Wild Beasts of the Earth - Chapter 3 - Roxane01 - The Tarot Sequence (2024)

Chapter Text

Mayan is nine the first time he attempts to kill his scion.

The white marble covering the entire the atrium is always pleasantly cool to the touch, a soft caress on his bare feet, even when the sun is at its most unforgiving, waves of scorching, black heat rising in stifling clouds of dust from the grounds surrounding the castle. Sometimes, Mayan wonders if Lord Tower uses magics to keep his floors and walls cool, as though the palace were perpetually in the shade, or if it truly is a miracle of modern architecture, the way visitors so often exclaim in enthusiasm, dazzled by the lacelike stonework, the white, serrated archways, and the overall grandeur of the place.

“The audacity,” he once heard a Castilian envoy whispering to another, “building such an edifice so close to the Alhambra! I am surprised the Sultan didn’t order it teared down immediately.”

But of course, Mayan knows in a distant, vague sort of way, Sultan Muhammad would never do such a thing. He and Lord Tower are allies – he needs him to maintain his diplomatic relations with the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, and the considerable fortune of the Dagger Throne has, on more than one occasion, bolstered the Emirate’s coffers.

“Without us,” Anton once told him, looking up at the sprawling fortress overlooking the city, “there would be no Alhambra at all.” Then, turning his large, serious eyes to his Companion, “There would be no Granada.”

Mayan supposes that must be true, although he wonders what it is that Lord Tower is getting in exchange for his generosity towards the Emirate. He certainly is not a gratuitously benevolent man. They get to live here and prosper, surely, but Mayan is not certain why they must. This is not their land. This is not their people. He suspects someone sent Lord Tower here, to do what he is doing now – preserving the peace between the Emirate and the Christian Kingdoms – but he cannot fathom why, exactly.

What he knows is that the Sultan believes them to be Spaniards. Lord Tower is known here as Oveco Torres, an affluent merchant and diplomat, an occasional ambassador for the crown of Castiles, his family well-established in the region for many decades but initially descended from Valladolid aristocrats. The story is convincing enough: the family has been living primarily in Granada for over sixty years, son succeeding to father, no one ever commenting on the striking resemblance between generations. The household ostensibly speaks Castilian as well as Arabic – which is the language they favor in Atlantis, too – and there is even a small, consistently deserted chapel on the edge of the palace. The Dagger Throne is nothing if not meticulous.

Lord Tower, of course, is not Castilian but he looks like he might be – dark of hair and complexion, but not quite Moorish – unlike Mayan himself – he and Lady Alvira, his wife, blend in seamlessly with the population of the peninsula, although she has pale blue eyes, like a Northerner. Perhaps this is why they are stationed here. Mayan was once taught that Lord Tower’s grandmother was a bastard daughter of Ferdinand of León, the first Emperor of Spain. The prevailing legend is that she was so devastatingly beautiful that his grandfather, the previous head of the Dagger Throne, abducted her from her palace chambers and whisked her away to Atlantis. The story does not say if she consented to being taken from her country and her family. It does not say if she ever loved him back. Come to think of it, it does not say if he ever loved her, either – simply that he wanted her and therefore took her. Mayan supposes these details are unimportant to the Dagger Throne family tree. They are unimportant to their glorious history. Sometimes, though, very late at night, he will wonder about that stolen Spanish princess who now lies buried in a crypt on a faraway island, and never got to come home. He wonders if Anton looks like her, if his shiny dark eyes and hair, the princely shape of his nose, his perfect, graceful poise all came from his pilfered royal blood. He wonders if she longed for her homeland until she died, or if she was offered a better life in this foreign land and was ultimately grateful for her fate. Even so, he wonders if someone here missed her after her disappearance.

These are all futile thoughts, of course, and he shouldn’t be wasting his time entertaining them. The woman was human and unbonded, she has been dead for well over two centuries and he will never have an answer to his questions. Not that the answer would matter, anyway. She did her part – she begot strong, noble descendants and contributed to renewing Atlantean blood with good stock. The story may sound like a tale of old, one of passion and desire, like that of Sir Gawain and Lady Guinevere, but Mayan knows how carefully selected the humans they breed with always are, especially when it comes to preserving the lineage of Great Houses. He’s heard dark stories of half-breed babies being ripped from their mothers at birth, and foolish sons and daughters of great families being exiled for conceiving children out of wedlock with unapproved human partners. Maybe those tales are exaggerated, of course – he has spent very little time in Atlantis, after all. The place is almost as mythical to Anton and him as it is to the humans they live among.

Mayan stops under the archway leading into the atrium. The sun is pouring down over the ornamental pool, making the stone yard almost blindingly bright. That was Lord Tower’s one concession to the Nasrid rulers’ magnificent red citadel: his own would be white and silver. It is significantly smaller, too, of course – the Alhambra is almost a city in itself, now. Still, the head of the Dagger Throne has a penchant for extravagance. This is the reason why Mayan has slipped away from his training this morning, in order to see if what he heard the servants whispering about in the corridors was true.

His steps are perfectly silent as he moves closer to the pool, and he keeps his shadow in that of the pillars. This is one of the first things he learned from Ubaid – do not be heard, do not be seen. Be quick and light on your feet. Don’t let anyone hear you breathing. Don’t let them hear the sound of your voice. Don’t let them catch sight of you. Stealth is harder for him, though – he is larger than all the other children, even those who are two or three years older than him. Like the other Companions Ubaid is training, he has learned his lessons the hard way – he still bears the scars of those times he failed to be discreet enough for his master’s liking.

You are not my real master, he thinks now, moodily. No matter how many times you whip me. You’re a servant, like me.

Ubaid is Lord Tower’s Companion and one of the best warriors on Earth – according to himself. Many of the greater houses send their own children’s Companions to train with him in Granada for a couple of years. He is ruthless, brutal, but efficient – everything Companions should aspire to be. The training is long and grueling, however. Sometimes, the young ones can’t take it – and it is not only the taxing physical exercises that they can’t stomach. Last week, one of the girls stopped eating and drinking because she missed her scion too much. She was sent home in shame. Mayan thought her reaction quite odd, but admittedly, he has never been very far away from Anton. He just doesn’t think he would mind as much as she seems to. Then again, maybe her scion is kinder.

He glances over his shoulder, murmuring a blessing, suddenly worried that his impudent thought might have been heard. There is no one standing behind him. There is no one reading his rebellious mind. He steps gingerly into the light and approaches the pool. Instinctively, his hand clutches the gold medal dangling around his neck – a way to ward off misfortune. Almost unconsciously, he starts reciting the words engraved in the small circle of metal. It’s a prayer, he knows, although the god it is meant for is not his own – not really. It was the god of his human father, though, and his human mother. Lord Tower told him, once, that this was all he came to them with, many years ago – this gold medal, inscribed with strange words his father had most likely put around his neck. This is all that he retains of him, now, and his only earthly possession which is not bestowed upon him by the Dagger Throne. This is the one single piece of his bygone past he will ever have. No glorious history to honor for the likes of Mayan. No noble lineage to inherit or further.

He moves very slowly towards the edge of the pool. The water is always a little murky, there, its surface almost completely covered in large waterlilies and tiny blue dragonflies. He peers into it, eyes narrowing against the punishing light. Nothing seems amiss. Nothing looks different. He is not sure whether he is relieved or disappointed.

Mayan is about to retreat when he catches sight of something moving just below the surface of the pond. The water ripples ever so slightly, a lily pad quivering and drifting away lazily. Heart hammering in his chest, the boy leans in. There it is – he sees it, now: a small, scaly eye, regarding him lazily behind soft pink petals. Then, slowly, the animal’s muzzle emerges from the waters. Mayan’s eyes widen despite himself. The servants weren’t exaggerating – the creature is enormous, much too big for the little pool. Its snout is at least as long as the boy’s arm and bristling with teeth the size of fingers. Its beady, yellow eyes glint with something dark and primal – not quite malice, but hunger.

He knows this is a crocodile, but when he meets the creatures’ cold gaze, he thinks, dragon.

“Hello,” he tells the beast, which he knows is strange, because reptiles do not speak (or if they do, they do not use any languages he knows.) “I’m Mayan.”

The crocodile blinks slowly, its powerful maw arranged into something resembling a grin. It must be the expression it always wears, but Mayan still feels like the beast is smiling at him. He smiles back. He is cautious, but unafraid. He likes animals – they may be dangerous, but they are honest, uncomplicated creatures. They don’t play games. They are not needlessly cruel. Mayan always had a soft spot for reptiles. He has never seen a crocodile before, except represented in gravures in Anton’s books, but he likes to watch small lizards running across the flagstones, and the occasional snake slithering in the tall grass. Once, he tried to keep a small tortoise he found in the gardens in his room. He fed and watered it for a few days – until Ubaid found it. He doesn’t want to think about it, now.

“This is such a small pool for you,” he murmurs, taking a step forward. The sides of the pool tower over the surface of the water, imprisoning the animal inside. “I’m sorry that you’re a prisoner here.”

I’m sorry too, he imagines the crocodile answering. That you’re a prisoner here.

Cautiously, he plunges a hand into his shirt and takes out a small package, wrapped in linen. It’s a slice of mutton he scavenged from the kitchens earlier, just in case the rumors were true. He unwraps it and shows it to the reptile, wondering if it will recognize food in this form. “I brought you a gift,” he informs it, crouching by the edge of the pool, and he throws the meat into the water.

The crocodile immediately snatches it, jaws opening unnecessarily wide, knife-like fangs glaring in the sunlight. A glimmer of satisfaction twinkle in its eyes as it swallows the unexpected treat. Mayan smiles. “I can get you more,” he says. “Although I’m sure they feed you well.”

Suddenly, he hears a noise in the distance and stiffens, looking over his shoulder again. This part of the palace is usually empty at this hour, but if Ubaid finds him here instead of where he is supposed to be – practicing with the broadsword with the others – he will beat him black and blue.

Maybe I could push him into the pool, if he tried, he thinks darkly. Maybe this one would take care of him for me.

He looks at the scaly creature, considering. “What do you say, friend?” He asks it with a smirk. “Would you eat a large, mean man? I think he must be very tasty, and you would be doing me a favor.”

The beast inclines its head a little, still watching him with its lazy, hooded eyes. Mayan takes it as a yes, which is nice. Of course, he won’t really push Ubaid into the pond to be eaten by crocodiles. Lord Tower would be very, very mad, he assumes, and petty personal grudges are not a valid reason for murder. But he likes the idea of seeing his master sparring with this aquatic dragon – perhaps it would be the opportunity for him to show that he is indeed the best warrior on Earth?

Not my master, he thinks again, mood darkening.

“I don’t think you are supposed to be here,” a voice says suddenly, just above him. “Or give her food.”

Mayan’s heart stutters, but he manages not to jump – that would be an admission of weakness. That would mean he lost their little game. Slowly, he rises to his feet, deploying to his full height. He did not hear him approaching – most infuriating, he did not feel him approaching. Maybe someone is also teaching Anton to walk quietly. Maybe he is just naturally furtive. He is not wearing shoes, either, when he climbs down the stairs and moves closer to the pool. He was hoping to catch his Companion unawares, then.

What are you doing here? Mayan wants to say, irritated. Don’t you have sigils to fill and dusty manuscripts to decipher?

He can’t say that out loud, though. That would be insolent, and he might get punished. It wasn’t always like that, not when they were younger and allowed to play and learn together to facilitate the development of their bond. Naturally, they never shared their quarters or meals, although their rooms used to be closer when they were very small, but Mayan doesn’t think his scion was entirely aware how far below him his Companion was until he was sent to train with Ubaid. Maybe he had not realized it himself, either.

“Is it a girl?” he asks instead of voicing his rancor, looking at the beast.

“A female,” Anton corrects, probably to antagonize him. He does it so very well. “Father had her brought here all the way from Sudan.”

What the hell for? Mayan wonders, looking at the animal slowly circling its aquatic cage, but he doesn’t voice this thought, either, because deep down, he knows why. The specifics do not matter – Lord Tower wanted her, so he took her.

“She is too big for the pool. Isn’t it cruel to keep her here?”

Anton inclines his head to the side, the way he always does when he is honestly considering his answer to a question. It’s a tell – Mayan should probably let him know. “Is it? She’s just an animal.”

“Animals have emotions,” Mayan replies quietly. “Isn’t she part dragon? We shouldn’t keep her imprisoned in this tiny basin, so far from home.”

Anton shrugs, unmoved. “The pool is a lot deeper than it looks. She can go down. She has room.”

As if to approve, the crocodile slowly disappears back into the water, letting her massive, rough body sink down into her lair, until neither of them can see her at all through the muddy surface.

“See?” Anton says, with a note of vindication in his voice that vexes his Companion. “She is fine where she is. It’s not a prison – she has everything she needs.”

What do you know of prisons? Mayan wants to say. Or of what one might need to thrive?

“You still shouldn’t feed her,” the other boy continues. “Father has her on a strict diet.”

A shiver courses through Mayan. “Why?”

Anton doesn’t blink. “To keep her hungry.”

Mayan feels a wave of fury crashing over him. “Why?” he repeats through his teeth. “Why would he be so pointlessly heartless? Why bring this creature all the way here just to torture it?”

“You’re being sentimental,” Anton mocks him, but there is an edge to his voice. “Sentiment is weakness.”

Sentiment is weakness – Lord Tower is fond of that particular saying. Mayan had never heard Anton parrot it before, though. His heart tightens.

“And you’re vicious,” he hisses. “Just like he is.”

The other boy whirls around. For all that he defends his father’s actions and mimics his words, he doesn’t like being compared to him. He never did. Mayan thinks it may have something to do with the way he treats his mother, or maybe it is the long days he sometimes spends locked into a dark, cold room under the palace without food when he says or does something Lord Tower doesn’t like. Anton never said anything, though. He wouldn’t.

“I am not,” he says harshly. “I just have more important things to do than shirking my duties to feed slimy reptiles. I am a scion of Atlantis.”

Mayan laughs, although he is not amused – he is enraged, now, and no longer cares about being insolent. “You are nothing,” he tells Anton with as much venom as he can muster. “You are not even the heir to your father’s throne!”

He is not. He has an older brother and an older sister back in Atlantis. He is third in line, and almost certain never to ascend to the Arcanum. This is a very sore point and Mayan can hardly believe that he is now using it against him. Perhaps he is vicious as well. Perhaps they deserve each other.

“And what does that make you?” Anton shoots back, face shuttering in anger. “The servant of a third-son?”

“I may be a servant,” he roars, taking a step forward, so close to his scion now that they are almost touching. “But at least I’m not a monster, reveling in other creatures’ pain!”

“She is a beast,” Anton spits, gesturing towards the pool. “And so are you.”

And in a rare display of petty anger, he closes his fingers around the medal resting on Mayan’s chest and pulls. The thin gold chain snaps easily, surprising them both, and the pendant slides from around his neck and slips between Anton’s splayed fingers. Mayan has been trained to be swift and precise. Catching a falling object should be child’s play. At the very least, he could step on the small, circular piece to stop its course. And yet – he doesn’t. He looks at his father’s medal, the only thing here that is his, as it falls onto the marble floor, bounces a couple of times with a sharp, clear clank, curiously loud for such a small item, and rolls away – before disappearing over the edge and plunging directly into the pool.

The sound Mayan lets out then is frankly disgraceful. It’s a raw, harrowing animal yowl, halfway between a sob and a howl. The cry not of a man, but of a wounded beast.

A beast – is that what he is, after all? Is that all he is?

Panting, he drops to his knees and leans over the undisturbed water of the pool. There isn’t even a residual ripple in the place his medal has sunk. It was such a trivial item, such an insignificant, weightless thing that its disappearance has not even left a temporary mark behind. It was simply swallowed, quietly and definitively.

All I ever had of my parents, he thinks, dismayed. The only thing I was allowed to own. The only thing that was mine.

“Well,” Anton says in the fraught silence that follows. “Perhaps she can eat that, if she gets truly hungry.”

A voice rings in Mayan’s head – Lord Tower’s, when they were maybe four or five years old, and Mayan was first taken away from his scion and brought to the training grounds. The first words he clearly remembers. His first real memory. Anton, standing on the steps of the main stairs, looking shocked and shaken (did he cry? Mayan likes to think so, but maybe he is rewriting his own memories. He certainly cried) and his father, all but dragging his Companion away. “Do not forget – he is not your friend. He is your master. He is your way. As he leads, you follow. As he lives, you serve. You are his, but he is not yours.”

As he lives, you serve, he thinks now, bent over the pool, shaking with such uncontrollable anger, such scorching hatred that his vision momentarily blurs. On his chest, the spot where his medal used to rest feels like an arrow wound, gushing blood. As he lives.

Anton doesn’t have to live, though, does he? He doesn’t deserve to. No one in this cursed household does.

Later, he will wonder about the logistics of this very first attempt on his scion’s life. “Poorly thought-through, you must admit,” Anton will say. Of course – they were only nine years old, and Mayan knew very little about efficient killing. He was blinded by rage and desperation, by pain like he had never felt before – the bite of bitter loss, the sting of utter and complete betrayal.

You knew what this meant to me.

It all happens very quickly. He gets to his feet and looks back at his scion. The boy is standing on the slippery edge of the pool, looking placidly at him, his large black eyes as still as the surface of the treacherous water, his fine features composed and calm – here, they seem to tell Mayan. I can take everything from you and throw it away like a bone I’m done picking. What can you do about it? Nothing. You can do nothing.

But he can – all it takes is one sharp push.

Anton is small for his age – or maybe he isn’t, really, but he is much smaller than Mayan. His body makes almost no noise and hardly causes more of a disturbance to the water than the gold medal did when it hits it. No grand splash, no screaming. Like the pendant, he seems to be immediately engulfed, instantly dragged down into the depths of the pool, like a small stone. Like precious metal. Mayan stares at the surface. The water lilies sway slightly with the swell. The dragonflies momentarily take off, then promptly land back onto their soft petals. For two or three long seconds, nothing happens.

Did the crocodile get him already? Mayan wonders, uncertain if the dizzying surge of emotion he feels is horror or glee. Was she hungry enough?

But then, Anton reappears, his head piercing through the surface, his pale face emerging among the lily pads. His wide eyes meet his Companion’s. He looks surprised, but not alarmed. Not even angry. He spits out a mouthful of water and, unhurriedly, as though he were only taking a bath, he swims to the side – but of course, he can’t hoist himself up. The pool is deep, and its edges are high: one wouldn’t want a crocodile to accidentally escape. Anton can only get out if someone gives him a hand. He looks up at Mayan, face unreadable. The other boy stands there, motionless, looking down impassively. The waters shiver almost imperceptibly just a few feet away.

Beg, he almost says. Beg for your life and see if I serve you.

Anton doesn’t. He doesn’t plead. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t thrash about in terror. He doesn’t shout out useless insults or threats, either. He merely tenses and looks up at Mayan, almost curiously – waiting. Watching.

What will you do? His quiet eyes ask. Will you let the monster eat me? Or will you the serve your purpose?

I could be free, Mayan thinks wildly. I could be free of this cruel place. Free of Ubaid. Free of you.

The water ripples again. On the other side of the pool, he sees the shadow of a great, toothy head brushing against the surface. Mayan remembers the way the crocodile’s jaws snapped open and shut around the piece of meat he gave her. He remembers the sharp sound of teeth clanking against each other. Anton is small – would she be able to swallow him whole? Would she drag him down to drown him, first? Would she need to tear him to pieces to eat him? Would he finally scream, then?

“Mayan,” Anton says suddenly, almost a whisper. He says nothing else.

The shadow glides closer, so very slowly, deliberately – but the pool is so small. The trap is so exquisite. Mayan looks down at his scion’s face one more time. The boy is still looking up silently, eyes boring into his Companion’s. Make your decision, now, and live with it.

Mayan makes his decision. Quick as lightening, he kneels down and grabs Anton’s arm. It is a good thing that he is bigger and heavier than him: he lifts him up and out of the water easily, hurling his lighter body onto the side of the pool in one single, powerful stroke. And not a second too soon, either. The crocodile’s gigantic jaws suddenly stab through the surface in the exact spot where the boy was a moment ago, and close loudly around thin air, a guttural growl escaping her pointy snout. Water splashes and foams all around her and a swarm of dragonflies fly away in panic.

She could have swallowed him whole, Mayan decides, looking at the beast in awe as she sinks back into the pond, empty-handed. She would have if I had waited one more second.

He still can’t tell if he feels disappointed or relieved that he didn’t. Beside him, Anton is looking at the animal with the same wide-eyed expression. He looks pale and a little shaken, with his wet clothes and hair, but he doesn’t feel the fright one might expect. Mayan knows that, because if he did, he would be able to taste it too. They exchange a long, loaded look.

I almost killed you. I saved your life. I have power over you, Mayan doesn’t say.

You almost killed me – do you know what punishment that entails? His scion doesn’t reply.

Mayan knows. He thinks he may even be ready for it, the way Anton seemed ready for the crocodile’s maw. He wonders distantly if most children their age regard the possibility of their own imminent death with such detachment.

“Anton!” A cry above their head. “Anton, what happened?”

Mayan tears his eyes from his scion. Lady Alvira is running towards them, her long, dark blue gown expanding behind her like the wind-swollen sails of a ship, her hair in disarray. She is wearing the terrified expression of a mother who almost saw her child perish right before her eyes.

So she knows, Mayan thinks regretfully. He likes Lady Alvira. She is beautiful and soft. She may be a little mad, but she is never cruel.

“What happened?” She repeats loudly, grabbing her son’s shoulders, helping him back to his feet. Anton looks at her mutely, and, for the first time, Mayan wonders if he might be too stunned to answer. She turns to him. “Mayan, tell me – what is going on? I saw the crocodile – it almost killed him. What were you doing, playing here? Do you realize how dangerous it is? You’re supposed to watch over him!”

She didn’t see me push him, he realizes. She doesn’t know.

But of course, she will. The moment Anton finds his voice, he will tell her everything. Mayan will be executed for his crime – burnt alive at the stake, most probably. That’s what they do to traitors, here. That’s what he deserves.

This will hurt, he thinks bitterly, looking at Anton. But I won’t scream. I won’t give you the satisfaction.

The other boy blinks at him, then at his mother. “I’m sorry,” he says in a small voice Mayan hasn’t heard him use in years. It sounds oddly inauthentic. “I wanted to see the crocodile. I wanted to feed her. I slipped.” Slowly, he turns his gaze back to his Companion, catching his eye over his mother’s back. Mayan stares back, dumbfounded. “Mayan saved me. I would be dead if it weren’t for him.”

Lady Alvira turns to him and squeezes his arm in gratefulness, with something like affection. Like pride. “Well done,” she murmurs. “Well done, Mayan.”

Over her shoulder, still dripping with muddy water, bits and pieces of leaves stuck in his hair, Anton smiles at him, white teeth glinting in the fiery sunlight – almost like those of the great lizard below.

Mayan is nine the first time he attempts to kill his scion. He isn’t burned at the stake for his treachery. He isn’t exiled by Lady Alvira and Lord Tower. He isn’t even reprimanded by Ubaid for not being where he was meant to be. They all nod and smile and pat his back – good boy, they say. Worthy Companion.

Anton doesn’t say anything at all. Not to his parents or Mayan’s instructor. Not even to Mayan himself. The next time they find themselves alone in each other’s company, he seems rather cheerful and talks of birds and migration patterns for almost an hour. He doesn’t mention the incident at all, as though it had never occurred. As though he himself believed the fiction he had come up with on a whim – “I slipped. Mayan saved me.” Mayan supposes he did save him – although it hardly counts, when he was the one to push him in the first place.

Two days later, however, Mayan finds a tiny parcel in his room. It was laid on the straw pillow on top of his cot. Curiously, he unwraps the small square of linen. Inside, his father’s gold medal rests against a tiny piece of lily pad. He blinks several times, unable to decide if what he is seeing is real or not. Gingerly, he picks the pendant up and examines it closely. This is undoubtedly the same medal he lost into the pool, miraculously fished out of its dark, dark depths, where an ancient crocodile dwells.

With trembling fingers and a pounding heart, he slips a leather lace through the small opening and fastens it securely around his neck, where it belongs.

Is this forgiveness? He wonders, stroking the cool, delicate piece of metal. Or is it a warning?

Well – he supposes time will tell.

***

Mayan is nineteen the first time Anton kills someone.

The year is 1416, according to the Christian calendar they abide by, and the Emirate has been at peace with the Kingdom of Castiles and Aragon for six years when the crown sends an envoy to Granada. Ostensibly, the man is here to discuss changes to be made to trade agreements signed under the new Sultan. In reality, Mayan strongly suspects that he is a spy sent by the Spanish king.

“Peace is an illusion,” Anton said the night before, as he tinkered with the plants he is currently growing on his balcony. He has developed a sudden passion for botany, it seems. “The Spaniards have no intention of leaving Granada alone, and what Sultan Yusuf has agreed to will make his own kingdom little more than a tributary state.”

“What choice does he have?” Mayan asked, genuinely curious. Anton has a keen political mind despite his young age – a lot sharper than his father’s – and could make an excellent diplomat, if he were who they all pretend he is. Perhaps that is what he is being groomed to become, anyway. “He has no more allies on this side of the sea.”

“No,” Anton conceded, sounding somewhat nostalgic. “We live in the last bastion of this civilization, and it won’t subsist for very long. The Christians will see it extinguished.”

“What is it to you?” Mayan said, frowning. “This is not your land. Or your civilization.”

That may not have been entirely honest. While they are exiles of sorts, this is the closest they have ever had to a home. Although they have visited Atlantis several times, neither of them has lived anywhere but here, and the possibility of seeing Granada fall sent a shiver of apprehension down his spine.

Anton shrugged, stroking the bluish petals of one of his most cherished flowers. “This is not my land. I just don’t trust Ferdinand. He likes to smash things to pieces.”

