlords could turn women into vampires—I would never forget that night I saw Eztli’s transformation—but it was my first time seeing their males in human shape rather than under the guise of batlike beasts. Moreover, a few of them shared my white hair and pale skin.

Somehow my gut told me that this detail mattered.

I cautiously examined them and made a point of memorizing their faces. These vile creatures all dressed in light clothing and gold jewelry styled after Sigrun's culture, though none shared her physical features. They played horns and handheld harps with surprising skills.

“I see you recognize the instruments,” Iztacoatl noted, her words playful and her eyes sharp. I felt like prey being observed by a predator searching for any sign of weakness.

“I do, goddess.” It hurt my throat to say the last word. “I thought Sigrun alone survived the raid on her ship.”

“Not quite true. The sailors’ wives and daughters were given to one of your predecessors, while I kept the singers for myself. I could not let them die until they had passed on their valuable skills to my progeny.”

I supposed even Nightlords enjoyed leisurely moments now and then. They couldn't torture poor mortals all the time.

Something is wrong, I suddenly realized. Iztacoatl is in too good of a mood.

Her sister perished in the most devastating cataclysm the empire had ever known, yet she found time to entertain herself? It couldn’t just be the eruption calming down. Something had happened during my confinement.

“Why has the goddess called me?” I asked cautiously, fishing for information.

“Why the rush, pet?” Iztacoatl knew the nickname annoyed me, so she delighted in using it again and again. She beckoned at me with her hand. “Join me.”

I stared at the pool with apprehension. I didn’t need the Gaze spell to tell that this churning blood was unnatural: brief glimpses of screaming faces constantly formed and dissolved on its turbulent surface.

“Don’t be shy. Do you know how many prisoners it takes to fill this bath? I can only afford to take a few each year, lest I run out of food.” Iztacoatl lightly spilled some of the blood outside the bath, once again showing her disdain for the lives of others. “You will feel better after a soak.”

Swimming in a bath of cursed blood did not appeal to me in the slightest, but the Nightlord’s vampiric servants had already begun to undress me with their cold dead hands. To my utter disgust, Iztacoatl appraised my nakedness with a lurid smirk, like a brothel owner appraising their merchandise. Did I look like that when I selected my concubines for the night?

“Young enough for my taste, thin enough too,” Iztacoatl commented. “I like young boys who sing. Can you sing?”

I hid my disdain behind a blank expression. “No, goddess.”

“You will learn to sing for me,” she said as if I were a slave. “Now come clean yourself.”

There was nothing clean about this bath, but I walked into it anyway. The tub was hardly deep enough for me to stand up in by the waist, its warm liquid sticking to my skin like hot mud and its steaming fumes filling my nostrils with strange smells. I immediately recognized the presence of herbs and reagents in the blood. Their aromas seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t put a finger on why. Perhaps Necahual used them in her potions.

To my unease, immersion felt oddly pleasant. I had already rested into a pile of human intestines. I supposed a bath of blood felt hardly nauseous in comparison.

“How strange,” Iztacoatl noted immediately. “You aren’t frightened. It is like you have already done this before.”

Damn it, she was uncannily perceptive. “Nothing you do can surprise me anymore, oh goddess.”

“No, I do not think this is a question of surprise.” She rested her head on her hand, studying me. “You have killed another human being in the past.”

I answered her with unnerved silence. Something brushed between my legs. I looked down to see serpentine shapes swimming under the bath’s surface and peeking just long enough to stare at me.

Snakes. As white as snow, with ruby eyes of dark crimson.

“You are not afraid at all,” Iztacoatl mused. “I have seen warriors twice your age quiver in your place, but you? You remain eerily calm.”

Curses, I had grown so used to hiding my emotions that I struggled to properly express fear. Everything about this scenario was a test. Iztacoatl was trying to throw me off my game and draw conclusions from my reactions.

My best bet was to provide as little information as possible. Give evasive answers.

“I do not wish to disappoint the goddess with cowardice,” I lied.

“You truly take me for a fool,” she replied. “Do you take me for a fool, songbird?”

No, I take you for a monster. “No, goddess, I do not.”

“Then do you think we do not see all the whispers spoken under the cover of songs and music? The way you try to position mortals in a way that will earn their favor?” One of Iztacoatl’s white snakes peeked its head out of the blood bath and crawled along its edge. “Do you think we would let you get away with your schemes if they mattered?”

