Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Teomitl is blazing, burning sunlight, walking through the world as though he’s covered in gold. When he is crowned...ah, when he is crowned he’ll be magnificent, the greatest Revered Speaker the Empire has ever known. Already he grows in power and wisdom by the day. By the time he’s ready for the throne, he’ll erase Tizoc’s name like mist.

And he turns and meets Acatl’s eyes from where the High Priest for the Dead is standing in the shade of the temple wall. Simply, casually, he holds out a hand. “Come on, Acatl. Let’s go.”

Acatl peels himself away from the cold stone, shivering at the pure pleasurable shock of being in the sunshine again. It feels so good to be warm. To remind himself that he is alive, that he has not yet gone down to join his patron in the underworld.

Teomitl’s hand in his is warmer yet.

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The star demons are falling again, and this time it’s not something that can be solved by the death of a single man. No, this time it’s because a sorcerer somewhere in the city—in their city—has summoned something too powerful to control, and now they’ve barricaded what feels like half the population of Tenochtitlan into the palace and the Duality House and they are fighting desperately to buy time.

Somewhere out there, Acatl knows his sister and his lover are battling for their very lives. If the room he was in had windows, he’d be able to see the ultramarine blue of the Duality and Teomitl’s searing sun-gold lighting up the darkness of an eclipsed sun.

He slashes his earlobes, prays for their success, and returns his focus to the ritual.

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Neutemoc was stern with his family, exactly the model of a Mexica patriarch, but...but his children weren’t scared of him. They ran shrieking with laughter around the courtyard, Necalli and Ohtli deliberately slowing their pace so little Mazatl could keep up, and Neutemoc only chuckled at their antics. He let them draw in the corners with charcoal and in the dirt with sticks.

Teomitl stood in the doorway watching them for so long that Acatl brushed his arm with a concerned expression, and he stepped aside with a murmured, “Sorry.”

Acatl wasn’t fooled. He gazed past him, watching his nieces and nephew for a long moment. “They’re good children.”

“Teomitl!” Mazatl shrieked. “Uncle Acatl says he’s teaching you magic, can you show us?”

Teomitl blinked. Acatl nudged him lightly. “Go on.”

Well. He supposed that counted as permission. Smiling, he went to show the toddler a few simple spells.

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They thought they were being discreet. They truly thought nobody was noticing the shift in their dynamic. They were idiots.

He may have been mostly blind now—gods, one day he was going to murder Tizoc-tzin with his bare hands—but he could see Acatl’s gray-black smoky magic mingled with Teomitl’s green jade anywhere. And he was, of course, seeing it everywhere, because they were practically attached at the hip wherever they went. After banquets they found secluded courtyards; in the middle of the Sacred Precinct the wind tangled their cloaks together.

So, of course, when he walked into Acatl’s temple one day and reflexively turned away from a sight he did not want to see even in his mind’s eye, all he could do was cackle.

“You really thought everyone didn’t know?”

Then Acatl had to hold Teomitl back from doing something violent, but Acamapichtli didn’t even care if the punch landed. His day was already made.

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“I have to work harder,” Teomitl says, scraping his hair back from his face. “I have to do better. If Tizoc is left to his own devices...”

“There’s not much else you can do,” Acatl says, and hates himself for it. He knows, after all, that there’s one thing Teomitl could do to handle the looming threat that is Tizoc’s continued reign, and he’s asked Teomitl to wait. I’ll give it a few years, Teomitl had promised, and knowing that he intends to keep it should make Acatl feel better.

Except that their Revered Speaker can’t lead a dog kennel, never mind an Empire, and watching Teomitl all but tear himself apart trying to keep the country together behind Tizoc’s back feels like a knife in Acatl’s heart.

“It would be so much easier if he just—if he just listened.” Teomitl blinks, and his eyes are wet. “If he—he was always arrogant, but he at least used to pay attention to things that weren’t himself. Now—he barely even hears me when I speak, and I’m his Master of the House of Darts!”

Teomitl must be exhausted, because he sounds close to tears. Acatl swallows past a lump in his own throat and reaches out to lay a hand on his arm. “You’re more than that. Didn’t I teach you well?”

Teomitl blushes, just barely visible on his dark skin, and doesn’t pull away. “...You did,” he murmurs, sounding a little bit more like himself. There’s the edge of a smile beginning in his voice. “Forgive me, I was...”

“Having a reasonable reaction to extended time in Tizoc’s presence?” Since that’s what Mihmatini is always telling them, he knows it will make Teomitl truly smile for once in this long, long day. It would help if you expressed your feelings more, she says, and Acatl thinks about the warm soft unfurling in his chest when Teomitl looks at him and wonders about that.

He’s not disappointed. Teomitl does smile, and then he clasps Acatl’s hand and his fingers are warm. “You’re right. I’ll figure something out.”

“I’ll help,” Acatl says without thinking, and Teomitl—

Teomitl looks like the sun.

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He found Quenami in his quarters. By the looks of it, the High Priest of Huitzilopochtli was trying to pack for a long journey. He’d barely turned Revered Speaker Tizoc’s corpse over to Acatl before trying to make his escape, so Teomitl supposed that perhaps the man wasn’t a complete idiot.

Not that it was going to save him.

“Ah—my lord—Teomitl-tzin—” Quenami had started being very obsequious around the time Tizoc had begun his decline. Now he was hesitating, wide-eyed, and if Teomitl hadn’t known him he might have thought him harmless.

He remembered all too well the sight of a knife at Acatl’s throat. The garrote tumbling into the dust.

He bared his teeth like an ahuitzotl in a parody of a smile. “Quenami. I’ve been looking for you.”

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They’re bundled up next to the braziers—it’s the dead of winter, and freezing, and really they should have moved inside ages ago but Teomitl had started complaining about something Tizoc had said regarding their military tributes so of course Acatl had asked him to explain—but well, anyway, between the food and the conversation Acatl is sufficiently entertained not to notice the cold.

And then Teomitl, usually so determined never to show weakness, starts shivering so hard he drops a grilled newt, and when Acatl looks at him he mutters “It’s chilly out. I should...I should get home.”

He should. He really should. But instead of a goodbye, what comes out of Acatl’s mouth is, “Stay.”

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It’s really not much warmer inside, unfortunately. Acatl only has the one reed mat, and at first Teomitl bundles himself up in his cloak and looks as though he’ll sleep on the floor to keep a polite distance between them. If he does, Acatl’s pretty sure it’ll be the only time he’s ever been polite in his life.

Acatl lays down on his mat for a moment, watching him. They’ve lit another brazier; the flickering firelight casts half Teomitl’s face in shadow, but the rest of his skin glows. Acatl finds he has to clear his throat before he can speak. “Come closer. We’ll be warmer that way.”

“...Alright then,” Teomitl says, and his voice is just as quiet. There’s something important here, something that could be ruined if they aren’t careful.

But then Teomitl is pressed against him, both their cloaks wrapped around their bodies so that Acatl feels all that bare skin like a shock against his own, and he’s not afraid in the least. Teomitl is deliciously warm and solid, his heartbeat steady as a drum, and when Acatl puts an arm around his waist he sighs and nuzzles in so sweetly that Acatl’s breath catches in his throat.

Oh, he thinks. He’s never been this close before. He would have thought—if he’d let himself think about it at all—that holding Teomitl would be like an inferno, but instead the heat of banked embers are soaking into his bones.

He lets out a long, gusty breath, and Teomitl only mumbles in drowsy satisfaction, “Good night, Acatl.”

“...Good night, Teomitl.”

He doesn’t think he’ll get much sleep.

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Apparently, haggling was a skill Teomitl was supposed to develop, but he really didn’t see the point. He had plenty of cacao beans and feathers and quills filled with gold; why shouldn’t he spread them around and make some vendor’s day a little better?

Acatl, judging by the way he was sighing and shaking his head, did not agree. “You are aware that those prices were practically robbery, aren’t you?”

“I can afford it!”

“That’s not the point! Come, we have one more stop.”

But he carried half their purchases anyway, so Teomitl guessed he wasn’t too annoyed.

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He walks through the city like a ghost, like a shadow. His footsteps sound muffled in his ears. He hears people speak to him—his warriors want to know what they should do now, his noble allies are angry that their promised coup has drifted away like smoke—but they make no impression. Impressions are for the living, and after what he’s done he doesn’t think he deserves to be among their number anymore.

But you turned back, says a voice that sounds like Mihmatini back when she loved him.

But you are alive, says a voice that sounds like Acatl back when he wasn’t cripplingly disappointed in him.

Gods, Acatl. He wants to bleed for that again. He’s been such an arrogant, hard-hearted fool to imagine that it didn't matter, to imagine that removing his brother from the throne to potentially save the Empire would be worth Acatl hating him. Acatl probably hates him now anyway. It would serve him right.

He ascends the steps of Lord Death’s temple like a soul ascending to Lord Death’s throne. When he reaches the top, it takes every scrap of breath in his body to say, “Acatl-tzin, I’ve come to apologize—” knowing it won’t be enough, knowing that nothing can be enough.

“There’s no need,” Acatl says, and brings him back to life.

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Mihmatini is truly and honestly still furious at him. He stood in front of her with an army and asked her to help him break their empire, and thought—just because she’s his wife—she would actually do it? Even after he turned his troops around, even after their long-overdue conversation, she still kind of wants to slap him. (He’d let her, too. She can’t stop thinking about his sword thrown in the dust between them, the tremor in his voice as he’d stared at it and whispered that he was sorry.)

So when he stands in the doorway of their chambers, swallows audibly, and says, “I...came to get my sleeping mat,” her first thought is that it’s for the best. She needs to get her head on straight.

But her second thought is—No. They were barely married a week before Teomitl went off to war, and that was four long, cold months without him. Then he came back, and she’s barely seen him for days during which he almost died. He may be an idiot (which she’s said to his face, and she knew he knew he’d done wrong when he didn’t even get defensive over it) but he’s her idiot.

So instead of standing aside, she says, “You don’t have to.”

He recoils like he’s been slapped, eyes going wide. “Mihmatini...”

(Why did you do it? she’d asked. What could have possessed you to think any of this was a good idea? And if he’d said for the Empire or for the sake of the Fifth World, she would have divorced him on the spot; such a man might make a wonderful Emperor but that’s not the sort of husband she wants. But instead he’d blurted out because Tizoc tried to kill Acatl, and he’s a danger to you, and—and I—I can’t—)

(She can understand that. She still doesn’t like it, because she and her brother can both take care of themselves—well, maybe not Acatl, honestly, Teomitl has a point there—but she can understand it.)

“Come on in,” she says with a sigh. “The other side of the room is free.”

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His mother died to bring him into the world. His grandfather was the Emperor. His brother Axayacatl reigns now. Who, then, is Teomitl? What great deeds has he done? A single captive, even taken without aid from his comrades, is nothing. He needs to do better, do more, if he’s to make a name for himself.

You’ve done enough, Acatl-tzin tells him, and he almost wants to scream. It’s never enough. Not until—not until—

He thinks, for a while, the crown will satisfy him. Maybe it will. He doesn’t get to find out right away, though, because first there is a courtyard and sunlit temple steps and maize cakes and I’m asking this as one man to another and Acatl and...

And maybe, for now, he can say he’s earned a victory.

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Acatl doesn’t think he’s ever been this angry in his life. No, that’s a lie. He’s definitely been this angry. It just hasn’t ever felt this personal before. He’s mine, Teomitl had said, and then Aren’t you, Acatl-tzin, as though his loyalty is assured—as though Acatl will follow at his heels like a dog, no matter how stupid and selfish and short-sighted—he is going to break them, but he can’t see it. He’d stood in front of Acatl in all that finery, almost a Revered Speaker already, and he’d thought Acatl was so loyal, so besotted—

He chokes on the thought, slamming an open palm on the wall. No. Teomitl thinks he can be ordered around? Well, Acatl will prove him wrong. Let the boy ask him again. Let the boy beg. He won’t be listening, not anymore. He won’t be a party to this senseless destruction.

A voice in his mind whispers, Even if it takes Teomitl with it?

He ignores it.

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Acatl heard him coming, of course, but he still looked stunned when Teomitl appeared around the edge of the copper-belled entrance curtain and lifted it to let the noon sun stream in. “What are you doing here?”

Suddenly, Teomitl wasn’t sure this was such a good idea. It had felt like one when he’d set out, and even when he’d had a tense and terrifying conversation with Ichtaca before being allowed to go in search of the man, but...well, his current record of good ideas was somewhat tarnished. After the past week, his nightmares had a new scenario to torment him with. Still, he was here now. Might as well forge ahead. Smiling with a confidence he didn’t quite feel, he held out the fat vegetable-and-chile tamales he’d brought. “I thought we could have lunch. You need to eat something.”

“I don’t need to be mothered,” Acatl muttered, but he took the tamale anyway.

Victory. He stepped back, holding the curtain open. “Come on,” he offered, “let’s sit in the sunlight.”

It was a beautiful day. A little chilly, admittedly, but that just meant he had an excuse to sit a bit closer than he normally would. The last time they’d been together like this had been after one of the worst days of his life, a day when he’d honestly thought Acatl might never speak to him again—ah, but then the man had smiled at him, and it was on the strength of that smile that he was here now. But the man he loved seemed distracted, eyeing him oddly, and finally Teomitl asked, “What?”

Acatl took another bite of his tamale and set it down, frowning. “...I wasn’t expecting...” He gestured wordlessly between them.

“Did you not think I was going to stop by?” They hadn’t seen each other in two days, since his utter debacle of a coup attempt. It had felt like an eternity.

Acatl was staring at the ground as though he found bare dirt fascinating. Finally he said simply, quietly, “I’m not your teacher anymore. You don’t need me.”

Oh. Oh. Teomitl sucked in a sharp breath. “And you think that means I’d cut all ties with you?” he snapped, angrier than he’d meant. “You think that I don’t still want you in my life, Acatl? In any way I can?” He knew he was saying too much, revealing things he’d really hoped to keep hidden, but he couldn’t stop himself. “There doesn’t need to be a reason!”

