Time behaved so strangely. There were moments in my life where months blurred into weeks, and where seconds seemed as if they had lasted centuries.

Tonight belonged to the latter case.

The march of time had come to a crashing halt. A thousand thoughts crossed my mind in the blink of an eye. The temple had fallen into a terrible silence and a hundred gazes lingered on me; none with more tension than the two women whose lives I now held in the palm of my hand.

The entire world waited for my decision. My heart pounded louder than a war drum and my blood boiled within my veins. Unbearable pressure crushed my shoulders, and the Jaguar Woman’s hands holding on to them from behind did not improve things.

I was trapped.

And like any cornered animal, my owl soul raged inside my heart. I felt its silent call for arms, the caress of its invisible talons ready to strike, the burning hatred fueling the fire of my soul. Every fiber of my being demanded that I fight. Only the shackles of my reason held it back.

To reveal my powers now, in the very center of the Nightlords’ power with all four sisters watching me, would be suicide. The Jaguar Woman alone had showcased spellcasting prowess far beyond mine. I was not ready to fight her, let alone the other Nightlords.

All I could do was…

“I refuse,” I whispered under my breath.

The words escaped my mouth on their own. They sounded so strange to me, like my inner voice briefly breaking through the mask of submission I had grown accustomed to.

I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. It was stronger than me. When faced with such cruelty, my spine stiffened rather than bent.

I knew it was a mistake long before I sensed the Jaguar Woman’s hands tighten on my shoulders. I had said those very same words to her atop the Blood Pyramid once. She had nearly strangled me to death in return and offered me a warning. I still remembered the words clearly.

“I will have none of your backtalk, insolent slave.”

The heartless witch tolerated no dissent, no matter how trivial. This parody of a trial was my punishment for failing to meet her expectations. The answer to my brief outburst would be even more terrible unless I could somehow salvage it.

Think, think! I told myself, calling upon all my willpower and wits to find a way out of this situation. You need to make those words seem like panic and not rebellion!

“Please, esteemed goddess, I beg of you,” I declared with a trembling voice. I looked over my shoulder and into her cold dead eyes. Mine were wide with genuine fear. “Please… do not make me do this.”

The Jaguar Woman’s most frightening quality wasn’t her terrible power or cruelty, but the fact I couldn’t read her at all. She answered my pleas with the same unfeeling gaze I had grown accustomed to. I couldn’t tell whether my fear amused or angered her. I couldn’t tell if she felt anything at all.

“It pleases me to force you,” she finally said, her words sharper than swords. “My father’s flame demands blood. It shall have it.”

Blood.

One way or another, someone would die tonight. That certainty hit me like a wave upon a shore. The Jaguar Woman would accept no other outcome. She would not give me the luxury of mercy this time.

Still, I struggled to find a third outcome. A solution beyond those presented before my eyes. A witty plan that would not turn one of my consorts into an orphan. If I could not fight, what leverage did I have? My own life?

Should I threaten to jump into the Sulfur Sun as a blackmail attempt? Considering how it devoured everything fed to it, it might very well destroy my flesh and soul beyond the Nightlords’ power to revive me. Since they needed me for the New Fire Ceremony, I assumed such an act would disrupt their plan.

But that was all it was: an assumption.

Besides the fact I didn’t wish for my soul to be devoured by a cursed flame for all eternity, I had no guarantee my death would disrupt the Nightlords’ plans. Perhaps the whole emperor charade had only been meant to bring their vile Sulfur Sun into the world. My presence at the Smoke Mountain ritual could be nothing more than empty protocol, a final play to top a centuries-long charade.

With the Jaguar Woman standing between me and the fire, I doubted I could even get past her; not without revealing my powers at least.

Who else than me would stop the Nightlords ritual if I perished? Mother might make a token effort, but she would not risk her life. She would never take the dangerous steps required to achieve victory. And even if my desperate bluff succeeded, the Nightlords would not forgive this act of defiance. I would never enjoy any taste of freedom. My secret war against the vampires would end before it truly began.