“No, goddess, of course not.” Not without magic at least. “You allow them because they amuse you.”

Iztacoatl smiled at me and then caressed the head of her snake. The serpent let out a hiss as it crawled away toward the Nightkin singers.

“Have you ever seen a snake pit?” Iztacoatl raised a hand above the surface of the bath and watched as blood droplets rained upon it. “Put a hundred snakes in a hole, and they’ll spend too much time biting and fucking each other to escape. Sometimes we throw in a piece of meat or a venomous newcomer to keep the frenzy going, but the pit? The pit never changes.”

I listened to her words with a blank expression. As a matter of fact, I had heard of a noble who once kept one such contraption in his home. The rumors said that the owner slipped one day and fell inside it. He had died from over fifty bites by the time his servants could pull him out.

One day, I would drag Iztacoatl into a hole and crawl over her corpse to freedom.

My true feelings must have shown on my face, for Iztacoatl tilted her head to the side in amusement. “How do you imagine you will kill me, pet?” she asked me. “By strangling me? Beheading me?”

Personally, I would settle for whatever worked. I wisely kept that thought to myself as I sat in the bath in utter silence, letting the warm blood cover me all the way up to the shoulders. I eyed her without giving an answer. As I suspected, she quickly lost patience with my silence.

“Come to me,” Iztacoatl ordered me. “Don’t be so shy. Have I not promised you pleasure if you behave?”

She just wants to humiliate you, Iztac. I retreated inside myself as I swam to the Nightlord’s side. She had me sit between her legs, my back against her breasts. Her arms were colder than the Rattling House’s snow in spite of the bath’s warmth. I felt them coil around my waist and hold me tightly. Do not give her the satisfaction. Be like the mountain that laughs at the wind.

I wouldn’t let her unnerve me.

“I do not sense any appreciation from you,” Iztacoatl whispered in disappointment. “Many would kill to share a goddess’ bath.”

I would rather kill her in the bath and then share it with her corpse, but the option was unfortunately beyond me. For now. “I am unworthy of the honor, goddess.”

“Modest too.” I sensed her icy lips brush against my ear. “Perhaps I will have you share my bed too, once you learn to sing properly.”

This time I failed to hide a sneer of revulsion, which delighted Iztacoatl. As I suspected, she sought only to torment me. I ought to turn the tables back on her. Test her.

“Bold of you to think,” I replied with a snort, “that you would satisfy me.”

The Jaguar Woman would have strangled me in Iztacoatl’s place. Her sister simply laughed.

This told me two things: one, that Iztacoatl had a sense of humor, and two, that she would rather play with her food than beat it into submission.

“I hear that you have followed my orders to breed, pet,” Iztacoatl said. “However, your new favorite has been asking questions about my sister Yoloxochitl’s whereabouts. I do not like it.”

Could she read my mind, or was she merely probing my defenses one after another? Necahual hadn’t wasted time in following through with my orders, but she still lacked subtlety.

I had to redirect Iztacoatl’s attention away from her.

“Perhaps I should tell her that Lady Yoloxochitl has died then,” I whispered back to her. “That should put an end to such speculation for good.”

Iztacoatl’s chuckle sounded even more sinister than Chamiaholom’s. “That is so cute,” she said, her tongue licking her lips. “You are trying to draw my wrath so I will forget about that woman. You actually care.”

I gritted my teeth in frustration, though deep down I felt slightly relieved. My true misdirection worked: namely, that Necahual wouldn’t be inquiring about Yoloxochitl’s whereabouts if she knew of her demise. That secret was safe for now.

“Moreover, you are wrong.” Iztacoatl traced a line along my arm with her finger. “My sister is back from the dead.”

This time, I couldn’t hide my surprise. My head snapped in the Nightlord’s direction in disbelief. I immediately realized that it was a mistake. Iztacoatl stared back at me with a sick, vicious grin; my reaction had proved my disloyalty.

That was a lie. I sensed only three chains binding my Teyolia. If Yoloxochitl had returned from the dead, I would know.

“True power does not come from killing, my pet,” Iztacoatl said, her fingers pinching my left cheek. “Power comes from lying. Once you get people to believe that what their eyes and ears tell them is false, then you own their soul.”

As I suspected, the Nightlords expected me to lie to the entire empire tonight. I quickly feigned ignorance. “I do not understand, oh goddess.”