Silence for a long moment, and then Acatl looked up and there was a smile tugging at his lips and oh no, Teomitl was gone. “So I’m to assume this will be a regular occurrence then?”

“Of course,” he huffed, and shoved half a tamale into his mouth before Acatl noticed he was blushing. “How are we going to hold the Empire together without you?”

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To raise the souls of the dead from their rightful afterlives—or worse, to shove them rough and uncaring back into their rotting bodies—is the mark of a sorcerer. But to go to those afterlives and speak with them there? To lay them to rest properly and respectfully? That’s Acatl’s job.

Which, of course, means that when the dead begin walking the streets of Tenochtitlan everyone is looking at him, and he has to say—more than a little defensively—“I don’t know why this is happening either!”

“Probably Tizoc-tzin’s fault,” Palli mutters, and Teomitl adds in an undertone, “It’s not too late—”

“We are not committing regicide just in case it stops the walking dead!”

Even though, he thinks wryly, it almost definitely would.

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“Motherfucker,” Acatl muttered, and then realized what he’d just called the Revered Speaker of the Mexica Empire and winced.

On the other side of the mat, Teomitl was staring at him in open-mouthed shock. Well, he’d encouraged Acatl to speak his mind more often, so really this was his fault in the first place. “I didn’t even know you knew words like that,” he finally managed to blurt out.

Acatl snorted. “I studied in the calmecac the same as you did. Do not get me started.”

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“Uncle Teomitl!” Ollin cries, running across the courtyard as fast as his stubby legs will carry him. He hasn’t been walking very long, but he seems to have mastered the basics already—at least insofar as they pertain to speed. Acatl suspects a certain Master of the House of Darts has been a bad influence.

Said Master of the House of Darts has dropped to his knees to welcome the little boy into his arms, scooping him up with a beaming smile and a fond kiss to his forehead. “There’s my favorite little jaguar cub! Oof, look how big you’ve gotten!”

Acatl watches, warm all the way down to his bones, and whatever his face is doing makes Teomitl look up from where he’s nuzzling their nephew’s hair and ask, “What?”

His proud, prickly lover will make a wonderful father someday. “...You’re good with him,” he murmurs. And since it’s just the two of them and Ollin, and Ollin won’t notice, he gives into the urge to squeeze Teomitl’s arm.

The smile he gets in return outshines the sun.

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Ichtaca took in the sight before him and closed his eyes, just in case opening them again would reveal that he’d been having some sort of overwork-induced hallucination.

He wasn’t that lucky. His High Priest was still awake, still squinting at the assembled notes of their latest case by the light of a single guttering torch, and still in the exact same position Ichtaca had left him in three hours ago. There was nothing for it. Gritting his teeth, Ichtaca stomped up the steps.

“Acatl-tzin. Go to sleep.”

Acatl blinked up at him, blearily sitting up in a way that made Ichtaca’s spine ache in sympathy. “We’re so close to a breakthrough—”

“Sleep,” he repeated, and reached out to take Acatl’s arm when the younger man wobbled dangerously. “I will send someone to wake you if there are any new developments.”

“But I—” Acatl began, and Ichtaca sucked in a breath and brought out the reserve weapons.

“If you do not take better care of yourself, my lord, I will be telling your sister.”

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He’d taken up carving to have something to do with his hands when he was bored. It had been wood at first, and uniformly awful, but as his skills increased he discovered that other materials were better suited to the purposes he intended, whether those were magical—anything with a sharp point or edge could be used for the magic of living blood—or purely decorative. (There were more of those than he’d initially imagined. His siblings kept producing children.)

The claws and fangs of sacrificed jaguars were suited to either. He pressed one into Acatl’s palm, hard enough to draw blood, and hoped he wouldn’t live to regret it.

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They are at best uneasy allies; Acatl would be the first to admit he doesn’t trust Acamapichtli as far as he could throw him, though probably not to the man’s face. (Probably. It depends on how bad a day he’s had recently.) The High Priest of Tlaloc might have indirectly saved his life once, but his political machinations nearly led to Neutemoc’s death, and that’s not something Acatl can ever forgive.

And yet.

And yet.

There are conversations at banquets that aren’t as tense as they could have been. There are meetings in courtyards that are almost casual. There is laughter—unasked for, unsought—because it turns out they have remarkably similar senses of humor.

Sometimes, Acatl wonders what might have been.

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It’s been a very long time since Teomitl has been clumsy. He’s been training with weapons almost since he was big enough to hold one; each movement is as familiar to him as his own limbs. He can’t even remember the last time he dropped any of them or even so much as fumbled his grip.

But he hasn’t been himself lately, not while knowing he’s been walking farther and farther away from the people he loves, and so he’s wrapping his fingers with shaky hands and trying—trying so hard—not to think of a different pair of hands on his own.

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It is not, in the end, planned. Acatl doesn’t agonize over it for days, doesn’t bite his tongue and curse his fate and resolve to bury his desires forever. He could have, but he doesn’t. (Admittedly, this is probably only because Mihmatini comes to him a week after that horrible day in the courtyard and tells him, very matter-of-factly, “My husband is in love with you,” and it takes him an entire month to stop blushing whenever he thinks about it, by which time he’s fully accepted that yes, if Teomitl does want him he’s not even a little bit opposed to the idea.)

So by the time it happens, he’s entirely moved past the need to justify it to himself. He’s sworn vows of celibacy? Well, he swore vows to support the current emperor too, and this is a much less painful one to break. Both will happen when they’re meant to.

Teomitl looks at him, smiling in the sunlight, and he thinks, Now?

Teomitl’s fingers brush against his as they eat a late dinner in his courtyard, and he thinks, Now?

Teomitl plucks an errant bit of something from his hair, and he thinks—

He doesn’t think at all, because Teomitl’s mouth on his has wiped his mind clean.

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Teomitl chewed on his lower lip for a moment before switching his attention to the inside of his golden lip piercing, where it would at least be less noticeable. He’d certainly been more terrified than this—he’d been to war, he’d taken captives, he’d seen men die—but he didn’t think he’d ever been more nervous than he was in this moment, sitting in Neutemoc’s receiving room with Acatl by his side as he waited to meet their mother. Since an illness several years ago, she moved slowly. There was plenty of time for him to imagine all the ways it could go wrong.

Acatl must have seen the look in his eyes, because he reached over and patted his forearm briefly. “She will adore you.”

“But,” he started, and stopped.

“And she will definitely give her blessing for you to court my sister.”

Teomitl, younger brother to the Mexica Emperor, thought about that for a moment and tried not to wince. Yes, it would certainly give him an advantage...but maybe he shouldn’t have worn all his finery.

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There is jade on the emperor’s fingers, his ears, piercing his lower lip. There is coral in his headdress and beading the hems of his cloak and loincloth. Even the ends of his sandal straps bear precious gems.

Acatl kneels in his gray cloak, dust in the ends of his long, tangled hair, and helps him take them off. One by one he slips off the rings, unties impossibly fine cotton fabric, sets the feathered headdress aside where it won’t be damaged. He’s very precise. This isn’t something to be rushed.

Until finally Teomitl whispers desperately, “Acatl, please—”

And Acatl stands, and pulls his lover into his arms.

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They should have been farther along their planned route than they were. Teomitl’s feet almost itched with the urge to keep marching, to keep leading his troops along the campaign trail. But he wasn’t a fool, and he knew they needed rest and better food. The Totonac traders from along the coast were able to provide both.

That wasn’t all they had.

His reverie was interrupted almost immediately by the sight of a group of his warriors clustered around a tub, staring in apparent fascination at whatever was inside. Without thinking about it, he headed over to investigate.

The wooden tub was full of round, spiky...things. Things with little feet on the underside, crawling gently over each other. Things that had gently undulating spines.

Sea urchins. He stared at them, fascinated. He’d seen dead ones, but they were so different when they were alive.

“You want to buy?” the trader asked.

He agreed without a second thought.

(Acatl was predictably unimpressed with his failure to haggle, but he did agree they were both cute and rather tasty, so Teomitl counted it as a win.)

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Really, Acatl thought with a disgusted sigh, he should have seen it coming. Yes, Teomitl had changed a great deal from the impetuous, arrogant youth he had been. He was steadier now, more confident and secure in himself. He knew he was loved, too, which had gone a considerable way towards tempering his...well, everything.

But he was still a youth of imperial blood, brother to two Revered Speakers, and he’d never in his life learned to tone down his enthusiasm when it came to gifts.

“Acatl, what do you think?”

Acatl looked at the jade-inlaid mirror that was apparently intended as an anniversary gift, closed his eyes, and reminded himself that when he wasn’t being given things that could have paid for a nice house in the better parts of the city, Teomitl made his heart melt.

Then he said, “No.”

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He is a fool. No, worse than that. There aren’t words harsh enough, bitter enough, for the kind of man he is. What sort of man stands in front of his wife and his teacher and says such things to them? What sort of man strides onto the remnants of a fresh battlefield, with the people he loves still bleeding, and demands that they help him in his cause? Of course they turned him down. Of course they’re sure to hate him now. He’s treated them—gods, the look on Acatl’s face—he’s treated them worse than Tizoc.

Mihmatini had cried, when they’d been alone, and he’d had no right to console her. His sword had lay in the dust between them, and he’d entertained thoughts of driving it into his own heart. It’s still a little tempting.

At some point while he’s been feeling sorry for himself, an ahuitzotl has eeled its way into his tunnel and is now leaning against his side like a dog. He buries his face in its wet, spiky fur and takes a deep lake-scented breath. So he’s ruined everything between himself and the people he loves.

He’ll just have to make amends.

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Acatl is not suited for politics. He’s tried to explain this so many times—to Ceyaxochitl, to his siblings, to his priests—but nobody ever listens. He doesn’t even like politics. He is a priest for the Dead. Let him be only that, and he’s content. He has no patience for sly games, for whispers like knives in the dark.

But now the knife is at his throat, and a man he hates is smiling triumphantly at him, and he knows he’s lost.

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Priests aren’t encouraged to be vain. Their long, tangled hair, twisted as the roots of the Underworld, is intended as proof of that. But priests for the Dead are held to somewhat higher standards, presumably because they already work with corpses all day and their fellow clergy would like to be able to stand downwind of them occasionally.

And therefore, Acatl spends one day a week attempting with varying degrees of success to comb his hair out. This is harder than he thinks it really should be; his hair is thick and wavy and falls past his waist, and there’s just so much of it. Normally, getting it clean and untangled takes hours.

Normally, he doesn’t have Teomitl.

The man had shown up just past dawn with a steaming bowl of porridge and a smile, and when he’d spotted Acatl’s still-wet hair he’d asked, “Can I help?”

And Acatl, weakened by that smile, had said yes.

So now he’s sitting cross-legged on his mat with Teomitl kneeling behind him and an oiled comb dragging slowly through his hair, and each touch makes him shiver. He can feel the closeness of their bodies, the way Teomitl’s fingers almost but not quite brush his skin. He wants to speak, but he’s not sure he has the breath for it. And if he did, what would he say? This is his sister’s husband.

It’s Teomitl who finally breaks the silence. “Your hair looks like obsidian.”

He feels his face heat up. “It does not.”

“You can’t see it from this angle,” Teomitl says, and there’s something so terribly soft in his voice.

Acatl bites his lip, remembers the way Teomitl had smiled at him—remembers the way he’d smiled back, the way it had made his heart full and warm for the first time in days—and says nothing.

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How long had it been since he’d looked at Teomitl in the sunset and felt his world, his future, reshape itself around him? Sometimes, Acatl wished he didn’t know the answer down to the hour. Other times, he gloried in it. He woke at dawn, making his half-asleep devotions to the gods, and even as he bled for his patron and the Fifth Sun he found himself thinking, Ah, that’s right. Teomitl is in this world with me.

He told himself he was content with that. And he was, truly. Teomitl was in his life, lighting it like the dawn. He didn’t need more.

He didn’t.

Oh, but Teomitl turned to him, lashes lowered—but Teomitl stretched like a jaguar, all coiled muscles and power—but Teomitl laughed as he sparred with his nephew—and Acatl wanted.

They were walking back to the Sacred Precinct one day when Teomitl took his hand, quite as casually as if he’d been doing it all his life. Acatl felt like he’d been struck by lightning. Finally, said his heart. Finally, said his soul. Finally, said every inch of his skin.

He didn’t pull away.

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“This,” Acatl hisses, “is the worst thing you could have ever done to me.”

Ceyaxochitl, the woman who calls herself his mentor, flaps a negligent hand at him. She looks perfectly at ease in her own feathered headdress and face paint, her intricately embroidered blouse and skirt like flames next to Acatl’s dust-dry gray cloak. Acatl hates her a little.

He hates her more when she says casually, “You’ll be fine. It’s just a banquet.”

“A banquet in the presence of the Revered Speaker!” He’s never been more painfully conscious of his own status. The closest his family had ever come to nobility was when the leaders of their calpulli showed up to see how the maize crop was getting on. He has to fight an urge to check his feet for field mud.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “And are you not the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli?”

He’s been High Priest for about two days. His cloak still has creases in it from when it was woven. He closes his eyes and allows himself precisely three heartbeats to think about all the ways this crowd could eat him alive. He’s had training, but they’ve had lifetimes to learn how to maneuver in these waters. They’ll be watching for any signs of weakness—for a lapse in manners, for a hint of a peasant accent.

Then he takes a deep breath, gathers his cloak around him, and stalks into the banquet hall.

Chapter Text

What do you think of Tizoc, Teomitl had asked him, and Acatl—Acatl had told him honestly, had spat out words like lead on his tongue. Had told him that their emperor was weak and cowardly and a murderer, a man who didn’t deserve to wear the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown. It had hurt to say, even more when he’d had to follow it up with a simple plea for Teomitl to stay his hand. To not slay his brother yet, no matter how badly he deserved it.