No. The Jaguar Woman desired innocent blood. She wanted me to surrender what shreds of mercy I still possessed, to shed my humanity like how a lizard sheds its tail, to compromise my morals for her own amusement.

For the sake of my ambition, and those I loved… I would have to play along.

My throat hurt as I uttered my next words. “Does… does it have to be them, oh merciful goddess?” I swallowed my hatred and my shame. “Can’t other souls… can’t other souls satisfy you?”

The Jaguar Woman narrowed her eyes at me. “Would you offer another in their place?”

At least she did not blow off my proposal immediately. My heart slowed down slightly, but I knew better than to rejoice. Who else could I offer? I would have suggested Tezozomoc if I could, but she would only laugh at me.

“There are…” My voice died in my throat. Every fiber of my being, every ounce of pride left in me, fought against the shackles of my reason to keep me silent. Shrugging them off felt like betraying myself. “There are… other concubines.”

The Jaguar Woman often threatened to smile. She rarely did so, but the shadow of her wicked smirk alone sent shivers running down my spine. The glitter in her cruel eyes promised a hundred nights of terror.

This entire mess began because I sought a way to spare those poor women a gruesome death. Because I had dared to argue with this brute of a false goddess. The Jaguar Woman no doubt delighted in putting me back in my ‘proper place.’

“A consort’s mother shares their daughter’s holy blood,” the Jaguar Woman said, her tone laced with a hint of amusement. “It is most precious to us.”

“I am sure other concubines share… imperial blood.” How many princesses would I betray tonight? “Surely an emperor’s daughter would satisfy the flame more than a consort’s mother.”

Forgive me, I prayed in my heart. Forgive me. I need these two.

“True, but you must still prove your resolve to me.” The Jaguar Woman’s half-hearted smile faded away. “One hundred lives. One hundred sacrifices, and then I shall reconsider.”

Her vile arrogance made me want to puke. I swallowed my disgust all the same and offered a weak nod.

It nauseated me to agree to those terms, but I needed two allies more than a hundred strangers. If I could not save these women’s lives, at least I would give their death meaning. I would avenge them one day. I swore it.

The Jaguar Woman studied my expression for a while. It seemed my decision confused her.

“How easily do mortals visit evil on their kindred, so long as they do not know them,” she commented with cold stoicism. “You would rather kill one hundred women you have never met rather than take the life of an acquaintance, even one whom you hate. Fascinating.”

“I want Necahual to suffer,” I replied weakly. “By my own hands.”

“Is that truly reason enough to sacrifice a hundred lives in her place?” The Jaguar Woman glanced at Eztli. “Or do you want to spare the girl more sorrow?”

I kept my mouth shut. Unfortunately, the Jaguar Woman had guessed right.

Necahual’s head would already be on the chopping block under normal circumstances. She had been a source of misery for most of my life and her current usefulness to my cause was debatable. Lady Sigrun brought her spying network, intellect, magic, and a full volume of the First Emperor’s codices to the table. By herself, Necahual wasn’t worth ten souls, let alone a hundred. Her importance stopped at being Eztli’s mother and last living relative.

And therein lay my problem.

Eztli’s face was the very picture of indifference, for she could not afford to show sentimentality with Yoloxochitl watching over her back. Her red-rimmed eyes, however, revealed her true feelings. She stared at me with fear and dread, the way a desperate priest would pray to their god for a miracle.

I remembered too well the depressing way Eztli stared at the sun through the obsidian window, or her obsession with the sulfur flame. She chafed under her unbearable situation even more than me; and unlike me, she had no secret Underworld to escape to. The Nightlords have taken her life and saddled her with a miserable existence; one that filled her with pain and loathing.

My oldest friend was unraveling at the fringes. I feared Necahual’s demise would push her over the edge.

“Touching,” the Jaguar Woman mused with a mocking tone. “I have reconsidered.”

I held on to my breath.

“One hundred concubines shall be sacrificed tonight, as you promised.” The Jaguar Woman glanced down at Sigrun and Necahual. “And one of these two shall be the one-hundred and first.”

I knew it was coming. A part of me knew it the moment I proposed my compromise, and still her petty cruelty managed to shock me into a brief silence.