“You will soon.” Iztacoatl kissed me on the neck, the brief icy contact sending shivers down my spine. “My sister Ocelocihuatl would have torn off your tongue for your insolence, but I prefer much more artistic solutions. Simple violence grows dull after a while.”

Whatever she could do to me paled before what I had endured in the Underworld. At least, that was what I tried telling myself. My naivety lasted for less than a minute.

“Look up,” Iztacoatl whispered into my ear.

New flames lit up the ceiling the moment I raised my head. A warm droplet fell upon my cheek, and I quickly learned who gave their lives so that I might bathe in their blood.

Tlazohtzin and a dozen other men dangled above our heads.

They were mercifully dead, but I could tell that they had suffered gruesomely. The corpses were flayed from the throat to the toes. Their faces alone remained covered in masks of skin, their mouths forever trapped in a haunting expression of fear and terror. I recognized the Sapa ambassadors among their number. Their eyes looked down on me in silent judgment.

Did they know that I’d killed them?

“I could fashion a cloak out of that Necahual.” Iztacoatl scratched my hair as if I were her dog. “Peel her smooth skin inch by inch, starting from the toes and all the way to her lips. The victim lives all the while through the flaying if the procedure is done by an expert, and I’ve had centuries to practice.”

To my horror, I was quickly reminded that the Nightlords’ cruelty more than matched those of the Lords of Terror.

“Or perhaps you would prefer statues over clothes?” Iztacoatl stroked her chin. “What is that little sister of Ingrid called again? Remind me, pet?”

My fists clenched in disgust and anger under the steaming blood. “Astrid,” I rasped between my teeth. “Her name is Astrid.”

“Astrid. What a lovely name for an art piece.” Iztacoatl glanced at the skeletal mosaics on the walls with a fiendish grin. “I could seal her in a shell of gold. What a delightful gift it would make for her grieving sister, don’t you think?”

That coward… Iztacoatl knew that nothing she could do to me personally would break my spirit, so she sought to hurt me through others. She turned my own compassion against me.

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She wants me to beg. Though I wished no more than to strangle her with my bare hands, I couldn’t afford to risk Astrid’s life, nor Necahual’s. One day, Iztac. One day.

“Please…” I gulped, the word straining my throat. “Forgive me for my insolence, goddess.”

“Finally, genuine fear.” Iztacoatl laughed slyly. “I could break your legs and you would still find a way to stand up with your pride intact. If I cut another’s legs though, you will weep in regret. How delightful.”

“I apologize for my insolence,” I rasped again through my teeth while glaring at the churning blood. “I shall not do it again.”

“I do not believe you, but I am a forgiving soul.” Thankfully, I didn’t have to look at Iztacoatl’s face. The smugness in her voice alone made me want to puke. “I know you only say these harsh words because you haven’t learned to love me yet, so I will let it slide this time.”

How merciful. I let her scratch my hair while letting her stew on her petty victory. The Nightkin singers began to dance before us to the tune of a hypnotic melody, as slow and mesmerizing as the one my concubines played earlier had been quick and rhythmic. I focused on them to better forget the Nightlord holding me in her arms, only for a surge of disgust to course through my spine when I looked at white-haired ones among them.

A few of them resembled me a bit too much.

She was mocking me, the wench. Mocking my life, mocking my work, mocking my ploys. She rehearsed my imprisonment like a bad play, except that she had put me in the place of the helpless toy and herself in the place of the almighty empress. Iztacoatl denied me whatever scrap of pride I could take in my servitude.

My thoughts wandered back to Necahual. I was going through the same humiliation I had forced upon her in our baths. I ought to apologize for it.

The white serpents crawled over the dancers’ legs and chests before coiling around their necks like a hangman’s ropes. The blood covering their scales dripped down their immaculate throats the same way that Qollqa’s did. I couldn’t avert my eyes from the macabre spectacle no matter how much I tried.

“I am sure of it now,” Iztacoatl whispered in my ear. “You crave the thrill of death.”

“If the goddess says so,” I replied coldly. Her words washed over me like water on a rock. I wouldn’t let her get under my skin more than she did.

“You think yourself better than us, but your soul is stained black.” She played with the churning surface with her hand. “You can feel it, can you? That sweet power that flows in human veins?”

To my shame, I did. The herbs in the blood filled my nostrils and mind with fumes, while slow tides of blood eased my fatigue away. The fluid carried a dread power seeping into my body and sharpening my senses. My body was smooth within and without.