But Teomitl had taken his words to heart, and since then Acatl had discovered the floodgates of his own rancor had been flung open wide when he wasn't looking. It was easier to speak his mind now, to not worry about going too far or being judged for it. Teomitl had plenty of venom of his own for cruel or stupid people; he wouldn’t be surprised. And Acatl no longer needed to worry about setting a good example.

Still, the first time he grumbled, “That’s because Quenami is an utter bastard,” Teomitl dropped his tamale in shock.

Chapter Text

Upon reflection, Teomitl felt a little bit like a lizard. A very drowsy, very contented lizard. The sun baked into his bare back and thighs, and when he shook an errant lock of hair away from his face the world behind his closed eyelids turned red with it. He could very easily fall asleep like this if he was allowed.

There were footsteps approaching in a cadence he recognized. He didn’t open his eyes as a sandaled foot prodded him gently. Acatl’s voice sounded from above him, wryly amused. “I’ve never seen you so still on purpose before. I thought I’d best check you were still breathing.”

He hummed, a wordless affirmation, and was rewarded by the faintly slithery thump of cotton on stone as Acatl sat down next to him. “Enjoying your nap?”

His mouth felt like it had been glued shut, but he nevertheless managed to force it open to murmur, “Should join me.” The gods knew Acatl didn’t take enough time for himself.

And the gods were merciful, because Acatl sighed and shifted his weight a bit more comfortably on the ground. “Very well, then.”

The sun was so wonderfully warm.

Chapter Text

“I think you should kiss me,” Teomitl breathes with a warm, wicked smile, and Acatl says nothing.

He shouldn’t. Teomitl’s probably drunk, after the two cups of strong pulque Acatl’s just seen him drain. He’s a married man, even if the comments Mihmatini’s made about their relationship lead him to suspect the two of them are more friends than anything else. He’s—

He has a hand on Acatl’s thigh like a brand, and Acatl burns with it.

“You don’t want to?” Teomitl looks up at him through lowered lashes, fingers tracing a meaningless pattern on his skin.

“Someone,” he chokes out, “will hear us.”

And then he seals his mouth over Teomitl’s, stopping his words.

Chapter Text

“You know,” Teomitl says sleepily, “I never could see the rabbit in the moon.”

Acatl’s half asleep himself. Neutemoc’s courtyard is quiet this late at night, and they’ve both had a long day. He can’t seem to close his eyes yet, though, because Teomitl is laying beside him with his head pillowed on his arms and a drowsy smile on his face. “What do you mean?” He waves a hand skyward. The moon is full tonight. It’s hard to miss.

Teomitl rolls over to face him. “It always looked like a face to me,” he mutters softly. He sounds a little embarrassed to admit it, moreso when he adds, “But when I was a child, I used to make up my own constellations in my head, so...”

Acatl can just imagine a tiny Teomitl, lonely and serious, staring up at the heavens, and the thought pinches his heart. He aims a smile at him that he hopes is reassuring.

“Tell me about them?”

Chapter Text

There were days when Acatl thought, bitter as gall and cold as the grave, that he really shouldn’t still be doing this. Teomitl was a married man, his former student; even if he’d been single, their positions meant a relationship could never be public. He was going to be the Emperor. There should have been no space in his life or in his heart for the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli. The graceful thing would have been to step aside.

But it was the pettiest things that defined them; for once in his life, Acatl wanted to be selfish. His sister had given her blessing, Teomitl was decidedly past needing a teacher, and they were both capable of being discreet. And...

And when he looked at Teomitl, he saw a bright and golden future. When Teomitl smiled, he smiled back. When Teomitl took his hand, met his eyes, kissed his mouth, he felt almost dizzy with the sheer unleashed joy of it.

It might still be a bad idea, but he’d made his decision and he was sticking with it.

Chapter Text

Acatl-tzin is a political appointment, elevated apparently by the whim of Guardian Ceyaxochitl. Ichtaca was told he was powerful, especially given his age and background, and in theory there should be nothing wrong with a man of common blood being elevated to the ranks of the highest clergy in the Empire. But in practice...well. In practice, Acatl-tzin is awkward, blunt, and about as politically astute as a cactus. They’re already not a popular priesthood, and every time Ichtaca thinks about Acatl-tzin’s refusal to appear at court he can only groan. This is going to be a nightmare.

And then a woman dies, and Acatl-tzin ushers her soul to Mictlan. Ichtaca isn’t needed for the ritual, so he has every excuse to stand in the doorway and watch. Outside of the temple, Acatl-tzin isn’t much to write home about. But here—here, with incense wreathing his limbs and blood streaming from his slashed earlobes and the words of a hymn ringing from his lips—he is in his element. The sheer magical prowess emanating from him makes Ichtaca’s teeth itch.

Perhaps, he thinks with some relief, their new High Priest will work out after all.

Chapter Text

He is only a man. The second son of peasants, a poor priest with no great family ties or political backing. The most that can be said for him at court is that he’s stubborn and has the very enthusiastic support of the master of the House of Darts, which—under Tizoc, at least—isn’t the boon it could be. Acatl would be the first one to say he’s average at best. There are better warriors, better politicians, better speakers.

But when he opens himself to the emptiness of Mictlan, turning his skin to black smoke and his eyes to fathomless voids and his blood to silver shining through him like moonlight, there is no better High Priest.

Chapter Text

Their people had once come from Aztlan—the place of white cranes, the place of white herons. Quenami, as High Priest of Huitzilopochtli, could still walk in the Heartland of their patron god without fear. There were times Acamapichtli thought about chafing over that; war fed the gods and the sun gave life, but without the rains brought by Tlaloc their Empire would reign over a barren pit. And besides, Quenami was far too useless (and cruel, and arrogant, and stupid—did he not think his days would be numbered ever shorter if he continued to make an enemy of Acatl once Teomitl took the throne?) to be as smug as he was. It was enough to make him more than mildly annoyed.

But then he sat on the steps of his temple and listened to the herons calling each other over the lake, winging home to their nests with mouthfuls of fish, and he wouldn’t trade his current station for anything.

Chapter Text

“It hasn’t changed,” Teomitl said in wonder.

Acatl was silent for a long moment, watching him. His heart felt full to bursting with pride. Someday, he thought with utter certainty, he’s going to be the greatest Emperor this sea-ringed world has ever seen. Not today, no—but someday. It was only a matter of time. “But you have,” he murmured, barely aware he was saying it out loud.

Teomitl heard him and turned, a faint smile starting to bloom across his face again. “Do you think so?”

“Mmm.” His heart still felt light, a burden he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying finally lifted, and so he smiled back and gave Teomitl’s shoulder a squeeze.

Teomitl flushed, stiffening visibly, and hastily rearranged his grip on his cup; he looked for a moment as though he might pull away. It was a surprise, then, when he moved to cover Acatl’s hand with his own. His fingers were warm. “All thanks to you,” he said simply.

Now it was Acatl’s turn to look out over the city, trying to push down the very strange fluttering in his chest. “Hmph,” he muttered.

One day Teomitl would be glorious. And he, Acatl, would be there every step of the way.

Chapter Text

Teomitl still can’t steer a boat to save his life, but that doesn’t matter anymore. When your patron is the goddess of lakes and rivers, you won’t drown unless She lets you, and his balance is good enough that he probably won’t fall off. (Some scrap of good sense warns him that he should have brought a companion or at least told someone where he was going. He ignores it. Is he the new Revered Speaker or not?)

He stands at the prow, pole in hand, and takes himself out into the canals of Tenochtitlan alone.

There are the porters carrying their loads; there are the water carriers and nightsoil men on their early-morning duties. He can hear merchants talking as they set out their mats and women singing as they weave. Nobody gives him a second glance—he’s shed his finery, so if they notice him at all they must take him for some noble youth out on his own business. He supposes that’s still true, even though he came out here without any plan at all. He simply...

He’s been cooped up in the palace too long. He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of the lake. Ah, he missed his city.

Chapter Text

He was born to riches, to precious jade and precious quetzal feathers. At three days old, there was coral on his ankles and gold on his wrists. His father may have lived for several years in exile, may have taken back his city with sword and flame, but Nezahual has never known want. Is he not an emperor and the son of emperors? Who would deny him?

Acatl, apparently. Tenochtitlan’s High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli has never been overawed or even impressed by him, and is currently narrowing his eyes at him in a way that suggests he might be more than mildly annoyed. Perhaps he’ll even raise his voice, something Nezahual doesn’t think he’s ever heard. “My relationship,” he snaps, “is none of your business.”

He steps back, trying to look innocent. “I only wanted to know where you got such a fine necklace.” And the equally fine love bites the rich blue stones aren’t quite hiding.

“It was a gift,” Acatl grits out, and turns to leave. “Is that all, Nezahual-tzin?”

He thinks for a moment. “...Give my regards to Teomitl when you see him.”

Acatl stiffens, the backs of his ears turning red, and Nezahual grins. He does so love being right.

Chapter Text

“I love seeing you smile.”

Acatl—who had been smiling as he watched the setting sun paint the Sacred Precinct crimson and gold—turned red. “I don’t know why,” he muttered. “It’s not—it’s just a smile. I’m capable of it on occasion.”

Teomitl froze. Oh, fuck, he’d said that out loud. And Acatl had heard it. He wondered if it was too late to throw himself into the nearest canal. “Uh,” he said intelligently. “You can. ah. You can forget I said that, I don’t—it’s just—” It’s just that you’re beautiful and patient and good. It’s just that I love more than your smile.

But then Acatl turned to him, his gaze softening. “Really, I think it’s your fault; when you do it, it’s contagious. You’re like the sun.”

Teomitl’s heart felt as though it had lodged itself in his throat. There was maybe a hands’ breadth separating them, and they were the only people sitting here on the edge of the temple steps. He was achingly aware of the shape of Acatl’s mouth. “...Brutal, unforgiving and capable of setting things on fire?”

He’d thought Acatl’s smile was lovely. He wasn’t prepared for Acatl’s snort of laughter, nor the way he covered Teomitl’s hand with his own and gave it a lingering squeeze. And he certainly wasn’t prepared for the way Acatl breathed, “Radiant.”

Chapter Text

Of course it couldn’t simply be a wandering ghost or hungry monster from the Underworld. No, Acatl was summoned from his warm and comfortable bed by the manifestation of a minor god, one who intended to take by force the tributes He felt had been denied to Him. Which would have been alright, really, except it was a god even Mictlan had thrown out, and so when the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli showed up...

Well. It was not taken well. Acatl, gritting his teeth on a scream as Teomitl poured cold water on his burns and Palli ran for a healing-priest, still had to admit it could have gone much worse. At least nobody had been too badly injured.

Of course, when he voiced this, Teomitl glared at him. “You’re not nobody, Acatl!”

He started to say it was still fine, he’d had worse—but then Teomitl started bandaging his wounds with shaking hands, and he shut up.

Chapter Text

When Teomitl caught sight of his reflection, he saw Tizoc’s hawkish nose and high cheekbones, a flash of dark eyes and straight dark hair before he turned away. Sometimes—it was much rarer now, but it still happened—his older brother would smile, and Teomitl could never look at him when he did that because he knew, he knew it was far too much like his own.

If there was a mirror capable of displaying the darkness of a man’s heart—cruelty, arrogance, paranoia—he wondered if he’d see Tizoc’s in his own reflection too.

(You’re not him, Acatl told him. You’ll never be him, Mihmatini said. Teomitl wished he could believe it.)

Chapter Text

He will be Emperor. Was it not foretold in prophecy that all Huitzilxochtin’s sons would rule? When Axayacatl is dead, he will succeed him. There should be no doubt. Indeed, even to vote upon it is almost an insult.

But there will be a vote, regardless of his feelings. The council will be looking for a canny politician, a man skilled in war, a man with the blessings and favor of the gods. He can handle the first two well enough, but the god do not bestow their blessings on mediocre men. He knows this. So does the council.

So too does his brother, who half rises from his very deathbed to ask, “Have you a plan?”

He almost smiles. “I do.”

And he doesn’t care who dies in its execution.

Chapter Text

“What’s that smile for?”

Had he been smiling? Acatl hadn’t realized. Still, it was only to be expected. He was lazing half-asleep in a shaded corner of the imperial gardens, his head resting on Teomitl’s thigh. Teomitl, who was his Revered Speaker. Teomitl, who’d saved his life and the world half a dozen times over. Teomitl, who’d taught him that there was more to life than duty, who’d taught him that it was alright to take things for himself alone. That he didn’t have to fear falling off the slippery slope to ruin.

So he reached up to cup his lover’s cheek, feeling soft down in his bones when Teomitl leaned into his touch. “I was thinking,” he murmured.

Now it was Teomitl’s turn to smile. “Oh no,” he teased. “You, thinking? That’s never a good sign. What about?”

“Hah.” He couldn’t help snorting fondly. “You. If I’d never met you...gods, I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like.” So much emptier, for one thing.

Teomitl caught his hand lightly, pressing a kiss to the palm. “You don’t have to,” he said simply. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good,” Acatl said, and sat up to kiss him properly.

Chapter Text

There was something to be said for Acatl-tzin, Palli thought. He cared. (Well, alright. There were a lot of things to be said for Acatl-tzin, some of them complimentary and some...less so. Like his seeming inability to sound pleased with anything. But that was besides the point.) Their previous High Priest hadn’t been a bad man—he’d certainly been better-spoken and more accustomed to leadership—but he hadn’t had a tenth of Acatl-tzin’s sincerity or determination. There wasn’t a priest for the Dead who wouldn’t defend their new superior with their life.

Which, of course, led to a certain chill in the air when the young Master of the House of Darts strode—no, more accurately slunk—into the temple complex with a handful of tamales. The last time any of the priests had seen him, he’d been at the forefront of a small army with a sword in his hand, seeming not to care at all that they’d all just been fighting for their lives against a vengeful ghost and a swarm of ahuitzotls. And that was after having been, so far as any of them could tell, second-in-command of a den of horrors run by that foul sister of his. Palli still had nightmares about that. He and the others watched with folded arms and clenched jaws as Teomitl made his way across the courtyard.