“What?” I asked in disbelief.

"This is the cost of indecision, Iztac Ce Ehecatl: if you fail to seize an opportunity, then you shall reap only loss and bitterness.” The Jaguar Woman’s amusement reeked of malice. “The obsidian crystal cries under the carver’s care, but it cannot become a dagger without shaving off part of itself. I will sharpen your edges whether you want it or not.”

“What value is a Godspeaker that cannot speak?” My fists curled into fists. Part of me knew I should just shut up and deal with the options I’d been dealt with, but it was beyond me. “What kind of lesson is that?”

“Here is your mistake, Iztac Ce Ehecatl. You believe you can negotiate with us. With the gods." What the Jaguar Woman lacked in divinity, she more than made up for in sheer arrogance. "Your role is to speak with our voice, to carry out our will, and to enforce our demands. This is one. Choose which of these two will die to save the other."

Hatred coursed my veins. I had met gods, true gods, great and small, kind and terrible, but none of them so cruelly heartless. Every word coming out of the Jaguar Woman’s mouth mocked the true deities of the world and the world they gave their lives to preserve.

"I refuse to choose between them,” I hissed like a furious snake. Anger gave me wings and made me forget caution. I refused to play along with that fraudulent goddess’ vicious game! "If one must survive by fate's decree as you say, then let them draw straws."

The Jaguar Woman’s hands moved from my shoulders to my skull. Her skin was colder than ice and her nails sharper than talons. She forced me to face her with such speed and strength I briefly feared that she might snap my neck.

“Here it shows again,” the Jaguar Woman hissed with quiet fury. Her hands pressed against my head so hard it hurt. “That unsightly spark of insolence. I knew your last lesson was not enough to douse its flame. We shall correct that mistake tonight.”

She forced me closer until our noses touched.

“Listen very well to what I am about to say, insolent slave.”

I looked into her red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, and then I saw it. A malice so great and so deep as to rival the horror lurking inside the sulfur flame. Cruelty refined to an art.

“My sister Yoloxochitl has spoiled you because she clings to the trappings of nostalgia. Whereas she doubts her purpose, I understand exactly what I am.” Her pupils were slitted like those of a jaguar ready for the kill. “I am a goddess whose will is law. Death bows to my power and life ends at my command. This land and all of its people exist at my sufferance.”

Unlike Yoloxochitl, the Jaguar Woman wasn’t mad.

She was evil.

Guatemoc once argued with me that good and evil were abstract constructs, a matter of point of view. He had been mistaken. So deeply mistaken. True malevolence existed, and it began to whisper such terrible secrets to me.

“If the next word that comes out of your mouth is not a name, Iztac Ce Ehecatl, then I shall kill them both.” The threat hung in the air like a black curse that grew stronger with each word spoken. “Right here, right now, right under their daughters’ eyes. I shall kill your concubines, all three thousand of them, and tear out their throats. Your palace’s halls will run red with their blood. The stench of death will reach leagues away. And I shall kill them all in your name.”

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Her face changed in an instant. Bloodstained and black-spotted orange fur covered her skin, and snarling fangs tore through her lips. Her skull reshaped itself in the form of a fearsome, gnarling blend of bat and jaguar; the ugliness of both and the charm of neither, lean and mean and vicious. Slitted red eyes glared at me with savage, yet carefully calculated fury.

The owl inside me stopped struggling to escape. The fierce pressure coming from my heart cooled down instantly, the way a deer froze when finding itself face to face with a predator ready to tear out their throat. My very soul quaked in dread the way it once did when I knelt before King Mictecacihuatl. The pressure coming from the Jaguar Woman was unbearable.

Death had me within her grasp. Her fangs were ready to tear out my throat in a blink.

“We own you,” the beast rasped with a foul breath filled with rotting stench. “We own you,” she repeated slightly louder, as if it would make it true. “We own you.”

By the time she released me, I found myself stumbling. I nearly fell off the ashen mountain’s slope, only for an invisible force to pull me back. The Jaguar Woman would not let me escape her grasp. Her strings recalled me to her side like an obedient puppet.