You may very well be related to him, Mayan thought, but remained quiet. Instead, looking at the flower the other young man is caressing with such affection, he said, “you favor this one. How come?”

Anton smiled almost dreamily, pleased that he asked. “Belladonna,” he answered quietly, as though it said it all. “Beautiful lady. Isn’t it a lovely name?” He co*cked his head, gazing back at his Companion. “It’s also known as deadly nightshade. The berries are poisonous. Five can provoke hallucinations and sickness. Ten will kill a man.” He sighed and took a step back. “Isn’t it strange, and a little sad, to think that such a beautiful thing can bring about such suffering?”

Mayan did not look at the belladonna flower but at his scion when he answered, “yes. I suppose it is.”

Regardless of Anton’s position on the matter of the Spanish envoy, he is tasked with welcoming King Ferdinand’s man on the next day. Lord Tower seems to believe that it is time he assumed what he likes to call his ‘rightful position’ at his side – which can only mean one thing: he intends to leave them here, possibly soon, and return to Atlantis. Anton will remain in Granada to manage their affairs and interests in Europe while his father returns to his homeland to train his actual heir in the ways of the Arcanum. After all, isn’t that what third sons are for?

I won’t miss either of you when you’re gone, at least, he thinks now, looking at Lord Tower and his Companion as they withdraw, entrusting the delicate mission of entertaining their guest to Anton.

The man’s name is Pedro of Almazán. He is a minor nobleman of Aragon and a very successful merchant. He ostensibly deals in textiles and oil, but the true source of his wealth comes from another type of imports entirely – he trades in slaves. Despite Mayan’s personal misgivings on the matter, this is not a disreputable venture per se. Al-Andalus was once renowned for its slave markets, selling Muslim men and women from across the sea, people who look just like Mayan, to the Northern kingdoms, while they sent Christian captives to the coast of North Africa – quid pro quo. The practice has somewhat abated for the last few decades, however, and most of the market is now concentrated in Granada. Still, there are those who consider the commerce of humans tasteless, and many merchants have taken to advertise their other ventures to avoid controversy.

Almazán is indubitably one of those. Anton is to greet him at the gate, flanked by a small escort, while Mayan awaits in the Great Hall, with the rest their guards. Lord Tower doesn’t want his guest to feel threatened upon arrival.

When the merchant finally enters the hall, Mayan dislikes him at first glance. He is a stocky, gray-haired man of almost fifty years, sporting a neatly cropped beard, a rounded belly, and so many rings on his hands it seems impossible that he should be able to lift them, weighed down as they are by gems and gold. Mayan supposes his slaves must still be worth a fair amount, then – how many people must one sell to buy a ruby this large? And what of the sapphire?

“If you please, sir,” Anton is saying as they walk in. “We have had refreshments prepared. I know your journey was long and you must yearn for a meal and a rest.”

“That is very kind of you,” Almazán replies cheerfully. “I imagine our talks can wait until tomorrow. Yusuf is not going anywhere.”

He offers a conspiratorial smile, to which Anton responds quite expertly, a smooth, perfectly executed moue of connivence. Mayan would be impressed if he didn’t find it quite so distasteful. His scion catches his eye as their guest sits at the table and raises an eyebrow, just a little. “Your rooms will be ready in a matter of minutes. Would you care for some wine?”

Almazán has the look of a man who has not often refused a cup of any liquor. He nods enthusiastically. He looks even more pleased when he sees the girl who brings them their drinks. Her name is Sonia, and she is thirteen years old. Her mother works in their kitchen.

“My, my, Segnor Torres,” Almazán teases. “Your father has built quite the life for himself in this savage land. Your house is just as grand as I’d heard.”

“Thank you,” Anton replies primly.

“And the household,” he adds, his bejeweled fingers brushing against Sonia’s as she pours his wine, “is quite welcoming as well.” The sapphire on his middle finger, perhaps the largest of them all, seems to accidentally get caught in the lace of the girl’s sleeve, exposing a skinny, white wrist and elbow as she attempts to move away.

“Apologies,” Almazán smirks, staring at her bared skin.

A tremor goes through Mayan’s hands, but he doesn’t move from his post. He has not been summoned. Sonia flushes and readjusts her dress.

“We do like to surround ourselves with competent servants,” Anton says evenly. He gives the girl a long, pointed look and she withdraws quickly. “As you well know, a nobleman is only as good as his help.”

Almazán nods. “Very true,” he acquiesces. “You are young, but you have a knack for commerce, already. And politics.” He grins above his cup. “Let us drink to that, then – commerce and politics. The future of our race.”

It is unclear whether he means Spaniards, Christians, merchants, or humans in general. It doesn’t matter, though, for Anton is none of these things.

“To the future of our race,” he agrees nonetheless, lifting his own cup.

This is when the merchant’s eyes finally find Mayan. It has never been easy for him to be inconspicuous, despite Ubaid’s tireless teachings. At almost twenty years of age, he has grown so tall that he stands at least a full head above anyone else in the room. He has grown in width, too, shoulders and arms hard as steel, their breadth enough to fill a doorway – ‘A perfect shield,’ Lord Tower said not so long ago, admiring him as though he had designed this body himself. ‘A veritable bulwark.’ Mayan felt a flicker of pride at the appreciation, but he also sensed a prickle of annoyance – not his own, though. Anton never liked anyone, least of all his father, commenting on his Companion’s appearance. Or his achievements. He prefers people not to notice him at all.

Unfortunately, Mayan is very noticeable. “Would you look at this?” the merchant exclaims, visibly awed. “This one is a veritable beast. Wherever did you find such a fine specimen? None of my Moors are quite so impressive! I must not be buying them in the right place.”

To Mayan, it feels as if the residual warmth of this late summer evening had been sucked out of the room in an instant. An icy wind traverses the hall, the sudden cold biting into the exposed flesh of his chest and prickling the nape of his neck. For a moment, he thinks that he might be the only one who feels it – he thinks the frost in the air is but an echo of the rush of white rage flowing through the bond which connects him to Anton. It is not – around him, he can see people shivering and rubbing their arms, eyes searching for the source of the strange and sudden drop in temperature.

It's magic, Mayan realizes.

As quickly as it descended upon them, though, the bitter cold dissipates. Almazán blinks curiously, looking back at his host. “Unexpectedly drafty,” he murmurs. “Must be useful at the height of summer.”

“You are mistaken, my lord,” Anton says, and his tone, while mild, is not yet entirely devoid of ice. “Mayan is not a slave. He is my most trusted advisor and intendant.” He gestures for his Companion to join them.

What are you doing? He wonders, obeying nonetheless.

“Truly?” Almazán asks, looking astonished.

“He oversees our entire household,” Anton continues, his voice growing more confident, warmer. “And he administrates our finances.”

That is a blatant lie, of course, and Mayan cannot fathom why his scion is telling it. He can only tell that he is very, very angry at their guest. Anton looks up at him and nods – come on, he says, follow my lead. Mayan bows his head – he has no choice but to go along. As you lead, I follow.

“I am trained in trade and mathematics, my lord,” he tells the man. “I like to think I can be useful to this house.”

“You speak flawless Castilian,” Almazán says, visibly surprised, and Mayan is not certain if it is his stature or the darker shade of his skin that threw the man off. Probably both. Then, laughing, he exclaims, “Well! What a brave new world! I cannot wait to see what you youngsters make of it!” he raises his cup again, and the gems on his hands shimmer in the firelight.

“I imagine you cannot,” Anton says, voice pitched low.

The rest of the evening is rather uneventful. The merchant drinks and eats and stares at Sonia, even though she keeps to the other side of the hall. He speaks of his oils and his cloths, then, after more wine has warmed his belly, of his slaves. He speaks of the trade agreements he is meant to renegotiate with the Sultan and of how the King hopes to crush the Emirate under his heel, until he has stamped out the last of the Moors, until the peninsula is once again a Christian haven. Mayan is almost as astonished by his volubility as he is by his faith in his audience’s unconditional support. Almazán does not seek to obfuscate or conceal the motives behind his visit, and he seems to have absolute confidence that Lord Tower can only espouse his views. Admittedly, Anton keeps his cup full throughout dinner and the man is so drunk by the end of the night that he needs his host’s and Mayan’s assistance to stagger back to his room. The large ruby on the man’s index finger keeps pressing uncomfortably into Mayan’s bicep.

“The girl,” Almazán whispers to him as he sits him down heavily on his bed. “I wouldn’t mind if you sent her to me. Actually, I would very much appreciate it.”

Mayan freezes. He opens his mouth to inform the man that their chambermaids are not prostitutes, especially not those who haven’t even bled yet, but Anton speaks first. “I will see to it that your desires are satisfied, Lord Almazán,” he says smoothly. “Please make yourself comfortable. I will send for more wine.”

The man grunts and nods and they both take their leave.

“You can’t send Sonia to this man,” Mayan whispers angrily, grabbing his scion’s hand once they are back in the hall. “She is just a child!”

Anton regards him evenly and slowly shakes his wrist free. “Go to bed, Mayan. I will handle it from here.”

There is nothing more he can do, short of guarding Almazán’s door to turn the girl away if she does show up, so Mayan obeys. That is what he does, isn’t it? He obeys. He has a hard time believing that his scion would send such a young girl to such a repugnant man – and he has no doubt his distaste is shared – but one never knows with Anton. One never knows with Lord Tower.

If you made her go against her will, Mayan thinks at father and son alike as he lies in bed, sleep eluding him, I will make you pay. And him.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to make anyone pay. It seems that, at some point during the night, justice has been served.

Sonia does go to Almazán’s room early the next morning, but she finds him cold on his bed. Mayan wakes to the sound of her screaming as she runs down the corridor, sobbing uncontrollably. He suspects at least some of it is for show, although perhaps she has never seen a dead body before.

“Lord Almazán is dead,” another servant, a young man by the name of Abdul whispers nervously into Mayan’s ear. “I just saw his corpse. Nasty.”

“Dead?” he repeats, something complex and unidentifiable flashing through him: surprise, relish, vindication – fear. “How?”

“I don’t know. There’s no blood, but vomit all over his linens. Maybe he drank himself to death.” Abdul smirks. “That wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve heard that, after almost drinking our entire cellar dry at dinner, he asked for more wine when he went to bed.” He sighs. “Rich pig. He had it coming.”

Mayan stays silent for a few moments. “So, he wasn’t murdered,” he says, not quite asking.

Abdul shrugs. “I saw at least six rings on his bedside table, each one big enough to buy an entire ship. If he was murdered, it wasn’t for his money.”

No, Mayan thinks, cold sweat prickling on the back of his neck. It wasn’t.

Within the hour, Anton and he are both summoned to Lord Tower’s chambers. His scion is awaiting in front of his father’s door. He looks rested and clean, dressed in white cotton and blue silk, his lovely face fresh and relaxed. As Mayan approaches, though, he feels a surge of trepidation coursing through their bond. Not quite fear – tension and excitement. Righteousness.

“You look tired,” Anton comments lightly as they go in together – a united front. “Is something troubling you?”

“I got little sleep, last night,” he replies, eyeing the other man.

Anton offers a small, earnest smile. “Hm. I hope you sleep better tonight.”

They go quiet when they enter the throne room. The throne room – that’s what Anton calls it. Is it not officially that, of course, because Lord Tower is not a king, although he fancies himself one. He very much looks like a monarch in this moment, sitting on his gold and velvet armchair, looking down at them with what Mayan can only call contemptuous suspicion. The kind of feeling a lord would experience when in the presence of potentially rebellious peasants. Lady Alvira is here as well, standing tautly at her husband’s side and she gives them a somewhat haunted look when they stride in. She doesn’t have a throne of her own. She is not even allowed a chair.

“Father,” Anton greets politely in Arabic. “Mother.”

He favors Spanish when he speaks to Mayan and addresses the staff – a small act of rebellion, because Lord Tower’s mother tongue, so to speak, is that of Atlantis. Since Old Atlantean has become obsolete, several centuries ago now, Arabic has been their shared idiom. The Dagger Court may play the part of Castilian aristocrats for now, but Lord Tower never lets them forget who they truly are.

“So,” the man begins severely in the same language. “I entrust a man to you for one night and he wounds up dead at sunrise. That’s… disappointing.”

“I was very sorry to hear it,” Anton replies. “And you are right to blame me, father.”

Mayan stiffens but resists the urge to turn. Instead, he looks straight ahead at Lady Alvira. Her paleness makes the greenish bruise on her cheek stand out.

“I could tell he had drunk more than his fill, already,” Anton continues. “And I should have begged him to stop rather than have Maria deliver more wine to his room. He was not in very good health. I’m afraid the journey and subsequent excesses might have led to his demise.”

A moment of silence follows. Lord Tower sighs and slowly rises from his sumptuous seat. “The man was sent to us in good faith by King Ferdinand. The Sultan is expecting him this morning.”

Anton can’t help himself, this time. “I’m sure he won’t miss him too much, father. Perhaps the next envoy will be more suited to the task of preserving the peace?”

Lord Tower takes a few steps forward, stopping right in front of his son. The younger man doesn’t flinch, but Mayan feels an odd kind of pressure on their bond. This is the closest Anton ever comes to experiencing fear, as far as he can tell, and it always happens when in presence of his father.

“You know,” Lord Tower says lightly, “that the Emperor and Empress have tasked us with overseeing and protecting Atlantean interests in the region. We are beholden to the Regency, and to our country. We are not free to do as we please and endanger our alliances.” He pauses, looking pointedly at his son and his voice grows sensibly colder when he asks, “Do you understand?”

“Of course, father,” Anton replies courteously, reciting well-rehearsed verses as though they were having a purely theoretical discussion on diplomatic etiquette. “It is most important that we uphold our position here, and our friendship with the Spaniards, as well as the Moors.”

“A dignitary died in my house,” Lord Tower says through gritted teeth. “On your watch.”

“There was no sign of foul play. He may very well have been sick and died in his sleep. You know how fragile humans are. You know–”

Lord Tower hits him in the face, hard enough to make him stagger a little, but not hard enough to make him fall. Mayan whirls around, but immediately, Anton raises a hand. Stop.

He takes a few deep breaths and turns to Lord Tower again. “I can see you are disappointed in me, father,” he says, a slight wheeze in his voice. His nose his bleeding. “But I can assure you that I take our role here very seriously. I wouldn’t risk our position by foolishly harming an ambassador.”

“Whether you harmed him or not is beside the point,” Lord Tower hisses. “The man is dead under my roof.”

He raises his fist again, but this time, Mayan is faster. He knows the gesture to be reckless, but he cannot resist the impulse – he catches the man’s wrist just before his hand connects with his son’s face for the second time.

“My lord,” Mayan whispers, half plea, half warning.

Raising a hand to an Arcana could mean death, but then again, so many things can in his life. Lord Tower is not a large man, and he is only wearing two sigils – Mayan could easily break his neck if he were quick enough about it. He has thought about doing it many times. Ubaid is not here to protect his scion, either, and part of him wants to sneer, where were you when your master needed you?

“Unhand me, boy,” Lord Tower orders sourly. “This is not what you’re for. Know your damned place.”

“Oveco,” Lady Alvira says, her voice trembling a little. “Please.”

“Mayan,” Anton murmurs, and it’s perhaps the softest his Companion has ever heard him speak. “Don’t.”

Mayan lets go. That’s what he does. He obeys.

“Father,” Anton says again, trying to sound contrite. “I am sorry that I failed in the mission you entrusted to me. I understand the gravity of what happened, and I promise I will not let anything like that happen again. I will protect our name. I will protect our House.”

Lord Tower doesn’t appear to be mollified, but he seems a little rattled. Maybe it’s his son’s unsettling serenity in the face of violence. Maybe it was Mayan’s hand around his arm. You’re not my master. He rubs his wrist and looks at them both, eyes narrowed. “I’m glad to see one of you is doing their job, at least. I would rather it wasn’t your attack dog, though.”

Another cool wave splashes over the bond, like a bucket of ice water, but Anton mercifully holds his tongue. He simply nods once.

“Oveco,” Lady Alvira says again.

“Quiet, woman!” Lord Tower barks at her. “And you two – get out. Go deal with your mess, Anton, and make sure not a single stain sullies our name, or there will be consequences.”

“Yes, father,” he replies meekly, bowing to the man before turning on his heel.

It may not be a victory march, but Mayan supposes it could have gone worse. Lord Tower has children to spare, after all. And if his wife won’t give him any more, he will take another. There are Atlantean noblewomen in his harem – this is a custom he picked from their Nasrid rulers and embraced with enthusiasm – and while they are not quite as high-ranking as Lady Alvira, sister to Lord Moon, they could easily be impregnated without seriously damaging the purity of the Dagger Throne’s bloodline. He would have wasted two decades on an unworthy son, but their lives are much longer than those of their human counterparts, and do-overs are always in the cards. Anton is not irreplaceable – angering his father the way he did was excessively risky.

They keep silent until they have walked back to Anton’s quarters, the young man holding a cloth to his nose. It has stopped bleeding by the time they arrive.

“Well,” Anton declares in Spanish, plunging his handkerchief into the basin of fresh water and dabbing his face gingerly. “I guess I will gather our guest’s personal effects and have them sent back to his family. I will need to write a letter of condolences.”

A smear of partially dried blood still stains his chin. Despite his best efforts, in the absence of a looking glass, he keeps missing the spot with the wet cloth. He moves to the balcony, watching his collection of exotic plants thoughtfully. Mayan keeps his eyes trained on his back, and not on the flowers gently swaying in the morning breeze. He knows Anton’s beloved nightshade will be missing ten berries.

“Do you think I should include a line about the wine and prepubescent girl?” Anton asks, voice deceptively light. “So that they know he died happy?”

Mayan takes a few steps forward – three steps are sufficient to cross most of the distance separating them, he has such long legs – and wrenches the handkerchief from his hands. It’s pink with blood, now, and the water in the basin is tinged with delicate red volutes, but he manages to find a clean spot and wets the cloth once more. Anton keeps perfectly still when he starts scrubbing his face, a little harder than strictly necessary.

“Poison is underhanded,” Mayan comments quietly when his scion’s face seems appropriately clean. “It’s a coward’s weapon.”

Anton co*cks his head. “Is it?” he asks calmly. “That’s the weapon the Romans used to do away with their enemies, in ancient times. Their history is brimming with accounts of notorious poisonings. Nero used it to kill his half-brother Britannicus. It’s an emperor’s weapon.”

“Why?” Mayan asks simply, meeting his gaze.

“He was sickly, you know,” Anton answers evasively. “Age, wine, debauchery – they all take quite a toll on a man.”

“Sickness did not take him.”

“I guess it’s a matter of perspective,” Anton retorts, inspecting his nails. “All it took was seven berries.” He looks up. “If he had taken better care of himself, he might have lived.” He grins, eyelids fluttering at he gazes into Mayan’s eyes. “I bet you would require at least fifteen.”

I am tired of your games, Mayan thinks, but his heart is pounding in his chest and the frisson going through him is not entirely unpleasant. They are standing so close to each other that he can feel the heat emanating from the other man’s skin.

“Why?” he repeats tersely.

A short pause follows. Then, Anton averts his eyes. “He was discourteous and a threat to our home,” he declares.

“Half of the men who dine at your father’s table are.”

“I did not care for the way he looked at the girl.”

“Is that why he had to die?” Mayan pushes, because he truly wonders. “Was it the real reason?”

Anton’s face undulates in the shadows, mask slipping for a brief moment. “He called you a beast,” he says finally, his voice low and careful, as if to conceal the emotion lurking beneath his words, the way he always does when he would rather no one knows what he feels, least of all his bonded Companion.

Which is most of the time, Mayan thinks darkly.

“You called me a beast,” he reminds him, rather coldly.

His scion looks pensive. “Yes. And you pushed me into a crocodile’s pond.”

Mayan’s heart stutters. Neither of them has evoked this particular incident in ten years. He keeps silent, attempting to mimic Anton’s neutral expression. That’s not why I pushed you, he thinks of saying. It was never why. He resists the urge to touch the medal around his neck.

The other young man shrugs lightly, his expression and body relaxed once more, as if they were discussing some complicated but ultimately uninteresting topic, wasting their precious time. “I just thought I’d save you the trouble. I thought I’d save everyone the trouble.” He smiles. “It was a teachable moment, wouldn’t you say? At the very least, I have progressed in my understanding of belladonna. I can be more precise, next time.”

He pats Mayan’s shoulder gently, almost affectionately. Maybe I’ll try the next batch on you, he doesn’t say. Or another rude dignitary. Or my father.

Mayan doesn’t know if he could begrudge him any of these.

When he goes to bed on that night, he finds something under his pillow. Once again, the item is wrapped in a small square of white linen, like an innocuous trinket left by a secret admirer. When he opens it, however, he recognizes it immediately – this is no trinket. The object is small but heavy, its many facets sparkling bright red in the candlelight. This is Lord Almazán’s ruby ring – worth enough to buy a ship, Abdul said. An exaggeration, perhaps, but certainly worth more money than any servant of the Dagger Throne will likely see in their entire life.

That’s the second time you’ve given me jewelry, Mayan muses, stroking the gem gently. He is not certain he understands what that means this time either.

Mayan is nineteen the first time Anton kills someone. Maybe he does it for him. Maybe he does not. One can never tell with his scion – he always seems to be ten steps ahead of everyone else, including his Companion.

Four weeks later, Sonia and her mother abruptly leave their employ. Mayan hears from the servants that they bought a cart, with horses, as well as enough supplies to last them for several weeks, and headed North, where they are originally from. No one knows how they were able to afford any of it, and even less how they intend to establish themselves in Catalonia – starting one’s life over is such a costly endeavor.

Mayan doesn’t ponder over the matter. He knows exactly how many rings once adorned Almazán’s thick, grubby fingers. He also knows how many were retrieved and sent back to his wife and children in Zaragoza – all but two. He knows one of them is hidden in the small wooden table in his bedroom. He knows, now, where the missing sapphire went.

Did you steal it when you found his body, Sonia? He wonders. Or did you also discover it under your pillow on the next day?

“Do you imagine Maria and Sonia will make it back home?” He asks Anton, a week after they disappear. He is sitting in his room in front of the balcony overlooking the Alhambra, painting. He is not a very good artist yet, but Mayan knows how incredibly patient he can be about such things. Time, dedication, constant application of effort, focus. Anton is very, very good at biding his time.

“I hope they do,” he answers pensively, his paintbrush suspended in the air, tinged with a deep, vivid blue. “After all this ugliness, they deserve a reprieve. A chance at a better life.” He turns to look at Mayan. “A way out, so to speak.”

Mayan thinks of the ruby concealed in his room and his breath catches in his throat. Is this a test? Or is it an offer?

Anton turns back to his painting. “One should always strive to have one of those – just in case.”

***

Mayan is twenty-six the second time he attempts to kill his scion.

This time, at least, he can tell himself that the reason behind his compulsion is somewhat more substantial. The second time he almost murders Anton, it is over a woman.

Her name is Amhara, and she is the most beautiful thing he has ever laid eyes on. She has dark brown skin, glossy blue-black hair so long that she has to keep it braided on her head, lest that it swept over the floor behind her, and eyes so large and deep that gazing into them feels like gazing into the night. She was born in the Ethiopian Empire, somewhere along the green and bountiful banks of the infinite Nile, and was one day captured by Harar Muslim slavers. She was fourteen when she was sold to the new Sultan’s household to serve in his harem.

“But his Majesty does not favor Christian women,” she told Mayan one day, months ago, the first time she took him to her bed. “And I was trained as a handmaiden for one of his wives, instead.”

After four years in the Sultan’s employ, her ownership was transferred to Lady Alvira, apparently as a gesture of goodwill. She moved into their estate five months ago and, loath as he is to admit it, Mayan has been smitten ever since. Amhara is not merely beautiful, she is clever and talented – she taught herself how to read Arabic and how to play the harp, she is a proficient gardener and seamstress, and, as it turns out, a very skilled lover.

Mayan has been with women before, and with men. Lord Tower’s harem has both, which he understands is most unusual and should not be discussed outside their walls. It always struck him as a little strange – women can bear unwanted bastards, their wombs a fertile terrain for bloody succession wars, yet it is relations between men that humans, Christians and Muslims alike, seem to shun. He imagines they must have different priorities – Atlanteans are quite preoccupied with the sustained purity of their bloodlines. The Sultan, on the other hand, certainly does not seem to fear begetting children out of wedlock.

And so, Mayan has known the touch of both boys and girls, he has been encouraged to visit the harem and has taken servants to bed. He has never, however, pursued anything that resembled a relationship with anyone. He has never felt any desire to do so – before he met Amhara. One night, he happens upon her as he patrols the grounds, and she is tending to the flowers in their garden. He marvels at her gentle touch and tasteful arrangements and, observing her from afar, he thinks, Anton would like her.

She notices him, standing in the shadows, but she is not frightened by his appearance or his covertness. She smiles and she teaches him the name of every flower in the garden in her native tongue, and she sings him a song her mother used to sing. On the next day, moved by an urge he cannot explain, he brings her new seeds to plant – passionflowers. She brings him to her bed.

It goes on for three long months – secret rendezvous and strolls in the gardens, clandestine nights spent in each other’s beds, and confidences exchanged under the cover of night. Mayan supposes none of it is entirely secret, per se: nobody ever asks either of them where they disappear to at night. No one formally forbids them to see each other. No one needs to worry about what they do when they are not attending their respective masters. They are servants. They are nobodies. There is no name or fortune to pass on or bloodline to preserve, should they be foolish enough to conceive a child. Who would care?

Who would care?

Perhaps he should have known better, already. Perhaps he should not have been so dreadfully naïve. Perhaps Amhara would have gone on to lead a happy, fruitful life, to bear another man’s children, perhaps she would have gotten to grow old and gray – if only he had been a little less oblivious and selfish. Mayan should have known that their idyl could only ever be a transient, fleeting thing, a passing sunbeam. He should have known that his touch would eventually corrupt and whither her. But he is young and has never fallen for anyone before. He has not been told that he shouldn’t.