He managed three steps before Ichtaca, Palli’s new second-favorite person in the world, met him with a cold glare. “Teomitl-tzin.” The honorific was almost an afterthought in his mouth. “What brings you here?”

Better men than Teomitl had shrunk from that tone. Teomitl swallowed audibly, but straightened up and held Ichtaca’s gaze. “I came to bring lunch for Acatl-tzin.”

You came to what. Palli growled, taking a step forward, but Ichtaca threw him a sharp look and he froze. Right. There was no use in picking a fight with the Master of the House of Darts.

Besides, their Fire Priest might get there first. His eyes narrowed as he swept a gaze up Teomitl’s body, taking in the embroidered cloak and gold earrings with a frown. “Why?”

“Because he doesn’t take good care of himself!” The words burst out of him in a torrent and didn’t stop; Palli listened, dumbfounded, as Teomitl went on to enumerate all the reasons Acatl-tzin desperately needed someone to help look after him, since he was too self-sacrificing and diligent to remember to do it himself. Political advantage didn’t come up once.

Ezamahual looked at him, and then back at Teomitl. An eyebrow went up.

Grimacing, Palli nodded. It looked like Teomitl wasn’t so bad after all.

Chapter Text

The office had once been a penthouse suite, of course. Once—when he was younger and stupider—Teomitl had taken the stairs. Had charged into the aftermath of a firefight. Had begged Acatl to ascend to the top floor with him. Acatl, forever smarter than him, had refused, and it’s why he’s now calm and steady enough to take the elevator. Like then, he’s not alone.

Unlike then, he has only three people with him instead of an entire squad. Acamapichtli is checking his knives. Mihmatini is calmly loading her sidearm, murder in her eyes. Acatl...Acatl is silent.

He can’t take it. “I asked you if you approved, once.”

Acatl looks at him, eyes unreadable. But then he sets a hand on Teomitl’s arm, and that’s clear enough. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

The elevator dings softly. They step out, Teomitl in the lead.

The penthouse used to be well-furnished, tastefully so. Now it’s too bright, too loud, too tacky. They meet resistance, of course, Tizoc’s hired goons prepared to use lethal force—but then Teomitl brings up the matter of their paychecks, and miraculously they all find better things to do than get into pointless fights. (Which they would lose anyway, because Teomitl has never seen his allies miss a blow.) Hard marble tile gives way to soft carpet with expensively useless objets d’art lining the silk-sheathed walls. The electronic doors have been locked, but he knows all the passcodes. Tizoc had trusted him.

His brother is waiting for them, standing on the other side of a vast mahogany desk with stacks of papers spread out between them. Teomitl doesn’t need to look to know what they are, but his gaze flicks over the titles anyway—records of protection money paid, drug sales negotiated, munitions sold.

And then he meets Tizoc’s eyes, and his brother reaches inside his suit jacket. “So,” he grits out. “Come to drag me down into the muck with you? Come to be righteous?”

Teomitl shakes his head. The gun is already in his hand.

“Consider this a hostile takeover.”

Chapter Text

Dawn should have been greeted by conch shells, by bloodletting, by hymns to the gods. Once, Acatl would have done it all promptly, without even thinking about it. He still did, of course, but now his morning was...slower. Lazier. Teomitl was a terrible, terrible temptation.

(“Good morning, Acatl.” A sweet smile, full of promise. A hand sliding down his side. He was suddenly very awake indeed.)

Dusk should have been a time for rest and relaxation, for going home alone to his cold and silent mat. Once, Acatl would have done that too. He was a priest of Mictlantecuhtli. Death was his lot, and Mictlan the domain of his god. There was no need for him to fill his nights with music, with love, with revelry.

Once again, Teomitl was a terrible temptation.

(“I should go,” whispered in between kisses, with hands on Acatl’s hips. That same sweet smile now with a wicked edge, saying he didn’t want to go. The way he started to pull away anyway.)

(Acatl yanked him back in.)

Chapter Text

Acatl has seen the sun. Brilliant, radiant, scorching. He has stood in the Heartland, the domain of the Southern Hummingbird, and baked to delirium beneath its rays. He knows its heat upon his back, knows the way it soaks into his hair. He hadn’t thought a brighter or more dangerous thing existed, either on earth or in the heavens.

And then Teomitl turns to him on a day where the sky is a flat unrelieved gray, a day where the clouds are threatening to release their burden of water any minute, and smiles.

And Acatl knows he was wrong.

Chapter Text

She’d been doing it since she was ten, but dressing the loom properly still took hours. The actual weaving, though? That, she could do in her sleep. She’d spun the thread herself, spindle humming in its cup while Teomitl watched in fascination. (He’d asked if she wanted any sort of help and looked adorably crestfallen when she’d pointed out that it had taken years for her to get good at it.) Now it was time to make something out of it.

A new cloak, she’d decided. Something with a hood; Teomitl would never admit it, but he did get cold. As the shuttle clacked, sending red thread on its way, she started to sing.

She lost track of time for a while. There was just her hands, and the loom, and the shuttle, and the sunlight streaming down on her head. She’d forgotten how soothing it was simply to sit and work—to not have to be the Guardian of the Duality or to think about magic or politics, but to just make something with her own two hands. Maybe I’ll suggest Teomitl take up some crafts, she thought idly. He could use more hobbies.

Footsteps behind her caught her attention a moment before her husband’s voice sounded over her shoulder. “What are you making?”

She smiled at him. “A surprise.”

Beaming back, he sat down with his own work. And if he neglected it to watch her instead, well. She wasn’t complaining.

Chapter Text

Oh, he thought, and then again, Oh.

It wasn’t the first time. There had been other moments where he’d looked at Teomitl, at the man who he knew with all his heart would lead the Mexica Empire to glory, and felt the dry and withered thing in his chest catch fire with the knowledge that he loved him. That he’d been an absolute idiot to have ever thought his feelings were platonic. Like a son, he’d said once, but that had ended the moment he’d seen Teomitl on the temple steps with the setting sun turning him to gold. By now, he was almost used to feeling his heart contract when their eyes met.

Almost. Teomitl was sitting quite close, almost touching; each time his fingers brushed Acatl’s thigh felt like a brand. And he’d just turned to him and smiled, continuing their conversation as though nothing at all was amiss. “Don’t you think so, Acatl?”

“Yes,” Acatl whispered, and looked at Teomitl’s mouth, and burned.

Chapter Text

“Tell me more about this Acatl-tzin of yours.”

“He’s not my—oh, fine.” Ah, her sweet, brave, naive little brother. He can’t resist an opportunity to talk about the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli, and he doesn’t know what he’s revealing with each smile and blush and proud Acatl-tzin says...

All she has to do is pat his arm and pour them more chocolate. Talk about how Acatl-tzin seems like an exemplary man, truly, it’s simply a shame that he’ll always see Teomitl as a child. Ah, but that’s too depressing to contemplate—tell her, has Teomitl won any great victories lately? How are things with his new bride? Is their brother still ill? The Heartland? Well, that explains a great deal about everything, if their Revered Speaker is a man already dead. Such a shame. Still, he likely won’t do anything too damaging. They can hope. Ah, of course Teomitl is impatient. She can’t blame him for that. Perhaps it is wise to begin building up his own power, just in case—and yes, his dear elder sister has plenty of ideas.

“Do you truly think this is necessary?” he asks her once.

She imagines herself behind the throne clad in gold, her skirt a single shade off from imperial turquoise.

And she says, “You’re a clever young man. It’s better to be prepared for any eventuality, isn’t it?”

When he nods, she smiles.

Chapter Text

“Sometimes I’m jealous of your hair,” Mihmatini tells him.

Acatl stares at his little sister in shock. “Why?!” It’s a ridiculous concept. Mihmatini’s hair is arrow-straight and gleams like a polished obsidian mirror, falling to her waist like a waterfall. Well, almost straight; she’s just combed out her marriage braids, and they’ve left kinks behind. But those will soon be gone, and she’ll be back to her usual loveliness. He’s positively unkempt in comparison.

She gestures at him. “It’s so thick and wavy! Like our mother’s. And it looks so nice when you bother to take care of it properly.”

Slowly, he reaches up to tuck an errant curl back behind his ear again. It’s just slightly too short to stay in the white cord holding the rest of his hip-length hair back, not that the cord is more than a token gesture half the time anyway. She is right that it’s something he’s inherited from their mother—the only thing she ever left him other than her scorn—but... “Mihmatini, it breaks combs.”

“It does not!” she huffs at him, and shifts to kneel behind him with her own comb in hand. “Here, let me comb it out for you for once. You’ll see how much better it looks.”

He sighs. There’s really no stopping her once she gets an idea in her head. “Fine,” he mutters as he loosens his hair, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

For a few minutes, it’s actually rather pleasant. And his hair does need the attention. But then—

Snap.

“Ow!”

“...Ah. There went a few of the teeth.”

“I tried to tell you!”

Chapter Text

The sickness, whatever it is—fever, boils, delirium, death—is spreading, and Quenami doesn’t know how to stop it. (No, that’s a lie. He knows, but he won’t let himself contemplate it. He did not go into the Heartland, humble himself before his god, return Tizoc-tzin to life, just to kill him. He is loyal. Besides...the man isn’t such a bad Revered Speaker, is he? There have been worse. Surely there have been worse.)

(Forty captives. Three hundred dead warriors, and only forty captives, and half of them are dying already.)

(Surely there have been worse.)

He bleeds himself. He sacrifices. He prays. He whispers in dark corridors, marshals his priests, keeps Tizoc-tzin as stable as he can. And he watches more men (women) (children) die, and he hopes he isn’t next.

Magic, says that jumped-up peasant Acatl, not a common plague. He hates to admit it, but the man might be right. At least in that case, it isn’t his responsibility anymore; with Acatl doing what he does best, he’s free to focus on ensuring their Revered Speaker’s survival. The common rabble can die in droves, but the leader of the Mexica Empire must live on.

With the High Priest of Huitzilopochtli by his side, naturally.

Chapter Text

Copper and bronze were useful in their own ways, but they required regular sharpening and maintenance. Not so obsidian, which stayed as sharp as the day it had been flaked off from its core. Underworld obsidian, green-tinged and rippling with magical power, was even sharper.

All this was to say that when Teomitl idly rolled over and picked up one of Acatl’s knives, turning it this way and that, he was acutely aware of how his lover stiffened. He couldn’t blame him, really; wounds made by these blades festered instead of healing, and even a scratch could mean a slow death. Still... “I just wanted a closer look.”

“You’ve seen them before,” Acatl pointed out. There was a rustling that suggested he was propping himself up on one elbow to keep an eye on him.

Worrywart, Teomitl thought with no small amount of affection. “Usually when you’re using them.” The knife he was holding was excellently made, handed down from one High Priest to the next; the edges gleamed like mirrors, and the hilt had been wrapped in white leather cord. The same sort of white leather cord, in fact, that held Acatl’s hair off his face. The overall effect was of something clean and elegant in its simplicity, with nothing ostentatious to distract from its purpose.

“And?” Acatl’s warm breath wafted over his shoulder. “What do you think?”

“They remind me of you.”

Chapter Text

There are tamales stuffed with duck and fresh greens. There are bowls of stew, fragrant with chilies and herbs. There are platters of roasted venison in pumpkin sauce and freshly-sliced fruit drizzled with honey. By the sides of everyone’s plates are stacks of warm flatbread baked to golden-brown softness, just the way Acatl likes them.

He’s not allowed love or wealth or glory. But he is allowed this, and so he digs in with abandon.

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“Do you trust me?” Teomitl asks him.

Never, Do you love me. Or, Do you want me. The answers to those are so obvious as to be self-evident even with Acatl’s reticence and Teomitl’s general insecurity. But trust? That’s something different. Something much more important than Acatl’s heart or body. It’s a question that requires thought.

Acatl’s decided on his answer long ago.

“Yes.”

“Good,” Teomitl breathes, and draws his sword.

They charge into the fray together.

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It feels strange, Acamapichtli reflects, to be working on a ritual with Acatl that actually doesn’t involve the very fate of the Mexica Empire. At least, not immediately. It’s for the maintenance of the Great Temple, which while certainly vital isn’t about to collapse under their feet.

Not that Acatl seems to realize this, judging by the agitated inky swirls of his magic. Acamapichtli prods him a little too hard to be entirely companionable. (He really can’t help it. Acatl’s just so skinny and easily offended, it’s a constant battle not to put him in a headlock.) “Calm down. We’ve done this dozens of times before.”

“You have,” Acatl mutters.

Acamapichtli smirks. That’s right; he’s been High Priest of Tlaloc for far longer than Quenami and Acatl have served their own patrons. “No pressure, then!”

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While probably not the stupidest thing Acatl’s ever done, he’s aware that this is up there. Tizoc is so paranoid, so unstable, that even to breathe a word of treason within the palace is to take his own life in his hands. But Teomitl has asked, and this time—without the army at his back, without the adrenaline still racing through his veins—it’s not so desperate. He’s asked because he really wants to know. And, more pertinently, because he wants Acatl’s advice. As a friend.

There’s something very nice about being wanted.

“...What do you think we should do about this?” Teomitl’s asking. This, at the moment, is Tizoc’s plans for a complete refurbishment of the Great Temple, a massive construction project that they can ill afford no matter how much it might please the gods.

Acatl grimaces. “Nothing.”

“But—”

“It’s a stupid idea,” he clarifies, “but it will keep him occupied and not ruining anything else.”

“Until we go off to war again,” Teomitl mutters mutinously.