“Now choose,” she said, once again wearing the skin of a woman rather than her true monstrousness. The bloodstained fur and savagery were gone, replaced with a thin veneer of vampiric regality. “Wisely.”

I gathered my breath, my skin sweating so much I felt like I was swimming in my robes. My chest hurt worse than it ever did before. The owl inside me had gone quiet, my animal spirit spooked into silence.

This… I looked at my own trembling hands and then at our audience below. Vampires and mortals alike studied me with a mix of confusion and impatience. If they had seen the Jaguar Woman transform into a monster, they showed no hint of it. I… what…

Had it all happened in my head? Or so quickly that no one else noticed? Had they even heard our discussion? It didn’t seem that way to me.

Did any of that happen at all?

Whatever the case, the threat felt all too real to me; as did the headache burning my skull from within. I held on to my forehead while trying my best to regain my bearings and composure. I struggled to string two thoughts together. My knees barely seemed capable of holding my own weight.

She is serious. I gasped while trying to calm down. I failed. My chest hurt almost as much as my head. There is no way out of this. She won’t let me take any.

I couldn’t negotiate with her, I could deceive her, I couldn’t fight her. I couldn’t do anything.

“It is unbecoming of an emperor to make a goddess wait,” the Jaguar Woman threatened me behind my back. I sensed two pointed fangs lingering near my skull and ready to carve it open. “Unless you seek to keep silent so as not to break our accord? It would be amusing, no doubt… and so very foolish.”

What choice could I make? I glanced at Sigrun and Necahual, whose lives hung in the balance. Both knew I could do magic, as did their daughters. Both could reveal the truth as revenge if I selected any of them.

The two women remained silent. Unlike me, both of them knew better than to speak out of turn in a Nightlord’s presence. Their eyes said so much though. Lady Sigrun squinted in the face of my hesitation, her gaze sharp and threatening. She expected me to save her. She had worked to make herself useful to me specifically so I would protect her in her time of need.

No doubt she wondered why I even considered choosing Necahual’s survival over her own. Lady Sigrun offered me her spy network, her sorcery, her skills, and her intellect. For all I knew she had even taken steps to ensure my secrets would leak in the case of her death, or to destroy the First Emperor Codex to cover her tracks.

Seeing that I still hesitated, Lady Sigrun lowered her hand over her belly. She slowly massaged it and held my gaze at the same time.

My eyes widened when I understood the not-so-subtle message. I turned to Ingrid, who also noticed the gesture. She swiftly looked away from her mother with a grim expression. I recalled the words she whispered to me after I laid with Lady Sigrun.

She is already replacing me.

Another Ingrid.

Lady Sigrun sought to bear another Ingrid. Another daughter meant to die a cruel death, to stave off her mother’s demise.

Lady Sigrun used her magic during our coupling. I thought she had simply taken some of my vitality, but what if she had instead used her magic to secure a child? A bargaining tool to use against me and the Nightlords alike?

For all I knew, three lives hung in the balance rather than two.

That scheming snake. Why didn’t I see it? Plots within plots! I knew she was a viper and I still let her bite me.

It was a low blow, but could I truly blame her? Lady Sigrun used the weapons available to her. She understood this game’s rules and played to win. She seized all the advantages required to ensure her survival.

I reluctantly turned at Necahual next. She quivered like a leaf in the wind, but to my astonishment, she studied Lady Sigrun carefully. She then looked up to me with depths of bravery I never expected from such a loathsome soul.

My brows curved in surprise. Was she…

Necahual nodded at me, so subtly I almost did not notice. She was trembling with fear, her heart heavy with sorrow, and yet her resolve did not waver.

Necahual was asking me to sacrifice her.

When she said that she would do anything to save her daughter, she meant each and every word. Necahual would throw away her life if it meant giving me an advantage to do just that. She knew Sigrun would serve my cause better, and thus increase her daughter’s odds of survival in the long term. She would pay the ultimate price if required.