In hindsight, he should have long started worrying not about what was said, but about what wasn’t. He should have better listened to the silence. That’s precisely what he gets from his scion – silence. But Anton, with his keen, attentive eyes, misses nothing. It was foolish to imagine he may not know about his Companion’s little love affair. It was maybe even more reckless to think that he did know and was just letting them be.

The night it all comes crashing down, Mayan is summoned to supper. It is unusual – he doesn’t take his meals with Lord Tower and his family – but not unprecedented. Sometimes, when ‘court is in session,’ as Anton likes to say, meaning that they are entertaining a fellow Atlantean, he is asked to sit with his scion. They are, as a matter of fact, hosting one of Lady Alvira’s sisters and her husbands. Perhaps this is why Mayan thinks little of this invitation when it comes.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Anton tells him when he takes his place beside him, which is his first clue that something is not quite right.

He tenses, but only nods and says, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “my lord.”

Anton smiles, and it is not his kind, put-upon smile, the one he flashes at foreign dignitaries and at his aunt. It is his real, sharp, gleefully cold grin. Still, Mayan is willing to blame his own apprehension on the formal setting and the presence of other Atlanteans, which never fails to unsettle him. He is eager to dispel his initial misgivings, and he almost does, up until the moment Amhara suddenly appears in their dining hall, wearing her lovely yellow dress. They stare at each other, astonished.

What are you doing here? He wants to ask, even as he can tell that she is wondering the same thing. He is supposed to be nothing but a personal guard to Anton, and sitting at his table with the lord and lady of the house must look more than a little peculiar.

Maybe she has come to attend Lady Alvira, he thinks. Maybe she summoned her.

She is, after all, heavily pregnant. But the lady did not call on her handmaiden – she looks a little surprised herself when the young woman enters. The one thing that truly alerts Mayan to the seriousness of this situation is the sudden thrill that tickles his bond – a burst of dark, warm excitement.

“Ah, Lady Lia,” Anton calls to his aunt across the table, voice pleasant and polite. “I remembered that you were quite enchanted by our flowerbeds this morning. I thought you might like to know more about them? This is one of our best gardeners…” he pauses, ostensibly for Amhara to introduce herself, but as he does, he looks straight at his Companion. Cold sweat tingles on the back of Mayan’s neck and he represses a shiver. He looks back, keeping his mouth shut and his heartbeat in check.

“Amhara is actually one of my handmaids,” Lady Alvira provides helpfully, temporarily putting an end to their staring contest. “But she is very good with plants, indeed. She has that in common with my son.”

“What a pleasant coincidence,” Anton comments, still looking at his Companion. “I wonder what else we might have in common?”

Don’t, Mayan thinks at the young man. Don’t.

“My lords,” Amhara says awkwardly, bowing clumsily at them all. “My ladies.”

“I absolutely adored your rose garden,” Lady Lia tells her kindly. “And the blue and purple flowers?”

“Passionflowers, my lady,” Amhara answers. She doesn’t look at Mayan. “I grew them myself.”

“Anton grows all sorts of flowers in his rooms,” Lady Alvira continues, oblivious. “Maybe some of them could be planted in the garden.”

“Really, my lord?” Amhara asks politely, looking down at him.

“Absolutely,” he replies. “Please sit. Maybe we can discuss this shared hobby further.”

Slowly, he slides sideway on the bench, so that Amhara may sit between him and Mayan. She hesitates, her eyes briefly meeting his, but then she complies. Mayan looks at Anton again and this time, his scion doesn’t smile. He merely stares back, eyes hard and dark as Marquina marble.

Don’t, Mayan tries to convey again. Whatever it is you intend to do, don’t.

For a little while, though, Anton does nothing nefarious at all. He talks about plants. He asks Amhara what kind of flowers she planted over the spring, ostensibly for the benefit of his aunt, and where she learned about botany. He asks her about her favorite flower – calla lilies, which used to grow along the river in her homeland – and her favorite tree – the warka tree, which Anton seems delighted to tell her he knows as ficus vasta – and goes on about his own personal passion for medicinal plants. It takes only a few minutes for her to smile back, then giggle, then lose some of her reserve and start sharing stories of her own. Mayan is not surprised – Anton is an excellent conversationalist. He can be so charming when he wants to be, and he does want to be, tonight. He can only listen and stay still as she sits less than a foot away from him and acts as if he didn’t exist. He can only look ahead, trying to keep his emotions as unobtrusive as possible.

And then, at the end of dinner, Anton’s fingers brush over Amhara’s and he says, in a low voice, “how fascinating. Would you care to see them?”

“Them, my lord?” She repeats, looking a little dazed.

“My poppies,” he clarifies. “And the other plants in my quarters.”

In my bedroom, he doesn’t quite say, but they both hear it loud and clear.

Mayan’s stomach drops. Amhara flinches slightly. “I… It is getting a little late, my lord, I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“You are not imposing, Amhara,” he replies gently. “Nothing would make me happier than showing you my collection. I must insist. ”

She doesn’t turn towards Mayan to seek his help – of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t say no, either – of course, she couldn’t. Anton is her mistress’s son. He is her lord. She is a servant – no, she is a slave, even though they refrain from using this term in this household. She is nothing at all, and if he wants her, there is nothing stopping him from taking her. Perhaps this is a better deal for her than any Mayan could ever hope to offer, ultimately. Why go for the lackey when she could have the master?

“As you wish, my lord,” she relents meekly.

Mayan could stop them. He could at least say something. He could protest. He could plead. He does neither. Amhara and Anton stand up, and she does look at him, then. Her gaze is steady and kind – it’s fine, he thinks she might be trying to tell him. I can handle this. He remains seated as they make their way out of the hall, unhurriedly. This time, Anton doesn’t look at him, but Mayan feels a vicious, triumphant twist of satisfaction wringing their bond.

He stays at the table long after they’ve gone, and after everyone else has retired, staring at his hands splayed over the wooden table. He has such large, strong hands – shouldn’t they be enough to protect her? Shouldn’t he be enough? Why is he still here, waiting like a coward, like a castigated child while his woman is taken away, probably against her will?

Would you force yourself on her? He thinks wildly, clenching his hands into fists. Perhaps not. But you wouldn’t need to, would you? And then, resisting the urge to pound them on the table in rage, why are you doing this to me? Why?

But even as he wonders, he knows this is an inept question – Anton does this because he can. He does this because he is proving a point. He does this because he has not allowed his Companion to take a lover, because Mayan has hidden it from him, because he needs to be taught a lesson. What is yours is mine.

At this point in the night, light-headed with anger and sorrow, sick with jealousy, that is what Mayan believes – that Anton has set to seduce Amhara, that he wants to take her from him. In hindsight, this is a ridiculous notion – to think that they are children squabbling over the last piece of fruit, over a favored toy, or the attention of their mother. Had it been anyone else, it might have been a fair assumption, but this is Anton, and he has never been a child. He is playing a man’s game.

Mayan should have known better. He has been playing these games his entire dammed life.

They have left for Anton’s chambers for almost thirty minutes when he finally decides to act. When he stands up, his entire body is shaking with fury. He is going to go up to his scion’s rooms and barge in. He is going to take Amhara, rip her from Anton’s arms if necessary and bring her back to the servants’ quarters, where she will be safe. Then, he will go back to Anton’s room and he – he –

He hasn’t thought his plan through that far ahead. He knows what he wants to do in this moment – he can almost feel his hands closing around the other man’s neck, he can almost feel his fingers crushing his trachea, hear his breath run out, smell the rich fragrance of his blood. Yes, that’s what Mayan wants – he wants to make Anton bleed.

The wooden door is not even locked when he pushes it open. Either his scion doesn’t believe he would dare come in uninvited, or he hopes that he will – he’s expecting him. Mayan isn’t certain what he expects, what he dreads he might see upon charging into this room. Amhara and Anton naked in bed, in the throes of passion, maybe? She, cornered against a wall, begging to be let go? Or something worse, something he cannot bear to envision – both of them on the balcony, still fully clothed, hands brushing absent-mindedly against each other, looking lovingly at the colorful, poisonous flowers that thrive under Anton’s care, and whispering to one another the way Mayan and Amhara have taken to doing? The way Anton and he once did?

The moment he steps in, all of these painful possibilities are dispelled, however. Mayan stops abruptly, staring at the scene unfolding before his eyes, not quite sure what he is looking at. Anton and Ahmara are both here, both fully clothed, but they are not whispering tenderly to each other, or languidly disrobing. She is sitting stiffly on Anton’s mahogany and velvet armchair, eyes wide and a little wet, her small, rough hands clutching the coarse fabric of her dress. She looks frightened. Anton is standing a few feet away, casually leaning against the wall. His silk shirt is partially unlaced, but it doesn’t look to be her doing. It doesn’t look like he was about to take her to bed at all.

“Ah!” he exclaims, something equally cheerful and sinister coloring his words, “here you are at last. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t join us.” He inclines his head, eyes shifting lazily towards Amhara. “I was beginning to think he might not like you as much as you thought he did.”

Instinctively, Mayan skims the room for clues of what precisely is afoot here, what kind of threat he is up against – what kind of trap. This is what Ubaid has trained him to do. He takes in his lover’s rigid stance, and the shadows in her eyes. The affected nonchalance in his scion’s posture and the way his own fine fingers drum lightly against the crystal cup he is holding. The large, open window overlooking the gardens. And, spread across Anton’s bed, a dozen scrolls of creamy white paper. He takes a second look – they appear to be letters written in Arabic, and he is confident that this is not Anton’s handwriting, but he stands too far away to attempt to decipher them.

“What is this?” He asks quietly, his heart beating so loud in his ears that he almost doesn’t hear the answer.

“I am so glad you asked,” Anton replies, and he does sound glad. He sounds thrilled. “Amhara, do you want to share with Mayan what you just shared with me?”

She turns her scared, teary eyes to him. “No,” she says, voice quivering. “I don’t. Please don’t make me.”

“What did you do?” Mayan demands, but not to her – to Anton.

He shrugs, tapping the ring on his little finger. “The slightest touch of magics.” Mayan stiffens. They never speak of such things in front of humans. “I thought this painful conversation would be more fruitful if Amhara was compelled to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.”

Mayan knows this particular spell. He has seen Lord Tower use it on unsuspecting merchants, diplomats and even servants. For as long as it lasts, the ensorcelled cannot utter a lie, or resist a direct invitation to bare their soul. He looks at his scion, both enraged and fearful. “Why are you doing this to her? She did nothing. She–”

“Now, you see, this is where you’re wrong,” Anton interrupts. “She very much did something. Didn’t you Amhara?” She mutters something unintelligible, a tear escaping her eye. “I’m sorry, darling, you are going to have to speak louder than that.”

“Yes,” she groans, fingers spasming over her knees. She turns to Mayan again and her face is a mask of terror. “He did something to me, Mayan. It’s not natural. It’s not natural!”

“You would be right,” Anyon concedes. “As far as your limited grasp on ‘nature’ allows you to be.”

“Witch!” Amhara hisses.

He chuckles. “I suppose that is about as close to the truth as you can get.”

“Your king would burn you at the stake!” She exclaims. “You belong to the Devil!”

“I have no king, girl,” Anton replies calmly, a small smile playing on his lips. He enjoyed hearing what she just said. He revels in her fear. “But I do have an Emperor. He is not fond of the stake, though.”

“Why are you doing this?” Mayan grits, taking a step forward, but uncertain of the direction he should take. Should he go to her, kneel at her side, take her hand? Should he move towards his scion, push him against the wall, make him relinquish his hold on her?

“Amhara is a spy,” Anton informs him, suddenly dispassionate, as though tired of his own little game. “Which I do not disapprove of per se.” He nods at her, almost appreciatively. “But she has been spying on us on behalf of Sultan Muhammad for months, now. Haven’t you, dear?”

“Y-yes,” the girl chokes.

Mayan looks at her, bewildered, then back at Anton. “What do you mean?” he says dully.

“Those letters,” the young man points at the stack of papers scattered on his bed, “were all written and sent by our little friend here. All are addressed to the Sultan’s vizier. Maybe you want to read them?”

He looks expectantly at his Companion, as though he really thought he might simply sit on his bed, pick up the scrolls and start perusing them while the other two patiently waited for his judgement. Mayan merely glances at the letters, then looks back at Anton mutely. Cold, tingling horror is slowly descending along his spine, almost paralyzing his limbs.

What are we doing here? What sinister play have you staged?

This was never about wanting Amhara in his bed. It was not even about seducing Mayan’s lover and teaching him a lesson about his place. This – Anton has been preparing this for a while. This is a carefully curated scene, and Mayan is not certain for whose benefit it is being played tonight.

“No?” Anton says in mock-surprise when he doesn’t give him an answer. “Well, let me give you the highlights. The sultan has been suspicious of my father for a while, now – he is not quite as amenable to our little arrangements as his father and grandfather were, I’m afraid. He sent Amhara here to observe and report on my mother’s activities, and, if possible, on the entire household. I have intercepted every piece of that correspondence, of course, and I must say I am quite impressed.” He lifts a hand and his fingers brush against her hair. She recoils in fear, or maybe disgust. Perhaps both. Mayan takes another step forward. “You are quite the artist, Amhara, when it comes to getting people to trust you. To talk to you.” This time, Anton turns to Mayan. “To confide in you.”

“I didn’t,” he murmurs, feeling dizzy with apprehension. “I never said anything to compromise us. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Not yet,” Anton tells him sternly. “But you would have, eventually. That was the plan, wasn’t it Amhara? Seduce him into spilling all his secrets? Our secrets? You always knew he wasn’t just another guard, here.”

Mayan can’t help it, this time – he turns to her, expectant.

“I…” She strains against the magics compelling her but cannot fight the compulsion to answer. “It was.” Her lovely face contorts in what seems to be genuine grief. “I’m sorry. I am. I only reported on small, innocuous things. The sultan has people placed in every nobleman’s house – he is not coming for you, this is just a precaution. Just to… keep an eye on you.”

“Just to keep an eye on us,” Anton repeats, raising his eyebrows at Mayan. “That’s all.”

“Amhara,” Mayan whispers, heart aching in his chest. “Why?”

She bursts into sobs. “He said that if I did that one thing, I’d get to go home! You don’t know what it’s like – you don’t remember.” Her words pierce through him like tiny, red-hot blades. The medal on his chest sears into his skin. “I was taken. I was enslaved. I was made to do things–” she trails off and buries her hands in her hair. “It was just going to be a few months, maybe a year. Just a few letters. I wasn’t hurting anyone. I wasn’t wronging anyone.”

“Of course not,” Anton comments with apparent solicitude. “You were merely stealing secrets and selling them to your master. You were merely using a good man’s affections to save your own skin. How could this be wrong?”

“Anton,” Mayan says quietly, and he can hear the ugly note of desperation in his voice. That’s all he says, though – he is a man of a few words. Anton is the voluble, articulate one, the clever one – the schemer. Mayan is just the muscle. Still, he knows where this must be going – how else could this all end?

Amhara suddenly stands up and takes a few steps in Mayan’s direction, stopping short of throwing herself into his arms.

“I love you,” she blurts out. She has told him that before, but it is perhaps the first time he truly believes her. “I… I thought that, when it was all over, we could run away together!” She looks frantically at Anton, then back at him, something triumphant passing through her brown eyes. “I can’t lie, can I? I am not lying to you! I would have taken you with me. We could have both been free of this place!” Tears are rolling down her cheeks, glistening on her long, graceful neck like liquid diamonds. Mayan stares back in horror.

Stop talking, he thinks, unable to voice the command. Be quiet, now.

“How touching,” Anton says mildly. He co*cks his head and gazes at his Companion. “Do you want to tell her or should I?”

“Amhara,” he whispers, despair and fear swelling in his chest – this, this is why, isn’t it? Not the letters, not the treachery, not lust – This is why. “I can never leave. Never.”

“Why?” She pleads senselessly, stretching out her arms towards him. She has nothing left to hide, no reason to play the part of the meek, obedient servant anymore. Mayan desperately wants to take her hand, but he can’t. If he does, this will all be over. It’s not her whom Anton is testing. None of this is about her at all. “They don’t really need you, here. They don’t care about you, you’re nothing but a tool to them, just like the rest of us!” She glares at Anton – defiant to the end. “The witch doesn’t care about you. He never will.” She sniffles, bright eyes shining with sudden, mad hope in the gloomy light. “You and I, we could have a life. I would love you. I would keep you safe. I would give you children.” She looks at Anton again, standing very still, his handsome face infuriatingly impassible – to the untrained eye. “He could never give you that.”

“What do you know of what us witches can do?” Anton asks her, smiling with his teeth.

“You could never give him that,” she repeats, her faith absolute.

“Well,” Anton says evenly. “You are technically correct. I see you like them smart.”

“Please,” Mayan says hoarsely, and the word burns his tongue like a red-hot iron. He has never begged his scion for anything before. He has never had so much to lose before.

“I just wanted to be free,” Amhara murmurs, sounding defeated. She glances back at Anton, no longer insolent. “Sultan Muhammad was going to help. I swear – I never wished you or your mother any harm.” She gives Mayan one last, long, pleading look. “I never wished you any harm.”

“You don’t need Muhammad any longer, Amhara,” Anton tells her, almost gently. His face is hard as stone, though. “I will set you free.”

For many years after that, every time this night flashes before Mayan’s eyes – which is again and again – he will think of the expression on her face in this very moment – when she hears Anton speak those words in that soft voice of his – ‘I will set you free.’ It makes no real sense, and yet, he thinks that he can understand. Her face goes slack, suddenly, as if all the tension keeping her body coiled as a snake about to strike had suddenly bled out of her. As if those words were some kind of incantation, putting her under a different spell. There was no magics in them, but all the same, her eyes lit up with an incandescent, unbearable kind of joy, and she seemed to just – let go.

I will set you free – Amhara had known nothing but constraint and servitude, nothing but the yoke of powerful men and their relentless manipulation. She had never been anything but a blunt tool to those around her. Perhaps it was no wonder, after all of it, that she looked so heartbreakingly grateful in that instant, that she would choose to believe such words could be true. Or perhaps, Mayan thinks sometimes, she always knew, and never minded. He likes to believe that, in the moment of her death, she truly felt free for the first time since she was taken to this strange, cruel land.

Anton might have killed her with his mind. He is wearing at least four sigils that Mayan can see, and probably more than he can’t. Any one of them could have been filled with a spell powerful enough to snuff out her life. To stop her heart. To steal the breath from her lungs. He could have extinguished her with a single thought, but he chooses not to – instead, he grabs her long, shiny braid and pulls. Then, as she stumbles backward, her back hitting the stone balustrade, he pushes.

(Mayan thinks of his scion’s small fingers closing around the pendant around his neck and yanking on it – he thinks of his own hand, hitting the other boy’s shoulder, shoving him backward into almost certain death. He thinks of Amhara’s easy smile and her deep, melodious voice when she read to him at night, and the dirt under her fingernails. He thinks of his medal clattering onto the floor, rolling away, disappearing into the water while he just stands there, looking on, utterly powerless. He thinks of running after it when it was already too late and staring into the merciless, black surface of the pool. He thinks of how easy it is to break things, or let them be broken, and how difficult to put them back together.)

Anton’s rooms are situated on the third floor of the palace. His window stands almost fifty feet over the pavestones adorning the garden. Still, Amhara doesn’t scream as she topples into the void and falls down, down, down, or when her body hits the ground with a dull, sickening thud.

Mayan was always supposed to be fast – and yet, he was never fast enough to catch precious things before they slipped between his fingers and disappeared into the night. Does he shout? He doesn’t think so, but he can’t be sure. He runs to the window and bends over the railing – a stupid, worthless move. If there is any chance that she could have survived that fall, he needs to be down there, right now, not wasting precious seconds howling at the window. And so, Mayan jumps after her. He lands on the balcony below without shattering his ankles, the way he was taught, then he jumps again onto the stairs. He runs down, straight towards the limp form burning bright in the darkness. If she survived, maybe he can call onto Lady Alvira. Maybe he can convince her to use her magics and –

Amhara did not survive. When Mayan kneels at her side, he sees that her warm, dark eyes are still open, looking distantly into the night. The blood pooling around her head has formed a large, glistening blackish halo, slowly expanding over the white stone. She looks just like one of her martyred saints, he thinks as he takes her limp, cooling hand in his. Unburdened by death.

Gone.

Through the buzzing sound filling his ears, Mayan finally perceives cries of surprise and distress echoing around him. Servants and guards are running their way, now, and he gets up slowly, legs still trembling with the strain of his leaps, heart pounding with the aftermath of his terror and growing sorrow, hands shaking with something else altogether.

He loses minutes. He doesn’t remember walking away, or climbing the stairs back to Anton’s rooms. He doesn’t remember pushing the door open for the second time tonight. What he does remember is that his scion is in the same exact spot as he was a few minutes ago, when he casually pushed the girl Mayan loved off a balcony and she plummeted to her death three floors below. He did not go down into the gardens to behold the consequences of his gesture. He did not run from his rooms to escape his Companion’s wrath. No, he remained here, patiently, serenely, and waited for him to return to his master’s side.

I am going to kill you, Mayan thinks, looking at him standing expectantly by the window, murderous hands primly folded in front of him, and while it is not the first time the thought has crossed his mind, it is the first time that he absolutely, unequivocally means it.

“I understand you are somewhat angry,” Anton begins in the placating tone he uses on bratty diplomats, disobedient maids and his father, when he has had too much to drink, and this the very last straw – this is the last straw.

Mayan lets out a deep, guttural sound, halfway between a grunt and a howl and lunges at the other man. His fist connects with Anton’s chin, and he feels his lower lip splitting under his knuckles, blood erupting from the wound, warm and viscous on Mayan’s fingers. I can make you bleed – I can hurt you.

He doesn’t make a sound, but Mayan hears his skull slamming against the stone wall, not hard enough to crack, but hard enough to leave him dizzy and faint. It makes a dry thumping noise, not unlike Amhara’s body hitting the ground below, and Anton goes slack – not unconscious but weakened.

Not enough. Not enough. Mayan always carries a blade – most of the time, he carries several. The one that finds its way into his hand first is the small silex knife normally attached to his ankle; a primitive, coarse, unworthy thing.

Yes, he thinks half delirious with grief and fury, this is what will claim your godsforsaken life. A jagged piece of stone. He presses it to his scion’s throat and skin breaks here as well, blood beading lazily on the soft, creamy flesh below his jaw, just above his jugular, coating the knife in red. That’s when Mayan notices that his hand is already stained that same color – it’s covered in Ahmara’s drying blood. Anton blinks slowly, perhaps a little dazed by the sudden attack, perhaps taking stock.

“Very angry,” he amends hoarsely, staying completely still as Mayan’s blade presses into his neck, as Mayan’s body presses into his own, crushing him against the wall. When is the last time that they have been so close? Never, probably. Not until this moment, when Mayan will finally slit his traitorous throat.

“You knew,” his voice breaks around the word. “You knew what she meant to me, and you brought me here to watch her die. To watch you kill her. Why?”

You could have had her executed for what she did, but that’s not what you wanted. You wanted me to see. Is it punishment for the pool, when we were boys? Have you been patiently waiting all this time, until I finally had something of value to take away?

“Why would you assume any of this is about you?” he replies, trying for nonchalant, but sounding a little faint. Mayan bangs his head against the wall a second time. This time, Anton lets out a soft, pained whine. When he looks back at his Companion, his eyes are a little hazy, but dark with anger. “Would you have preferred I ordered you to do it?” He whispers between his teeth – his saliva is pink, already. “I thought of doing that, you know.”

I thought about making you choose.

Mayan pushes his blade a little further. He presses on Anton’s ribcage a little harder, until he hears wheezing. “Why did you do this to me? Tell me!”

“She was a traitor!” Anton hisses, tone losing its cool, although it might be from pain and nausea rather than fear. “She betrayed this house, and she would have betrayed you!”

“She was a girl,” Mayan snarls, usually steady hands shaking with rage and grief of his own. “She made a mistake!”

He is not sure what he wants from this man, or what he expects he might hear from him, but he takes a step back, letting his scion breathe while still holding the knife to his neck. The blade has left a shallow but long gash there, revealing the unexpected vulnerability of his flesh. It’s oozing blood, now, like his broken lip, trickling down his neck. Anton has such a lovely, long neck, just like Amhara did, before she broke it on the pavement. Mayan could hit him again. Turn both of his eyes black, break his fine nose, shatter the arch of his eyebrow. Anton is not a god – he f*cking bleeds.

“Well,” his scion replies more evenly, looking up and opening his hands in mock surrender. “She will make no more.”

Mayan shoves him back against the wall with a grunt. He knows Anton has sigils on him right now – he cannot win in a fistfight against his Companion, but he could knock him out with a press of his fingers and a single thought. Mayan has no idea why he doesn’t.

“All she wanted was to go home!” He barks, but there is more anguish than bite in his tone. “To be free!”

“You don’t get to be free!” Anton spits at him, composure fracturing, raw and wrathful all of a sudden, and Mayan is the one to recoil, this time – did he notice his slip? Does he care, at this point? “You don’t get to go anywhere, with anyone – You are mine!”

Is there a dark, hidden, shameful part of Mayan which has always longed to hear those very words? I won’t let anyone else have you because I want you for myself. Perhaps. But in this moment, he squashes it underfoot. In this moment, what he hears is nothing but a taunt – you belong to me. You’re mine to torture and break and use up. His knife moves an inch lower and stops over the blue, pulsating vein on his scion’s throat. It would only take a nick – a cut just one inch wide.

He meets the other man’s black, imperturbable eyes. This time, though, he sees something in them – the shadow of an emotion so deep and real that its echo momentarily drowns their bond in white noise. It isn’t fear, exactly, but it is dark and sticky, thrumming with anticipation, and it licks at the inside of Mayan’s heart. “Do it, then,” Anton murmurs. “Do it if you must.”