Acatl takes a moment to study him—the young Master of the House of Darts, keeper of one-fourth of Tenochtitlan’s army, devotee of She of the Jade Skirt, skilled in magic and warfare, currently crunching a handful of peanuts as though they’ve done him an injury. And then he finds himself smiling. “I think you can handle that.”

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The worst part, Teomitl reflected, was that he’d really thought his elder sister had cared about more than power. That she’d been sincere when she’d patted his shoulder and told him to have faith, it would all work out. That she’d ever once weighed his misgivings as more than an unfortunate attack of morality. (She’d asked about Acatl. About Mihmatini. And he’d been so stupidly, pathetically grateful to have someone to talk to that he’d told her.)

Hatred—at her, at himself—curdled his heart, but he stood in front of her complex in Zoquipan anyway. The guards had their weapons half-drawn. The one on the left (gods, he’d never learned the man’s name) said, “State your business.”

He straightened up to meet the man’s gaze. “I’m here to speak to my sister.”

And warn her never to contact me again.

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Quenami was supposed to be the loyal one. Tizoc had appointed him, after all, and he knew where his power ultimately derived from. He would never do anything to jeopardize that, and that was why Tizoc could trust him. Quenami had helped him to the throne. Had brought him back to life (oh, the other High Priests had helped, but they would have gotten nowhere without Quenami and everyone knew it.) He was very possibly the closest thing the Emperor could have to a friend.

And so Tizoc was smiling as he accepted the bowl of spiced chocolate and raised it to his lips. It had been a dreadfully long time since he hadn’t had to fear poison.

“What do you think, my lord?” Quenami’s voice was soft and smooth as always, a balm to his soul.

He took a deep draft. “Wonderful.” It was wonderful, rich with vanilla and honey and chile. There was an odd spice he couldn’t place, though, so he opened his mouth to ask Quenami what it was—

And then he blinked, spots swimming in his vision. The room seemed to spin before his eyes. The guards, he thought frantically, fetch my guards—but he couldn’t say it, because his tongue was too thick and heavy in his mouth. The cup slid from his useless fingers to smash upon the floor.

“Yes,” murmured Quenami, “it is.”

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“Look at yourself,” She of the Jade Skirt whispers, and Teomitl can do nothing but obey. He is acutely aware of Her presence behind him as he’s been aware of nothing else in his life, even though all She’s doing is standing over his shoulder as he kneels to peer down into Her crystal-clear waters.

He sees—himself. Just himself. There’s his curved nose, his high cheekbones, his dark eyes. His hair is growing out, thick and dark and still too short to do anything with. He doesn’t look like a warrior or a prince or a future Revered Speaker. He just looks...normal. Ordinary. Mediocre, hisses a voice in the back of his head. Mediocre, even with Jade Skirt’s patronage.

He blinks back an unruly tear, and his eyes are jade from lid to lid.

He tilts his head, and an ahuitzotl sitting across from him mirrors the motion.

Over his shoulder, Chalchiuhtlicue smiles.

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There are unexpected complications to becoming Revered Speaker. The new septum piercing, for instance, which itches abominably and hurts when he sneezes. The difficulty in finding any actual privacy for longer than an hour. The part where he’s expected to have concubines, which wouldn’t be so bad except that he has no idea what to say to women who are trying so painfully hard to fawn over him. The sycophancy in general, really. Is it too much to ask for honesty from the people around him?

But at the moment, the worst part is that the Revered Speaker is expected to lead sacred dances at certain festivals. And he...well.

“Again,” says his instructor with a sigh as the musicians begin drumming anew.

He has to learn the steps eventually, right?

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Despite her follies, her heartbreak, her frankly terrible choices, Huei had been her sister-in-law. She’d borne Neutemoc five healthy, happy children. And now she was dead, having given herself in sacrifice to Chalchiuhtlicue to escape the judgement of the Underworld, and there was a hole in the air where her place at the table had once been.

Mihmatini knew she wasn’t the only one feeling it. The children had been inconsolable all day; even Necalli, who bid fair to take after his uncle Acatl, was silent and shaky and close to tears. Neutemoc had barely spoken a single word in weeks. Acatl...well, he was always quiet, but now there was an edge to it. He’d tried to save Huei. He’d failed.

Finally, it was too much to take. Carefully, without quite looking at either her siblings or her nieces and nephews, she picked up another serving of now-cold meat and said aloud, “Do you remember when she made these?” Huei, for all her skills in other areas, had never been able to roast anything without charring it to a crisp.

Neutemoc made a face. “Unfortunately yes. Ah, but her baking...”

Sniffling, Mazatl added, “Mama made the best maize cakes.”

That set Necalli and Ohtli off, and even Acatl managed to unbend himself to share his own stories. Huei was still gone. Nothing would change that. But for the moment, she lived on.

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He is Ahuitzotl; thanks to Chalchiuhtlicue’s favor, the beasts for which he was named are bound tightly to his soul. As much as they’ve saved him in the past—it turns out that even the fiercest fighter is vulnerable to a man-sized blur of teeth and claws that can spring from any source of fresh water—there are occasional downsides to that. He finds it more difficult to keep ahold of his temper when he’s hungry. His hair is frankly unmanageable. (They are, after all, thorny water beasts, referring to their spiky wet fur.) His teeth are sharper than they ought to be, and he keeps biting his tongue or the insides of his cheeks by accident. Sudden bright lights give him headaches.

And he is absolutely, shamefully ravenous for raw fish.

(“Teomitl,” his wife asks, “what are you eating?”)

(He swallows the rest of his still-bleeding meal quickly. “Just a quick snack!” It’s not technically a lie.)

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There were so many ways this could have went so badly. Acatl knew them instinctively and could list them off without thinking. But he didn’t, because...because it wasn’t going badly. Because Teomitl was in his arms and in his life, and it was good. Because they were safe together, and both of them intended to keep it that way.

So when Teomitl nuzzled in with a grin of his own and breathed, “Now, what’s put that smile on your face?” Acatl kissed him, and told him why.

Perhaps slightly too effusively, admittedly, because Teomitl went crimson and tackled him back onto the mat, with the end result that they were both extremely late for a planned meeting. It was worth it.

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Sometimes, Acamapichtli almost felt bad for Acatl.

Not often, mind you. The man had a terrible mixture of stubbornness, arrogance, and naivety that made it positively a pleasure to watch him fume, even if he hadn’t been so frequently at odds with Acamapichtli’s own desires. But when he wasn’t—when they agreed on things, rare as that occasion was—Acamapichtli found himself experiencing something close to pity. He was devoted to his patron as well, but not to the exclusion of all else. He wasn’t completely sure Acatl slept.

“Do you have friends?” he asked one day, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice. “Hobbies? A lover? Anything?!”

Acatl stiffened, drawing his cloak around him. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” he snapped, which meant no. So did the moment’s pause before he added, “And what lover, you know the vows we’ve sworn.”

Ah, right. The one about celibacy. Acamapichtli had forgotten about that. Acatl was so godsdamned virtuous. Or possibly hypocritical, given the way Teomitl followed him around like a puppy. Hmm. “It was a friendly question. You know, it’s not healthy to be so isolated—”

“Haven’t you anything more important to do?!”

Acamapichtli grinned. Oh, this was going to be fun. “Not at the moment, no.”

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There is a thunderstorm brewing out on the lake, whipping the waters to froth and stinging the eyes of anyone foolish to be out in it. Wiser men would be indoors huddled around their hearth, perhaps listening to a singer or reading an improving book.

Teomitl’s never been wise, even with Acatl’s tutelage. He’s left hearths and singers and books behind, and he’s walking out along the canals to the very edge of the city. It would be faster to swim. To let his powerful body and tail carry him through the water, seething in a tide of his fellows, fangs bared to feast on any mortal stupid enough to fall from their boats—

He stops. Closes his eyes. Breathes deeply. Blocks out the high, chittering song of the ahuitzotls in his mind. No. He is a man. He is a man, and he is out here with water soaking into his skin because...because...

Because it called, and he must answer.

He keeps walking.

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I have duties to complete, he though dully. What is happening out there while I rest? Are they preparing for Cuauhtli’s funeral and consoling Chiltochtli’s family? I should...I should...

“I can hear you thinking,” Teomitl murmured.

Acatl didn’t open his eyes. He was far too tired for that—too tired even to register real surprise that Teomitl, who had walked him home and all but forced him to lay down after Palli had let slip how little sleep he was really getting, was still in the room. He hadn’t expected him to stay. Had been half wondering if he would, but hadn’t expected it. “Mrrm,” he muttered, and buried his face in the cushion.

There was a long, heavy sigh. “Go to sleep. You’ll feel better.”

He was trying. But sleep refused to come. He yawned, shifting position, and felt Teomitl move a moment before callused fingers smoothed a ticklish lock of hair off his face. That was...nice. It was nice.

(It was more than nice, but he didn’t have the energy to dwell on it.)

Teomitl’s next words were barely audible, as though he feared Acatl might already be asleep. “I’ll be outside.”

“...Stay,” he mumbled. In his cold chambers impregnated with his own residual magic, the sound of another man’s breathing and the heat of his skin nearby was a welcome reminder that he faced only sleep, not death. That the world wouldn’t end when he let himself drop into slumber.

Teomitl stayed.

Acatl slept.

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Their names had been Cuixtli and Ocelotepetl and Cozcatl, Tapachtli and Nextic and Miyahuatl. Dozens of others—no, hundreds—whose names were engraved forever on his heart. All dead. All dying in cages like animals choking on their own blood and raving with fever, because of his Emperor’s paranoia. They’d relied upon him, and he’d failed them. He won’t fail again.

“I will hold the way open for you,” Mihmatini had said.

“We never had this conversation,” Acatl had muttered.

Acamapichtli closes his eyes, remembers his clergy, and steps into the Emperor’s throne room. He doesn’t need to be a warrior or march at the head of an army. He just needs to kneel at Tizoc’s feet, draw his blade, and leave a single scratch before finding out whether Teomitl’s won all the guards over to his side or not.

Either way, the white-hilted knife of underworld obsidian will do its work.

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“Can’t sleep either?”

Teomitl could barely ever sleep, but he wasn’t going to bring that up. Acatl would only worry. So instead he nodded wordlessly, keeping his gaze fixed on the stars wheeling overhead. They were reassuringly faint pinpricks in the night sky.

Acatl didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. He simply hummed thoughtfully as he took a seat next to Teomitl on the flat roof, long legs tucked under the heavy cotton of his cloak. If he sat just a little closer, Teomitl could rest his head on his shoulder.

It was a tempting prospect. Undignified, but tempting.

This is Acatl, he reminded himself. He’s seen me at my worst. He won’t...well, he would judge, but not for this. Not for softness. Not if I...if I...

Ah. Right. This was probably a stupid idea. But he was tired and restless and worried for what the dawn would bring, and he wanted this. He wanted more, but he’d settle for this.

He shifted over, first feeling their bare arms touch and wondering if he was making a mistake—and then Acatl sighed and moved as though to put an arm around his waist, and he gave up all pretenses of hesitance in favor of collapsing into the loose hold. He was right. Acatl’s shoulder was very comfortable. Bony, but comfortable anyway. He wriggled a little, adjusting his position, and Acatl huffed affectionately. “Happy now?”

“Mmm.”

They sat and watched the stars. Whatever the morning brought, they’d face it together.

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“It seems to be a nice day out,” Mihmatini said, and cursed them all.

Acatl had been about to agree—had been in the very act of opening his mouth to speak, in fact—when the heavens opened up to drench his brother’s courtyard. His nieces and nephews had to be herded inside, Neutemoc swearing over his now-drenched pipe as he followed them in. “You caused this somehow,” his elder brother muttered.

Mihmatini snorted, making a mock punching gesture. “The Storm Lord brought the rain! I had nothing to do with it.”

The rain drumming on the awning was peaceful even with his siblings’ bickering, as long as he didn’t have to be out in it. There were many things more disagreeable than walking through muddy streets in wet sandals, but he didn’t care to experience any of them. Acatl sighed and closed his eyes.

Maybe he’d take a nap until the rain stopped.

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For family.

For glory.

For love.

For things to be different.

For his brother to be a good man again.

For his soldiers to last the night.

For the power to protect his people and his nation.

For Acatl to look at him and see him, to view him as a man and not a pathetic child.

For—

“You said things as one man to another. That won’t change, Acatl.”

“No. I guess not.”

For a smile, soft and uncertain and entirely transformative.

For a city bathed in golden light, and a heart so full of rapture he could barely find words to speak.

When he looked back, Acatl was still smiling.

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“We shouldn’t,” Acatl murmured, but it was a token protest and they both knew it. They’d come too far to stop now even if they wanted to.

Teomitl kissed him again, sweet and hungry. When he drew back, his mouth was red and wet as a feeding jaguar’s. “Does that mean you don’t want it?” It sounded sincere, for all that his hands were slipping under the waistband of Acatl’s loincloth and there was a thigh pressed rather insistently between his legs.

I shouldn’t want this, he thought. We both have so many other responsibilities, other duties. You will be my Emperor. But you are the sun of my life, and even though I burn, I throw myself into the fire willingly.

He rolled them both over, pressing Teomitl back down on the mat, and lowered his mouth to his lover’s throat. “Let me show you what I want,” he breathed, and bit sharply enough to sting.

There was no hesitation after that.

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The stars were falling again.

It was Tizoc’s fault. Of course it was Tizoc’s fault; he’d botched the restoration of the Great Temple, and She of the Silver Bells had broken free from Her prison for revenge upon the Mexica people. Star demons were plummeting by the dozens out of a noonday sky to join her. One would have been bad enough. This was a massacre.

The Duality House was safe—for now. Acatl didn’t know how long it would last. Mihmatini and Teomitl were doing an admirable job of defending it and the innocents huddled inside, but it took a High Priest—or several—to put paid to a furious goddess. His hands did not shake as he strapped another knife to his hip. He was born for this.

“Are you leaving already?” Teomitl was standing in the doorway. He looked exhausted, blood and ichor splattered across his armor, but his eyes were clear.