“Wicked sorcerers once used blood baths as part of a ritual to keep themselves eternally young,” Iztacoatl enlightened me. “I do not need it, of course, but it smoothes the skin.”

“Why has the goddess called me?” I asked once more with impatience. I wanted nothing more than to escape her grip, the quicker the better.

“Patience, songbird. Patience.” It delighted her to deny my request. “Enjoy the bath first. You better get used to them.”

“Get used to them?” My brows furrowed in annoyance. “Will this happen again?”

“You will take blood baths on each new moon for the rest of the year,” Iztacoatl confirmed. “Due to special circumstances, you will need to be prepared with extra care. These baths will keep you…”

The Nightlord offered me the most ominous of smiles.

“Edible.”

The smell of herbs mixed in the bath immediately enlightened me. I finally remembered it. These weren’t the scents of medicinal plants, but of cooking ingredients.

The Nightlords were seasoning me.

Yoloxochitl’s death hadn’t changed their ultimate goal. They still very much planned to sacrifice me on the Night of the Scarlet Moon. The loss of one of their numbers and the weakened seal of the First Emperor simply meant that they would need to prepare me with more care than my predecessors.

Iztacoatl let me stew for a moment, in both senses of the word. I sank into the warm blood and attuned my mind to the sorcery suffusing it. I half-believed what the Nightlord told me about its rejuvenating properties; the sparks of dead Teyolias still coursed through the liquid. They flowed inside my heart and the black, hungry pit of Iztacoatl’s vampiric curse.

What effect would prolonged exposure have on me? Would it reinforce my sorcery or smother it?

“We have a sweet song for you, my pet,” Iztacoatl declared. “You will rehearse its words until you believe in them.”

I snorted. “The same song that the goddess asked me to sing in the throne room?”

“Of course, though we shall expand your repertoire a bit.” Iztacoatl gently scratched my cheek. “We will need to parade you around for a while to reassure the livestock. You will look pretty and sing our praise to all who will listen.”

Parade me? I did my best to hide my excitement. Outside the palace?

With the eruption shaking the entire empire, the disasters that followed in its wake, and the coming war with the Sapa, the Nightlords sought to reassure their followers and intimidate their tributaries. I doubted they would let me out of the capital’s hinterlands, but being outside these walls alone would widen my opportunities.

“I can see that you are already plotting to escape our sight,” Iztacoatl said. “Please try. You will fail, and we will laugh.”

“I have no such intent,” I replied truthfully. Only the Nightlords’ destruction alone would free me, and nothing else.

Iztacoatl let out a sly chuckle. She didn’t believe me. “Of course,” she said as the dancing spectacle came to an end. “Oh, and one final thing.”

Iztacoatl marked a short pause and studied my expression with rapturous attention. I denied her any pleasure by remaining stone-faced.

“That girl, Eztli,” she said, “shall no longer be your consort.”

My heart froze in my chest. All my fears for Eztli’s safety returned stronger than ever. Had the Jaguar Woman’s paranoia gotten the better of her? Had she found something about the ritual that demanded Eztli’s death?

I should have convinced her to run, I told myself before forcing myself to calm down. Iztacoatl said she won’t be my consort anymore. That could mean anything.

Which was what frightened me. Death wasn’t the worst fate the Nightlords could provide to those who defied them.

“Why are you so tense, pet? Do you think we’d kill our own?” Iztacoatl laughed at me, as if they hadn’t been planning on sacrificing Eztli on the Night of the Scarlet Moon. “You should feel happy for her. She has been promoted.”

Promoted? Could it be…

My eyes widened in shock as I put two and two together. I stared at Iztacoatl in utter disbelief. She answered my expression with a slight nod.

“You catch on quickly, songbird. I would rather have chosen another path, but alas, fate has a morbid sense of humor.” From the brief flash of amusement in her crimson gaze, the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Iztacoatl. “She will officially act as your fourth consort until we find a proper replacement, but the decision cannot be changed.”

The lie had become the truth.

----------------------------------------

I had witnessed Nochtli the Fourteenth and his consorts being led to the slaughter atop a longneck on the Night of the Scarlet Moon. I would have enjoyed my first ride atop one, had we not been in the exact same place and traveling to the same destination.

The golden palanquin gently swayed with each step of our ride, the cold nightly wind blowing on my face. I always imagined longnecks to be slow and the one carrying me to the Blood Pyramid was no exception. The green-scaled beast gently trotted among the streets of the capital, its immense weight shaking the ground. Walls weakened by the quakes crumbled at its approach.