And in that moment, he means every word, the way Mayan meant it when he thought, ‘I’m going to kill you” – he will not fight. He will not run. He will not scream. He will never, ever beg.

Mayan’s knife slips from his fingers, slick with blood, and clatters onto the floor. Instead, his fingers close around Anton’s neck. Even now that they are fully grown men, there is something oddly gracile about his throat, deceptively fragile. Mayan only has to squeeze hard enough to crush his windpipe – not very hard at all. And then – then, he would be free, just the way she wanted them to be. She was right – it could be so easy.

He thinks of what else she might have been right about, looking fearfully at Anton and spitting, ‘witch!’, looking straight into Mayan’s very core and saying, ‘The witch doesn’t care about you. He never will.’ He thinks of this girl he might just have loved – elegant, level-headed Amhara, with her precise, fine hands and her delicate flowers, beautiful, dangerously smart, ultimately treacherous – oh, was Mayan truly foolish enough, blind enough, proud enough not to see it? Did he ever believe he had managed to escape his fate?

“Do it, Mayan,” Anton repeats a third time, whispering his name breathlessly, and Mayan supposes that, in hindsight, he decides to take this as permission to disobey.

He could snap his scion’s neck, or strangle him, or slash his throat – there is a part of him, there has always been a part of him which wants to do all three. But if he did, he knows, that would be the last thing he ever did. Not merely because Lord Tower’s men would immediately tear him to pieces, but because he understands instinctively that when Anton dies, there will be nothing in this world left for him. This is Mayan’s curse. This is the price of his purpose.

I can’t kill him, he thinks, enraged and mortified. I just can’t.

And so, Mayan does the other mad, foolish thing he so desperately wants to do, the one he has thought about doing almost as often as he’s thought about squeezing the life out of this man with his bare hands – he buries his fingers into Anton’s hair, tilts his head back forcefully and smashes their mouths together so hard that he tastes blood.

It is more an assault than a kiss, but then again, he never could imagine it any other way. Mayan bites into Anton’s mouth, into the soft flesh of his cheeks and his slippery, perfidious tongue. Blood fills his mouth and nostrils, flowing from his scion’s split lip, from his own bitten tongue, from Amhara’s headwound, now smeared on Anton’s chin, all of it mingling together in some sinister, vampiric feast. He holds the other man’s head back and crushes his free hand against the wall, immobilizing him completely. Mayan is so much larger – even if Anton wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to reach for a sigil, now. He couldn’t break free. The bond flickers with surprise, with dismay, then with the thwarted instinct to fight.

No matter how many times the thought has crossed his mind, they have never done anything like this before. Mayan would not have dared. He is a shield, a servant, a constant, silent, pliable follower, not an equal, not a partner – it is not his place to want anything from his master – not retribution, not violence, not love. And yet, in the span of two minutes, he has raised his hand to him, has almost slit his throat, and now, he is defiling him.

There, Mayan thinks viciously, this is what it’s like to have something that matters taken from you against your will. This is what I can do to you. This is what I am – a beast.

But then – then, something else floods their connection. An immense, dark, vindictive kind of joy. The unmistakable, bittersweet taste of satisfaction. Anton is pleased. All at once, he stops struggling and starts biting back. For a single, dizzying moment, Mayan is once again at a loss. Momentarily overwhelmed by shock, he lets go of his scion’s hand. When he feels the man’s fingers grabbing the back of his skull, however, when his mouth opens wide and his body pushes back against his Companion’s, not to escape, not to rebuff, but to draw in, he finally understands.

This is what you were after, he realizes, anguish clawing at his chest as sudden, irrepressible heat pools into his stomach. This is what you really wanted.

Not Mayan, per se – of course not. Mayan is nothing but a beast – just a means to an end. Not carnal pleasure, either – he’s never known his scion to be particularly interested in the matters of the flesh, and if he needs an outlet, there are dozens of readily available men and women at his disposal in this very estate. This is not the endgame of this song and dance, this is not about desire, or love, or even jealousy. This has only ever been about power – and Mayan has none of it. He never did. Even the heady feeling of his superior strength, his thirst for revenge, the intoxicating possibility to give into his own wicked urges are all but a fleeting illusion, just shadow puppetry. Anton is still the f*cking puppeteer.

He growls in fury against the other man’s mouth and pulls them both off the wall. He is not merely strong, he is deft and precise and when he hurls Anton onto the bed, he does it in a single, perfectly executed movement, graceful as a dance. It almost appears choreographed. It is almost as if Mayan weren’t about to debase and ruin them both. Almost as if he weren’t about to prove that he is every bit the animal Anton has always thought he was.

An animal, he thinks as he rips his scion’s clothes off, tearing them to pieces, feverish with anger and sorrow and lust, just a beast.

Anton doesn’t resist him, he doesn’t try to escape him, but he does fight back, clawing, snarling and biting, just enough that he has to be held down, his Companion’s hands leaving scratches and bruises all over his skin. Perhaps Mayan isn’t the only one with a wild animal inside, after all.

But I am the one whose dead lover is still lying on the ground, barely cold, just a few yards away. I am the one who has dragged her murderer to bed while she rots outside.

The thought is almost enough to break the spell when it crosses his mind, to bring him back into himself, to make him relent and retreat before he burns that bridge to cinder, but then, Anton digs his nails into Mayan’s shoulder, drawing blood, and he says, in a low, husky voice, halfway between a purr and a snarl, “Mine.”

Anton still doesn’t scream when Mayan takes him, and he doesn’t beg, but at least, he makes noises his Companion is fairly confident no one else has ever drawn out of him. His scion may favor light garments, soft, thin fabrics, and like to go barefoot, but in truth, he is perpetually covered in hard, shiny iron plates. His armor is never so thin, however, as when he is with Mayan. He would never allow anyone else to lay eyes on those narrow interstices meandering between his metal scales. He would never let himself be so vulnerable.

But you own me, Mayan thinks, peeling away layers upon layers of steel with teeth and nails, exposing bits and pieces of naked skin, of pale flesh, of pulsing veins, and even then, you would never let me scratch the surface of your heart.

It goes on for a long time – they do, after all, have a lot to let loose, and Mayan doesn’t know if he will ever get to do any of this again. Probably not. He may very well not get to do anything again. It may be his last night on this Earth. Maybe he will be joining Amhara soon and have a little peace. Maybe Anton will find a less unruly shadow. Maybe it’s all for the best.

When it’s finally over, they lie on their backs amidst shreds of cloth and linen, covered in sweat, blood, scrapes and bruises. Mayan looks at Anton, his hair in disarray, his neck still bleeding sluggishly, his mouth puffy and blackening, his perfect cheekbone swollen. He looks like he just fought a lion. He looks like he just dragged himself off a battlefield. He imagines he might look similar – like he’s been to war and barely escaped with his life.

They don’t speak for a very long time. The bond between them hums with a drunken sort of contentment, with the exhilaration of righteous violence. Under Mayan’s fingernails, Amhara’s blood itches and burns – or is it Anton’s? At some point, the other man slowly crawls up the bed, wincing slightly. Mayan watches him curiously.

“Did it hurt?” he finally asks, quietly.

He doesn’t mean his blade, or his fist, even though both wounds look nasty – Anton can heal those easily enough with one of his sigils. He can disappear them with a snap of his fingers. He can make it so that they never even happened, but Mayan is fairly certain that his scion has never let anyone else do what he just did to him. The young man blinks slowly, looking a little dazed, still.

“Yes,” he answers after a few seconds of consideration. Then, inching almost imperceptibly closer, he adds, “does it please you?”

“Yes,” Mayan responds sincerely before he can think better of it.

It pleases me. It would please me to hurt you more, if you didn’t look like you enjoyed it quite so much.

Anton nods pensively. His hand is resting flat on the bed, just an inch from Mayan’s arm. If this was something different, something a little less heart-wrenching and grim, something less woeful, he might have touched his Companion, now. He might have casually let his fingers linger on his bicep, a gesture of tenderness and trust – if they were lovers instead of master and servant, instead of enemies. If Anton hadn’t used this very hand to shove Amhara out the window. If Mayan hadn’t used his arms to strike his scion, almost murder him twice, and hold him down while he forced himself on him.

I didn’t force myself on him, he tells himself, clenching his fists. This was his doing. All of it.

“Will you have me executed?” Mayan whispers, intrigued and perhaps a little excited. “Or will you do the deed yourself? Slit my throat? Push me off a cliff?”

The question seems to catch Anton off-guard. The passing surprise on his face, however, immediately morphs into something that raises Mayan’s hackles – a lazy, dark sort of amusem*nt. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he replies in a low voice, and this time, his fingers brush against his Companion’s arm. “I will not have you executed.” He stretches slowly, languidly, like a sleek black cat idling in the sun, hooded-eyes deceptively sleepy, claws retracted into a silky paw – so that the oblivious mouse toddling by might not recognize the threat until it is ready to pounce. Mayan hates that it sends a bolt of heat down his stomach. One more way you wield power over me, now. “I want to make sure that you live a very, very long life.”

Mayan stares at him, every single hair on his body raised. The sweat beading on his forehead and chest suddenly feels ice-cold. I want you on my leash, on your knees, at my beck and call for as long as you live. You will only ever have what I allow you to keep, and I will take everything else away when I feel like it – and I will ensure that it all lasts for a long, long time.

He thinks of his father’s medallion, retrieved from the jaws of a crocodile, and of the ruby ring, slipped off a dead man’s finger and carefully laid on his bed – tokens of affection, he once thought, authentic, grand gestures of love. ‘I wrestled the beast for you. I killed the man who spoke ill of you.’ Was it ever what they were meant to convey, or did he simply always misread the message Anton had written all over them? ‘You can only ever have what I give you. These, I allow you to keep.’ A capricious, whimsical god – that of the Ancient Greeks and the Jews, before Christians decided to make him merciful and forgiving – Anton will strike people down for minor offenses, he will avenge and betray, protect and vanquish, he will take and give back as his fancy dictates.

But Amhara is not a piece of gold that can be fished out of a pond if need be. Her skull cannot be uncrushed, her body unbroken when Anton decides that he has punished his Companion enough, or if he ever comes to regret the sudden burst of anger that led him to throw her off his balcony. She cannot be restored. He would never want her to be, anyway – she was too much of a threat to his House, but mostly, to his pride.

She would never have taken me with her, Mayan realizes dejectedly. And I would never have gone had she tried.

And isn’t this the saddest, most sinister part of this entire sad, sinister tale? Mayan would not have gone. He would never have chosen her. He suspects Anton knows that all too well. It wasn’t fear of losing his Companion that led him to eliminate a rival. He was merely removing an inconvenience while making a point – setting an example. Well, Amhara is dead and Mayan, for all his pointless fury and base violence, is lying naked in her killer’s bed. He supposes that point was adequately made.

“What about you?” Anton asks, sounding intrigued. “Will you finish what you started?” He looks down at Mayan’s large hands, and a shiver goes through them both.

“Not today,” he replies.

So, neither of them plans to end the other’s life tonight. Mayan might still be put to death for what they’ve just done, he thinks, looking at the split lip adorning his scion’s face, and at the red marks his fingers left on his hips and throat, and which will turn into ugly bruises within a day. He knows exactly how anathema this is. Although, he reasons, who would know about it if Anton didn’t want them to? If he looked naively at his father and mother and said in his best innocent tone, “I slipped”?

And would they truly care if they knew?

Had Anton been a woman, of course, the stakes would have been very different, and the consequences of their foolish actions potentially much more dire. Had he been a woman, and risked impregnation by a fully human, non-vetted Companion, Lord Tower might have ordered Mayan killed, or at the very least banished. And if there had been a child, what would he have done? Many Atlanteans have bastards scattered all over the world, but they are Arcana. They are the Dagger Throne. They don’t suffer hiccups in their family tree.

If there were a child, it would be taken from me, he thinks, staring at the ceiling. The way I was taken from my own father and mother.

Maybe that is why scions and their Companions are so rarely of opposite sexes. So that if they err, their shame doesn’t stay with them for the rest of their lives, sullying their houses and their lineage. He closes his eyes – this entire train of thought is pointless. Anton is not a woman and cannot be with child. And even if he were, if he could, there would never be a child carrying Mayan’s blood born onto this world. He would not need Lord Tower to tear that baby from him; he would snuff it out in the womb himself.

Who would want a child that is part beast?

But he will never let any woman bear his seed to fruition, either. He made it very clear, tonight. “Mine,” he said, holding on to his Companion as if he were indeed worried that he might be taken away, as if he could. But he won’t, he cannot be, and Mayan will never be allowed to make a similar claim. “You are his, but he isn’t yours – as he leads, you must follow.” These were Lord Tower’s words. This is the rule they both live by.

Then, suddenly, Anton turns on his side and looks at him, bottomless black eyes unusually earnest and disarmingly bright. “I am not sorry,” he says in that strangely soft voice he sometimes uses to say the harshest things. “I will not apologize.”

Mayan is stunned by the admission. This is probably as close as Anton has ever been to actually asking for forgiveness. “I am not sorry either,” he retorts, looking over the other man’s battered body.

“Good,” Anton says lightly, almost cheerfully, as if they had just exchanged vows. “Then tell me, Mayan – what do you actually want? What path would you carve for yourself if you had the chance?’”

No one has ever asked him this question, least of all his scion. He frowns. What does he want? What would he want if he were allowed to do such a trivial, dangerous thing?

“What is it to you?” he asks. “I cannot carve a path for myself in this world.”

This is why I’m in your bed now, while this girl I cared for lies dead in your garden. Wasn’t it the whole point of this grim bit of theatre? To show me I had nowhere to go?

“Humor me,” Anton replies, eyes still fixed on his.

Mayan takes a breath. He wants… He wants Amhara. Gentle, willful, kind Amhara, young and human and real. He wants his freedom. He wants a legacy. He wants a life and a family of his own. He wants to love and to believe and to mean something to someone.

And… Mayan wants Anton. Hard, wicked, clever Anton, unforgiving and powerful and magic. He wants this bondage. He wants the wild, cruel touch of his deadly hands. He wants to follow him into the darkness and the light. He wants to love and to believe and to mean something to someone.

How tragic, then, that he can never have either of them.

“I want…” he whispers. “I want to find meaning in this world.”

Anton seems surprised but oddly satisfied with his answer. He nods thoughtfully, one slim, elegant finger tracing the contour of his Companion’s jaw. “Good,” he whispers back, sounding tender and thrilled, like the young man he is supposed to be. “I can do this for you. I can give you meaning.”

Mayan shivers, although he can’t tell if it’s in fear or pleasure. “What do you want?” he asks his scion, realizing he has never asked, either.

And Anton smiles – a large, earnest yet predatory smile that reopens the cut on his lip. He leans in, his fingers brushing against Mayan’s shoulder blade, his mouth almost pressed against his ear, the heady smell of his blood filling his nostrils. His voice is soft and clear, vibrant with lust when he murmurs, “I want to be the Tower of Atlantis.”

Mayan is twenty-six the second time he attempts to kill his scion.

He is not executed on the next day. He is not thrown into one of the dark cells below the palace. He is not banished. Instead, he attends the quiet, solemn funeral of the young handmaiden who tragically fell out of a window the previous night. Privately, though, all the servants are whispering that this was no accident. Amhara must have flung herself off the balcony. No one will say it out loud, of course – taking one’s own life is a mortal sin to both the Christians and the Muslims residing in the household – but they all exchange knowing looks and loaded nods.

Lady Alvira seems genuinely shaken when she deposits a spray of wildflowers on the girl’s body, one hand caressing her taut belly as though she could guard her unborn child against her own sorrow. Ahmara is wrapped in an immaculate white shroud, only her face exposed to the mourners, and her mistress strokes her brow carefully. “She was so young,” she tells Mayan ruefully when he approaches. “She didn’t have to do that.”

“No,” he agrees quietly. “She didn’t.”

He doesn’t have calla lilies to give her, to remind her of her lost home and her bygone life, so he gently lays a single passionflower on her chest, just above her heart. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he turns away, leaving her behind.

Anton doesn’t attend the wake, for which Mayan is grateful. When they next see each other, on the eve of that day, he sports none of the bruises and cuts, none of the scratches and bites his Companion left on him the previous night. He must have Healed them all. Mayan cannot say if he is thankful or disappointed for his unblemished skin, now, but he is not surprised. But then, Lady Alvira frowns at her son as he readjusts his collar.

“What is this?” she asks. “How did you get this cut?”

This is when Mayan sees it. On Anton’s throat, just above his jugular, a blunt, angry red line remains, stark on the pale, vulnerable flesh. An un-mended wound. A souvenir. He meets Mayan’s eyes above his mother’s shoulder and says, his tone soft and sincere, “I slipped.”

***

Mayan is one hundred and forty-five when they encounter a true monster, in the swampy, dark depths of the Ecuadorian jungle.

Of all the foolish quests and preposterous undertakings he has been dragged into, this journey is by far the maddest. Officially, Anton and he have joined the expedition at the behest of Lord Tower. For the last few decades, the Dagger Throne has been monitoring very attentively those increasingly ambitious maritime explorations undertaken by European seafarers. The new world they believe they have discovered – “they are tiresome, are they not?” The Empress told Lord Tower when she visited their Sevillian estate, a few years ago. “They will probably ruin this land the way they ruined theirs.” – had been a safe haven for Atlanteans for a long time. Many have mingled with the native populations and prospered on the continent, and they do not look kindly on this sudden European intrusion. Most crucially, though, those voyages across the ocean are a danger to Atlantis itself.

“We are, for lack of a better term,” Anton sighed over a year ago, as they prepared to embark for many weeks of perilous crossing, “in the way.”

Atlantis stands in the middle of that great expanse of sea, just in between the Spanish monarchs and their West Indian ambitions, and someone has to make sure that the intrepid explorers do not accidentally stumble upon it on their way to the New World. It’s a risky endeavor, too, even for those who command winds and waters. Lord Tower’s eldest son, Cristoval, embarked onto one of these expeditions almost thirty years ago – and was never heard from again. Perhaps he died in the tumultuous embrace of the Atlantic, or on the lush shores of Hispaniola, slain by the natives. Perhaps he disappeared voluntarily into the jungle, like so many before him. Maybe Lord Tower secretly hopes that his second son will follow his lead.

Mayan has been to the savage lands the Italians and Spaniards have taken to calling America before, because Anton is fascinated with the ancient civilizations which long ruled over them. He has seen the long-lost, shining cities which so whet the Spaniards’ appetites and that they named El Dorado, but could never find. He has met with many of the tribes that dwell in the dense, teeming jungles of the continent, some of them welcoming, others murderous. He knows this to be a dangerous, wild world – although perhaps not quite as wild and dangerous as the one they are from – and he knows to be careful. And yet, nothing could have prepared him for what awaited them in the meanders of the great river they foolishly believed they could tame.

For this, and for the mayhem that follows, Mayan blames Francisco de Orellana, the madman who devised this expedition in the first place.

Their voyage was off to a very bad start from the very beginning. The expedition they joined had been sent to find the coveted “land of cinnamon,” an El Dorado of its own, under the command of a bitter and incapable conquistador by the name of Pizzaro. The man managed to lose over half of his men to the lethal mountains East of Quito in just a few weeks, taken by disease, hunger, wild animals and hostile Indians, and still, no bountiful forest of cinnamon trees was discovered. On the day he had to turn back empty-handed, Pizzaro burned seven of their native guides alive and fed their remains to his dogs.

“Even your father would have balked at this,” Mayan told Anton quietly on that night. “We cannot remain with this man.”

“No,” he agreed, unexpectedly pliable. “We cannot.”

Orellana, who was Pizzaro’s lieutenant then, volunteered to push on – this first expedition might have proven unfruitful, but there was so much else out there. If they built boats and went down the Coca river, if they could find its mouth, who knew what unimaginable treasures they might come upon? The mysteries that lay ahead and that God intended for them to uncover? Mayan must admit now that there was always something oddly compelling about Orellana’s passion. The man is young, charismatic, cunning, driven, maddeningly confident and entirely careless with the lives of his men.

In the first few weeks of navigation, his feverish enthusiasm was contagious. Their boat was small and cramped, uncomfortably crowded, but Mayan could not help but enjoy their slow traveling through the immense, lush vegetation. It felt like being accidentally swallowed by an oblivious, gigantic monster and drifting almost peacefully down its enormous bowels. Anton and he shared their quarters, a tiny cabin with two wooden bunks, both much too short for Mayan – still, a private cabin was a luxury only Orellana was also awarded. He worried, in the beginning, that living in such close quarters meant that Anton and he might be tempted to kill each other before they ever reached the river’s end, but for months, their cohabitation was remarkably pleasant. Anton was remarkably pleasant.

During the day, he rambled on happily about these unchartered lands and their unknown fauna and flora, filling books upon books with notes and sketches, writing songs, dragging Mayan onto the deck to look at strange birds and pink dolphins, drawing multicolored parrots to them with a spell so that his Companion could pet and feed them, pointing out sleeping crocodiles with obvious relish and surprisingly childlike excitement, showing him new cantrips in the privacy of their room. During the night, more often than not, he abandoned his own cot to join Mayan on the straw mattress he had laid out on the floor, pressing his warm, naked body against his.

This, too, was entirely different from the way they have grown used to touching each other over the last century. This was unlike their usual, brutal couplings back in Spain. When Anton slipped under Mayan’s raggedy blanket as they glided over the deceptively quiet waters, he didn’t bite or kick, and never said, “hurt me,” as he normally would, as though he craved pain more than release, as though it was the only thing he truly wanted from the other man. Mayan did not feel like hurting him, either. During those first few months, when they lay on their hard, sweaty, floating bed, Anton let himself be touched and kissed as if it were all he required from Mayan, as though they were not scion and Companion, master and servant, pawns of the Dagger Throne, but merely men. Lovers.

(They are not, though, and it does not matter how enticing the fantasy is to Mayan – and perhaps, on the quietest, starriest of nights, in the humid embrace of this foreign land, even to Anton – they can never be. He would do well to remember it. They both would.)

Is there a part of you that wishes we could never go back? He wondered sometimes as they went deeper and deeper into the jungle. Do you feel liberated in this dangerous, mad place the way I do? Is this why you insist on staying? Is this what your brother experienced, too, when he walked into this world?

They would not be the only ones – many men have deserted since they left Quito, some out of fear and exhaustion, but others inexplicably drawn into the heart of the wilderness, Spaniards, Frenchmen and Italians who had sailed across the sea in search of riches and adventures and who suddenly ran off, abandoning their people and faith, disappearing into the night to live with the strange tribes dwelling in the forest.

Good for them, Mayan used to think longingly, staring into the infinite, glistening vegetation.

But as they moved forward, as summer melted into winter, then into spring, their numbers kept dwindling. Their supplies ran out. Their hope to ever find something worth all the lives that had been lost already grew ever slimmer. And then, just as a second summer was creeping up on them, its stifling heat gnawing at the slowly rotting hull of the ship, covering it in bright green moss and luminescent, poisonous mushrooms, they came face to face with something truly evil.

“We must be close,” Anton repeats feverishly, these days. “We must be.”

Mayan is not certain he knows what it is they are close to, but he has stopped asking. His scion has grown thin and sallow, strangely wild-eyed – they all have, in the last couple of months, and even his remarkable powers cannot quell the hunger that is eating them all from inside. They cannot save the lives of the men whose limbs have turned black and rotten after touching the wrong flower, or those who suffered from a fatal wound inflicted by an enemy arrow – the only person he can Heal is his Companion. They cannot restore the minds of those who saw things, in the deep, dark woods, that they can never comprehend or unsee, because these jungles are home to ancient, dark forms of magics that Anton himself cannot quite fathom. They cannot fight off the slew of wild beasts roaming this unholy earth, the unknown, bloodthirsty animals which crawl inside their encampments and their ships under the guise of night to claim their due, their many pounds of flesh, dragging wailing men into the darkness.

Mayan used to think his scion impervious to human suffering – he had even began to believe, after all these years, that he might be as well – but this… this powerlessness, these constant losses, the vastness of the voracious rainforest are taking a toll on them both, something beyond the tiredness of their bodies and the reversible depletion of muscle and fat. He can feel it in the strained rawness of their shared bond: this jungle is eating away at their souls.

And yet, here they are, still. Mayan knows that the real reason they remain on this ship months after their initial mission failed, traveling in increasingly dire conditions, is not what they may or may not find down the river, and neither is it the alluring call of adventure and discovery anymore. He has also stopped nurturing the destructive hope that this might all end with them running away from Lord Tower and from past lives, becoming something new. No, they are still here because Anton is smitten beyond reason with Orellana, who is crazier than them all.

It isn’t the first time this has happened. Occasionally, Anton will become infatuated with a human he deems exceptional – Botticelli, the Italian painter whom he met in Florence and who taught him what none of his previous masters could. Isabella, the Portuguese harpist whose music made him cry. Yunxian, the Chinese astronomer who taught him to map the night sky before she threw herself off a cliff. Cesare Borgia, the ambitious, ruthless son of a pope who almost conquered Tuscany and whom Anton thought so vibrantly tortured – follow them into their most insane endeavors, then eventually get bored with their weaknesses and failings. With their humanity. Maybe it is Orellana’s disconcerting lack of compassion and self-preservation that has seduced him so. Maybe those long months away from civilization have driven them all mad.

“I am not smitten,” Anton sneers when Mayan confronts him about it, on a day they awaken to a sulfuric yellow sky. “Merely… impressed by his dedication. No one has ever tried to do what we’re doing – not even in Atlantis. This is terra incognita. This is our moment!”

“Our moment to do what?” Mayan barks back. “Lead the last few dozens of men entrusted to us into certain death before we perish as well? This is where his dedication is taking us!”

“You cannot possibly understand,” Anton replies coldly, looking at him with that familiar, icy contempt he almost let himself forget about. “You were born to follow. What do you know of actual drive, of true purpose?”