Why is that hag finding her courage now of all times? It would have been so much easier to sacrifice Necahual if she had shown cowardice in the face of death. That way I could have hated her until she drew her last breath. Doesn’t she realize that she is cursing her daughter to a life of loneliness?

Curse…

The Curse.

A great and terrible idea crossed my mind. The Nightlords wanted to sacrifice Necahual to the sulfur flame, unaware that my Mother cursed her. Would the ritual go wrong if fed such a poisoned offering? The odds were long, but the potential rewards…

If it works… I resisted the urge to glare at the Jaguar Woman. You do not own me, wicked beast. You do not own any of us.

Eztli glared at me. She had noticed her mother’s gesture and now silently begged me not to follow through. She moved her lips without letting any sound come through, but I guessed her words easily enough.

Don’t do it, Eztli said silently. Not her.

She would not like my answer. I wish I could settle for a third option rather than the lesser evil.

I am sorry, Eztli. I apologized to my dear friend in my heart. Please, forgive us. Please understand. She is doing this for you… and I am doing this for the world.

“Necahual,” I whispered, so low only the Jaguar Woman heard it.

I could not save her life, but I could at least give her life meaning.

“At long last,” the Jaguar Woman commented behind me, before clearing her throat and addressing the audience with a deep, regal voice. “Our emperor has made his choice!”

The audience held their breaths, at least for those who could breathe.

Lady Sigrun kept her composure, though her steady back and posture betrayed her confidence. Ingrid held her hands together, shifting uncomfortably as Iztacoatl leaned on to listen to the announcement. Sugey and the rest of the Nightkin eyed both women with bestial bloodlust.

As for Necahual… when I looked at her with a guilty heart, I knew she knew I had chosen her. She looked down at the stone ground with resignation.

The betrayed, horrified glare Eztli sent me hurt more than any blade. Her expression twisted into a ghastly scowl of fury. Her nails became like claws and her eyes reddened into two pits of crimson. Her back bent slightly like a great cat preparing to pounce on an opponent. My heart skipped a beat in dread.

If I would not save Eztli’s mother, then she would do it herself; or more likely, she would die trying. She had nothing else left to lose. The vampire curse had taken everything else, fear included.

Don’t do it, Eztli. I inhaled sharply and waited for the inevitable disaster. Don’t!

“Kill the blonde one,” the Jaguar Woman said.

The order echoed in the temple, and a terrible silence followed in its wake.

Lady Sigrun’s confident eyes widened slightly as her mind processed what her ears told her. Necahual’s head snapped at me in shock, while her astonished daughter flinched in surprise. Ingrid covered her mouth with her hands.

I looked over my shoulder, praying I had misheard. The Jaguar Woman leaned in to whisper one final cruelty in my ear.

“Here is your final lesson, our Godspeaker.” The Jaguar Woman’s lips stretched into a ghastly, sinister smirk. “You wield no power that does not derive from our providence.”

Eztli immediately moved to grab Lady Sigrun’s shoulder alongside another Nightkin. My first consort struggled to hide her relief and jubilation at this sudden turn of events. She alone showed joy in the face of tragedy.

Ingrid let out a scream, which drew a look of annoyance from Iztacoatl. Yoloxochitl did not hide her disappointment, but did nothing to stop the execution. I was too shocked, too taken aback to come up with an answer.

“I am pregnant!” Lady Sigrun shouted.

Her desperate words hit me like a slap to the face. The Jaguar Woman raised her chin slightly, and Lady Sigrun’s captors loosened their hold on her.

“I have shared the emperor’s bed,” Sigrun hastily said. I would never understand how she managed to keep a cool head in such a cruel situation. “I can feel it in me. I shall bear him a child.”

“How can you be sure?” Yoloxochitl asked with sudden interest.

Lady Sigrun straightened up. “I took precautions.”

So she did use Seidr to conceive, I guessed, my hands tightening so much it hurt. That witch…

“Perhaps you are pregnant,” the Jaguar Woman said with a neutral, unwavering tone. “What of it?”

The sheer callousness in her voice took the wind out of Sigrun’s sails. My concubine quickly regained her composure, though her expression became slightly more strained.

