Skykeepers

friends, we’re still not sure who Ambrose was, for the same reasons as before—lack of records, too many people to choose from. But I think it’s safe to say he would’ve been someone the queen trusted implicitly, someone she thought would keep you safe and raise you well.” The winikin had clearly guessed her unspoken question, because he continued, “We have to assume that his orders from the queen included his severing his connection to the barrier. Every mention of the spells capable of breaking the barrier connection suggest that they are, quite literally, hell. If we take the trauma of the spell, and add that to his being abruptly cut off from the culture he’d spent his entire life training for, he must have . . . broken inside somehow. The queen would have picked him thinking he could handle it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”

You can say that again, Sasha thought. But for the first time in a long time— maybe ever—the anger and regret that tainted her memories of Ambrose were overlaid with a new degree of empathy. She’d been a part of Skywatch for only a few weeks, but already her life was intertwined, to different degrees, with her teammates, and the winikin. What would it be like to have that feeling of belonging, multiplied several hundredfold, and then have it yanked away? More, he would have been a functioning mage, capapble of tapping the barrier for power, for answers. Maybe he’d even had a cool talent. A lover. Gods, a family. Then, on his queen’s order, he’d left all that behind to undergo the worst sort of trauma, severing his connection to his entire life. And after that he’d been alone, adrift with a newborn baby, acting on standing orders to protect her and raise her as befitted a princess. Was it any wonder he’d lost it, that his priorities had gotten badly skewed, the delivery harsh in the extreme? Could she really blame him for breaking?

Sasha became aware that the tables had gone silent, that everyone was looking at her.

“You hanging in?” Michael asked.

She nodded. “Just rearranging a few very deep-seated preconceptions.” Like the one that said Ambrose had never wanted her, never loved her. He’d given up his life for her. How could that not be a form of love?

And at the thought, she had the glimmer of an idea, a strategy that might just get them into the haunted temple.

“I have something for you,” Strike said, gesturing for her to rise. “Come around here.”

Keeping the nascent plan to herself for the moment, she stood and joined him at the front of the group, in an open spot beneath the edge of the ceiba tree’s reach, where the shadows gave way to sunlight. Nerves hummed through her as she realized, from the serious expression on his face, that they’d moved into the formal- acceptance part of the morning’s meeting. She’d halfway expected something along those lines. What she hadn’t expected was for her stomach to go tight, for it to matter to her as much as it suddenly did.

She, who’d never wanted to believe in the Nightkeepers, now wanted to belong to them. She wanted to be one of them, wanted to fight with them, for them. She wanted her birthright, damn it.

Standing straight and tall in the strange orange sunlight, looking every inch the king even without his regalia, Strike pulled a gleaming black knife from his belt and held it out to her, haft-first. “Sasha Ledbetter, as a member of the jaguar bloodline and the royal house, this knife is yours by right of descent and the warrior’s mark,” he said formally. “Will you accept it?”

Her breath went thin in her lungs at the sight of the etched knife, which was sand-polished obsidian, worked with the jaguar and the ju. “Whose was it?” she asked softly, curling her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching for the blade, even though she was dying to snatch it from him. She didn’t know whether the impulse came from her newly minted warrior’s instincts or a chef’s appreciation of a good edge, but she wanted the knife, wanted it badly.

“The queen’s.”

The queen. Her mother. The woman who’d saved her by giving her to a madman. Sasha wasn’t sure how she felt about that, wasn’t sure what to think about the things she’d just learned. But she could no more refuse the knife than she could undo the past. She wanted the blade, wanted the symbol. She reached for it, then hesitated and looked at Anna. “You don’t mind?”

“Warrior’s prerogative,” Anna said. “Go ahead, please.” She touched the heavy chain she wore at her throat. “I’ve got our mother’s pendant.”

Our mother, thought Sasha, her heart kicking in her chest at the realization of a childhood wish fulfilled, though not how she ever would’ve expected it to be. Not now, she told herself. Later. She could process everything later. Her time wasn’t entirely her own anymore, and the Nightkeepers had priorities other than welcoming their newest member.

Throat closing, she took the knife, which was warm and heavy in her hand. As she tested its weight, Strike stepped forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Welcome home,” he said simply. Then, moving to her side, he waved the others forward to formally welcome her into the group. Anna was first, and gave her a big hug. The others greeted her one by one, both winikin and magi, with a handshake or brief kiss, acceptance as one of them. More, acceptance as royalty.

Michael held back until last. When he finally moved up to face her, the intensity in his eyes brought a jitter to her stomach and a skirr of warning from her warrior’s mark. Instinct said for her to back away, but pride had her holding still and offering him her hand rather than a kiss. He ignored the hand, leaned in, and touched his lips to hers. For a moment, she thought she heard his voice inside her head, a soft whisper: I’m sorry for last night.

Then he withdrew, leaving her to stare after him, trying to figure out if that had been wishful thinking or not. More shaken than she wanted to admit by the suspicion that she’d just touched on Michael’s thoughts, another sign that they were destined—or had been at one point—to be mates, she gripped her new knife convulsively. Forcing herself to ease up, she returned to her seat as the others took theirs. She didn’t move away from Michael, didn’t want to deal with the questions the move would raise. And, damn it, she would’ve been physically aware of him regardless of where either of them sat.

Strike brought the meeting back to order. “Jade? Anna? One of you want to bring us up to speed on where we stand with the Aztec research?”

In the weeks since Sasha’s rescue, although she’d been immersed in her studies, she’d been aware of the Nightkeepers’ ongoing efforts to find Iago’s stronghold, or at the very least project the Xibalbans’ next set of moves in the countdown to the end-time. Strike had sent teams to check out several of the mountains the Aztec had considered sacred, but they’d come back with a whole lot of negatives. The Florida compound was a crater, and there was no sign of Iago or his people anywhere else. It was like they’d disappeared, though not even Iago had power enough to tuck a few hundred Xibalbans into the barrier. Apparently it was far easier to fold away inanimate objects than people—it required serious magic to get a sentient being across.

Their inability to find Iago or catch a hint of any Xibalban activity on earth had left the magi trying to guess what they would try to do on the night of the winter solstice, when the three-year countdown began. Also, there was no sign of the Banol Kax. Instead of reassuring the magi, it had put them on edge.

Anna stood and walked past the tables to take Strike’s place. “I’m going to assume you’ve all read —or at least skimmed—the report Jade sent around last week. Suffice it to say that the deeper we go into the research, the more it looks like the Xibalbans all but created the Aztec empire, and that, if it hadn’t been for Cortes’s arrival and the subsequent Spanish conquest, the Xibalbans and Aztec might have wound up ruling all of Mesoamerica.” She paused. “Based on what we’ve seen from the Xibalbans so far, I think it’s a pretty good bet that Iago is planning to complete that rulership. I don’t think he’s trying to ally himself with the Banol Kax, as we had originally believed. I think he destroyed the intersection and hid the hellroad with the prime purpose of barring them from the earth for the time being.”

“But why?” Strike asked, frowning.

“I think he’s trying to preempt the end-time itself.”

That brought a murmur of surprise from the assembled group. When it died down, Anna continued.

“The Aztec calendar was akin to, but not identical to, the Mayan Long Count. It delineated a five-

thousand-year cycle broken into five periods, called suns. Each sun began with peace and prosperity, then deteriorated toward chaos, whereupon the gods rose up and destroyed their creations in order to bring them back to life, purified. The first period—the Sun of Precious Stones—ended when the jaguars and other animals rose up and slaughtered mankind. The Sun of Darkness ended with the destruction brought by a huge hurricane. The Sun