This might be the moment when Mayan finally feels like hurting his scion again, after over a year of relative concord. Of corrosive longing. Of preposterous hope. What do you know of true purpose? Of course, every single person Anton has ever been drawn to, those who deserved his attention and retained his genuine interest, those he chose to share slices of his life with, all had this in common – artists, writers, statesmen, scientists, explorers, all of them above and beyond the unwashed masses, all of them extraordinary in some way. What does Mayan have? There is nothing remarkable about him, save for the size of his body – only surface, just matter, perishable flesh and blood. He lives, still, many decades after he should have expired and decayed in the ground, at the sufferance of his bonded master. He will never be Anton’s equal – he is, as he ever was, just a beast. What does he know of true f*cking purpose? He only ever had the one.

“You cannot understand,” his scion repeats under his breath, sounding almost as sour as Mayan feels.

Mayan’s fingers twitch, once again itching with the urge to close around Anton’s throat and squeeze, to punch him in the mouth, to drag him back to their cabin by the hair and show him actual drive. He doesn’t. Instead, he disembarks and walks into the forest to hunt before they all starve to death.

This is how they happen upon the Amazons. Or, rather, this is how the Amazons happen upon them.

This is not the name they give themselves, of course. Their name is infinitely more poetic and fearsome and cannot be repeated by coarse, untrained Spanish tongues. It strikes terror and awe into the hearts of all those who hear it. Their name is godly and unspeakable, but when Orellana finally lays eyes upon them, those brown, fierce women warriors, he doesn’t even attempt to learn it. Amazons, he calls them, after the mythical archers of ancient Greek epic poems.

Well – that’s what he decides to call them after he and his men are almost wiped out by their initial attack. Mayan doesn’t see it happen because he has left the ship when they fall upon them with the silent deadliness of a pack of lionesses. He has left Anton behind. He is almost a mile away, in pursuit of some kind of giant white deer, trying to escape or at least exhaust his fury and to bring something back to feed the few half-starved men they have left.

He has cornered the animal in a cave and is about to make his kill when he feels it – a sudden, extremely uncommon burst of panic washing over the bond. The distinct prickle of pain in the back of his mind.

You’re hurt, Mayan realizes, horrified. I left, and you were hurt.

The deer escapes with its life and Mayan runs back to the river so fast that it feels like flying. His bare feet hit stone, grass and tree trunks, leap from rock to rock as he crosses a steaming brook, crush small animals and thorny, barbed plants – they are cut open and bleeding when he finally clears the tree line, but he can hardly feel any pain at all.

Mayan doesn’t know what he expected to find when he sees the ship – jaguars tearing apart the sailors, or crocodiles, maybe, dragging Anton down into the dark Coca – and wouldn’t that be grimly poetic? – or perhaps another pigmy ambush. What he actually sees first is the state of the two ships moored on the riverbank. The brigantines are so riddled with arrows that they look like a pair of giant porcupines idling in the water. The second thing he sees is two dozen native warriors encircling them, their bows still risen, their arrows quivering in the boat’s flank.

They are all women, Mayan realizes as he takes a step closer.

They are all tall and long-haired, mostly naked, breasts and stomachs exposed, a simple cloth covering their genitals. On the deck, Mayan sees several men lying dead, arrows protruding from their chests and backs. He sees many more, though, standing in awe as they look, not down at the fierce warriors attacking them, but up, at the dozens of darts floating in the air, hovering above their heads like birds riding a gust of wind, suspended mid-flight. The women stare as well, murmuring wildly as they shoot again and again, each new flight of arrows getting caught in the invisible barrier protecting the ship.

It's Shield, Mayan thinks, amazed. Anton has drawn a Shield around them.

That’s when he finally spots his scion, kneeling by the helm next to Orellana, an arrow through the shoulder, both hands held above his head. Mayan can feel the shooting pain and the increasingly unbearable strain of maintaining his spell in spite of blood loss pounding through his own body. Anton has saved these men, and himself, but he won’t be able to hold his Shield for very long. They stand far apart, too far for him to see the details of his scion’s expression, but he can pinpoint the exact moment the man senses his presence nearby – their eyes meet through the wall of arrows. Something flickers along their bond.

I can’t kill them all before they kill me, Mayan thinks, looking at the women who have yet to make him. But I can distract them.

He counts twenty-two of them, and he thinks that the tallest, curiously fair-skinned warrior, the one who is wearing a red cloth over her crotch, might be their leader. If he goes for her, the others will probably feel compelled to protect her. They have clubs and bows, and a few are sporting sharp metal blades fastened to their waists. How long can he hold them off before he’s slain? He knows he will not last very long – he might be the fiercest warrior here, the most experienced, but they seem to be trained fighters and they are far too numerous for him to defeat – but it could still be enough time for Anton to let go of his shield and make his escape, steering the ship away. It will have to be.

It will have to be, he thinks, a little light-headed as resolve slowly spreads through his limbs. This is the moment he has trained for his entire life. This is when his irrelevant existence finally amounts to something. True purpose. He only wishes that the last words he’d exchanged with his scion had not been filled with anger and resentment. Well – he supposes it makes sense. He supposes it is a fitting end to their tumultuous relationship.

Mayan is about to leap into the group of archers, when he feels something so powerful, so violently startling reverberating through his body that it leaves him winded, his momentum lost. He takes a step back, reeling with the shockwave that just went through him, fingers spasming around his own knife.

Magics? He wonders, dazed. Was I hit by a spell?

But he wasn’t, he realizes. The sudden surge of energy that made him stagger so was his Companion bond – and it wasn’t magics. It was an emotion so unprecedented and so powerful that it stole the breath from his lungs. This is Anton experiencing senseless, overwhelming, boundless fear, and it burns through Mayan like a blaze, like a pyre.

As far as he can tell, Anton has never, ever felt anything like this before. This is nothing like the alarm he sensed earlier, the sudden recognition of danger or even like the cold, strained apprehension Lord Tower sometimes still elicits in his son. Until this very moment, Mayan had not believed his scion could experience this type of raw, paralyzing terror. But he can – he does. For a fleeting moment, just as Mayan was about to make his very last stand, Anton was utterly, viscerally afraid.

And then, as quickly as it came about and before Mayan can even begin to interpret it, this single moment of vulnerability is swept away and the all-consuming fear is channeled into something else, something more familiar – rage. And that rage, as all things ultimately are with Anton, into power. Mayan still cannot quite see his eyes, but he knows they have turned obsidian black – he has seen it happen before. A gust of cold wind sweeps across the jungle and, suddenly, the yellow sky cracks open directly above the ship.

Mayan hears exclamations and screams, and he thinks it might be the men praying and the women shouting, but most of it is lost in the deafening clap of thunder that rumbles above their heads. The rest is swallowed by the blinding lightning bolt that strikes the riverbank, splitting the large rock they have been using as a mooring post in two in a shower of sizzling silver sparks. The earth moves under his feet, the trees sway and creak, and the arrows suspended in the air suddenly drop onto the ground, catching fire as they fall, and as Anton’s Aspect rises.

“Enough!” he shouts and the river itself seems to tremble.

For a long, astonished moment, nobody makes a sound. Nobody moves at all. Mayan has seen his scion’s Aspect twice before, and it has, on occasion, kept him up at night. But this – this is different. Never before has he seen his power disturb the very ground he walks on or break the sky above his head. Never has he seen the fabric of the world around him shiver and strain around that much power.

Maybe you are a god, after all, he thinks in awe, and if he could, he would kneel. If he could, he would worship this man whose might is still burning under his skin.

He does not need to, though – everyone else does. The men on the boat, men who have sailed with them for months, broken bread with them, fall to their knees as though they had just witnessed a miracle. Friar Carvajal, their priest, starts taking the name of his Lord very much in vain. Orellana stares, gaping at the man he believed to be nothing but a minor noble, some pampered erudite seeking adventure. A few moments later, the female warrior in red lets out a long, hooting call, a birdlike screech, and her soldiers immediately mimic her, howling to the smoldering sky. The archers drop their bows and the hunters their clubs, and all of the women suddenly kneel in the grass, bringing their cupped hands to their brow. Mayan has never seen such a gesture performed before, but he understands it all the same – this is surrender. No, it’s submission.

The last of Anton’s Shield disintegrates as he slowly moves forward, overlooking the adoring crowd. The arrow protruding from his shoulder no longer looks like a sign of weakness; it looks like a divine seal. Like an irrefutable proof of his indestructability. “Enough,” he repeats, in Spanish, soaring above the deck and floating down onto the solid ground under the bewildered eyes of the humans gathered there.

He is burning through his sigils, Mayan knows, and he has no sanctum to replenish them as easily as he normally would, but he has no other choice – he needs to keep up appearances. They must believe that his powers are unlimited. They must think him invincible for him to become so. Mayan has seen firsthand what the Christians do to those they call witches. He can guess what those fierce tribal fighters do to their enemies.

Anton alights in front of the tall, pale chieftain as his Companion approaches them. He must appear otherworldly to her, Mayan realizes, with his translucid skin and bloody shirt, with his night-black eyes. To him, however, he looks and feels like a man in very bad shape, his grasp on his own movements increasingly tenuous as he draws on the last of his strength. He is close to fainting and Mayan wants to hold him up, he wants to drag him back inside, where he can better protect him. He does neither. He simply stands by his side, channeling his own strength into their bond.

“We are not foes,” Anton tells the warrior. “We mean no harm.”

She looks down at him, uncomprehending, then she opens her mouth and says something back. The words are angular yet pleasant, not unlike some of the native languages they have heard before. They are still beyond either of their grasp: Anton speaks nine languages fluently, but not hers.

“Can someone understand her?” Mayan barks at the men cowering on the boat. “Does someone know her tongue?”

“Signor,” A young Indian man calls timidly. “I – I think I can. This sounds like Tupi. I know it.”

“Come here,” he intimates. “Translate for us.”

The boy obeys, trembling as he climbs down and approaches the quiet fighters. Anton looks at him expectantly. Warily, the sailor starts speaking to the leader. She looks at him, frowning, but she seems to understand enough of what he is saying to answer. She points at Anton, then at the jungle, and utters a long series of clicking sounds that the young interpreter appears to make sense of. Then, looking back at Anton she says, very distinctly, “Yacam.”

The word sends an inexplicable tremor of dread down Mayan’s spine – there is something strangely sinister to the sound of it, or maybe it’s the way she utters the word. Is that what she is calling Anton? Or is it something else entirely?

“What is she saying?” Anton urges the young Indian. “What do they want from us? If this is their land, we will leave at once.”

“No, Signor,” the boy says, frowning. “I… I’m not sure I understand everything. Our languages are close, but not the same. But I think she wants us to follow them. She needs assistance.”

“Assistance?” Mayan sneers. “They almost massacred us!”

Anton gives him a sideway glance as the woman continues to speak. Orellana has joined them his severe, bearded face unusually astonished. He stares at his companions, then at the half naked women and their bows, strewn across the ground. This is when Mayan first hear whisper, “Amazons!”

“She says…” the native man continues, struggling to translate the chieftain’s words, “she says that you are – I don’t know this term, but I think it means… savior. Or god, maybe. She thinks you can… I – I’m sorry, signor. I think she says – strike down the Evil?”

“The evil?” Anton repeats a little fainter than usual.

“Or – demon? This is what it sounds like in my language.”

“Yacam,” the woman repeats intently, looking at them, then, cupping her hands together, she brings them to her forehead again. “Yacam.”

It’s a plea, Mayan realizes. They are begging for his help.

“There is something in this jungle,” Anton tells him quietly, in Arabic this time, so that no one else may understand them. “Something foul and powerful. I can feel it. I’ve felt it for a while – I’ve been...” He looks up at Mayan. “Not quite myself. We must follow them.”

“This is madness,” Mayan responds trying to maintain his stoic façade. “You can barely stand, and you want to go and fight some dangerous magical creature at the behest of people who just attempted to murder you?”

“Yes,” Anton replies, grinning suddenly. “I don’t think they want to murder me anymore. I think I made quite an impression.”

And you like it, don’t you? Mayan doesn’t tell him. You want them to think of you as a god. He hopes the stiffness of his shoulders and the disapproval he lets loose between them are indication enough of how he feels about it.

“You are on the verge of fainting,” he informs his scion. “You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re injured. How many sigils do you have left? We can’t follow people who may mean us harm into their territory, now.”

“You’re right,” Anton replies, eyes lit with something that makes Mayan shiver. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

“That’s not–” he protests, but Anton is already giving his orders.

“Tell her we need to tend to the wounded, and we will go with them at first light.”

This is how, an hour later, Mayan finds himself yanking an arrow out of his scion’s shoulder and guarding his door as he refills as many sigils as he can – a frustrating, gallingly slow endeavor in his present condition. Mayan ostensibly declines to talk to him, irked by his foolishness and stubbornness. Frightened by this sudden and unexpected drive to sacrifice.

You saved the lives of these men, even when it meant exposing yourself to them. You saved my life, even though this is what I am for – die instead of you. And now, you want to go into the rainforest and perhaps save these women who almost killed you.

He refuses to be impressed. He refuses to feel proud.

Without a sanctum, the task of replenishing sigils is apparently much more arduous and taxing, and despite the Healing spell he uses on himself, Anton still looks gray and weak in the morning, as they begin to make their way through the dense, lethal jungle, delving into the unknown. No one else seems to notice, however. Orellana, Friar Carvajal and six other men accompany them while the rest stay behind to repair the brigantine. Surprisingly, none of them seems horrified by what they have just seen. None of them calls them witches or suggest that Anton’s display of supernatural power means he must have consorted with the devil. On the contrary, Orellana now looks at him with wonderment and reverence. Mayan wonders if that was what his scion was after, ultimately.

After half a day’s trek through the wilderness, they finally reach the Amazons’ village. Anton has taken to calling them that as well, and his Companion cannot tell if he is humoring Orellana or if he would rather no one remembered their actual name once they leave this place – if they leave this place. Mayan sees at least two hundred people there, men, women, children. Their outward appearance is similar to that of most of the tribes they have encountered in those parts: light brown skin, sleek black hair, almond shaped eyes. They are taller and stronger than most of the Indians Mayan has seen, however. And yet… All of them look somewhat sickly, drawn, or despondent, he realizes after only a few minutes. They look like the life is being slowly sucked out of them.

The leader – her name is Katù – urges them to stay hidden. They are those in her village, she explains, who do not take kindly to pale, armored strangers walking among them. And they are those whose minds have been devoured by the creature she calls Yacam – the evil which has taken over their home and which she wants Anton to vanquish. They will do anything to protect it, to serve it, to feed it, no matter how dark its appetites have grown. And, Mayan understands quickly, they have grown dark, indeed.

The woman Katù sends their way to recount that particular story is old and gray. She is called Jaci, and she speaks Portuguese fluently, which means most of the men can understand her. In her youth, she lived by the Plata river and met an explorer, a captain from Lisboa. He took her as his wife and travelled the continent with her. When he died, she and her young son were driven away by his men and, unable to return to her tribe, she was taken in by the Amazons.

“I became a wisewoman,” Jaci tells them as they huddle around her fire. “I learned of healing and plants as I traveled with the pale men, and of secrets that only belonged to the forest when I ran from them. I know how to speak to the trees and the streams, and how to call onto the spirits beyond.” She stops and looks at Anton, lips trembling. “Last year, the ground went dry and the trees began to die. We were all starving. All I wanted was to help. All I wanted was to save my son.”

“He was sick,” he states, not unkindly, as though he knew the story already. “And you believed the spirit could help.”

“It is no spirit,” she whispers fearfully. “Yacam is a goddess.”

“Is she?” Anton murmurs back. “Then why did you call on me to free you from her?”

Jaci goes quiet for a long moment, the fire painting fiery shadows across her emaciated face. Then, unexpectedly, she turns to Mayan. “Have you ever had something you loved taken from you?” she asks.

He blinks in surprise. It is the first time she has addressed him directly. “Yes,” he answers simply.

She nods. “Do you know what it’s like, losing that precious thing to someone you believed you could trust? Knowing that your faith in that person is the cause of its demise?”

Mayan doesn’t look back at his scion. He only looks into her hooded, haunted eyes. “Yes,” he repeats huskily. The bond flickers, but Anton doesn’t speak up.

The old woman nods. “I see it in your heart, that wound, and she will see it too, if you let her.” She leans forward, her dark eyes searching his. “You look like a young man, but your eyes are older than mine.” A short moment of tense silence follows, and Mayan holds his breath. Finally, she sighs, withdrawing. “We thought we could trust her. We loved her. When we first called on her, she brought us such blessings.”

“She restored your son to health?” Anton asks quietly, not meeting Mayan’s eyes.

Jaci shakes her head slowly. “My son… Was no longer sick when Yacam first came to us.” She stares into the flames. “He was dead.”

Mayan frowns. “Do you mean…”

“Yes,” Jaci acquiesces darkly. “She brought him back.” A tremor traverses her bony fingers and knobby knees. “She dragged his soul back into his corpse. It was…” she lets out a bark of a laugh. “My late husband would have called it a miracle.”

“Only God can resurrect those who have died,” Orellana remarks. “And the Devil.”

Jaci doesn’t reply immediately, but she nods absentmindedly. “She did not truly resurrect my son. What she brought back wasn’t really him. Not all of him.”

This creature can raise the dead, Mayan thinks, apprehension spreading in his chest. No Atlantean can do that. No being in our lore can.

“What does it look like?” Anton enquires. “You say ‘she.’ Does she appear to you as a woman?”

Jaci hesitates. “She does, now. She grew better, stronger under our care. When she first came to us, though, she was…” she gulps, apparently unsettled by the memory. “She looked otherworldly. And… decayed. Like a dead thing – part woman, part jaguar.”

Part woman, part jaguar, Mayan thinks, glancing at Anton. Has he ever heard of such a monster?

“But you trusted it?” Orellana asks, voice dripping with disgust. “This unholy dead thing?”

“Luisõ,” the wisewoman murmurs reverently. “God of death and the in-between. This is what some of us believed her to be, then.” She looks at them, almost defiantly. “Death is not a curse in our culture – it is the natural way of things. We do not fear it, if it comes when it must. But…” she wrings her hands. “If we could keep it with us? Nurse it back to health? She raised Jorge – with Death on our side, we would be invincible.”

“Of course,” Anton agrees pleasantly. “But she wasn’t Luisõ, was she?”

Jaci shakes her head slowly. “It was many months ago. At first, after Jorge was returned to us, we were all so grateful. We brought offering to her – Yacam is what she calls herself – food, flowers, clothes. She seemed to enjoy those gifts and she bestowed her own upon us. After months of starvation, our trees became ripe with fruit again. Game filled the woods and the river teemed with fish. But then, as we were fed… She grew hungrier.” She pauses taking a breath. “My son… in the beginning, he seemed merely lost. Like a child reborn. But then, he, too, grew hungry.” The way she says that word makes it clear that whatever was wearing her son’s corpse, its cravings could not be sated with fruit or fish. “First, it was small animals – rats and birds, then deer. I saw him, tearing them apart, feasting on their raw flesh. I was… troubled, but they were just animals – meat. But then…” she goes quiet for a long minute. Finally, she whispers, “he had a mate and two young daughters.” Her eyes meet Anton’s above the fire. “I was the one to find the remains. I was the one who cut his head off.”

They all keep silent for a while, staring into the flames. Then, Anton asks, “he wasn’t the only one, was he?”

Jaci shakes her head. “First, it was just him – the man she had recalled from beyond, but then, she became stronger. Able to… Control others. Only the weakest at first – the old ones and the children, the sick and the mad.” She rubs her tired eyes. “I can’t explain it. One day, the elders attacked the nursery. They – we lost four babies.” She swallows. “And a few days later, the children… a dozen of them went mad and stabbed their mothers and fathers, then turned on each other.” She lets out a sudden sob. “Other things happened, ever stranger, and even to the strongest of us – our hunters slew some of their own, mistaking them for wild boars – it wasn’t before they brought back their skinned and gutted corpses to the village that they realized what they’d done. Katù had to kill her mate – she tried to murder her in her sleep.”

Mayan listens, stunned. He has never heard of anything like this – a creature so cruel and so powerful that it could push an entire people into self-destruction. He looks at Anton again. His statuesque face is completely immobile in the glow of the firelight, but Mayan can feel his trepidation through their bond. He knows something.

“Some of the other wisewomen say that we have angered Yacam, that she is letting this curse take us because we need to find new, better ways to worship her, to be once again worthy of her protection. But I don’t believe she is letting it happen. I think she made it happen.” She bends forward, eyes flicking to Orellana. “I think you are right, Signor. She is the Devil.”

“She’s not the devil,” Anton says with a confidence that Mayan doesn’t believe he truly feels. “But she is a monster.”

“Can you help?” Jaci asks. “Katù told me what you did on the ship. You have the power of the old gods, like her. Tomorrow, I can show you where she dwells. Her lair.”

He tilts his head. “I think so.” He looks gravely at his Companion. “I do know quite a bit about monsters.”

The first thing that he does, after they set up camp near the village, is use a Shield to obscure their presence. “I’m afraid it already knows I’m here,” he tells Mayan once their fellow travelers have finally surrendered to a fitful sleep. “But it should not be able to get to us as long as it cannot find us.”

“You know what it is,” Mayan states. “Or at least, you think you do.”

Anton stares at his hands for a few seconds, then nods. “It’s hard to say for certain. If this creature is what I think it is, it’s the first of its kind anyone has encountered for over a thousand years. The Arcanum has declared them extinct.”

“What is it?”

“A lich,” Anton responds grimly, and although Mayan has never heard this name before, he feels a trickle of cold sweat running down his back. “A creature that was once one of us – an Atlantean spell-caster. It’s merely a hypothesis, but it appears sound: this Yacam seems to have access to vast amounts of magic, but she – it can only use it to consume, not create. Its blessings are an illusion, but the destruction it sows in its wake is very real. It needs to eat the lifeforce of things around it to sustain its own existence. It feasts not only on death, but on suffering, on mayhem. The more it eats, the more powerful it becomes. It needed the Amazons to trust and take care of it while it was weak, but now that it has grown healthy again, it no longer needs their offerings. It only needs their lives and their pain.”

“An Atlantean spell-caster?” Mayan repeats, astonished.

Anton shrugs, but his casualness is an affectation. “The records are vague. Some say they were once necromancers who fed on death to stay alive for eternity. Others believe that they are revenants – the tainted souls of some of the most powerful magics users, warped and corrupted by something beyond the veil. These are all conjectures, however. As I said – no one alive has ever met a lich, as far as I know.”

“So you cannot be certain?” he wonders out loud. “What we are really up against?”

“Not yet,” Anton confirms. “We must be patient. We will need to observe.”

And so, they observe. For four days and four nights, they remain hidden, and they watch. For many decades afterwards, for centuries, really, Mayan will think of this handful of days when he closes his eyes and the nightmares creep up on him. He has seen heretics tortured and burned at the stake, children put to the sword, men eaten by wild dogs – and he will live through wars and famines, through plagues and sieges, through unthinkable loss and unimaginable grief. He will live through the annihilation of his homeland and the demise of almost everyone and everything he has ever let himself hold dear. And yet, the horrors which most often visit him, the images that haunt him most during long, restless nights are the things he sees here, in the dark, dense Amazonian jungle.

On the first day, Jaci leads them to Yacam’s cave above the village, the entrance a thin crevice in the cliffside, which can only be reached after a steep, dangerous climb. Anton refuses to let anyone approach or even lay eyes on the creature. When they come back, though, it looks as though a riot has broken out – several houses have burned down and the wisewomen, all of them but Jaci, who escaped into the jungle, have had their eyes gouged out. Gouged out and eaten.

On the second day, all the men seem to go mad at once. Armed with clubs and hatchets, they suddenly attack their women, hunting them down around the village and through the woods, howling like crazed beasts and hacking away at terrified girls and old women – until the tide suddenly turns and the hunters become prey. The women stop running and the men, regaining their senses, find themselves targeted by their mothers, wives and sisters. By the end of the day, over a dozen villagers have been slaughtered, their blood soaking the earth and the trees, the stench of corpses rotting in the heat thick and nauseating already. No one even bothers disposing of the dead.

On the third day… On the third day, Mayan sees something he cannot bear to describe, something even his seasoned mind shrinks from – but on too-quiet nights, he sometimes hears the cries of the boy, still, and the way he begged his mother to stop. On the third day, he pleads with Anton.

“We have to stop it now. We have to put an end to it.”

“I need more time,” the man replies, although he looks paler and thinner than ever. He has been trying to channel his magics into his sigils, but he is struggling much more than he normally would. It’s as though the jungle were sucking his lifeforce out as well, as though the lich, or whatever the hell it may be, were eating his mind the way it ate the Amazons’.

“We don’t have time!” Mayan growls. “They are being decimated under our eyes! What good will it do them if you destroy that creature after it has burnt their entire tribe to ashes?”

“It is not just about them!” Anton seethes. “Don’t you see? They are lost already – barely shells of their former selves. If I don’t defeat this Yacam, if I let it kill me or even escape, it will wreak havoc on a lot more than a few hundred Indians. It will destroy their entire civilization. This whole continent, perhaps.”

There are more words exchanged between them which Mayan does not like to think about either, but this why, on the fourth day, he goes hunting. Anton tells him that they need sustenance if they are to keep their wits and strength about them, but he suspects he wishes to keep him away for a little while – maybe he knows that whatever will happen on that day would push his Companion over the edge. Maybe he did not count on what it would do to him. Mayan doesn’t witness what goes on in the village on that day, but when he comes back, two of the six men they were camping with are gone, Orellana and his priest seem to have gone mute, and Anton… Anton is sitting in the middle of a clearing, clutching his sigils, and he looks rattled.

Mayan has fantasized many times about the kind of power it would take to strike true fear into his scion’s heart. To force contrition and shame on him. To humble him. What he sees on the fourth day, however, forever wipes this yearning out of his mind. “What happened?” He asks, sitting next to him in the tall grass.

