“…. to demand things from the diviners. I hope I haven’t raised a fool.”
The Inka's and the princess’s voices are as faint as the sea breeze and just as cutting. This is better than letting myself in. This is an advantage they can’t take away. I need to listen.
I hold my breath so as not to disturb the air. The noises come and go.
“… failed the Guardians, failed this family,” the Inka shouts the end of a sentence I missed the beginning of.
There’s murmuring and the sound of furniture and bodies moving. It all slowly gets closer to me.
“In the end, you will be on top,” the Inka says. She leaves no room for argument, so the princess’s agreement afterward isn’t a shock.
“I will, Inka Yanaru.”
“From the mouth of the diviners themselves, that girl, the so-called Guardians’ Hero, will be the one to pass the trials on Isla del Sol. Let her pass them then. She will retrieve the Sun Staff. And then, when she returns, she will be so injured she’ll have no choice but to hand you the Staff and lie down to die.”
“Inka Yanaru, that is not guaranteed by the diviners–”
“Then make it a guarantee.”
The breath is knocked out of me, and somewhere outside the range of my heartbeat, I hear the princess gasp as well.
“Understand, Yanami?”
I am so overwhelmed by the sound of my breathing that I do not process any words that follow. It takes only a second for me to regain my composure, but then all I hear is the whistling sea breeze.
Is it over? Is that the end? Is that supposed to be my end?
“Yanami.”
I have never heard a voice so acrid. The Inka’s tongue must burn.
“Yanami. You will get rid of the false hero.”
False hero. That’s how the Inka sees me. I am nothing more than the False King she defeated in her own youth. I keep my breathing under control. I can no longer hold my breath, not when I already feel like I’m going to pass out.
“I will not repeat myself.”
I don’t know what I want to hear. I beg my heart to quiet down. I beg the princess to just agree. I beg the Inka to take back her words, or I’ll make her by force. I beg enough times to turn the words meaningless, and I am only interrupted in those fated seconds by wind cooling the sweat on the back of my neck and whispering yet again.
You are meant to serve…
Then–
The resounding crack of skin against skin. I know the sound of a slap. I know this is one. The sound echoes in my head as if it were the squelch of a blunt object smashing in the princess’s head.
I feel sick. Then, she talks.
“I understand, Inka Yanaru.”
I can’t listen anymore with the wind slamming into my neck and ordering me to move, move,move. Why can’t I move? All I do is take one step back and lean against the wall next to the door.
Away from the sounds I can’t unhear.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but when the door opens, I am in a daze.
Oh, the princess is just as beautiful as the first time I saw her.
She’s no longer in ceremonial dress, but her tunic still screams Panaka. Its vibrant colors don’t shine the way they should in this cavern, but I catch the significance anyway. Her hair is still completely black. There are no white strands to prove what happened at the Guardians’ ceremony. She is heavenly, shining like a sun trapped inside a black-frosted glass cage.
