“We’ve gotten everything we can out of them.”
“Will they wait until sundown?”
“I’m sick of waiting.”
“She’s gone.” That’s my mother again. I could single her voice out of any chaos.
The figure’s hand goes up.
“He’s dying. He’s dying, and she knows it, and she’s playing games.”
She? Is she referring to me?
“I’m not waiting. We have what we need.”
The group all nods as if that communication said it all. I suppose for them it did. Because in the next second, the Inka is dead, a dagger to the throat.
The second after that, my mother follows.
The princess is sobbing. Or maybe that’s Mare, or the entirety of the empire. I can’t tell with the ringing in my ears.
All I can process, all I can think of, is my mother’s final words.
She’s gone.
I’m crying. I can’t breathe. My extremities go numb, my heart races, my body acts on its own accord. I did that. I did that.
And something has my lips curving up. Because I didthat. I was finally strong enough to leave her first.
Chapter 23
At night, Yanami and I sit outside by a dying fire. We’re not in Cusco anymore, far from it. We used the chaos in the aftermath of the executions to escape the city. Mare slept on my back, and we walked past the smell of iron and flesh. It took hours to find a cave away from it all, but we settled in before nightfall.
Silent. In disbelief.
Mare sleeps in the farthest corner of the cave. Safe. Covered. He’s unconscious from the use of mimicry, but maybe that’s for the best. In the far reaches of my mind, I realize I don’t want him to see me like this. Whatever this is. Whatever ugly monster I resemble. Whatever hero I’m trying so desperately to be.
I can’t see my reflection, but when I close my eyes and imagine it, it’s nothing but blood.
The princess looks a mess. Her white hair goes in all directions from being pulled by her own hands. Her lips are bitten through and raw. And me, my shoulder aches, and I notice red staining my blouse. When I take off my blouse with trembling hands, I see that half of my stitches are torn open. I stare at it and feel numbness overtake me as Yanami runs to wet some fabric and wipe me clean.
This is how we spend the first hour after our mothers’ deaths. Yanami’s hands on me long past my wounds being clean. She’s ice cold, but her hands are steady, wiping over the same spot until my skin is red and inflamed.
Yanami runs her fingers over my shoulder one last time, and they come back red. She stares at it. Does she see blood every time she closes her eyes too?
I almost ask. I almost say something bold, something that should come easily to me, something true. Something likeyour touch is keeping me alive.Something likeplease don’t go.
I don’t need to say anything. Yanami stares and stares until she doesn’t. Until she looks me straight in the eyes and touches my cheek with a bloody hand. It’s a phantom touch, there but not there. I feel the dried blood more than I feel her skin on mine.
When Yanami kisses me, it tastes of salt. I lick the tears off her lips and savor each one.
Now, the taste of Yanami’s, my Inka’s, emotions is all I can focus on, all I want to focus on. I’m tired of the blood. I’m so tired of my own thoughts.
“Do you hate me?” I whisper against her lips.
She breaks contact and turns her face to the side, but, before my heart can break, she follows it with a bite to my cheek. It hurts. She’s real, not a ghost, but a real human, beside me.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” she says.
