Beautiful Salvation (9 page)

The line between Saamal’s brows deepened. “I don’t understand. Why do you think you were possessed? Why do you think the Black God wants more bloodshed? What nightmares?”

Aiyana stepped back, eyes narrowing in suspicion at Saamal. “Are you a stranger to this kingdom?”

“No.” Saamal tried to step closer to her again, but paused when she held up a hand. “Aiyana, why are you afraid of me? Why are you afraid of the Black God?”

“Because we worship the White God. We celebrate life, justice, and mercy. The Black God celebrates war, judgment, and bloody sacrifice. The Black God possessed me when I was only a baby, putting his darkness inside me so that I would become an instrument of his violent blood lust.” Frustration burned inside her and she blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay. “I have fought my entire life against that darkness.”

Saamal blinked, his lips parted. Slowly, the lines in his face tightened, his lips pressing together in a thin line. Claws clicked together as he fisted his hands at his sides, muscles rippling as they tensed. His eyes grew misty, swirling and moving until they became drowning pits that were dizzying to look at. A roiling energy stirred to life around Saamal and the night seemed to absorb the light, the forest growing darker around them, the wind stirring and tossing Aiyana’s hair about her face. She raked it into one hand, holding her hair out of her eyes as she took a few steps away from Saamal.

“The White God does not rule this kingdom,” Saamal growled. “His time has not yet come. The Black God still rules here.”

“You were not possessed against your will.” Aiyana stepped back again. “You became his host willingly. You
wanted
to serve the Black God.”

“Please do not be so frightened.”

Saamal stepped closer again, his hand held up, palms out. His eyes drifted closed and he breathed in again, seeming to savor some scent that she could not detect. Aiyana sniffed the air, trying to determine what had caught Saamal’s attention. He opened his eyes, a hazy, almost drugged appearance in the once again golden orbs.

“You are beautiful, Aiyana, and I can sense your strength. I don’t know who told you such frightening tales to make you fear the power inside you, but when I look at you, I do not see a threat to your people. I see a woman who will be a strong queen someday, someone who has the power to protect her people against any force that may threaten them.” He took a step and this time, Aiyana didn’t step back. He raised a hand and stroked the back of his fingers against her cheek.

Aiyana caught herself leaning into his touch, soothed by it and his words in some strange and wholly foreign way. She wanted to fold herself into his arms, wanted to bask in the peace of being with someone who knew what she was and wasn’t afraid, someone who saw her darkness as a strength. His words touched a need inside her, a need to be a good queen, a protector of her people instead of the danger her mother believed so strongly that she was.

“I have waited a long time to meet you.”

His voice was gentle, soothing, the caress of a rose petal against her skin. He leaned down and Aiyana’s pulse pounded in her ears. He was going to kiss her. A fine trembling seized her body and she stumbled back.

“I have to go.” Her words came out muffled, hindered by the confusion he’d managed to inspire in her, the tangle he’d made of her thoughts. Her head spun and she wavered as she stepped back, trying to put distance between her and the man causing so much conflict inside her.

“Go where?” Saamal grabbed her arm, keeping her next to him. “Why are you out here, Aiyana? Why are you not in your palace, safe and sound?”

“Safe and sound,” Aiyana spat. Her nostrils flared and she clenched her hands into fists. She tore her arm free from Saamal’s grip. “I hate those words. They mean nothing but trapped, imprisoned. Despite all your pretty words, I know my people are afraid of me and I know those guards that hover around me every second are as much to protect my people from me as they are to protect me from any imaginary threat.”

She clamped her mouth shut, biting off the last word before she could spew anymore personal information. Saamal was a stranger. He shared her curse, but that did not make him a friend, didn’t make him a reliable confidante. Unease rolled through her stomach. As a matter of fact, he was the opposite of reliable. He had welcomed what was done to him, wanted it. She shook her head, backing away. “I have to go.”

“Aiyana, you are not a threat.”

Saamal tried to catch her arm again and she bared her teeth at him, raising one clawed hand in warning.

 
“I dream of spilling my people’s blood, sacrificing them to the earth in the name of prosperity,” she seethed. “I have dreams of leaping upon unsuspecting youths, challenging them to fight, to prove their strength. I dream of killing them, brushing off their death as proof that they were not strong enough to be worthy of this kingdom.” Tears burned her eyes and she jutted her chin out at Saamal in challenge. “Do you think that’s not evil? That it doesn’t make me a threat to my people? Because if you can look me in the eye and still claim I will make a great queen, then you are just as great a threat as I am.”

“Darkness is every bit as necessary as light.” A muscle in Saamal’s jaw twitched.

He paused and focused on the trees around them as if gathering his thoughts. His arms hung limply at his sides and he ducked his head and closed his eyes a moment. When he met her eyes again, Aiyana’s lips parted and the tension bled from her shoulders. There was sorrow in the set of his shoulders, deep lines in his face that looked like…shame?

“The urges inside you are not so macabre as they may seem.” He met her eyes again, his voice calm, clear. “I can help you understand.”

“I don’t want to understand, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say to try and make me give in to the urge to hurt people.” She whirled around and stalked through the woods, heading in the direction of the lake where Okomi had told her the fairy could be found, more determined than ever to get rid of her curse. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she tossed back over her shoulder. “If all goes as planned, I won’t be this way for much longer.”

Suddenly Saamal was standing in front of her, his feline eyes glowing in the darkness, the air around him vibrating with restrained energy. “What do you mean?”