The rest of the imperial procession was just as fearsome. Soldiers with brooms went first to remove the layers of ashes covering the earth. Wagons driven by trihorns and holding the quartered corpses of Tlazohtzin and his accomplices followed after them, so that the crowds of Yohuachanca could throw stones at the traitors to the state. The ones after carried broken statues of Sapa gods and painted fresco pictures representing the upcoming conquest of the mountain people by the ‘true’ deities of the night. I supposed it was a good way to whip the citizens into a frenzy. I suspected that most of them hadn’t even heard of the Sapa before today.

My own longneck walked in the middle of the procession alongside an entourage of armed priests and masked guards. The military orders closed the march to the tune of war flutes and thundering drums. Nightkin flew above us and howled under the moonless dark as if to celebrate a victory.

I was the dark jewel of their parade. A puppet clothed in the remains of his enemies and stinking of blood. I felt soiled simply sitting atop the palanquin.

What a farce. I looked at Smoke Mountain in the distance with a heart filled with disgust. The volcano was slowly calming down and the clouds of dust raised by its fury had begun to clear, but rivers of magma continued to drip down its slope. It would be months before it ran out of flaming drool. Do they truly expect to save face like this?

“The stars do not lie,” the wind whispered in my ear. I had almost missed it. “The night hungers for light.”

I looked up at the moonless night sky. The Scarlet Moon ceremony had taken place on the winter solstice and heralded the return of the day. Yet the night set one hour earlier than normal. The very heavens called out the Nightlords’ lie.

Something had gone wrong with the cosmos.

I forced myself to smile as I waved at the crowds who had gathered to greet the cortege. Thousands upon thousands of imperial citizens acclaimed me with a mix of religious frenzy and fright. The sight of my hideous clothes terrified the children among them, but most simply bowed at my approach.

The lucky few among them caught the pieces of food that the priests threw in my name. The blood rain on the first day had polluted many wells and befouled a few gardens, so we had to open the imperial storehouses. I watched on as families fought over a piece of meat like dogs with a surge of disgust.

I understood their suffering, having gone through a famine myself, but somehow their reaction still disappointed me.

At least I am not suffering through this comedy alone. I turned my head briefly to look at my fellow prisoners. The Nightlords had allowed my consorts to accompany me. They looked wonderful in fine-colored clothes matching the Nightlords’ favored ones; their headdresses of flowers, feathers, jaguar fur, and snakeskin made them look almost divine. While all of them took care to wave their hands at the capital’s citizens, only Nenetl appeared to enjoy the longneck ride. None of them dare to look at me, however.

I could hardly blame them. I feared to look at my own reflection.

All four of my consorts sat on cushions behind me, each as silent as a tomb. Our captors forbade us to speak to one another; officially, to honor the dead; and in truth, to better hide the impostor among us.

I glanced at ‘Eztli.’ Chikal had noticed as well, and Ingrid sent her strange looks now and then when the sight of my costume didn’t make her nauseous. Her instincts told her that something was wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. Only Nenetl seemed utterly oblivious to the truth.

We were sitting next to a fake.

The body double looked very much like Eztli, to the point it became disturbing the more I looked at her, but I had lived with the real one for years. I noticed the subtle shifts in posture, the small changes in expression…

Unable to suppress my curiosity, I abruptly took the copy’s hand into my own before she could pull away.

Warm. Her skin was warm and I sensed a pulse. She had to be a red-eyed priest.

The double smiled back at me as she removed her hand. She didn’t say a word. I suspected her voice would have given her away.

“A prop for the people,” the wind whispered as we finally reached the Blood Pyramid. “A prop for the heavens.”

Our longneck ride sat at the pyramid’s base. Tayatzin and a set of priests helped our group climb down on wooden ladders and then ascend upward to the summit. It was difficult for me not to trip with each step.

A mantle of flayed human skin was no practical clothing.

To honor the First Emperor’s mercy—whatever lie the Nightlords came up with—I had been dressed in the skin of the sacrificed Sapa ambassadors. I assumed parts of Tlazohtzin were in there somewhere too. I had to suppress a morbid chuckle at the sinister irony. My guilt was physically latching onto me.