“I bear a child in me,” Lady Sigrun insisted. She placed her hands on her belly, perhaps hoping to appeal to whatever shreds of mercy the vampires still possessed. It seemed to work on Yoloxochitl at least. “A princess of his blood; he who has lit your sulfur flame and shall herald an age of glory.”

“And that gives you protection from us?” The Jaguar Woman squinted at Sigrun with what could pass for genuine confusion. “From your sacred duty as our sacrifice?”

Even the worst of villains would have hesitated at killing a pregnant woman. It didn’t even phase the worst of the Nightlords.

“No,” I whispered. I couldn’t muster the strength to speak louder. “No…”

I doubt anyone heard me, but my distress must have shown on my face. Eztli’s jubilation briefly faded away, while Yoloxochitl took a step forward to plead my case.

“Sister, another can satisfy the flame,” she argued with the Jaguar Woman. “We could delay her execution until she gives birth–”

“Her unborn child will die before it can live,” the Jaguar Woman interrupted her with a sharp tone. Her icy gaze remained set on Lady Sigrun. “An emperor’s blood is precious to us, true, but no offering may compel us to act in any way you wish. All life in this world is born to feed us.”

Her mind was made up. Nothing could change it. Anything I would say would only make it worse. The Jaguar Woman meant to hurt me. To stab my heart and twist the knife until I screamed.

“It’s not…” Ingrid sobbed, tears forming in her eyes as she realized death had come to her family. “It’s not supposed to happen… not this way…”

“I have a book,” Lady Sigrun said, trying to bargain her way out of a gruesome execution. “I have information, knowledge–”

“Spare your breath, fool!”

All eyes turned to Necahual. My mother-in-law kept her head down in resignation, her nails sinking onto her knees.

“Don’t you see? They have already made up her mind.” Necahual briefly bit her lower lip. “Nothing will save you.”

“Shut up,” Lady Sigrun hissed at her fellow concubine. “You know nothing.”

“She understands more than you do, slave,” the Jaguar Woman replied with contempt. “I can read your entire life written in your eyes. If I please the emperor, he will love me. If he loves me, he will protect me. If I have his children, I shall please the goddesses. If I please the gods, they shall not kill me. If I do this and that, I will be safe.”

I watched on as the light of hope died in Lady Sigrun’s eyes with a heavy heart. I knew what it meant to be weak. To crawl in the mud for scraps of food. Lady Sigrun had been captured in her youth, spared for her beauty, and then forced to serve as an imperial concubine in a foreign land. She made the most of her situation and through wits and strength of will, she managed to carve a small kingdom for herself. One she ruled for over fifteen years; fourteen more than any emperor.

But what value could a slave’s kingdom possibly have? Her reign would end with a snap of her masters’ fingers.

“I betrayed my homeland for you,” Lady Sigrun rasped. “I told you of Winland, of my people…”

“And we shall grace them with Yohuachanca’s glory in due time,” Sugey replied with a snort of rueful disdain. “Your countrymen will bless your memory in time.”

I did not hide my disappointment, and neither did Ingrid. I should have seen it sooner. Ingrid told me she had been her expedition’s only survivor; I thought Yohuachanca spared her for her beauty, but now the truth became clear to me. She had taught the Nightlords about Winland’s existence to secure her survival when they first caught her.

“You still fail to understand,” the Jaguar Woman said. “We punish those who defy us, but we are not compelled to reward those who please us. Your loyalty is already expected. Our mercy and kindness are subject to our whims, not your prayers.”

It was a mistake for the weak to expect gratitude from the powerful. So Lady Sigrun did not try to petition her masters further. Instead, she turned to me, a fellow weakling, for salvation I could not grant.

“Say something!” Lady Sigrun all but ordered me. The panic in her eyes immediately warned me of her intentions and forced me out of my stupor. “Or I will tell–”

I interrupted her before she could sell me out. “Think of your daughters.”

Lady Sigrun’s words died in her mouth and her head swiftly turned in Ingrid’s direction. My consort was alone among Nightkin and no more safe than her mother. Little Astrid was in no better a situation, waiting for her family back in the imperial apartments.