Acatl nodded. “Be careful while I’m gone.”

Teomitl clasped his arm. “You too.”

“I’m going off to fight a goddess. It’s not a careful occupation!”

Now Teomitl was almost smiling. “I know.”

“Which is why I’m coming with him.”

Mihmatini should have been on the battlements directing her priests, flinging down all the spells at her disposal. Instead she was standing just behind her husband in quilted cotton armor, a long smear of blood across one cheek. Her eyes were cold and hard.

Acatl opened his mouth. Remembered exactly what his little sister was like. Closed his mouth again.

And so the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli and the Guardian of the Duality went to imprison a deity.

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Teomitl loved his lessons with Acatl-tzin. The man was patient and intelligent and never seemed to mind in the least when he couldn’t sit still. “As long as your mind is paying attention,” he’d said drily, “I don’t care what your body’s doing.” He was very possibly the best teacher in the world.

His other tutors...well, not so much.

“What are you working on?” Acatl asked. He’d shown up a little early for their planned lesson.

Grimacing, Teomitl set the stick down and gestured at the equations he was trying to work out in the dust of his courtyard before committing them to paper. Key word: trying. “Cuauhtepetl-tzin assigned me these math problems,” he muttered. He was terrible at math. It didn’t even need to be said; there was no way Acatl could miss it. This was going to take him hours.

Acatl sat down on the bench next to him, frowning at the numbers. After a long moment, he asked, “...Do you want some help with them?”

His face felt like it was on fire, but he nodded.

It really did go faster with help, at least. And unlike him, Acatl was good at math.

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The army isn’t going off to war this year. Following Tizoc’s failure of a coronation war and the resulting horrific plague, they simply can’t afford to. Acatl had thought Teomitl would be angry about it—every war, after all, is a chance to show their strength and earn further glory—but instead he finds the man smiling when he shares the news.

“You actually want to stay here for the winter?” Acatl can’t keep a note of incredulity out of his voice.

Teomitl shrugs, almost carelessly—but then he links their fingers together, and that’s not careless at all even if his ears are pink and he’s not making eye contact as he answers, “I do miss you a great deal while I’m gone, you know.”

Now he’s blushing as well. This facet of their relationship is still so terribly new and tender; it’s one thing to be told (and enthusiastically shown) how much Teomitl adores and respects him when they’re together, but another thing entirely to learn he’s missed even when they’re apart.

“Well,” he says, and clears his throat. “This year, you won’t have to. Perhaps—we can celebrate your birthday together for once?” It’s always fallen just after the army leaves, and so he’s never had the chance. He rather likes the idea.

Judging by the way Teomitl lights up, he likes it too.

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Acatl woke up one morning and realized, disagreeably, that he was in love.

That doesn’t mean I have to do anything about it, he told himself. I’m a busy man. I’ve taken vows. And even if I hadn’t, this is entirely unsuitable. Indeed, it was difficult to imagine a more unsuitable object for his involuntary affections. No matter that the man smiled like the dawn and made his heart feel like warm honey—Teomitl was his sister’s husband, a dozen years his junior, and the heir apparent to the Mexica Empire. If he thought of Acatl at all, it was probably with brotherly tolerance. And that was leaving aside whatever his sister would think about it. Gods, it would break her heart.

“I think my husband is in love with you,” she informed him, and he spat his drink across the table.

When he could breathe again, he wheezed, “What?!”

She blinked. “He hasn’t been subtle.”

Well. He was still busy. This was still a bad idea. He definitely still shouldn’t be contemplating taking any sort of action.

But when Teomitl showed up at his door red-faced and flustered, mumbling something about having talked to Mihmatini earlier, Acatl invited him in.

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A poisoned newt. Ceyaxochitl had almost died because of a poisoned newt. If she’d been hungrier that day, or if she hadn’t gotten lunch from a street vendor earlier, she would have died in slow, lingering agony as paralysis crept in from her limbs to her lungs and then to her heart. But the server had dropped the tray, and as she’d looked at the mess she’d decided that she really wanted a cup of maguey sap instead. Thank the Duality for Acatl and Teomitl, who’d uncovered the attempt when one of her priest’s dogs had gotten sick off the refuse. And thank the Duality that there had been no attempts since.

But that didn’t mean she could get out of training up her successor, so on a particularly good day she sat down with Teomitl’s betrothed, set her cane across her lap, and asked, “How would you feel about becoming the Guardian of the Duality after me?”

Mihmatini looked first at her and then at her cane, and then said—very politely—“No thank you.”

She’d expected that. Coolly, she brought up her other major point. “No one would be able to stop you from marrying who you wished. Not even the man who thinks he’s going to be the next Emperor.”

“You don’t think the council will elect Tizoc-tzin?”

Without meaning to, she found herself smiling. Ah, such a bright young girl. “I think even if they do...well, we can find a way around him.”

Or through him. Men were so fragile, after all. Young Teomitl had all the bravery and intelligence his elder brother lacked, and was far easier to keep in check. When she and Mihmatini worked together, what couldn’t they achieve?

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Mictlan is dry dust against his bare feet, the soft hush of sand and the muffled crack of old bones. He is hollow, scraped raw by the cold wind. He feels like a corpse himself.

But this is his lot, and so he opens himself up to it. He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with the nonsmell of the place; for an instant, he feels as though his skin has sloughed off like a moth’s cocoon. There is no joy here, no satisfaction in a job well done. There is only a deep and final peace for kings and slaves alike.

Acatl walks through ashes and the broken remnants of obsidian knives, wades through rivers of blood and pus, to fall on bruised knees before his lord’s throne.

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“I’m fine,” she says. “I don’t need your help,” she says. And Teomitl remembers how they’d tied his cloak to her blouse (his heart to her heart), remembers the flare of magic that meant danger, and bites his lip, saying nothing. Was I not supposed to protect you, Mihmatini?

“You need to be patient,” he says. “We can weather this,” he says. And Teomitl remembers a knife at his throat (a garrote at his throat), remembers the poisonous hatred in his brother’s eyes, and bites his lip, saying nothing. You guard the whole of the Fifth World, but who guards you, Acatl-tzin?

There’s nothing he can do. He’s useless. The only thing he can do is sit and watch and wait as his brother spreads calamity throughout his Empire, threatening the people he loves. The people he gave his heart to, who don’t even seem to know that he’d do anything for them.

“You can save them,” she says. “You can save the Fifth World,” she says. And Teomitl remembers a frantically beating heart (a slow and faltering heart), remembers his soldiers dying in the mud because his brother is too unfit to rule, and he looks down at his sister.

And he says, “I will.”

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“It’s...snowing,” Teomitl had announced in disbelief, and Acatl hadn’t thought anything of it. Snow was rare but not unheard of, deep in the dry season as they were; it would probably melt by morning. He’d tugged Teomitl gently back to the mat, and their activities there had kept them wonderfully warm.

That had been two days ago, and the snow hadn’t stopped. Acatl and his priests were all getting sick of shoveling the stuff, and Teomitl had been so determined to be of use to them that he’d injured his shoulder and was grimly huddled next to a brazier in case the heat would help. As Acatl stumbled in on half-frozen feet, he looked up to inform him, “I’m going to start buying those closed shoes from the northern traders if this keeps up. This is ridiculous.”

“I know,” Acatl grumbled, and sat on the other side of the brazier in a bid to thaw himself out. “If it doesn’t stop soon, I’m not sure you’ll be able to get back to your own mat.”

Teomitl blinked, and then smiled sweetly. “What are you talking about? It’s right over there. And you certainly make me forget all about this weather.”

For all that they’d done on that mat, Acatl couldn’t help but blush. “I’m sure you’d want to be back in your own space eventually.”

“Mihmatini talks in her sleep,” Teomitl pointed out. And then he smirked. “But she doesn’t put her cold feet on me in the middle of the night, so...”

“I’ll show you cold feet!”

Teomitl didn’t quite squeak when Acatl pressed his now-bare foot against his thigh, but it was a near thing.

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It was far, far past midnight, but Teomitl couldn’t sleep. He’d been up since just before dawn. Exhaustion tugged at his limbs, but stubbornly refused to drag him under.

Slowly, mechanically, he dressed himself. Perhaps a walk would help. If nothing else, it might distract him. And if he wound up seeing the dawn from the other end...well. That wouldn’t be so bad. It reminded him just a bit of Acatl-tzin.

I wonder what he’s doing right now. Hopefully he was sleeping. Gods, please let him be sleeping. The night air was slipping through Teomitl’s cloak, and even his tendency to run warm wasn’t saving him from the chill. Acatl-tzin would feel it even worse.

He stepped out into his courtyard, gazing up at the moon. He wondered if the rabbit up there was lonely, too.

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Teomitl was growing his hair out. He’d started after being elevated to Master of the House of Darts, but that had been nine months, a war, a plague, and a coup attempt ago. Acatl hadn’t been able to take the time to really notice. Now that he was, he couldn’t stop. It was thick and coal-black, still at the spiky stage, and looked astonishingly soft. His fingers itched. He wouldn’t appreciate it, Acatl told himself. I shouldn’t.

But then there was a summer day in Teomitl’s courtyard, just the two of them, and Teomitl had been moved from sullen anger to a faint smile by his words (“I have faith in you,” he’d said, and known it for the truth) and then Teomitl had given him a look, soft and hopeful, and—

And Acatl reached out and ruffled his hair.

He snatched his fingers away in the next instant as Teomitl stiffened, already bracing himself for huffy indignation. The man had absolutely no sense of humor when he thought he was being belittled, and Acatl couldn’t blame him.

But Teomitl wasn’t angry. He was, in fact, staring at Acatl in utter bewilderment.

“Sorry,” Acatl muttered, knowing there wasn’t really a defense for his actions. It had been so soft under his palm.

And then Teomitl started to grin. “If it’s you doing that, I don’t mind at all. I’d say you’ve more than earned it.”

Acatl’s heart was beating faster than he was used to. Resolutely pushing aside any thoughts of what it might mean—he could examine that later when Teomitl wasn’t looking at him like that—he tweaked a stray lock back into place. “There. It’s better.”

“At least until you mess it up again,” Teomitl teased.

Now, that was a challenge. Acatl planted his hand on top of Teomitl’s head, but before he could follow through on the implied threat he realized how Teomitl was smiling at him, a soft light in his eyes. His heart was hammering fit to escape his chest. Slowly, his hand slid through close-cropped black hair to rest at the base of Teomitl’s neck instead. He could—but he shouldn’t—but he wanted—

Teomitl let out a long sigh and leaned in.

This, too, was soft.

Chapter Text

The worst part, Quenami thinks, is that he doesn’t have proof. Oh, he has plenty of evidence—Acatl and Teomitl are in each other’s presence constantly, Acatl is the only one who can rein in the brat’s temper, there are bruises and marks on both their bare skins that he knows Acatl can’t have gotten in a fight and he highly doubts Mihmatini would put on her husband (though he could be wrong; she seems like the sort to be domineering), he has seen Acatl seethe in fury when Teomitl is threatened—but none of that constitutes actual proof. Even Tizoc-tzin isn’t paranoid enough to think two brothers-in-law enjoying each other’s company means something untoward is going on.

But there is. Acatl has shown up to meetings with ornaments in his hair and a telling hitch in his step. His spies in the Duality House say that Teomitl rarely spends the entire night on his wife’s mat, and can often be seen making his way through the Sacred Precinct in the predawn hours with a distinctly smug expression. Someone in the markets has been buying a great deal of avocado oil.

If he can only catch them at it, he can take them both down. Tizoc-tzin’s reign and his own power will be assured. But Tizoc-tzin is weakening, and he is running out of time.

And then one day, he runs out entirely.

It is a bright spring day when Tizoc-tzin dies and he must entrust the Emperor’s body to Acatl. No sooner does he perform that unfortunate duty then Teomitl locks eyes with him over his brother’s corpse. “Finally,” he says with a note of triumph.

Quenami is prepared for death. Teomitl’s always hated him, after all. He is not prepared for the man to step over to Acatl, lift his skull mask out of the way, and kiss him full on the mouth in front of half the palace and the gods themselves.

(Judging by the way he goes scarlet and hisses “Teomitl!” under his breath, neither is Acatl. It’s a small balm.)

Chapter Text

It’s good to be Revered Speaker. Nezahual has beautiful concubines, the riches of a kingdom, and the leisure to enjoy both. And, just as importantly, plenty of opportunity to spread his good fortune around.

Not that Teomitl seems to appreciate it. He’s agreed to join Nezahual in the natural hot springs connected to the royal baths, but judging by the way he’s been huddled against the edge nursing a bottle of pulque for an hour he clearly isn’t enjoying himself. He’s not even looking at the dancers in their gauze blouses and near-transparent cloaks.

Nezahual reaches over and splashes him just to get his attention. “Don’t you ever relax?”

Teomitl splutters, wiping water away from his face to glare balefully at him. “With you here? Of course not.”

He grins as a thought occurs to him. “...Maybe I ought to extend an invitation to Acatl-tzin as well. I’m sure he’d enjoy the entertainment I picked out for us.” Granted, the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli is the most staid person he knows, but there are singers and poets he probably wouldn’t be offended by. Probably.

Now Teomitl’s turning red. “He would not,” he growls, just as one of the dancers does something with his hips that makes him practically choke on his own spit.

Oh, this is better than what he’d had planned. “Have you asked?”

“I am not having this conversation with you,” he says stiffly, and pointedly knocks back the rest of his cup.

Nezahual sighs and shakes his head, relaxing against the edge of the springs. He’ll simply enjoy himself on his own, then.

Chapter Text

He is not nice. He is rarely kind, though he tries to be. What he is—what all priests for the Dead should be—is honest. In death, there is no room for lies or trickery. A corpse has already given up its secrets, and a soul will soon be beyond any mortal concerns. Acatl, as High Priest, must be the same.

He must.

But that means he can no longer lie to himself either, no matter how much he might wish to.