It was the mask on my face that felt the heaviest, however: a sinister artifact of jade in the shape of a bat’s face. It covered my entire head save for the holes in the eyes, with etched ruby symbols glowing on its surface. I could hardly breathe through the obsidian teeth.

The priests said that I now bore the face of the First Emperor, but they were wrong. I had seen him. He was no bat, but darkness itself.

“Are you well, Your Majesty?” Tayatzin asked me after I nearly tripped on a slippery staircase.

These steps are soaked in blood. Centuries of sacrifices had tainted every inch of this structure. Moreover, I sensed a sinister force beneath my feet. Something vile lurks in the pyramid’s depths.

“Have there been revolts since the eruption?” I asked Tayatzin. The consorts and I were forbidden to speak during the ride to the pyramid, but we had reached our destination. “Riots?”

“Not a single one,” Tayatzin replied proudly. “Your people are a quiet and devout lot, Your Majesty.”

He probably meant to reassure me this way. Instead, his words left me crestfallen. Not even a cataclysmic eruption or a set of disasters could shake the Nightlords’ divine image.

The priests stopped climbing before me. My consorts followed all the way to the penultimate step, to represent their lesser role in the divine order. I alone ascended all the way to the summit.

The First Emperor’s altar waited for me. Its spikes reminded me of gnashing fangs hungry for blood.

“Not today,” I muttered under my breath. Not any day.

A shrieking swarm of Nightkin heralded the Nightlords’ coming. The four appeared around me in hooded cloaks. Their masks hid their cruel faces from the world with one exception. While three carried themselves with the arrogance of false goddesses, the fourth meekly remained silent, her back tenser than a bowstring.

Eztli struggled to fit Yoloxochitl’s robes, but no one would tell from afar.

“The show must go on,” the wind whispered in my ear, “Until the stage burns to ash.”

I finally understood why Eztli survived Yoloxochitl’s death.

The four consorts stood in for the Nightlords and I for the First Emperor. Eztli was meant to represent Yoloxochitl and bore her curse. Yohuachanca believed Yoloxochitl was alive, and so she was. The false goddess had died, but her image survived through her followers’ faith.

The Nightlords had practiced the ritual for so long that like a tradition carried on by inertia, the death of an actor on-stage would not end the performance so long as someone could replace them on the fly. People continued to believe that the four sisters ruled absolute and that Yoloxochitl still haunted the world; if none of them could tell the real from the illusion, then the mirage would become the truth.

The Nightlords intended for Eztli to adopt her tormentor’s name and identity, tricking both their subjects and the cruel fate that guided their ritual.

The fact that no fourth chain replaced Yoloxochitl’s meant that the ritual remained fallible, but if I failed… if I failed to destroy the remaining Nightlords before the Scarlet Moon, then they would force Eztli to chain my successor. They would torture her into repeating their sick cycle of torment.

I needed to free her from this awful fate.

“If the stage sustains her,” the wind said, “What shall happen once you destroy it?”

I ignored the taunt and briefly glanced around the stone platform. Most of my consorts were too frightened by the Nightlords to look at them and thus notice the switch.

Most except Chikal.

The amazon queen was the most observant of my consorts and showed it again. Her eyes wandered from the fake Eztli to the real one, before settling on me. Our gazes met for the briefest of instants.

Then she knew for certain.

Chikal had seen me command the wind. She learned that I planned the war with the Sapa in secret and that I worked to destroy the Nightlords from the shadows. The truth wasn’t hard to glimpse for her. Unlike the Nightlords, she wasn’t too arrogant to believe that nothing existed beyond her knowledge; she didn’t need to understand how I’d killed Yoloxochitl to realize that I’d done it.

I had promised her that I would destroy a Nightlord one day, and I fulfilled it.

Chikal quickly looked away before anyone could notice our discreet exchange. However, I didn’t fail to catch the shadow of a smile at the edge of her lips. I found that promising.

My joy lasted until I sensed the Jaguar Woman’s shadow looming behind me.

“It is time, Iztac Ce Ehecatl,” she said imperiously. “Tell your people the truth.”

The truth. The very word sickened me.

I stood at the top of the Blood Pyramid, surrounded by the undying and looking down on their living slaves. I had a perfect view of the city from so high. A thin mantle of ash and dust covered the roofs as far as my eyes could see. Hundreds of thousands of eyes stared at me in silent awe, begging for me to lie to them, to assure them that all was right, that their false gods were true and that victory was assured.