If Sigrun perished, who would take care of them? Who else but me? Necahual understood that well enough, so someone of Lady Sigrun’s intellect should too. I prayed that for all of her ruthlessness and selfishness, she at least felt a modicum of parental affection for the lives she brought into the world.

My heart stopped when Lady Sigrun met my eyes again. I saw countless emotions pass through them. Fear, disbelief, resignation… and when she finally understood that I couldn’t save her, she turned to fury.

“I curse you all.” Lady Sigrun dared to meet the Jaguar Woman’s gaze and sneered at her with regal defiance. “The true gods I worship know the truth! You have buried your secret and now cower in his shadow! May your betrayed father devour you–”

Her throat burst open in a shower of blood.

I couldn’t tell which of the Nightlords had cast the Doll spell, but I recognized the magic nonetheless. An invisible claw had sliced through Sigrun’s throat with enough strength to sever her neck all the way to the spine.

Ingrid’s screams made me wince, as did the sight of Sigrun’s head bending to the side like a fallen tree. Her blood dripped down her dress in a crimson rain and tainted the floor red.

“Do not avert your eyes, Iztac Ce Ehecatl,” the Jaguar Woman whispered into my ear. “This is the essence of godhood. The power to kill anyone. King or peasant, child or mother, man or woman…”

No matter how much I wanted to, my captor’s hands would not allow me to look away.

“You are all the same meat to us.”

Meat. That was what they had reduced Lady Sigrun to. A batlike Nightkin hurried to grab her convulsing corpse in its talons and carried her upward into the air. Her head remained attached by threads of bones, her white stare making me want to puke.

I had slept with her, laughed with her, plotted with her. She had been a woman of wisdom, wits, and experience, full of life and ambition.

Thirty years on this earth snuffed out in an instant.

The Nightkin threw her into the flame like a slice of turkey meat on a pyre. The cursed fire swallowed her whole in an instant. It ate her flesh, her bones, her soul… it would have eaten her screams too, if she still had the throat for it. She vanished in a burst of fire, leaving naught but memories behind her.

Ingrid had begun to cry; mourning for both her mother and the beautiful lies she had been raised in all her life. That no matter how useful she might prove, no matter how smart or beautiful or hardworking she proved to be, a vampire could kill her on a whim anyway. Safety was an illusion. There was no point in trying to find sense in senseless cruelty.

Her mother had been wise, beautiful, and driven. She had been perfect in every way. And she died anyway, all to satisfy a monster’s savage hunger for death.

She was pregnant. That nauseous thought would not leave my mind. Pregnant. With my child.

“Twice I have humbled you, Iztac Ce Ehecatl,” the Jaguar Woman warned me. “There shall not be a third time.”

I stared at the sulfur flame and the all-consuming darkness at its core. A gullet of murdered souls from which nothing escaped. No afterlife awaited Sigrun. No more than me.

“I understand,” I whispered, so low I barely heard myself.

My answer satisfied the Jaguar Woman. “Fulfill your duties so that we do not chastise you. Father children so that we never go hungry. And never forget your place again.”

I would not. Never again.

My role was to wipe out these monsters from the face of the earth, no matter the cost. To me, to the world, to innocents. No matter the cost, they all had to die.

If the Nightlords survived one more year, all of this cruelty would have been nothing.

The true gods I worship know the truth, Lady Sigrun had said. You have buried your secret and now cower in his shadow.

The true gods knew the truth. The buried truth.

The altar.

Lady Sigrun hid something in her room’s private altar. Something related to the First Emperor’s codices. A hint of the truth that could bring down the Nightlords. A final plot to avenge herself through me.

Lady Sigrun took my secrets with her to the tomb. I could not save her life, but I would give her death meaning.

I no longer doubted. I no longer felt remorse about what I had to do; about the people my Mother would kill to destroy Smoke Mountain, or the war I’d started, or the lives I would ruin to see this through. The Jaguar Woman’s cruelty had purged all hesitation from my mind. From now on, I knew I was capable of anything.

The Nightlords refused to compromise on their cruelty.

So neither would I.