Anton blinks several times, looking at his hands, then up at Mayan, as though he had not known he was coming. He appears disarmingly young, suddenly, as though he were really just as old as he looked in this moment: a man in his mid-twenties, barely more than a boy, off on an adventure much too dark, too big for him. But he is not a boy – he is a very powerful centenarian, older than any human alive on this continent, he is a shrewd, ruthless strategist and he has seen more devastation in his lifetime than all of their conquistador friends combined. And yet.

“I will go to its lair tonight,” he says hoarsely, and his side of their bond feels flayed and raw. “I am going to end it.” He takes a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. “You were right. It needs to be stopped now.”

Mayan’s heart tightens. “I will prepare my weapons. When do you want leave?”

Anton’s wide, haunted eyes flick to his. “No. I will go alone.”

Mayan huffs. “You will not.”

“I will,” Anton insists. “It’s a powerful magic being. There is nothing you can do against it.’

“I can protect you!”

He lets out a curiously high-pitched laugh. “You cannot. It is a lich, and it is perhaps several thousands of years old. What do you imagine you can do to stop it? You would just be in the way.”

Mayan clenches his jaw, refusing to take the bait. “I will come with you.”

“You will not,” Anton hisses, glaring at him, and at least, he sounds a little bit more like himself. “I am your master, and this is my order – your damn duty is to follow it!”

“My damn duty,” Mayan repeats darkly, “is to keep you alive! Companions who follow asinine orders given by fatuous scions are not loyal – they are fools. I am no fool.”

Anton gazes at him in astonishment, opening his mouth to answer. He is used to Mayan using his fists to express his… disagreement, but not his words. He is not used to open defiance. When he speaks, he is obeyed. A long, tense silence follows, and then, Anton presses his lips tightly together.

“Very well,” he says coldly. “Just – stay out of my way.” Mayan nods, surprised to see him caving in so easily, but relieved, nonetheless. “We move just before dawn.”

In hindsight, he should have been more suspicious of this apparent surrender. Anton never yields to anyone, not even when he knows that their argument is sound – it’s a matter of principle. Mayan should have remembered how good he was at biding his time.

He wakes up with a start, not remembering having gone to sleep in the first place, his arms and legs stiff and heavy. The night is dense and black around him, sticky with the sort of darkness that does not merely come from the absence of light, thick with an eerie, unnatural silence. Mayan sits up, disoriented and a little nauseous, looking frantically around him. The few men they have left are asleep as well, silent and still. Dawn is far away, yet, but the moment he gets to his feet, he knows – Anton is gone.

Son of a whor*, he thinks, terror and wrath flooding his limbs in equal measure, godsdamn two-faced bastard!

Anton must have put them all under a spell to keep them unconscious. Mayan only has himself to blame, he knows. He had orders and he disregarded them, rebelled against his master’s word. This is a lesson for him as much as it is a strategy on his scion’s part.

Damn your lesson, he thinks furiously at him. Damn your strategy. He can feel Anton, not so far away, at the entrance of the lich’s cursed cave, slipping into the mouth of hell. He can feel him gathering his magics and his willpower. Damn you.

And, grabbing his hunting knife, Mayan runs after him into the night.

The climb to Yacam’s cave is steep and treacherous, but not much of a challenge for someone with his strength and agility. He can catch up with Anton is less than fifteen minutes if he works fast. When he reaches the bottom of the cliff, though, he realizes that he is not the first – or even the second – person to attempt the ascent tonight. On the jagged boulders jutting out of the mountain’s face, he sees the broken body of a woman lying face down in the rubble, and, a few feet beneath her, splayed on a rocky ridge, the corpse of her infant daughter.

Mayan stops dead in his tracks. He recognizes them both. He’s heard their names spoken in the village. He’s seen the mother walking slowly in the grass, nursing her baby, idling in the sun. The spectacle of their shattered, bloody limbs reminds him of those Portuguese ships he saw decades ago, wrecked upon the reefs of Hispaniola, hundreds of lives lost to the hungry ocean. This particular tragedy, though, is even more futile – a friable rock crumbling under an unsteady foot, and they would have toppled backward into the void.

What were you doing? He wonders, horrified. Climbing these rocks in the dark with a small child?

But as the thought occurs to him, so does the answer. This woman did not come here of her own volition. She was called. Cold sweat suddenly beads and trickle over Mayan’s entire body. She was called – and she is probably not the only one. Yacam must be ravenous tonight.

Hands and feet stable despite the roaring of his blood in his ears, Mayan begins to climb. His eyes adjust to the low light and his strong fingers hoist his considerable bulk steadily along the stone wall, avoiding slippery patches of gravel and treacherous ridges. He scales the cliff like an acrobat, swiftly and soundlessly, not a single bit of shingle falling under him. When he finally clears the entrance to the cave his hands and feet feel raw and cramped, but he is unhurt and, as far as he can tell, unheard.

Stealth, Ubaid used to tell him, usually before he would beat him bloody with a rod, is your weakness. You must not be seen. It will be your undoing if you don’t get better.

Stealth was never Mayan’s real weakness, though, he thinks as he walks silently, deeper into the bowels of the mountain – and it will not be his undoing. He has always known, deep down, what sort of mistake would ultimately cost him his life, if he were careless enough to let himself be blinded by things he should be above. But more importantly, it could ultimately cost Anton his life. Tonight, Mayan has been careless. He has been stubborn. He has been blinded. There will be a price to pay – he just doesn’t know what it might be, yet.

It only takes him a minute to reach the heart of the grotto. It is unexpectedly large and high, the curved stone ceiling giving him the momentary impression that he has stumbled upon some primitive cathedral carved into the belly of the mountain. It is bathed in soft moonlight and rippling with the golden glow of a small fire burning in the center. It looks like an ancient temple. Like an old, old god’s den.

This is where the beast lives.

The first thing Mayan sees upon entering the heart of Yacam’s nest, though, is not an altar or the heaps of fruit and jewels Jaci told them about. It is not Anton, either, although he can feel his presence in the obscurity, just a few yards away – it is the bodies.

It no longer needs their offerings, Anton said just a few days ago. It only needs their lives and their pain.

Seven, no eight women are lying on the ground in a growing pool of blackish blood, their throats slashed, their vacant faces slathered with bright red gore. Mayan stands there, stricken despite himself as he lays eyes on the massacre, attempting to take stock. The cave is saturated with the smell of fresh meat – iron and musk, and the sharp, sour odor of fright. Three of the corpses are close enough for him to see almost perfectly despite the dim light. There are blades in their limp hands, also bathed in blood.

They turned on each other, Mayan thinks at first, narrowing his eyes. The lich must have gotten into their heads. But as he observes the gruesome tableau a little more closely, he notices that this is not consistent with the position of their arms, or with the way they have collapsed onto the ground, far from one another. They did it to themselves, he realizes. They all slit their own throat.

And this is when he sees the children – no, not quite children: babies. Some of the women lie on their stomachs, making it impossible to distinguish them clearly, and the infants’ bodies are so small and bloodied, so twisted that Mayan did not immediately spot them in their mother’s arms. There is a tiny body close enough for him to touch, though, a child no older than one with a shock of shiny black hair. It lies on its back, exposing a hideously mauled, almost severed neck, empty eyes still wide with fear and disbelief. It looks as if an animal had chewed on its flesh, possessed by some all-consuming hunger, trying to separate the head from the shoulders.

Mayan recoils, unable to maintain his composure (what would Ubaid say? Would he feel compelled to beat him for his cumbersome squeamishness? Isn’t Mayan too old, too seasoned for such puerile displays of sentiment?) until his back hits the wall behind him. Catching his breath despite the nauseating smell, he sweeps his gaze over the cave – he sees it, now. In each and every woman’s arms lies a dead, partially eaten child, a tiny, mangled corpse, and the moment he lays eyes on them, he understands.

You made them come to you with their helpless sons and daughters – and those who made it all the way up… You made them do this.

Mayan thinks of the woman and her baby he found dead at the bottom of the cliff and suddenly realizes – they were the lucky ones.

“They were just so hungry,” a low, suave voice murmurs in the shadows.

Mayan’s hair stands on the nape of his neck as he turns. In his dismay, he forgot his most basic training – do not let yourself be distracted. Always map the entire location before coming in. On the other side of the grotto, huddled in a corner, arms wrapped around her knees, another woman sits. She is wrapped in a long, red robe, and she is swaying gently from side to side, as though in shock.

She’s still alive, is the first thing that goes through Mayan’s head. I can save her.

He takes a step forward, forgetting that he is supposed to remain hidden. Forgetting that he must not be seen. Forgetting, even, that he came here to find his scion and hasn’t located him yet, although it feels like he should be right there. For a fleeting moment, the only thing that matters is that he’s not too late – there is one person here he can still save.

As he moves forward, the prostrated woman turns her face towards him and immediately, he’s struck by her breathtaking, unearthly beauty. Her skin glints a pale silver in the moonlight, and her hair seems to shine a deep, vibrant crimson. Her large blue eyes glow in the dark, an impossible, iridescent indigo like those carnivorous, luminescent flowers which bloom solely at night, in the blackest parts of the jungle. Her hands are thin and dainty, but her curved nails are long and black like talons. The only truly unsettling feature in her lovely face, though, is her mouth – when her eyes find Mayan’s, she smiles at him, revealing long, spear-shaped teeth, like a crocodile’s. Like a jaguar’s.

She is not a woman, he realizes – too late.

“I only let them eat,” Yacam whispers, her grin widening, her mouth slowly morphing into a large, bestial maw. “That’s all I ever do – let you eat.” Her eyes gleam in a moonbeam, two bottomless pits of cold blue flames. “You are always so hungry. Insatiable. And yet, when you are done feasting, you always seem so sad.” She tilts her head to one side. “That’s why I always let you have a blade. It can put an end to the sorrow.”

In one agile, feline leap, she springs to her feet. They make no sound at all as they hit the stone floor, but the walls of the cave seem to tremble under her mass, as though, slim as she was, she weighed more than all the bodies strewn across the ground put together. She unfurls to her full height, long silky hair flowing down her shoulders and back like a cascade of blood. She is very tall, probably as tall as he is, but aside from that, and her claws and fangs, her shape is definitely human-like. Was that what she once looked like, hundreds, thousands of years ago, when she was a magician, a necromancer, before the monster growing inside her took over? Or do liches simply mimic the appearance of their victims to better blend in among them, to move silently in their world?

“Are you hungry too, tall man?” She purrs. “Do you want to feast with me?”

Mayan opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His entire body feels like stone and iron, his feet nailed to the ground. He can only stare at the creature, clutching his blade. Anton was right – he is powerless in the face of that evil.

“Don’t answer it,” a husky voice says, somewhere above him. Despite the rare gravelly tone, that voice is unmistakably Anton’s. “Don’t engage – that’s how it gets in.”

Mayan lifts his gaze, startled. Although he could feel his presence, he didn’t see his scion upon entering the slaughterhouse, and now, he understands why. Anton is floating some thirty feet above ground, seemingly pinned to the wall, pressed against a stalactite at an impossible slant, like a fly trapped in a giant spider’s web. For a second, Mayan can only blink helplessly at him – what is happening? – and then, he sees that he is not alone, up there. Across from him, standing on a thin ledge etched into the rock face of the cave, four women, all carrying infants, are huddling together, their dirty faces streaked with tears. They make no noise at all, though, even the babies mysteriously quiet.

You’ve shielded them, Mayan realizes, suddenly distinguishing the faint, shimmery contours of the magic barrier Anton has deployed around them, muffling their cries and pleas. You’re protecting them from her spell.

But in doing so, he has made himself vulnerable. He is not merely levitating above Yacam and Mayan. He has been hurled into the air and flung against the rock, and she is keeping him here, her own magics crushing his body into the boulder. Mayan can feel it, now, the distant, dull echo of bones cracking under pressure, lungs straining to inflate, Anton’s entire body fighting for his life – fighting to maintain the hold he has on his Shield. Fighting for the lives, the souls of the eight humans cowering behind it.

And Mayan has walked right into Yacam’s trap.

The lich tuts disapprovingly. “This one pretends he is above and beyond the craving.” She grins, taking a few steps in Mayan’s direction. “But he isn’t. I know – he is like me.”

“I’m not like you,” Anton says through gritted teeth. “We are nothing alike.”

“Hmm… Not yet,” she muses, turning her sharp-toothed smile to him. “But we will be.” She twists her neck in an eerily birdlike move, bones and skin straining against the unnatural angle, as though she was unused to the limitation of this body. “I see it your heart – the hunger.” She hisses the last word, tongue darting between her fangs. “The devouring need for more. More power. More control. More time. More life. More, more, more!” She lets out a blood-curdling hoot of a laugh. “I have felt you approaching, you know, I have listened for your dark song across the jungle. I have called out to you to come to me. You are not like them, little brother. You walk among them, you sit around their fires, you wear their garments, you look like them, but you are not them. You hail from the same pit I do.”

“You are not Atlantean,” Anton whispers, and Mayan hears blood in his throat. “You are not of this world.”

“No,” Yacam concedes. “But once, I was. Or part of me was. I remember – walking in the sun, bathing in the river, eating fruit from trees, bearing children.” She looks up at the terrified women on the ledge, smiling. “But I was hungry then, too. My magics made me ravenous.”

“You let it consume you,” Anton tells her, curious despite his predicament. “Until there was nothing of you left. You are but a husk, now.”

She hums. “First, I fed off the Earth, until it ran dry and cracked open. Then, I fed off the stars, until they started falling from the skies. Then, I learned to feed off death – immense, limitless.” She sighs ruefully. “But life always tasted so much better. It prickles the tongue and soothes the throat, like honey and nettles. And what is life, really, if not pain?” she runs a blood-red tongue over her fangs. “Pain tastes so good.”

“You can’t satiate your hunger,” Anton grits. “You are nothing but that hunger.”

“Yes,” she murmurs contentedly. “And one day, so will you be.” She looks down at Mayan again. “What do you think, tall man?” her clawed fingers contract around the empty air. “You are not like him, but neither are you like them. We used to have creatures like you, too, when I walked among the living – mongrels of no world. Oh, but I can taste your bond to him – iron and salt. Can you feel it, too, then? Can you feel his dark appetites?”

Mayan doesn’t mean to answer. He doesn’t mean to engage. And yet, as though summoned by her words, he can suddenly feel the phantom pain of Anton’s teeth sinking into his shoulder. He can see the vibrant, poisonous flowers dancing on his balcony. He can smell the blood of his rivals staining his hands. He can hear the distant, warm whisper of his voice in his ear as he lovingly murmurs, ‘I want to be the Tower of Atlantis.’ Even as he clenches his jaw, he can hear the word being ripped from his mouth – “Yes.”

This time, Yacam’s laugh sounds like a roar. “Come to me, mongrel. I bet that he is a cruel master, but I will let you have your fill.”

She will let me eat. The thought crosses Mayan’s mind before he can get a hold of it. He can feel her magics caressing him, coiling around his limbs like whirls of smoke.

“Don’t!” Anton cries, not to him, but to her, and perhaps this is the closest he has ever been to actually begging. “Let him go!”

“I don’t think so,” she replies, crooking a finger. “Come to me.”

And Mayan’s legs start moving by themselves, slowly but inexorably walking towards her, unable to resist the unknown compulsion she is working upon him. Perhaps it’s not that odd; that’s what he does, after all – he obeys. He stops an arm length from her. This close, he can smell the sweet yet foul scent emanating from her – wilted flowers, stagnant waters and rotting fruit. She smells like fresh, new death. Slowly, she stretches her black talons towards his throat.

“Yacam!” Anton calls out. “Sister! stop!”

That seems to catch her attention. Her hand stalls, then stills. She lowers her arm and looks up at him. “And what would you give me, fledgling, in exchange for this favor?”

Don’t do it, Mayan thinks desperately. Don’t engage.

“I would leave you be,” Anton answers roughly, blood pearling beneath his nose. “If you let us both go, I’ll let you have them – all of them. You could rule over this land. You could feed as much as you want for the rest of eternity.”

Her phosphorescent eyes seem to get brighter as she considers his offer. “Would you, really?”

“Yes,” he hisses, blood now dripping from his lips.

Mayan wants to scream, but he has no voice at all.

“Do I have your word, little brother? God to god?” she grins. “Monster to monster?”

“You do,” Anton murmurs, and Mayan cannot tell whether this is a lie or not. He suspects that his scion can’t either.

Don’t do it, he wills him silently again, but there is nothing he can do. Anton ordered him to stay away, and he disobeyed. Worse, he gave himself away as he came in – now, he has put his scion at a disadvantage. He has jeopardized his life and those of the Amazons he could have saved.

Yacam remains silent for a long time, eyes shifting between the two men, then lingering on the women on the ledge. Finally, she bows her head. “This is a tempting offer… But I must decline. See, my fledgling, I don’t think I can trust you. I think you are the tricky, devious, backstabbing kind.” She smirks. “Takes one to know one.”

What happens next happens in quick succession, and Mayan can only watch. Yacam whirls around, her claws swinging in the air, aiming directly for Mayan’s chest. Her nails look as hard and sharp as obsidian daggers and he has no doubt that the moment they come into contact with his skin, they will penetrate his flesh as easily as they would soft cheese.

You should have let me die on the banks of the river, killed by the Amazons, he thinks, closing his eyes and waiting for the slicing pain to claim him. He doesn’t want to see the lich’s eyes when she tears him apart. He doesn’t want to see Anton’s. This would have been a worthy death. A warrior’s death. You should have made your escape, then, and never come here at all.

No pain comes. No warm spray of blood as his ribcage caves in and his insides spill out. When Mayan reopens his eyes, he sees the shimmering membrane of a Shield rippling in the air less than a foot in front of him, a translucent, impenetrable wall. He blinks confusedly – How can this be? Anton is already using this spell to guard the women on the ridge. Did he have a second spell?

Yacam’s fingers graze lightly over the glistening protection, scratching it lazily, almost pensively, like a favored pet. “So you chose, little brother,” she murmurs. “One for eight. One for all.”

Mayan looks up. His scion is still pinned against the stalactite, bright red blood dribbling from his nose and mouth. He meets his Companion’s eyes – wide and shocked. At this exact moment, the wail of an infant echoes through the cave, then another, punctuated by the lamentations of women’s voices.

I can hear them, Mayan realizes. And that’s when he understands.

The Amazons and their children are still standing on the ledge, trembling and keening, but they are no longer protected by Anton’s Shield. He did not have a second spell – he could barely fill enough sigils to hope to be able to protect himself from the lich, and he ended up having to guard nine other people against it. No, the barrier that just saved Mayan’s life is the one that his scion was using to shield the Amazons, simply torn away from them and moved across the cave – leaving them all exposed and vulnerable. Ripe for the plucking.

Yacam turns to the women, and her comely face shifts progressively, slowly splitting into a grin so large that her lips seem to curl up all the way to her ears, teeth growing like unsheathed daggers, until her face is almost nothing but a voracious, fang-filled mouth. “Let us feast,” she snarls, crouching like a panther about to pounce, her speech now more growl than voice.

Mayan can see her foul power bursting out from her, a wave of blue-gold energy blasting up and wrapping itself around her victims. The women scream again, realizing what is about to happen. Perhaps they have seen it occur to the others, those who now lie dead all around them. Perhaps they have seen their fellow villagers ripping the throats of their own babies with their teeth and nails, biting into their soft flesh as they shrieked, swallowing their blood, unable to resist the lich’s call. On the ledge, one of them extends her arms in the air, holding her newborn child over the void, and with a howl that will remain engraved in Mayan’s brain for the rest of his life, she drops it on the rocky ground, fifty feet below. It hits the rocks with a dull thud but doesn’t make another sound.

At least it must have died on impact, Mayan thinks in horror. The others won’t be so lucky.

He can only stand there and watch. He can only observe.

But then, something unexpected happen. Instead of turning on their babies and tearing them apart, the Amazons start shouting, all at once, as though one single voice was erupting from all of their throats – it sounds like a sinister choir and like the mountain growling. It sounds like a battle cry. And then, suddenly, they burst into wild, purplish flames.

The blaze is so intense that Mayan feels its unnatural, searing heat kissing his upturned face and he has to close his eyes. The Amazons burn so quickly, so thoroughly that their collective cry is still echoing through the air when the flames suddenly die out, smoldering ashes raining down on them like black, incandescent snow. Some of it lands on Mayan’s arms and chest, reddening his skin as he blinks in confusion, still struggling against the lich’s compulsion, to no avail. Around him, the Shield is disintegrating. On the ledge, there is nothing left of the women and their children but a pile of smoking cinders and cooling embers.

What happened? He wonders wildly. Why would she –

Hunkering in the dirt, Yacam roars – not in joy, though, but in anger. “That’s cheating!” She screeches. “You, deceitful, faithless dog!”

It wasn’t her spell, Mayan understands as he takes a step back, the hold she has on him wavering as fury overtakes her.

Of course, it wasn’t – those people burnt up in seconds, before she could make them rip each other apart. Before she made them truly suffer. Before she could lick their pain. Honey and nettles. No, this was not the lich – this was Anton’s very last spell, Fire. So powerful, so focused that it exhausted itself in seconds. A mercy killing.

And now, Mayan thinks looking once more at his scion’s limp body, you are all spent.

“That was my dinner!” Yacam growls. She is still crouched low, her limbs arranged at increasingly odd, impossible angles, like many-jointed insect legs, her skin grey like that of a dead fish. Her face is so distorted, now, that it looks more like the rapacious snout of crocodile than a human visage. Mayan can’t believe he ever thought it was a woman.

“I guess,” Anton rasps from above, struggling to speak at all, “that you’ll have to go hungry tonight.”

The lich howls again and suddenly, its hold on him seems to dissolve. His body jerks and slides along the stalactite. Mayan sees it happening before it does – Anton plummeting down face first onto the ground, shattering his bones and skull on the sharp rocks beneath him.

Just like Amhara did, he thinks, unbidden. He hasn’t thought of her in such a long time.

The moment he sees it, it seems as if the grip Yacam had on him vanished as well. He moves so fast that his eyes cannot adjust, that his feet fly over the ground. He moves so fast that, impossibly, he catches his scion as he falls like a stone. The impact is hard, still, Anton’s body crashing into him like a dead thing, stealing the breath from his lungs as Mayan’s knees buckle under their combined weight – and maybe cracking a rib or two. The other man is still conscious when Mayan turns him around in his arms. He blinks up at him, dazed and shaky, but alive.

“I told you not to follow,” he chides weakly, unable to sit up. He lifts a hand, brushing against his Companion’s face. The old scar on his neck, the only one marring his skin, feels rough under Mayan’s fingertips. “You never listen.”

“I’m sorry,” Mayan gasps. “I couldn’t.”

Yacam emits a strange, whistling sound behind them, half hiss, half cackle. Mayan hears it scuttling in the dark, a large, scaly spider circling them. “Aaaah,” it wheezes. “No matter. Human suffering is always a little sour. But I haven’t tasted an Atlantean’s pain in millennia.” Mayan can make out its vibrant blue eyes in the shadows. “You’re a little too broken to eat, fledgling, but I think you can still make it worth my troubles.”

“Wait,” Anton croaks, but he has no leverage left. Nothing to bargain with the monster in the cave. No way out.

“You,” the lich hisses, “mongrel of no world – I think you’re hungry too.”

The putrid magic closes around Mayan’s throat like a hand, its cold, slimy fingers parting his lips and slithering into his mouth. He rears up, tries to spit, to cough out the evil gliding down his throat, spreading inside his chest, but he can’t. The force of it seems infinite yet elusive – it’s like fighting with the wind, or the ocean.

“Yes, you are,” Yacam soughs. “You were made to keep your own appetites in check to make room for his, but they are not gone – here it is, the yearning, the craving.” It makes a revolting, wet sound, like it's smacking its chops. “Very well. Now, take that blade of yours… and cut his heart out.”

Mayan makes a sound, low and raw in the back of his throat. He attempts to retreat, to move away from Anton, but the compulsion is too great. His fingers clench around the handle of his knife.

“Don’t you want to see for yourself whether he has one or not?” Yacam whispers, its voice barely more than a purr. “If he does, we can share. Actually, you can eat first, mongrel, I know how you long to touch it with your very own hands, to hold it. I know how you long to sink your teeth into it. Do it. Eat.”

Mayan’s hand is no longer his own – but then again, was it ever? The knife glimmer in the bluish light, beating inside his palm like it has a heart of its own. He looks down, frowning.

Cut his heart out. Hold it. Eat it.

He remembers sunlight bathing their old atrium in pale gold and glittering on the surface of a pond, where a sleeping monster dwelt. He remembers a ruby ring on a dead man’s finger, still secreted away behind a loose stone inside his bedroom wall. He remembers Amhara’s clever, soothing hands and Anton’s split lip, smearing blood over his.

Cut his heart out. Hold it. Eat it.

He remembers Ubaid’s whip slicing his shoulders open and Anton’s hands, unexpectedly gentle, knitting torn skin back together. He remembers the streets of Rome and Florence, and the painter’s workshop, stained with the most incredible shades of blue. He remembers the silky feel of his scion’s hair, and the tangy taste of his blood.

Cut his heart out. Hold it. Eat it.

He remembers long, cold, lonely nights, Anton sitting at someone else’s table, in someone else’s garden, in someone else’s bed. He remembers the sound of a girl he loved, in a different life, hitting the pavement. He remembers the sound of his gold medal ricocheting across marble floors. He remembers lying on a thin straw mattress on a creaky ship, Anton’s head resting on his shoulder as they drifted silently across the world, before he looked up at Mayan and said, “you cannot understand. What do you know of true purpose?”

Cut his heart out. Hold it. Eat it.

But Mayan understands. He has always understood. Better than Lord Tower. Better than Lady Alvira. Better than Anton. Certainly better than godsdamned Yacam. More than any of them, Mayan has always had true f*cking purpose. He was born to it.