I had never fathomed the sheer size of my empire until now. As I gazed upon the multitude waiting for my false wisdom, I wondered how many people suffered under Yohuachanca’s yoke. Millions? If it wanted, this mass of flesh could swallow the priests and Nightkin like the rising tide.

So why didn’t it? I had shattered the Nightlords’ illusion of invincibility for the first time in centuries. Why couldn’t these people see through the veil? Why did they not revolt?

“Because they would rather believe,” the wind whispered in my ear.

“Do you understand now, pet?” Iztacoatl whispered into my ear. “How misplaced your hopes are?”

In the depths of my heart, I had held on to the hope that the citizens of Yohuachanca would rebel. That the eruption and the destruction of Yoloxochitl’s priesthood would awaken the fighting spirit of my people. I had dreamed of them rebelling and shaking off their chains now that they had loosened.

Instead, nothing had changed.

The Nightlords would keep lying, their servants would keep believing, and their thralls would keep taking the lash one indignity at a time. They were livestock sleepwalking to the slaughter.

My people would never drag the Nightlords off their thrones. I could only count on myself.

“Now sing,” Iztacoatl ordered calmly. “Sing for us.”

I pondered her words. I thought back to the hours I spent rehearsing her neat little speech. I recalled all the lies I was supposed to sing to a million fools; how the Nightlords and I had saved the dawn from the foreign traitors who sought to usurp it. I remembered the truth I was supposed to hide; that the disasters striking Yohuachanca were their rulers’ own fault and the result of their mad ambitions. I gathered my breath.

Then I refused to comply.

“My gullet swallows all,” I said with a deep, guttural voice. “Even screams.”

The joke is on you.

I denied Iztacoatl. I denied the Nightlords’ lies and their ill-gotten power. I sensed them tense up behind me and my consorts freezing below me. To their lies, I answered with a prank bolder than any other.

Huehuecoyotl would be proud.

“Your dawn will never come,” I said, the jade mask hiding my smirk. “Traitors.”

I lied all the time and stood in the presence of true gods, so faking possession came easily to me. I remembered the First Emperor’s words by heart. I hoped the truth in them would spare me the lash.

I couldn’t be blamed if their Dark Father spoke through me in front of his own altar, could I?

The Jaguar Woman reacted first, as I expected her to. I sensed her fury reverberating through the chain holding my Teyolia. She tightened her grip on me with such rage and anger that I thought my heart would burst out of my chest.

A stronger force pushed her back.

I sensed it swelling upward from the black depths of the pyramid. I felt its touch in the encroaching darkness, in the blood tainting my skin. The flayed cloak of skin covering my shoulders fluttered in a baleful wind and stretched into the shape of great bat wings.

The mask on my face pressed against my skull. The pain was sharp and raw. The jade became my skin, the obsidian teeth my fangs. My breath carried the burning stench of sulfur.

“The traitors will perish,” I said, my voice reverberating with the echo of a million fresh graves. “Death to those who have defied me. Eternal suffering to those who have betrayed me.”

Those were from my lips, but not my words.

“The door is unlocked,” the wind whispered. “The hinges rattle in the cold.”

A swarm of small red-eyed bats descended from the clouds above. They flew in a circle above my head, forming a halo of fur and flapping wings. The Nightlords stepped back in fear and shock. I did not look at them. My bloodshot eyes fixated on the dark horizon and the countless ears listening to my prophecy.

The voice speaking through me did not talk to its food, but at it.

Gods or ants, they would all satiate his hunger.

“I am the dead black sun and the starless night,” I said with a voice that was no longer my own. It hurt my throat and filled my ears with blood. “I am the teeth that herald the scream. I am the last word and the silence that remains.”

The lie had turned into the truth.

I had become a Godspeaker and a deity spoke through me.

“The heavens will weep tears of blood,” he said through my lips and obsidian teeth. A promise made to the earth and the sky. “My true children will feast under the glow of the scarlet moon. The restless dead shall rise in silence as my teeth crush their wailing souls. You will wake up to a dawn bereft of light.”

We raised our hands to the night, seizing the stars.

“This is my year. This is my age. This is my time.”

The First Emperor departed me on this final word. The mask on my face loosened its grip and the mantle fell. The bats fled to all corners of the earth, and my body became my own again. I sensed countless gazes on me, from below and behind. I expected the Nightlords to tighten their chains on my heart and lash me half to death.

They did no such thing.

I was surrounded only by fear and silence.

I could get used to it.