“What do you think of Tizoc?”

“He killed the clergy of Tlaloc, as surely as if he cast the spell himself.”

“And you think he should rule, until such time as he dies?”

A deep breath. A single heartbeat. And then, knowing he speaks truth even as the words fall like lead on his tongue, even as it dooms him for treason—

“No.”

Chapter Text

The unfortunate thing about the armor of the Master of the House of Darts was that the aforementioned Master of the House of Darts couldn’t actually put it on himself. He simply wasn’t flexible enough to reach the ties on his own back. Normally there were slaves to help him, but this morning was special.

This morning there was Acatl, who’d soothed the sting of his ritual bloodletting with kisses and joined him for a bath that had only not gotten them extremely distracted because it was frankly too cold to get up to anything interesting. Who was even now smoothing the feathers of his quilted cotton suit so that they lay flat and gently tweaking his headdress so the plumes fell correctly. Who’d stared at him in actual surprise when Teomitl had shown up the night before with his gear, as though there was any question of them not taking the chance for one last night together before he went off to another campaign.

Warm fingers grazed his back as Acatl tightened the knot, and he couldn’t suppress a shiver even as he grinned. “So, what do you want me to bring you from the Mixtec lands?”

Acatl was silent for a moment. Teomitl wondered what he’d ask for. He always said he never needed anything, but he’d seemed pleased with the gifts of knives and codices and interestingly shaped rocks. Maybe I’ll bring him a new chocolate cup, he mused. The one he uses is so plain.

Finally his lover said simply, “Yourself, safe and sound.”

Teomitl’s face went hot. “I—you—” He started. I can’t promise that. You can’t just say that. If you keep being so sweet and sincere, I won’t even want to leave.

He heard Acatl chuckle behind him a moment before soft lips brushed the nape of his neck. “I have faith in you,” he whispered. “Go and bring us glory.”

Chapter Text

The first time they’d been to Texcoco, they’d been fleeing for their lives from then-false accusations of treason. Now they are here officially, as honored guests, and the experience couldn’t be more different. There are singers and musicians to entertain them, lavish feasts arranged for them to bask in the bounty of Nezahual-tzin’s kingdom.

And there is only one room for the two of them. Acatl is very, very aware of that single room, with two mats laid out side by side. He’s even more aware of it when he comes in on their first night to see Teomitl sprawled lazily out on one with his cloak spread underneath him, long legs splayed in a way that draws Acatl’s eye inevitably to the fact that loincloths hide absolutely nothing. His mouth is suddenly almost too dry to talk, but he forces out, “You look comfortable.”

The look Teomitl gives him should by all rights set something on fire, it’s that heated. “It’s a comfortable mat,” he says, with the edge of a wicked smile curling his lips. “You should join me.”

He should do no such thing. But they’re in a strange land, far from anyone who would judge them, and so Acatl drops to the mat.

Whether this will hold when they return home, he can’t say. But for tonight—and every night until they leave—he’ll let himself indulge.

Chapter Text

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. He thought he might have felt a flicker of real joy a few weeks ago, but it had been gone so quickly he hadn’t had time to dwell on it. There was just so much else for him to do. Funeral rites here, vigils there, being summoned even from the scant snatches of sleep he managed to grab by the need to put down monsters that were still cropping up because he’d asked Teomitl to wait...

He closed his eyes and slumped against the inner wall of his own courtyard, taking a deep breath. Half an hour. Storm Lord strike him, give him just half an hour of rest.

“Acatl-tzin?!”

One of his priests, frantic. He could smell fresh blood.

Gritting his teeth, he straightened up. It was time for him to do his duty again.

Chapter Text

There were certain advantages to a large age gap between yourself and your youngest sister. For one thing, it meant that when she was trying to cozy up with the man who intended to court her, you had both the fuel and the obligation to share embarrassing childhood stories. Acatl and Neutemoc may not have spoken for several years, but when Mihmatini started talking about her calmecac training—Teomitl hanging on her every word—they exchanged looks. It was time.

Neutemoc’s grin split his face. “Did she ever tell you about the time she tried to climb a cactus to get at the fruit when she was eight...?”

“Neutemoc!”

“...She didn’t.” To give him credit, Teomitl was clearly trying not to smile. Unfortunately, he wasn’t trying hard enough. “What happened?”

Mihmatini glared viciously at her brothers. “You’re both horrible,” she muttered.

Acatl reflexively winced, but Teomitl seemed determined to allay the tension in the room before anyone got anything thrown at them. He gave Mihmatini’s hand a squeeze and said, “It sounds very brave of you. Maybe a little foolish, but I’m sure I did worse things when I was eight. At least you never tried to pet an ocelot.”

“You what,” said Mihmatini and Acatl simultaneously, which at least did derail the conversation from Mihmatini’s childhood gluttony in favor of Teomitl’s complete lack of self-preservation. And it made Teomitl laugh, which in Acatl’s view was always a plus.

Chapter Text

Teomitl has many siblings who share his blood, but none of them have ever really felt like his brothers or sisters. He was the youngest, the spare, the hanger-on. The one whose birth killed his mother. It’s not particularly conducive to a good family relationship in the viper’s den that is the Imperial Palace.

But then he meets Acatl and his family. Mihmatini, who has the courage of eagles. Mazatl, endlessly curious. Necalli, grave and careful. Ohtli and Atoyatl, who are astonishingly clever for their age. Ollin is too young to have much of a personality yet but he smiles at Teomitl anyway, which is adorable. And Neutemoc, the children's father, who is...well. Teomitl’s never met a man who wants to sit in silence with him while they go over their armor, or discuss entirely hypothetical battle strategies over dinner. Acatl is wonderful in other ways, but the affairs of warriors visibly make his teacher’s eyes glaze over and he doesn’t want to put him through that.

Neutemoc, on the other hand, listens. He has ideas. He’s teaching Teomitl how to put together a macuahuitl from scratch. He is, in short, a far better brother to him than his own ever were, for all that his relationship with Acatl is strained. (And for all that Teomitl privately thinks Acatl was in the right; if the rest of his family couldn’t see how amazing Acatl was, that was their own fault.) He’s never once made Teomitl feel unwelcome in his home or in his family’s lives.

“Teomitl!” screams Mazatl when she sees him, sprinting across the courtyard so he can pick her up and swing her around. Both of them laugh; in the background, Neutemoc and Acatl crack fond smiles.

“It’s good to see you,” Neutemoc says, and Teomitl’s heart is light for what still feels, even now, like the first time.

He does want to marry Mihmatini, regardless of how much the court fights him on it. But even if he didn’t—even if he wasn’t willing to go to war for that—there’s nothing that would make him give this up.

Chapter Text

“I got them to make me a key,” Teomitl says, and grins.

Are you insane, Acatl wants to say. Do you have any idea what Tizoc-tzin would do to you if he found out?

He does say that last part, but with one thing and another—it’s probably not the worst week of his life, but it’s certainly a strong contender—he actually manages to forget entirely about the passageway through Tlalocan Teomitl’s managed to hold open, and it’s only months later he’s reminded about it at all.

Granted, at the moment he is, Teomitl’s no longer the only one who’d be dead if Tizoc-tzin found out what either of them had done. Are doing on a regular basis, in fact; he’s still catching his breath, brain pleasantly fuzzy, when Teomitl murmurs, “You should stay a little longer.”

He heaves a sigh. Teomitl’s fingers are tracing a meaningless pattern over his chest and the last thing he ever wants to do is leave this mat, but he doesn’t have a choice. When they’re in Teomitl’s palace quarters, he can’t afford to linger. “You know I can’t. If I’m caught here without a reason...”

Teomitl lifts his head. “Don’t you remember? There’s a faster way out.”

“Beg pardon?” Nothing occurs to him. Possibly that’s because Teomitl still has a leg thrown over his hip.

“That tunnel you scolded me for making?” His lover’s wicked smile probably shouldn’t stir his blood so soon. “I’ve made a few improvements. There’s a side passage that lets out near my quarters.”

He swallows. Teomitl knows what he’s doing, but Tlalocan is still dangerous. On the other hand, the chance of a few more hours in his arms is tempting enough that he wants to risk it, even though... “I wasn’t scolding you,” he huffs. “I was worried for you. You know I loved you even then.”

Teomitl blinks at him. “You were...oh. Oh, Acatl.”

Then he surges up and kisses him, and Acatl knows he’ll definitely be making use of that tunnel later. Anything for more of this.

Chapter Text

Outside there was the low hum of passersby and the snort and stamp of horses. The saloon had just opened for business, adding its own din of shouting cowboys and the calls of working girls. The windows had been flung open in a desperate bid for any sort of breeze, but it wasn’t working very well.

Acatl grimaced and straightened up from the corpse he was laying out. As much as he hated to admit it, maybe it was time for a break. A short one. Miss Alvarez (age 21, stab wound, perpetrator yet unknown) would understand if he at least paused for a drink of water. But the pump was outside, and outside was loud.

Nothing for it. He washed his hands quickly, rolled his sleeves down, and stepped out into the sunset night. The saloon directly across from his funeral parlor was already bustling, gamblers and tradesmen alike spilling in and out of its swinging doors. They looked as though they were having fun. As he watched, a young man on a black gelding trotted up to the hitching post and dismounted in a smooth motion that set his bright orange poncho swirling. Acatl couldn’t help but stare a moment. There was something terribly familiar about that aquiline nose...

“Hey, our little prince is here! Teomitl, what’ve you been doing with yourself?”

Teomitl was huffing at the gambler who’d waved to him—something about needing a drink before work—but Acatl wasn’t listening. Teomitl. Their town wasn’t large, and their mayor made frequent rounds with his wife and children. And his younger brother, who was glancing back over his shoulder in Acatl’s direction with something like surprise on his face.

The gambler smirked as he saw where he was looking. “That’s our coroner. Don’t bother inviting him in; man’s never darkened this doorway in his life. Heard he usedta be a priest—he sure does act like it!”

Acatl flinched. It was true, but that didn’t mean he wanted it bandied about. But Teomitl didn’t look judgemental; instead he turned to Acatl and nodded politely, visibly dismissing the gambler with a sort of inborn arrogance that wasn’t surprising at all. Annoying, but not surprising. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve been looking for you.”

A cold chill ran down his back. Suddenly and irrationally, he wished he was wearing his gun. It was a cheap six-shooter, but it would do for self-defense. “...Why?”

Teomitl’s gaze flicked from side to side before returning to Acatl’s face. His spurs jingled as he stepped forward, the sound almost covering his low voice. “I might have some information for you regarding Miss Alvarez. And the other women.”

Acatl sucked in a sharp breath. Because Miss Alvarez wasn’t the only woman who’d been killed recently, but Teomitl had been in the city for the past month so there was no way he’d have known that, unless... “Did Ceyaxochitl send you?” At Teomitl’s sharp nod, he grimaced. The old woman had gotten him away from the church in El Paso, saying that he could do more good out here. Ever since then, she’d made a habit out of offering her “help” just when he didn’t want it.

Well, there was no stopping it now. He nodded politely and motioned to the pump in the street. “I’ll draw us some water. We can talk inside.”

Chapter Text

“How dare you,” Acatl snapped. “He’s my former student—his wife is my sister, the Guardian of the Duality! You cannot possibly be suggesting that he or I would even contemplate such things.”

Acamapichtli frowned thoughtfully for a long moment, but finally he conceded the point. “You have always been sickeningly self-righteous. I confess I thought the rumors far-fetched.”

Acatl drew himself up to his full height and adjusted the fall of his cloak so it looked a bit less rumpled. It was something of a lost cause. “Keep thinking that. And if you spread them any further, we will have words.”

And then he stalked off, back stiff. The nerve of Acamapichtli! At least the way he’d tied his cloak did an admirable job of hiding the love bites on his collarbones.

Chapter Text

The peyotl, the teonanacatl. The copal incense. The bloody paper burning in the brazier. Cacao and herbs and sour, scorching pulque. Quenami sat in a room that had never known sunlight and took it all in. He knew no pain, no want, no time.

The pounding of drums.

The rolling of thunder, close enough that he felt it in his kidneys.

The staccato beat of hooves—a herd of deer? But strange, giant deer without antlers.

Ships larger than any he’d ever seen before, with snow-white cotton stretched above them.

Sallow, pale-faced men in strange clothing, speaking a tongue he didn’t recognize.

A Tlaxcallan nobleman smiling coldly.

Blood. Blood. So much blood. The roofs of the houses were caving in, and the bed of Lake Texcoco was cracked and dry, and a single shattered spear lay forgotten in the dust, and—

There was a horrible retching noise. It took him a moment to realize he was the one making it, but fortunately his underlings were quicker and less...impaired than he was, so there was a basin in front of him before he ruined the arrays drawn onto the floor.

“What did you see, Quenami-tzin?”

He grimaced, wiping his mouth. “I must speak with the Emperor.”

Tizoc wouldn’t be happy.

Chapter Text

From the pen of Ixtlilxochitl, 50 years after the Night of Victory

Now in his youth Ahuitzotzin had been tutored in magic by Acatzin who was High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli, and took that man’s sister Mihmatinitzin for his first wife though their family was of humble origin. It is a widespread and common opinion that he held both of them in equal esteem, for often was he seen to clasp Acatzin in his arms and call him the best of men, while in the same breath praise Mihmatinitzin for her power and great beauty. Acatzin was known to be a great lover of justice and temperance, even to the extent of arguing with his Emperor, but Ahuitzotzin always heeded his counsel when he would heed nothing else. Alone among the noblemen, he was allowed to call Ahuitzotzin by his birth name of Teomitzin.

Ahuitzotzin was sorely injured in the great flood of Tenochtitlan, taking a wound to the skull that kept him from battle for the rest of his reign. While he recuperated, Mihmatinitzin and Acatzin guarded the Empire. Many say that he would have died if Acatzin had not pled with Chalchiuhtlicue to spare him. Others say that so desperate was Acatzin to save him that he fought with the goddess himself. All saw Ahuitzotzin’s namesakes leap upon and devour Alvarado, so I think the former to be more likely.