“Mayan,” Anton murmurs, his eyelids fluttering, and it sounds like absolution. It sounds like permission.

And Mayan smiles. You still won’t beg, will you?

“Do it,” Yacam repeats, teeth clinking in its mouth. “Let me feast!”

You really don’t get it, he thinks vindictively at the creature, the hand holding the knife slowly rising above his head. The lich might be thousands of years old; it might have consumed entire civilizations and swallowed stars – but ultimately, it’s nothing more than a beast. And Mayan… Mayan is not a damn beast. He is a Companion.

You could never understand, he thinks fiercely.

“Do it!” The beast shrieks, and, unable to resist any longer, Mayan strikes.

With one powerful, deadly blow, he plunges the blade into soft flesh and hard bones – he feels them opening for his knife, swallowing it. He expected pain, dull and distant, but he feels none. And then – more screaming. The lich; Anton. Anton is screaming – How utterly peculiar. Has he ever screamed before? Not in his Companion’s presence.

And how I’ve longed to force such a sound out of you.

A twinge of vindication tingles Mayan’s mind as he looks down at his hands, now covered in dark, gushing blood. As he looks down at his own chest, where he buried his knife to the hilt, just below his heart. Blood keeps pouring out, a terrible uninterrupted flow of dark red waters. It’s all over the floor of the cave. It’s splashed across his scion’s startled face.

You look beautiful, he wants to say, bathed in my blood.

Still, he feels no pain. He only feels the liquid warmth of his life as it leaks out of him. Then – then, Mayan really isn’t certain what happens, because it’s only a minute before he loses consciousness. He thinks there’s a blinding white light and a clap of thunder. He thinks the ground quakes beneath his prone body. Maybe Anton’s Aspect is rising – this is the only thing he has left, isn’t it? He has no sigils, no spells, and now, no Companion. He thinks he sees him, rising to his feet, covered in blood and glory, and feels a surge of power flooding their bond.

Then, Mayan feels nothing at all. Then, he supposes he dies. A worthy death. A Companion’s death.

Except he doesn’t. He will never know how long it really takes for him to come to, but when he does, it’s to a scorching heat burning around his heart. He knows that burn well, he has experienced it many times before. This is one of Anton’s Healing spells, punishing and mighty.

But you have no sigil left, he thinks vaguely, although he is unsure why. Around him, the world feels dim and evanescent, immaterial. Where is he? When is he? Is this one of the cells under their Granada estate, where Ubaid has thrown him for failing one of his tests? Is this the hold of a ship sailing across the ocean, transporting them to the New World? Is this the dazzling white cavern beneath the dragon mountains of Atlantis, where Anton brought him once, and where he held his hand for no particular reason?

That sounds like a good place to spend the afterlife.

“Come back to me,” Anton’s voice says above him, and Mayan opens his eyes.

He is not in Atlantis, or Granada, or even on a ship sailing across the sea. He is lying in the dirt, in a cursed cave, at the heart of the darkest of jungles. He is in the lich’s den, and his scion is kneeling at his side, hunched over him.

“Don’t move,” Anton orders as he tries to sit up. “You almost bled out. You are very weak.”

“What?” Mayan croaks, blinking away the residual brightness and the smoky dreams. He feels like he has been staring into the sun. He feels like he has been thrown under a carriage. “What happened?”

Slowly, he looks around him. He was right – they are still in the Yacam’s cave. He recognizes the shape of the stalactites and the vaulted ceiling. Except… Except it looks different, now. The walls are no longer made of light gray stone – they have become entirely black, and they glisten like glass in the moonlight, as though a volcano had erupted inside, its cooling magma solidifying over the rocks. Mayan doesn’t see the mangled bodies of the women and their children scattered across the makeshift altar, either. In their place stand small mounds of spiky, sparkly white and red crystals, like ancient tombs covered in hard flowers, as if they had died centuries ago, and the mountain had slowly closed around them, a vast, natural crypt. As if Mayan had been asleep for a thousand years.

But, most unsettling of all –

“Where is it?” He asks hoarsely. “Where is the lich?”

Anton grabs his face to keep him from rising. He is careful, though, almost gentle. “It’s gone,” he tells Mayan steadily. “I killed it.”

Mayan turns his head to look at him. He is still disheveled and pale, splattered in dark, dried blood, but he looks – he looks otherwise unhurt. No trace of the injuries he sustained before or after Mayan came into the cave. He brushes against their bond – it feels whole and strong. “How did you do it?” he whispers, frowning. “And how did you Heal me?” He lets his eyes sweep once more across the grotto. It shines like a dark diamond mine. “How did you do any of it?”

Anton looks pensive for a moment, then, slowly he shakes his head. “I’m not certain,” he says carefully, looking down at his hands. “I felt you dying and the power just… came to me.” He blinks, looking a little confused himself. “So much power, all at once. It roared through me like a river, like a blaze.” His eyes meet his Companion’s, his hand still resting over his heart. Cut it out. Hold it. Eat it. “So I held it, and I burnt the devil to the ground.” Cut it out. Hold it. Eat it. He smiles. “And I brought you back to me.”

Mayan is one hundred and forty-five when they encounter a true monster, in the swampy, dark depths of the Ecuadorian jungle.

When they emerge from Yacam’s lair, the sun is rising above the rainforest. They climb down, make their way back to the village, and go to collect the four men they still have. When Orellana sees Anton coming, covered in blood, he falls to his knees and crosses himself, murmuring a hasty prayer.

Finally, Mayan thinks with a dark twist of pleasure, finally you fear him.

“Don’t be afraid, my friend,” Anton says softly. “None of this is real. None of this has really happened at all.”

And he touches a finger to the man’s forehead. Immediately, his eyes close and he collapses onto the ground. Mayan has seen it before. When he awakes, he will not remember any of the things Anton doesn’t want him to recall. He has never seen any Atlantean perform this trick without a sigil before, though.

“What did you take?” Mayan asks him curiously.

Anton is quiet for a long, painful second. “Everything,” he finally answers in a blank voice. “He will not remember this, or us, at all. When they wake, they will go back to the ship and continue on.” He inhales. “Maybe they will find the mouth of the river. Who knows?”

Mayan nods. He knows this costs the other man in ways he will never acknowledge. “What do you want to do, now?” He asks.

Anton closes his eyes and takes another long, deep breath. Their bond crackles in the rising sun. “I want to go home.”

***

Mayan is one hundred and seventy-one the last time he attempts to kill his scion.

It happens three days after Anton’s older sister, Yara, dies in childbirth. Mayan has lived most of his life among humans, until his scion brought them back to Atlantis twenty years ago. He knows that this is a fate endured by many, many women throughout the world. It is, however, a very rare thing among Atlanteans. They tend to have fewer children, despite their infinitely longer lifespans, and their magics can almost always save them from the perils of childbed.

No one, it seems, could save Yara. Their mother is the one who delivers the news to Anton. She visits his Southern mansion, built on the shores of the Petal Sea – Anton always loved his flowers so – two days after her death. Lady Alvira was the one to find her daughter dead in her bed, her newborn son yowling in her cold arms on the morrow of her labor. Apparently, she had bled to death in her sleep.

“The baby is doing well,” she tells her son in a hollow voice, looking at the white and crimson blossoms washing ashore from the terrace overlooking the waves. “She named him Noa. Her husband will be rearing him for now, but I imagine your father will want him to be brought to the Dagger Throne Estate soon enough.”

Mayan is present for this conversation, mostly because he came to greet Lady Alvira when she arrived, unaware of her visit’s grim purpose. He offered his condolences, but he is standing back now, quiet and solemn. It is not his place to comfort Anton’s mother.

“Will you let him?” Anton asks her, standing close to her but not quite touching.

She breathes in. “I don’t know,” she answers. “I – I’m not sure how I can refuse him.”

Lady Alvira has birthed five children in her life, all sired by her only husband. Lord Tower does not practice polygamy the way other heads of Great Houses do, either, but it is not unadulterated love that binds him so to his wife of almost two centuries. He must be certain that all of his potential heirs are both legitimate and thorough-bred, much like his horses. The mate he chose is the most suitable one he could find, and he does not intend to take another.

Lady Alvira lost her eldest son to the American shores, and now her daughter to her own firstborn. She has had two more children after Anton, a son and a daughter who have taken their older brother’s place in the Kingdom of Spain. Mayan knows them well enough – they were both born when Anton and he were young, and grew up in Granada alongside them. He knew little of Yara, though, who spent her life in Atlantis. Anton and she were not close friends or confidents, but they grew well acquainted over the last few years, and he believes his scion did care for her. She had a Companion as well, a fair-headed woman with pale eyes named Astrid, stolen from the Northen lands. Mayan wonders what will become of her, now.

Does this news sadden you? He thinks, skimming over the bond as he stares at Anton’s back. Or can you not help but rejoice?

Mayan wishes he were above this kind of considerations, but he would be fooling himself. With Cristoval vanished for almost sixty years and Yara dead, Anton is technically now the heir scion to the Dagger Throne. A third son suddenly elevated to successor.

“I want to be the Tower of Atlantis,” he once told Mayan, when they were barely more than boys. A fanciful wish, now finally within reach.

“I think you should stay with us, mother,” Anton offers gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. “For a few days. I’ll have my people prepare your apartments so you can rest.”

“This is a peaceful place,” she comments blandly, looking at the swelling sea of flowers. “And such a beautiful one. You always had an eye for true beauty.” She kisses his cheek. “I will stay for a day or two. I think you and I need to talk about the future.”

Dinner is a somber affair. Lady Alvira sits quietly, drawn and pale, trying to put on a brave face. She insists that Mayan joins them because, for a reason that has always escaped him, she enjoys his company.

“You’ve built a good life for yourself, Anton,” she tells him as she pretends to eat. “I’m glad you came home. I’m glad you managed to…”

She doesn’t quite finish her thought, but Mayan understands the silent meaning behind it, the words between them that must always remain unspoken – she’s glad that he escaped the prison that his father built for him. For all of them. Anton exchanges a look with Mayan.

“You could stay more than a few days,” he suggests quietly. “You need to regain your strength. This is a perfect place for you to mourn and to recover – you don’t need to go back to the Dagger Throne Estate quite yet.”

“I will make sure that the guest rooms are furnished to your liking,” Mayan adds. “I can send for your belongings if you wish.”

She looks at them and smiles, grateful but strained. “This is very kind of you, boys.”

Mayan likes the way she always said this particular word, with the warmth of a mother who does not care that her children are almost two hundred years old. She is not Mayan’s mother, of course, but sometimes, he still likes to bask in that warmth.

“However,” she goes on, “I don’t think your father will allow that.”

Mayan knows what Anton thinks of his father. He knows what he would like to tell his mother – leave him. He has ruined your life long enough. He has ruined you long enough. He has, too – Lady Alvira has spent the last two hundred years in a jail of her own.

“He does not need you now, does he?” He asks instead with affected nonchalance.

She stares into her plate, then, quietly, she says, “I am afraid he might want me to give him another child.”

Anton’s face doesn’t change, but Mayan feels the unmistakable contraction of their bond as it sizzles with surprise, then anger. “Another child?” he repeats neutrally, taking a sip of his wine. “Is he afraid he is running through potential heirs too quickly?”

Mayan glares at him and he has the good grace to look a little contrite. “Forgive me, mother,” he adds. “This was callous. I only meant that you have three legitimate children left, and I was under the impression that you did not yearn for more.”

“I do not,” she replies.

Not with Lord Tower, she doesn’t say, but Mayan knows this is what she means. He is a brutal man, a ruthless father and a violent husband. She doesn’t want to rear more children in his household.

“Well,” Anton says after a long, uncomfortable silence. “Stay the week at least. We can discuss the rest later.”

Lady Alvira retires early, and Anton goes to his study while Mayan does his nightly rounds, greeting the guards as he passes them. This is a small household for a scion of an Arcana court – four guards, a cook, a gardener, two chambermaids. Mayan is de facto in charge of overseeing it all, but this is nothing like the Dagger Throne Estate. This is a surprisingly quiet, enjoyable existence, living on the oceanfront, away from the bustling cities of Atlantis. For the last few years, Anton has been… tranquil. Almost content. His spends his days painting and writing music, learning to play a new instrument every few months, taking walks along the beach and caring for the slew of new exotic plants in his glasshouse, many of which are not poisonous. Sometimes, he takes short trips to the city to visit his mother, or longer ones, when he gets a little too restless, to go back to the continent and walk the paved streets of Rome, Barcelona, Istanbul or London. Mayan always pretends he is irked to be dragged along, but he never truly is.

Anton spends some of his nights in his study, a majestic, dazzlingly bright room with a large balcony overlooking the shore, pouring over his precious books and maps. Sometimes, he will retire to his rooms before dawn to get a few hours of sleep, and sometimes, he will nod off as he sits at his desk. Most often, though, he will come down to the ground floor, to Mayan’s room and lie by his side until sunrise. Sometimes, he will wake him up to tell him about something he just read about – a rare plant, an ancient painting technique, an island that someone discovered on the other side of the world or an aboriginal myth he deems fascinating enough to need discussing now – heedless of his Companion’s grunts of protest. Sometimes, he will be agitated, impatient, and he will need… containing. Sometimes he will need pain. Mayan knows how to give him both, by now. And sometimes – sometimes he will just lie there, falling asleep the moment he touches his Companion’s skin, like a satisfied cat, and he will need nothing more from him, nothing at all.

In this small, hidden retreat, it almost feels like they have built a life of their own, far from Lord Tower, from the Spanish monarchs, from the hungry jungles. A life that they live side by side. But Mayan has wanted to believe in this fiction before, hasn’t he? And he is reminded now of what he learned on the Amazon and should have never been foolish enough to forget – their respite can only be temporary.

When he joins his scion in his study, the sun has long set over the flowered sea. The sky is alight with purple and blue stars and the air is heavy with the sweet scent of blossoms. The doors to the balcony are wide open, the white curtains dancing lazily in the breeze, and Anton is standing there, facing away from his Companion and looking into the night. He feels – agitated. Mayan wonders if he will require pain or containment, tonight.

“She will not stay,” Anton says suddenly without turning. “Although she wants to.”

“She is grieving,” he replies evasively. “Give her time.”

“She has had time. She will never leave.”

He turns around with a sigh and steps into the doorway, looking oddly grim.

“Are you grieving?” Mayan asks, rather insolently. He no longer attempts to remain courteous when they are alone. “You liked Yara, but she was always in your way, was she not?”

Anton purses his lips. “Do I hear disapproval in your tone? Or are you merely concerned about the state of my heart?”

I know the state of your heart, Mayan thinks regretfully.

“I would not begrudge you some measure of satisfaction,” he says in a low voice. “You are the heir to your father’s throne, now. Isn’t that what you always wanted? To be Lord Tower?”

You will become the head of the Dagger Throne, one day, he thinks, and it tastes more bitter than he had imagined it would. We will need to return to the capital. You will have to marry. Make alliances. Sire more heirs. You will no longer be free to wander the streets of European cities with sculptors and philosophers. You will no longer sleep under open skies in faraway lands and map uncharted rivers. You will no longer slay monsters dwelling in cursed caves and save the lives of mighty warriors. You will no longer roam the world with me or fall asleep in my bed.

Anton inclines his head looking out at the starry sky. His face is perfectly still, carefully expressionless – and so is their bond. Mayan senses no more turmoil, no sorrow or joy, just a quiet, cold resolve. He doesn’t dare pry further and turns away too admire the planisphere on the wall, the one where the other man has carefully inked every single place in the world he has seen. A treasure map of his own.

“I am not, actually.”

Mayan glances back at him, startled. “What do you mean?”

Anton keeps quiet for a few long seconds, then slowly turns to face his Companion again. He looks so cruelly handsome then, in his white linen shirt, hair just a little too long, swaying in the soft wind. “You know how the line of succession works – Yara was the heir scion.” He pauses, nostrils flaring. “And she has had a son.”

A cold, prickly kind of dread creeps down Mayan’s spine. “He is a baby. A successor must not merely be next in line – he must manifest before he can ascend.”

That, they learned after they came back from the New World. Anton told his mother about the lich, and she urged him never to speak of it to anyone else. She also explained to him how he had been able to defeat it – this unprecedented, shattering surge of power that flooded him when all other options had run out. “You manifested,” she whispered in awe.
“Arcanis maioribus. This is a power that few of us are ever granted. This is what makes Arcana.”

Both Cristoval and Yara had manifested this mysterious gift as well, but neither Anton nor his younger siblings had, yet – this had apparently caused Lord Tower a lot of grief. Why was his wife unable to produce more powerful children? Why was she saddling him with weaklings?

He always believed you delicate and fragile, Mayan thought then with a thrill of satisfaction. An artist and an erudite, clever but flimsy, lacking the true potential to be a leader. But you are powerful – one day, soon, you will be more powerful than him.

“Of course,” Anton says conversationally, bringing Mayan back into the present. “Maybe he never will. Or maybe it will take centuries.” He steps inside and the fragrant wind follows him, a few stray petals fluttering inside like lost butterflies. “But why do you imagine my father is so keen on bringing him into the fold?”

“You cannot seriously think he plans to make this infant his heir,” Mayan protests, but as he says it, he understands that Anton may very well be in the right. He has been disappointed before – his eldest disappearing into the night before he could even produce a worthy heir, his promising second-born dying in childbirth – such a simple, natural task, too – and his third child, the unruly aesthete, now standing to inherit his crown?

“That’s exactly what I think he plans to do,” Anton replies darkly, and the edge in his voice tightens Mayan’s throat. “And who knows when my father will go? Noa could be two-hundred years old by then. He could have manifested twenty times over. He could have produced a hundred sons and daughters of his own.”

“No,” Mayan says, his voice huskier than he thought it would be. “No.”

He does not mean to contradict his scion, for he knows he is right. The truth of his words is not what he means to deny him.

“He is two days old,” Anton argues, cold and assessing. “And he is an orphan. What kind of life would he have?”

“He has a father,” Mayan points out. “He seems like a good man.”

“He will be dead or paid off within a month,” Anton scoffs. “And my father will have the infant. He will make him his puppet. He will poison him with his schemes and foolish ambitions.”

The way he poisoned you, Mayan understands. The way he poisoned all of us.

“The child is your nephew,” he says through gritted teeth, cold spreading through his chest. “He is innocent of any of your father’s crimes.”

Unexpectedly, Anton nods. “Yes. And he could remain so.” He takes a few steps forward, his tone growing soft, coaxing. He wants his approval, Mayan realizes. He wants his support. He wants his absolution. He wants, he wants, he wants.

He wants the godsdamn throne.

Anton’s hand brushes against his arm, fingers tapping lightly, tenderly, the way he moves them when playing the piano – with deadly precision and confusing grace. The way he uses them when playing the blunt instrument that is his Companion. “You see it, don’t you? This would be best for us all.”

He sounds so gentle. So suave. In Mayan’s mind, the sudden echo of another voice, eerily similar in that moment. “Can you feel his dark appetites?”

Anton leans in a little more and Mayan can feel his heart beating – cut it out, hold it, eat it – and the heat of his skin as he murmurs, earnestly, “Dying now would be a mercy.”

Dying now would be a mercy, he repeats in his mind, and, unbidden, long-buried memories bubble up to the surface –

A woman standing on a narrow ledge, holding her baby above a fifteen-meter drop and letting go with a wail that still echoes in his ears.

A sudden, purple blaze illuminating the cave and burning ashes raining down on him.

Amhara, in the middle of Anton’s bedroom, so lovely in her yellow dress, and the look on her face as he whispered into her ear – ‘I will set you free.’

“You know all about mercy killings, don’t you?” Mayan snarls and Anton flinches, surprised by his venom. “Were you thinking about doing the deed yourself? Or would you send me to press a pillow over his face? To break his tiny neck?”

Anton takes a step back, looking ashen and startled. “I would never send you to do that,” he says quietly, as though it could alleviate Mayan’s sudden rage. “I would–”

“You would end a child’s life, your own flesh and blood, to secure your throne,” Mayan interrupts. “How does that make you better than he is?”

How does that make you better than the monster we fought in the jungle?

“This is not about me!” Anton barks back, destabilized but recovering quickly all the same. “This is about the future of Atlantis! This is about what the Dagger Throne could do, if it were led by someone who had true vision! One life against our entire people!”

“Don’t try to lie to me,” Mayan growls. “I can always tell. This is not about mercy, and this is not about the greater good – this is about power.”

Anton’s lip curls. “And what if it is? We cannot build greatness on good intentions, or on sentiment. We can only build it through power. When I have it…” he falters, anger giving way to something more uncertain. That moment of doubt only lasts for a fleeting second, however. His eyes shine with such passion when he resumes, “When I have it, Mayan, I will be able to do such things for us. For all of us! Can’t you see that?”

But what Mayan sees, in that moment, is the luminescent blue of a demon’s eyes as she whispers, “The devouring need for more. More power. More control. More time. More life. More, more, more!”

“You can’t create anything worth keeping over the corpses of children,” he whispers, horrified. “How can you not see that?”

Anton opens his mouth, then closes it, black eyes smoldering with anger. “How would you know about creating anything at all? How would you know about the cost of greatness, or the sacrifices required to mean something?”

“You will not have this child killed,” Mayan says blankly. “I will not allow it.”

And Anton laughs. It’s a cruel, unhinged laugh, and it smells of wilted flowers, stagnant water and rotten fruit. It smells of fresh death. “You will not allow it? You will not?” And in a rare, unrestrained movement of anger he picks up the bronze statue on his desk and hurls it across the room, narrowly missing his Companion’s head. It crashes into the wall leaving a large, deep dent in the stone. “You don’t get to give me orders!” he seethes, moving closer, grabbing the other man’s arm. “You’re–”

You’re just a beast.

Does he actually say the words? Mayan is not certain that he does, but he hears them all the same. He hears the metallic sound of this gold medal hitting the floor as his scion wrenches it from his neck. He hears the dull thump of Amhara’s body breaking on the pavement. He hears the shrieks of the Amazons in the cave and the mad cackling of the lich. He hears the wet cracks of Ubaid’s whip. He hears the cries of a newborn child as an anonymous henchman smothers him with a pillow.

And then, he hears nothing at all; Anton goes completely quiet all of a sudden, the hand on Companion’s arm growing slack. He blinks up at the other man, long, dark lashes fluttering slowly. “Oh,” he murmurs, taking a step forward until he is almost resting against Mayan’s chest. In Mayan’s arms. A soft pink petal, carried in by the wind, twirls above them gently lands on Anton’s cheek.

This is when Mayan feels the thick warmth of his blood trickling down his hand. He glances down at the knife between them – the very one he once plunged into his own chest, almost twenty-five years ago, to try and save Anton from a lich. The one he has just stabbed his scion with, now, one inch above the navel, perhaps for the exact same reason.

He catches him as he falls backward, gently lowering him onto the floor.

What have I done? He thinks, the deafening roar of blood in his ears muting the world around him. He wants to say something, to shout, to cry, but he is incapable of making the slightest sound. It feels like the blade is stuck in his own throat.

Anton blinks again, a trickle of blood oozing from his slightly parted lips. “Oh,” he sighs once more, looking down at the knife protruding from his belly. He doesn’t reach for it, or for the sigil around his neck, although it contains a Healing spell. Instead, he looks up at Mayan again, with that same unsettlingly tranquil, questioning expression that stole over his features when his Companion shoved him into the crocodile’s den a century and a half ago, and when he pressed a blade to his throat, a few years later. Do it if you must.

Must I? Mayan wonders, silently watching the rapid spread of Anton’s blood across the Persian carpet. Do I get to end us both tonight, before it’s too late for either of us?

For a moment, he lets himself imagine it – kissing Anton’s mouth one last time, then holding his hand, stroking his hair gently the way he almost never does, until his cold, cold heart has finally stopped beating. Then, he imagines gathering him in his arms, carrying his body down onto the beach, and walking into the Petal Sea. And wouldn’t that be a sight to behold? Millions of tiny pink, red, and white blossoms washing over them as he moves forward, slowly but surely, until they are both swallowed in a sweet, fragrant shroud, and gone forever. No more strife. No more anger. No more wailing infants in the back of their minds. No more blood on either of their hands.

That would be fine, he thinks, looking into Anton’s increasingly glassy eyes, slipping his hand in his. I think that would be fine.

“Mayan,” Anton whispers, the same way he did a hundred, a thousand years ago in the crocodile’s pool, the way he did when his Companion closed his hand around his throat for the first time, the way he did as he lay in his arms in Yacam’s lair, and still, it is not a plea – it sounds more like a prayer. For the first time, a mad thought crosses Mayan’s mind.

Did you think this might be your last word? Is this why you repeat it every time you think you’re about to die?

Anton’s hand clenches around his and slowly, his eyes fall shut.

Make your decision, now, and live with it. Die with it.

Mayan makes his decision. He takes his scion’s limp body into his arms, taking care of not moving the knife in his guts, and he rushes out of the room.

Despite the late hour, Lady Alvira is still awake in her apartments, and she opens at once when he bangs on her door. In that moment, Mayan is truly sorry for her. She has just lost a child and here she is now, opening her door to the bloody, almost lifeless body of another. Her lovely face goes slack with shock when she sees Anton, her clear blue eyes widening in horror.

“What happened?” she cries as he runs in. “What happened to him?”

“Stab wound,” Mayan replies curtly, laying his scion onto her cushioned bench. He is unconscious, but still breathing. “Can you heal him?” She blinks at him, too stunned to answer. “My lady,” he presses, voice breaking, “if you don’t heal him now, he is going to die.”