Aiyana tilted her chin up. “I’m going to see the fairy that lives near the lake. I plan to ask her to banish this darkness from me, prune away the rot so that whatever…power, I have can be allowed to grow in a more positive, less gruesome way.” Okomi’s words tasted strange on her tongue, and she shifted uncomfortably at the way Saamal’s face paled.

He leaned back and for a moment he looked like he might be sick. “You are going to a fairy to have her…exorcise this power from you?”

“Yes.”

The jaguar-man raised a clawed hand to his head, pressing his palm against his temple as if he had a headache. “But what if removing this power from you causes you harm? What if this power is so much a part of you that without it…you would die?”

His voice was low, calm, but there was a trembling undertone that spoke of the effort it took to make it that way. Aiyana got the distinct impression he was trying not to shout, resisting the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

“Then I’ll die.” Aiyana straightened her spine, steeling her resolve against the strange pain in Saamal’s eyes. “I will not be a threat to my people.”

“If the Lord of Near and Nigh gave you this power, then he obviously meant for you to keep it. He must mean for you to use it to benefit your people, perhaps you simply don’t yet understand how?”

Aiyana hardened her jaw. “I had no say in what was done to me. I was never asked if I wanted this power, never consulted about whether I wanted to be the one to bear the responsibility of these urges, this bloodlust. The Black God cares for power, not for people.” She hesitated, then forced out the next words in a rush. “The urge the power inspires in me to sacrifice my own people proves that. How could a god who cared for his people want them to die like that? Hearts ripped out and thrown into pits, flesh torn and—” She pressed her lips together, unable to say anymore.

Saamal flinched as though she’d punched him. He opened his mouth twice before he spoke. “Surely you know why the sacrifice is needed?”

Aiyana averted her eyes, examining the trees, the ground, anything to distract herself from remembered dreams. She knew that they were memories given to her when the Black God put his power inside her, knew that they weren’t merely images, but men who had truly been killed in the years before she was born, before her family had seen the error of their ways and turned to worshipping the White God. “Yes. My people used to believe the land had to be fed, to be revitalized. They thought it needed blood.”

Her stomach rolled. For a second she could swear she felt the earth trembling, a surge of hunger screaming from the land. The forest disappeared around her, and suddenly she was back in her dream. She could see herself, standing larger than life over a barren field, one of her subjects clutched in her grip. She squeezed the squirming form, claws sliding like swords into the struggling body until blood rushed in a warm flood over her hand, pouring to the earth in a waterfall of too much blood to have come from one body. The blood poured and poured, rushing like a river over the land. The land drank it down greedily, brown grass coming alive, flooding over the land in an emerald blanket. Dried up river beds swelling with water, trees blossoming with leaves where moments ago there had only been bare, brittle twigs. So much blood…

“Earth does not need blood to be fertile,” she gasped, talking to herself as much as to Saamal. “People, lives, should not be sacrificed for food.”

“Perhaps not in Sanguenay, Nysa, Meropis, or even
Dacia
, but here in Mu, it is
very
necessary.” Saamal widened his stance, his arms straight down at his sides as he faced her.

“Why?” Aiyana demanded, her heart beating so loudly she could barely hear her own voice. “Why must we be so barbaric, so bloodthirsty?”

“It is not the people who are bloodthirsty, but the land. Have you never heard the story of how Mu was formed?” A thread of warm anger had woven through Saamal’s voice and he stretched himself to his full six feet to stare down at her from his superior height.

Aiyana opened her mouth, then closed it. She searched her memory, but for some reason, none of the stories that came to her offered a response. “No.”

“In the beginning, there was only the sea, and the great crocodilian sea monster Cipactli. She was a ravenous beast with thick brown scales and a gaping mouth full of sharp, jagged teeth at every joint. The Black God and the White God sought to create a world where people could live and thrive, but every time they created something, it would fall down into the sea and Cipactli would consume it. Cipactli knew only how to destroy, and she kept the gods from creating the life they meant for their people. So the Black God and the White God joined forces. Together they defeated Cipactli and distorted her body. It was from her flesh that the world, the
Kingdom
of
Mu
, was created.”

“Our kingdom is standing on a dead crocodile?” Aiyana let her doubt show in her voice as she blinked disbelievingly at Saamal.

“Not dead. Cipactli was an immortal monster. She lives, as the land. After the gods defeated her and created the human race, Cipactli realized that she had the potential to serve life instead of end it, and she became content to be the land upon which her people thrived. However, her hunger did not vanish completely. She is still alive, and she still craves the nourishment she once sought as the sea monster she was born as.”

Memories of a deep, inhuman voice whispering through her mind came floating back to Aiyana.
“I’m hungry. Feed me, Aiyana. Flesh and blood.”
Cipactli? Had that voice been the sea monster—the land? Aiyana swayed on her feet. She wanted to sit, to curl up into a ball and think of the macabre history of her people, but she didn’t. A royal did not have the luxury of wallowing in horror. The kingdom must endure. She closed her eyes and evened out her breathing, focusing on slowing her rapid heartbeat. She thought back on what history she did know of her people, the few stories she’d heard of the sacrifices and her own experience with the grisly custom through her nightmares. “You’re telling me that once a year one of my subjects must be sacrificed…to feed the giant crocodile whose body makes up the land of my kingdom?” The words sounded ridiculous, but they resonated deep inside her, ringing with an awful truth. She opened her eyes to find Saamal watching her, sympathy in his eyes.