This seems to break her out her trance. Trembling, she kneels beside her son and presses her index finger to a small cameo necklace around her neck – not a Dagger Throne sigil, but a Nightglade heirloom – then places both hands on Anton’s stomach. “The… the knife,” she stammers. “I need…”

Mayan yanks it out in one swift pull. A small fountain of blood gushes out, spraying Lady Alvira’s arms and face, but she doesn’t flinch, this time. She presses her palms onto the wound, as though trying to slow down the flow and closes her eyes – then, she starts humming. Mayan is not sure that he has ever seen her performing magics before, but he recognizes the melody she is crooning. It is the lullaby she sang to all of her children when they were very young. He remembers being six or seven years old, already sent off to live down in the servant quarters, but sitting on the other side of Anton’s door on most nights and listening in, listening to her soft voice singing him to sleep and wondering if there ever was a woman, on the other side of the sea, who had once done the same for him.

“There,” she murmurs. “There.”

Under her hands, Anton’s flesh is slowly regrowing, closing around the gash. It only takes a minute to reduce it to a thin, red line. His breathing is soft and even and his eyes roll under his lids, but he doesn’t come to. She withdraws, panting slightly, and turns to Mayan.

“It’s the only Healing spell I have. I need to go to the Sanctum to create another.”

“Will he live?” Mayan asks blankly. “It wasn’t too late?”

She shakes her head. “He will live. I closed the wound and repaired the flesh. I need to replenish his blood, now – he looks like he lost a lot of it. It may take a while for him to regain consciousness, but he will live.”

The certainty in her voice is enough for Mayan to let out a sigh of relief. He looks down at his hands, covered in drying blood. There is so much of it, up to his elbows, on his shirt.

“He was attacked?” Lady Alvira asks nervously. “Did you get rid of the threat?”

“Yes,” Mayan answers. “There is no more threat.” He supposes that’s not a lie. “You can go to the Sanctum. I will sit with him.”

She nods and leaves the room, her pale skin still dotted with tiny red specks. Mayan sits down on the floor, listening to Anton’s slow, deep breathing. Listening to his heart as he keeps on beating. He rubs his eyes with bloody fingers.

I couldn’t do it, he thinks dully. Not even when you were standing there, talking about murdering your newborn nephew to spite your father. I couldn’t do it, even when I saw how dark your appetites have grown.

“Mayan,” Anton whispers, and the man springs to his feet – but his scion is not awake. He is just raving in his sleep. Mayan takes a deep breath and leans down, pushing the unconscious man’s matted hair out of his eyes.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t end you and I cannot save you. I am no longer of any use to you.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pressing a kiss to his scion’s clammy forehead, although he is not sure what he is apologizing for – almost murdering him? Not being able to go through with it? Or for what he is about to do, now? Maybe for all three. Maybe for it all, since the beginning.

Mayan stands up, then he turns around and walks out of the room. Then, he walks out of the mansion. Then, he walks on along the beach, gazing wonderingly at the Petal Sea – it may be the most beautiful place in the world, and he is probably seeing it for the last time.

It was worth it, he thinks. It was worth it anyway.

And then, Mayan runs.

He runs for miles and miles, to the nearest town, where he takes a carriage to the nearest port. In the morning, he takes the first ship leaving Atlantis – a large fishing boat bound for the distant Canary Islands.

That’ll do, he thinks, looking over the growing expanse of bright blue sea separating him from his homeland. From his House. From Anton. He knows that he survived the night. He can still feel him, in the depth of his heart, in the pit of his stomach. He can feel him even as he crosses miles and miles of ocean and land, as mountains and rivers and countries grow between them, as weeks pass, and the gap that separates them becomes so great that it feels like they are now living on different planets. On distant stars. Still, Mayan feels him – awakening, growing strong again, returning to his life.

You will do better on your own, he thinks as he finally disembarks one day, four weeks after he ran away like a brigand in the night, on the blackened, dry island the Spanish call Lanzarote – another crumb of the slowly declining Castilian Empire. Its dwindling, mostly enslaved native population, the Guanches, has been supplemented with Spaniards and merchants from the coast of North Africa, and the people of Lanzarote look surprisingly like Mayan and speak a wide array of similar dialects. It will be easy enough for him, at least, to blend in with the inhabitants.

Mayan remains on the small island for five months. It is such an insignificant amount of time in his long, long existence, and yet, it feels like a life of its own. A life of his own.

For the first few weeks, he keeps waking up panting in the middle of the night, covered in cold sweat, heart hammering in his chest, hands instinctively feeling around for the body that they can’t help but miss. For the one they were meant to guard. For the first few weeks, he observes everything and everyone warily, wondering whether Anton has already sent someone after him – to kill or capture him, perhaps. Of course, his scion knows where he is the same way Mayan always knows it, too. The rest, however, the emotions and the intent, is blurred by the great distance between them. Has Anton already ordered someone to dispose of his sister’s son? He would be wise to do it now, while the child is still a newborn, and it can easily be made to look like an accidental death. Has his mother returned to her golden cage, where she may or may not be made to bear additional heirs, whom her oldest son might feel compelled to remove as well? Has Lord Tower already stolen the infant to raise him to be the worthy successor he so dearly wants?

Noa, he thinks sadly sometimes, watching the sea, maybe dying now would be a mercy, after all.

After a month on the island, however, Mayan finds himself warming up to this new, pared-down existence. When he first arrives, autumn is approaching, and he makes a living harvesting wheat with the indentured servants and Guanches. He shares a small cabin with a native family who seems endlessly fascinated by his size and scars. He tells them he used to be a huntsman in Al-Maghrib and fled the unjust rule of the Saadian Empire (for this, if nothing else, he must thank Anton’s impromptu midnight lectures.) He teaches the oldest girl and youngest boy to use a bow and an arrow. They teach him bribes of their language and show him how to braid his unruly hair like they do, in many thin, long plaits.

“Here,” the girl says one night, looking satisfied with her handywork. “Now you are Guanche, too.”

Soon, he stops watching over his shoulder. He stops looking for familiar yet foreign faces in the crowd.

Could you have really let me go? He wonders, still, in the early hours of the morning, when he cannot help but skim over their bond, when he knows Anton must be asleep. Or is this another one of your games? He cannot quite tell which hypothesis makes him feel more dread, or more relief.

Then, he stops feeling for the bond at all. He buries it as deep as he can, in the darkest, most secret corners of his heart.

At the end of the season, when the cereals dry up and the wind rises, he finds work with herder, a man too old to oversee the transhumance of his animals anymore. Winters in Lanzarote are a mild affair, it seems, shorter days and rainy nights, but it never grows truly cold, even in the small black mountains surrounding the island. Mayan doesn’t mind taking the sheep to pasture there. It’s a lonely endeavor, three months spent in the wilderness, with a small wooden shelter to rest at night, but he finds that he relishes the company of the quiet, peaceful livestock. He finds unexpected solace in that solitude. There are no wolves or bears on the island, only the occasional snake and a few vicious hawks to protect the yearling lambs from. On most days, Mayan walks alongside the beasts, then sits and watches them, watches the land. He carves pieces of wood to occupy his hands – weapons, first, then small statues of sheep and birds, of sharks and crocodiles. He is not as proficient an artist as Anton, but he finds that he is satisfied with his skills all the same. After a couple of months, he starts carving human-shaped figurine and faces. No matter how hard he tries, though, they always end up looking the same.

Once a week, he goes down into the valley for supplies, and he meets with the Guanche family whose house he shared in the fields. They bring him small gifts – fresh fruit, clean linen, painted ceramic beads to weave into his hair – and he gives them the wooden animals he sculpted in the mountains, making the children shriek in joy and awe.

This is not a bad life, he thinks, these days, looking at the setting sun and at the grazing sheep, and he may even have come to truly believe it.

The nights are harder, though. During the night, it is still difficult to keep the nightmares at bay. During the night, when he looks down at his hands, they are invariably red with Anton’s blood, and sticky with faded pink petals. During the night, the sheep’s bleating sounds surprisingly like the wails of young children and the howls of grieving mothers. During the night, the hard straw mattress feels like the cold slabs in the cells of his youth, and the scars on his shoulders ache. During the nights, and these are perhaps the hardest dreams to dispel, he sometimes feels the phantom heat of someone else’s skin against his, the ghostly touch of fine, elegant fingers, and the desperate, animal craving he so loathes.

The nights are getting shorter, however, and he can endure.

And then, one morning, as the first sunbeams of spring descend on the island, Mayan awakes to a feeling he hasn’t experienced in months. When he opens his eyes, the world around him is different – the taste of the air, the smell of the wind, the feel of the familiar small pebbles under his feet, the pastel black and green of the mountains, the muted blue of the sky. All of it is… sharper. More vivid.

Ah, he thinks, awed despite himself, was it truly what it was like before?

Is it trepidation he feels? Anger? Relief? Vindication? Longing? Was it always so hard to tell the difference?

It was, wasn’t it? This was why I came here. This was why I ran hallway across the world.

He has not touched his bond in weeks, but when he brushes against it now, it thrills with emotions and excitement. With hunger. Mayan closes his eyes for a long minute, then he stands up and exits the cabin. He tends to the flock, leads the animals to the river, brings them back to pasture, throws rocks at the circling hawks, and finally, as afternoon is almost bleeding into evening, he sits on his favorite rock, the one that looks a little like a lion overlooking the valley, and he waits.

Anton is alone when he appears on the gravelly, winding path, dressed inconspicuously enough in black, loose-fitting garments and flimsy leather shoes. He could be a Spanish missionary, Mayan supposes. That’s probably what he looks like to the islanders, and they would have given him a wide berth. He can’t repress a smile. Clever. Devious.

It is such a strange, yet poignant sight – his deceptively slight silhouette moving slowly through the herd, a cautious, well-fed wolf walking among unsuspecting sheep. They have nothing to fear, though – they are not his intended prey. Was he always so heartbreakingly beautiful? Are Mayan’s traitorous eyes merely playing tricks on him now?

He doesn’t move from his perch. He will stay still. He will make Anton come all the way to him.

I have done that, already, haven’t I? You’ve traveled half the world to come to me.

He wishes the knowledge did not bring him such savage, dark pleasure, but maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe he is allowed his gloating, too.

When Anton finally climbs the lion-shaped rock and sits heavily beside him, he is panting slightly. This was a long, hard walk from the harbor, and Mayan suspects the previous weeks were long and hard as well. He would not have sailed a small fishing vessel, of course, he would have taken a mightier, faster boat, but the sea is vast and turbulent, still. For a long minute, neither of them talks.

“These are the wrong shoes for these paths,” Mayan says finally, voice a little rough with disuse. Anton has travelled for weeks to find him – he supposes he can be the first to speak.

The other man grimaces. “I have come to realize that, yes.”

Mayan will not smile. “How was the journey?”

“The crossing or the climb?”

“Either. Both.”

“Rocky. Wet.” Anton sighs. “You’re a hard man to find.”

Mayan doesn’t look at him. If he looks, he will be lost. He arches an eyebrow. “Am I?”

“You’re a hard man to reach,” his scion amends. “I was afraid I wouldn’t actually make it here.”

“You have never been afraid of anything in your life,” Mayan retorts, although he remembers Anton standing on the brigandine, an arrow jutting from his shoulder, the sky opening above his head. He remembers the taste of his fear, then.

A silence. “I was told you were guarding sheep, now.”

“As you can see.”

A sigh. “Sheep? Really?”

This time, Mayan looks back. “They are a lot less work than you ever were.”

This draws a surprised laugh out of Anton and his eyes look almost brown in this pale light. Well, Mayan supposes he was always lost, anyway.

“This is new, too,” Anton adds, somewhat inanely, gesturing towards his braids.

“Yes,” Mayan replies noncommittally.

“I like it,” he offers, and Mayan is immediately irritated by the rush of gratification that washes over him. For the gods’ sake. “Can I touch them?” the other man adds, uncharacteristically coy.

At least, he asked. He didn’t take. Mayan narrows his eyes and squares his jaw. “No.”

Anton takes it in stride, nodding solemnly. “Very well.”

“What do you want?” Mayan asks briskly. “I imagine you didn’t come all the way here to express your disapproval regarding my choice of occupation or comment on the way I wear my hair?”

Maybe his query is not particularly honest, either – there are only two reasons why Anton would ever trek all the way up these hills to sit amongst bleating sheep. Since he hasn’t burned his Companion to the ground yet, he is probably not here to take revenge. Not like this.

“I want you to come home,” he replies calmly. “I want you to come back to me.”

Mayan closes his eyes. “I brought you back to me,” he said once, in a dark, damp cave, twenty-five years ago. A lifetime past. Just yesterday. What is time to people like them?

“I almost murdered you,” he says after a long minute.

“That wouldn’t be the first time,” Anton retorts reasonably, as though this particular aspect of his flight were hardly the issue. As though this incident were but a minor spat between them.

And maybe it is, to you. You understand violence and anger better than you understand anything else. You forgive them more easily than you would any other offense.

“And I told no one else. My mother thinks I was attacked by an unknown assailant and that I sent you on a very secret mission.” He smiles, a boy reveling in his own cleverness. “You have nothing to worry about.”

Mayan looks down at his sheep. A lamb has wandered away from the herd and he tracks her ambling closely, ascertaining that she doesn’t stray too far. “Did you kill the boy, yet?”

Anton’s face doesn’t change, but their bond flickers uncomfortably. He stays silent for a moment, then he tilts his head back, looking at the pale blue sky, tinged with the pink of incoming dusk. “Would my answer to your question affect your answer to my request?” he says softly.

Mayan thinks of all the wooden faces in his wooden cabin. “No,” he replies, more hoarsely than he meant to. “I suppose it wouldn’t.”

Anton shifts slightly, drawing just a little closer. They are not touching but sitting close enough that Mayan can feel the heat of skin caressing his. He can smell him. A twisted pang of sorrow, desire and longing tugs at his heart. I missed you so. Even as I ran, I could never leave you behind.

“I did not kill him,” Anton says at last – a plain truth – and Mayan blinks, genuinely surprised.

“Why not?” he asks prudently.

Anton smiles his sharp, dangerous smile. His right hand brushes against his stomach, almost absentmindedly. “You made a compelling argument for his life.”

Mayan opens his mouth, but no response comes. He takes a deep breath and after a moment, he asks, “Did you leave him to his father? You were right about this – Lord Tower will come for them.”

“Oh, was I right?” his scion pushes, half teasing, half baiting. Mayan gives him a severe look. “I did not leave him with his father,” he continues, more soberly. “I took him in.”

A beat of silence follows his words.

“What?” Mayan says, truly baffled this time.

Anton shrugs, as though he couldn’t imagine why that would surprise his Companion. Their bond flares up with pleasure, however. Maybe Mayan isn’t the only one craving approval, after all. “I funded Yara’s husband’s venture in the New World. In exchange, he gave me his son. I was right – he has very little regard for his duties as a father.”

“So, you…” Mayan is at a loss for words. “You are raising this child?”

Anton tuts. “Don’t be ridiculous. Did you think I left him on the ship while I wandered up here? I moved Yara’s Companion, Astrid, in too. She and my mother are taking care of the baby.”

Mayan gapes at him. “You convinced your mother to come to live with you?”

Is this truly happening? Are you really here, telling me these things, or have I grown lonely enough that my dreams are now bleeding into my days?

“It is quite the story, actually,” Anton says with a flourish of his hand. “I will tell you, if you want to know. But the short of it is – yes, I have.”

Well, it seems that all Mayan had to do was move out of his way, and his scion became a model citizen. A decent man. Everyone is doing much better without him, are they not?

“And your father let you?”

Anton looks a little grim for the first time since this mad conversation began. “Not… exactly. He and I had words. I may have moved our household somewhere a little… safer.”

“Safer?” Mayan repeats dully.

“Paris,” Anton specifies breezily. “I hear it will be the Constantinople of the modern age. They have theatres and palaces. You will love it.” He gives him a sideway glance. “If you wish to come.”

“Lord Tower can find you in Paris.”

“He can find us anywhere, presumably.” He looks around, raising his eyebrows at the expanse of dry grass, black stone, and bumbling sheep. “Well, perhaps not anywhere.” He smiles again. “But angry as he was, I don’t think he is coming after us. Not yet. I gave him something he very much wanted to keep him at bay.”

Mayan frowns. “What?”

“I let him disinherit me.”

Mayan’s heart slows down. His face feels hot and cold at the same time. “You did what?” he whispers.

“I renounced the Dagger Throne,” Anton confirms. “He can make Adèle his heir. Or he can let mother go, find another spouse, and sire more children. I am powerless to stop him.”

“You are not,” Mayan says in a low voice. “You have never been powerless.”

Anton hums low in his throat. “I don’t know. I can only take so many knives to the gut.”

Mayan takes a moment to think about his next words. He has never been much of a talker, and he hasn’t conversed at length with anyone in a long time. “There will be no knife in my hand on the day you move against your father,” he finally vows. “Except to cut his throat.”

Anton looks at him, head still tilted back, exposing his own neck. It takes a lot out of his Companion not to sink his teeth into it. “I will keep that in mind,” he replies, tongue darting between his lips.

“I cannot believe you did this,” Mayan comments after a short pause, still reeling from the news – all of it. “You have always wanted this throne more than anything else.”

But then, he thinks of Anton, still a teenager, crushing poisonous berries into a nobleman’s wine, incurring his father’s formidable wrath, because he had threatened a servant girl’s virtue and insulted Mayan. He thinks of him, pale and shaken by things he had seen in the Amazons’ village, climbing the deadly cliffside to the lich’s lair to attempt to protect them from the demon. He thinks of him sacrificing his last spell, his last chance to save his own life, to burn the captive women before they could turn on their children.

Your bravery always comes shrouded in darkness, he thinks sadly. Even your good deeds have fangs and make people bleed. But they are good deeds, still.

“Not more than anything,” Anton says quietly. “Never more than anything.”

Mayan has no retort to this. He looks down at his sheep grazing peacefully as the sun sets over the mountain. He will need to lead them back into the valley before it gets too dark.

“Do they all have names?” his scion asks suddenly.

“Of course not,” Mayan scoffs. “They are sheep. There is a hundred of them.”

Anton grins. “Don’t try to lie to me,” he says softly. “I can always tell. You gave them names. Each and every one of them.”

Mayan pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs in exasperation. He doesn’t answer. A companionable silence settles over them as they watch the sky reddening around them.

“Will you come with me?” Anton finally asks, his voice a little strained. “Will you come home?”

Mayan wonders if he truly doesn’t know the answer to his question, or if he is merely offering him the illusion of self-determination. He supposes he appreciates the effort either way. Once again, he thinks carefully of what he wants to say. A part of him wants to ask, “Is your hunger really satiated?” Another, “what if I tell you no? What then?” Most of him, though, most of him wants to know – “Why did you say my name, then, when you were lying in a pool of your own blood?”

“What if I had left you there?” he ends up asking instead. “To bleed out on the floor?”

I thought about it. I wanted to.

“Then I supposed I would have died,” Anton replies practically, raising his eyebrows as though his question was absurd. Mayan reckons that it is, to an extent.

“Did you not mind the prospect?” he presses again.

“Dying?” Anton says with a grimace. “I do mind. It sounds dreary.”

“Then why?” Mayan grits. “You didn’t even…” he trails off. “You didn’t try to fight it.”

A heavy silence follows. Anton’s black eyes scrutinize him questioningly, sincerely troubled by his Companion’s query. As if his actions should have been transparent to him. “You’re my Companion,” he finally tells him, his tone even. “If you want me dead, how can I expect to stay alive, anyway?”

“Don’t do that,” Mayan barks.

“Do what?”

“Act like I have the power of life or death over you.”

Anton still looks puzzled when he answers, “but you do.”

Mayan huffs, unsettled. “Since when?”

“Since the beginning,” Anton replies. “Since we were children and you pushed me into a monster’s lair, then pulled me out at the last second.” He tilts his head to the side, regarding the other man pensively. “I knew then what I know now. You said I was never afraid of anything – well, I am not afraid to die.” He waves a hand all around him, not at the mountains or the sheep, but as if nonchalantly embracing the whole world with a tip of a single finger. “Nothing out there can ever touch me. Nothing out there can claim my life. When I die, it will be by your hand.”

Mayan stares at him, stricken silent.

“I find a lot of comfort in that knowledge,” Anton adds, more lightly.

There is a hard lump in Mayan’s throat, but he swallows around it. “Why did you really come? Why do you even want me back?”

He is not fishing for praise or reassurances. He wants the truth. Anton’s face twitches. “I need you,” he says simply.

“What for?” Mayan challenges. “You don’t value my counsel and you don’t need my protection.”

“I do value your counsel,” the other man replies tartly. “Or did you miss the part where I surrendered my throne and uprooted my life and my home to heed your advice?”

That was not my advice, Mayan almost says. I didn’t ask you to do any of this. I merely told you not to murder an innocent child.

Perhaps this would not be in good faith, however. To Anton, this all amounts to the same thing.

“And I do need your protection,” he adds, frowning. “Why would you doubt it?”

Mayan laughs. “Please. Throne or no throne, you are one of the most powerful magics user of your generation and you are clad in so many sigils, in so much power that a cannon ball could not hurt you. You are the smartest, most vigilant, most ruthless man I’ve ever met. You don’t need anyone to guard you from your enemies, least of all me.”

Anton keeps silent for a moment, regarding him thoughtfully. “I like it when you say I’m powerful,” he murmurs.

“Anton.”

He reclines, angling his face away. “I don’t need you to guard me from my enemies,” he finally says, so gently it’s almost a whisper. Almost an apology.

Mayan frowns. “Then what–” He cuts himself off. Turns to his scion.

What are you saying? He wants to ask, fear closing around his heart. He doesn’t. He knows what Anton is saying.

“I find comfort in that, too,” the man continues with a genuine smile. “There is no one else I could ever trust to do this for me.” His fingers hover over his stomach again. “There is no one else who would dare. No one would care enough.”

No one who loves me enough to slit my throat when the time comes.

“Don’t. Don’t ask that of me.”

“I never did,” Anton points out. “You offered. Three times, already.”

Mayan stands up. He feels like running away again, but where would he go? Anton will always be on his heels. The leash around his neck might be infinitely extensible, but it will never snap. A light, careful hand lands on his naked knee. There is such unexpected tenderness in the touch that he would be tempted to call it loving.

“I am sorry,” Anton says, and he almost sounds sincere. “I thought you knew.”

“I…” Did he know? Did he?

“I think about what it said often,” Anton continues. “I know you think about it too.”

It takes Mayan a second to understand. Little fledgling, I see it in your heart – the hunger. You hail from the same pit I do. He does think about it. He always will. He never realized he was not the only one.

“I thought about it, that night, when you stabbed me and I lay dying,” Anton says again, eyes growing distant. “Of course, it was trying to rattle me, back then. And yet…” he leaves the rest of his sentence unfinished. “But I’ve come to understand – the lich and I, we will never be alike.” He turns towards Mayan and his eyes are clear and bright again. “And it is neither time nor heart that truly separates us. Yacam, or whatever it was called when it was still a woman, still one of us – she had no one to watch over her. No one to stop the leprosy from spreading. No one who cared enough to end her before it was too late and she longed to devour the entire world.” His hand caresses Mayan’s calf, gliding down to his ankle. “But I have you. You will always protect me. You will never let what happened to her happen to me.” With this, he pushes his face against his Companion’s leg and presses a single, reverent kiss on his skin. “For that, I am so grateful.”

Mayan covers his face with his hands and inhales sharply through his nose, the soft press of Anton’s mouth against his skin a fluttering dragonfly and a red-hot iron. They stay in that same position for long seconds before he finally sits back down. Perhaps he always did know. Perhaps this why he really ran – not in anger, or horror, or fear of what his scion would do to a child he did not know, but in the knowledge that it could only ever end this way, with Anton looking up at him and whispering his name, Mayan’s blade in his heart, Mayan’s hands around his neck.

“That is not fair,” he says huskily, with childlike indignation.

“No,” Anton concedes, kissing his shoulder this time. “It is not.”

They sit in silence again, until he repeats, almost shyly. “Will you come back anyway?”

Mayan graces him with a single nod. Then, pursing his lips, he adds, “but not yet.” He points at the sheep. “The transhumance is not over. I can’t abandon the animals here.”

Anton blinks at him. “The…” he catches himself, remembering why he came for. Remembering to be civil. Mayan’s lip twitches. He can let himself revel in this brief moment of power. “I see. How long, yet?”

“Ten days, give or take. Then, I will come with you.”

His scion sighs, but he doesn’t attempt to argue. “Very well.” He indicates the shepherd’s hut below. “Is this where we will be sleeping?” Mayan stares. Anton raises his eyebrows. “You can’t expect me to sleep outside with the sheep.”

“I don’t expect you to stay here at all. There are inns on the shore for the merchants. You will be much more–”

“No,” Anton interrupts jovially, standing up. “Absolutely not. The crossing was ghastly enough – I am not letting you out of my sight again. I will be staying here, with you. And the sheep, apparently.”

“This is a tiny, wooden cabin,” Mayan argues. “I sleep on a heap of brittle straw. There are beetles.”

“I remember a tiny wooden cabin on a tiny wooden boat,” Anton answers easily. “Do you think so little of me that you don’t believe I will last ten days in these mountains?”

Mayan thinks of Anton sleeping on the hard floor of this dilapidated hut, surrounded by cattle. He thinks of him walking alongside the herd, barefoot and unwashed for days, and drinking from the stream, and eating roots and dried fruit. He thinks of him burrowing into him for warmth at night. His heart flutters.

“I merely fear for the sheep’s safety,” he replies.

Anton grins. His teeth glint in the declining sunlight. “Just tell me which ones are your favorite. I promise not to eat them.”

Mayan is one hundred and seventy-one the last time he attempts to kill his scion.

Perhaps, he thinks a few hours later, as he lies in Anton’s sleeping arms, he can learn to find some solace in the other man’s certainty – when I die, it will be by your hand.

As the years pass, he does. Mayan understands, now, the only real threat he must guard Anton against is, and always will be, himself. He can handle everything else. No, he thinks, as years turn into decades, and decades into centuries, as empires rise and fall, as plagues engulf the world and continents sink – as long as he watches over him, nothing out there can ever touch his scion.

Nothing at all.