As for Acatzin, he lived to be over seventy years of age and was still hale and healthy when he sacrificed himself on the Night of Victory, fueling the spell which turned back the Castilians. Ahuitzotzin died upon that same night, fighting valiantly to the last despite the lasting effects of his old wound. He was succeeded by his son Cuauhtemoctzin.

From assorted museum plaques in the Sacred Precinct, 500 years after the Night of Victory

String of silver owl beads once owned by Cicuacen Acatl, High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli 1479-1520 (b. ~1450).

Silver pectoral of an owl flanked by two spiders, the reverse bearing the name-glyph Teomitl, once owned by Cicuacen Acatl, High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli 1479-1520 (b. ~1450).

Painted wooden comb carved with a bat motif, once owned by Cicuacen Acatl, High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli 1479-1520 (b. ~1450).

Painted clay cup bearing a motif of reeds and water birds, donated from the grave goods of Emperor Ahuitzotl (1487-1520, b. ~1463) by his descendants.

Fragmented, fire-damaged codex page purported to be love poetry written by Emperor Ahuitzotl (1487-1520, b. ~1463).

Carved stone stele depicting Cicuacen Acatl and Emperor Ahuitzotl upon the Night of Victory. They are holding hands.

Chapter Text

There is a way to dig himself out of this chasm he’s fallen into, and it starts like this.

“I brought you lunch.”

“Talk to me, I’m listening.”

“Do you mind if I sit and watch you work?”

“My lord, I was thinking...about Tlatelolco...”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

He’s still not sure if he’s doing it right; he came so close, so horrifyingly close, to destroying what he loves. But little by little, the fences he’s broken seem to be mending. Acatl is happy to see him even when he doesn’t come bearing food. (He still does, because the gods know that the man needs it.) Their relationship with Tlatelolco is finally improving. (He might have to marry one of their princesses, but he hopes it doesn’t come to that. The last thing he needs is another wife to potentially disappoint.) And Mihmatini...

She sings sweetly as she weaves, and even though it’s a love song it sounds like a victory hymn.

Chapter Text

Jade Skirt speaks to him and through him, an itch in the back of his mind. No, not an itch—a gnawing, as if something with too many teeth wants to get out. He gave himself to Her freely, knowing what he was sacrificing, but that doesn’t make it any easier. She is not kind, and She is not gentle, and She is not careful.

And She doesn’t let him lie to himself at night. Oh, during the day it’s mostly fine—there are distractions aplenty, and he can’t afford to waste time ruminating on all his failures. But if he tries to rest or meditate, there She is.

You cannot run from it forever. One day you will lie in the embrace of the earth, and it will be too late.

Speak your heart, boy. He was right in front of you!

She loves you. She worries for you. Will your reign be magnificent enough to make up for slighting the Guardian of the Duality?

Teomitl punches his cushion. It doesn’t help. He wants to scream, but he doesn’t dare risk it; his sister’s compound isn’t the place to show frustration or weakness. Soon, he promises Chalchiuhtlicue. I’ll make it all right soon, and when Tizoc is gone I’ll raise such a temple to You as was never seen in the Fifth World.

She grumbles inside his head. You’d better make all this worth it.

Chapter Text

At the end of every month, the Guardian performed a ritual with a few drops of her own blood and a great profusion of flowers. It was intended to clear the air of magical interference for the start of the next month, ensuring that the proper reverence was given to each god. Though it took less than an hour, it was still performed at the top of the Duality’s temple with no less than four attendant priests.

And Teomitl, whose job it was to metaphorically anchor his wife to the material world. Metaphorically, which meant that instead of channeling magic of his own or being more fully involved with the proceedings, his job was to stand there and watch in case her magic was too much for her. He hadn’t previously thought it was possible to be bored and terrified at the same time, but watching the ritual be set up proved him wrong.

And then Mihmatini slashed her earlobes and left palm lightly, and he forgot all about his own frustrations.

Blue light spilled from her skin, deep and pure as the sky above. When she lifted her voice in a hymn to the Duality, he actually had to fight the urge to drop to his knees from the sheer unleashed power of it. The world felt for a moment as though it had shifted on its foundation—no, he thought a moment later, shifted back on its foundation. It had been just slightly askew, and now it was right again. Mihmatini was doing that with the power of her blood and her voice and her connection to the Duality, and he was...he was...

Mortal. Human. Weak. Utterly insignificant to the Fifth World. He almost couldn’t breathe.

Slowly, a thought filtered through the crushing awareness of his wife’s power. A half-hysterical laugh started to bubble up, but he kept it locked firmly behind his teeth.

And I thought she needed protection.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t think. There’s a monster straight from the underworld bearing down on them, and Acatl—well, he’ll be the first to say Acatl’s a skilled fighter, but not when the thing currently charging at them doesn’t seem to have easily stabbable parts. So he dives between them and nicks his own arm, bringing Huitzilopochtli’s protective magic to searing golden life.

The monster isn’t so easily deterred. Now that he’s bought them both a moment to think he can see it’s something like a smoky beast of shadows with a head like a caiman and claws—ouch, very sharp claws—like a bear. It’s all he can do just to hold it back, because his sword isn’t doing anything. It seems to really hate his magic, though, which gives him an idea.

Acatl’s quicker than he is. “Keep it steady so I can banish it!”

“Work fast,” he snaps back. His skin feels like he’s been shoved into an oven, and he’s dimly aware that he’s still bleeding. But Acatl said to keep it steady, so that’s what he’ll do. Feint here, jab there, keep moving and circling and don’t show fear—

He can hear Acatl chanting. It can’t be much longer now.

Step. Turn. Watch its claws and teeth, keep your distance. Slash down, briefly parting the smoke that wreathes its body. Step.

Acatl’s voice lifts. Mictlan’s magic surges like the tide, cold and empty and final. Teomitl staggers, nearly falling to his knees, but that’s alright. He’s allowed to be weak now, because the shadows are rising to sweep their foe away.

Chapter Text

“You did well, Acatl.” A lie. They were only trying to lower his guard.

“You could bring honor to your family.” Another lie. Nothing he did would ever be good enough.

“I’m only looking out for your best interests.” To assume the arrogance of a warrior, instead of serving the gods humbly.

“Our mother loves you, Acatl! How could you do this to her?” This was joining the priesthood, this was devoting himself to Mictlantecuhtli instead of to a house and family of his own. Simple things. Unobjectionable things. Things that should have made his mother proud.

He closed his ears and his heart to his brother’s words and kept walking. If he turned around, he would only start shouting again.

Chapter Text

Other couples would probably watch plays or attend parties at their friends’ houses. Perhaps they would listen to singers or poets, or go for walks together. Teomitl and Acatl weren’t other couples.

They weren’t that lucky, for one thing. “Can we,”—there was a nasty schlorp as Teomitl yanked his knife free of the monster that had oozed up out of the shadows at them—“have one nice night? Just one?” The complaint was directed at nobody in particular and absolutely wasn’t helping, but it did briefly make him feel a little better.

Acatl sighed, but there was a fond look in his eyes. “It’s not over yet.”

It wasn’t, but... “You’re hurt,” Teomitl pointed out. His lover had gotten a nasty-looking gash in the fighting.

Judging by Acatl’s expression, he’d entirely failed to notice this. Typical. “...Ah. It’s fine. Look,”—he flexed his arm, visibly wincing as he did so—“it’s nothing.”

“Acatl.”

He didn’t have to say anything more. Acatl grimaced and got to his feet, wrapping his cloak around the wound. “Let’s go home, then, so you can fuss over me.”

“Someone has to!” Teomitl huffed. Honestly, if it wasn’t for him Acatl would probably be dead a dozen times over just from lack of rest, never mind a barely-treated wound. It needed to be washed and bandaged at the very least, and it was entirely likely he’d need stitches or a healing priest anyway. I can’t let you be hurt, he thought. Anyone else, but not you.

There was another sigh, but then Acatl reached over with his good hand and linked their fingers together. “Just so long as you remember it goes both ways, love. And this time I insist you let me buy our dinner on the way.”

Despite himself, Teomitl smiled. “Afraid I’ll hand over a small fortune again?”

“I know I taught you better than that, I swear you do it on purpose...”

So their night wasn’t going to plan. But they were together, and that was what mattered.

Chapter Text

His feet throb. His back aches. His arms and earlobes still sting, still burn from his bloodletting. He can feel the trickle of fresh blood down his neck even now. The night before last he and his priests had to put down another monster from the underworld, and every muscle is still protesting the exertion. He can’t remember the last time he properly filled his belly. Even his eyes are burning from exhaustion.

But enough of his suffering. He is High Priest, and he has a job to do.

He slashes the back of his hand, another spike of pain, and summons the emptiness of his lord’s realm. A hollow chill grows in the pit of his gut, pushing aside hunger. His wounds fade to itches and then to nothingness—and then past nothingness, an utter absence of feeling that pulses under his skin like a second heart. He inhales and tastes dust on his tongue.

He is High Priest for the Dead, and the dead do not feel pain.

Chapter Text

“No, Acatl-tzin.”

Acatl opened his mouth to protest—it was only a broken ankle, he wasn’t an invalid—but Palli spoke right over him. “Ichtaca-tzin has already taken over your ritual duties for the next week, and we are more than capable of handling anything else that may arise. Your only job right now is to rest.”

“But...”

“Teomitl-tzin,”—Palli didn’t quite grimace at the name, but it was dangerously close—“has already been informed of the situation and is sending warriors to bolster us on our missions. I am told he intends to visit himself at some point today. The Guardian is also expected—”

Running footsteps. His sister’s voice calling, “Acatl!”

Acatl rubbed his temples. “I suppose you have everything well in hand without me, then.”

Mihmatini shoved the jingling entrance curtain aside, frowning at both men. Well, mostly at him. Palli looked a little terrified to be caught in the effect. “Of course we do. Acatl, how did this happen? No, wait, I’m not sure I want to know.”

Since he’d broken his ankle when a ladder rung had snapped under him, possibly the least dignified way to injure himself, he didn’t want to tell her. Unfortunately Palli was both loyal and scrupulously honest, so she found out anyway.

But it wasn’t all bad; Teomitl showed up as promised, with food and another (touching but unnecessary, really) healing priest, and Acatl’s priests really were as good as their word. All the rituals were performed flawlessly, he’d never seen the temple so clean, and when he was finally back on his feet he...well, he didn’t miss the period of enforced leisure, but it was nice to rest occasionally. It was nice to know he could rest, and the people around him would help him.

He let Palli and Ichtaca handle more of the temple affairs after that.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t that they tiptoed around the subject. Given their respective positions, they couldn’t really avoid it. But they both tried not to linger on it too much in front of Teomitl, even so. His fury had a way of amplifying theirs until all three of them were in a bad mood and Acatl, for his part, was really regretting asking Teomitl to hold off his coup for another few years. It wasn’t healthy.

But. Well. Sometimes it came up anyway, like when Acatl showed up late for dinner at the Duality House and Teomitl asked him what kept him at the palace so long. He could hardly refuse to answer, after all.

“A meeting with the Revered Speaker,” he muttered.

“Tizoc,” Teomitl spat.

“You shouldn’t have said anything!” Mihmatini hissed. “Look, you’ve set him off...”

Because of course, Teomitl didn’t need any further encouragement. Worse than his arrogance, his paranoia, his instability—Tizoc was a disappointment. He had once been Teomitl’s respected older brother, the man who’d taught him to climb trees and speak well to his fellow nobles. Now he was a cancer upon the Empire they loved, a stain that had to be cleansed before it did permanent damage. Everything Teomitl said about him was true.

...Impressively profane, but true.

Finally, Mihmatini sighed and shoved a cut pitaya in front of her husband’s face. “Eat. It’ll get slimy.”

“And he wouldn’t know a terrain chokepoint if it bit him—oh, pitaya! I thought we ate the last of it.”

Silence thus restored—Teomitl loved pitaya and was fully capable of eating a whole one by himself—Acatl sighed and settled in to enjoy the rest of his meal.

Chapter Text

He isn’t crying. He’s very proud of how much he’s not crying, actually. He’s standing across from Acatl in his sister’s compound, facing him down like an enemy instead of someone he loves, and though his voice is tight with (grief) rage, he isn’t crying. There can be no space for tears in a heart turned to stone, for stone is what he must be if they’re to have any hope of removing his brother from the throne.

“You’re mad,” Acatl spits out.

“Not mad. Desperate. It isn’t the same.” His voice cracks. He hopes Acatl doesn’t notice. Please listen, he thinks. Please work with me. I need you. I could leave my sister’s house today if you were with me, I wouldn’t need her power or her magic if you were by my side.

But Acatl is bitterly furious, and he’s barely holding it together, and in the end—

In the end, when he’s alone, he cries anyway.

Chapter Text

Grackles are not especially known for the beauty of their song, but they sing sweetly enough. They’re certainly not known for the brightness of their plumage, either, but there’s something very fine indeed about that iridescent black. It reminds him of the shine of Acatl’s hair unbound and flowing in the morning, before he’s pulled it back.

Teomitl—Ahuitzotl, Revered Speaker of the Mexica—has been on campaign for months. He has been at war, away from his city and the people he loves, for months. He stares up at the birds singing on their branches and thinks about sunlight rippling on the canals, sunlight caught in the waves of Acatl’s hair.

Gods, Acatl. Steady as the earth under his feet, with a smile like a rainbow after the summer storms. A grackle takes wing suddenly, black feathers flashing blue-purple, and Teomitl sucks in a breath. Suddenly he misses that man like a lost limb.

When I get back, he thinks. When I’m home, I’ll tell him.

And then he goes to find his quartermaster. Perhaps it’s possible to cage a few of the birds and bring them home with him. They will liven up the palace aviaries admirably. And perhaps, just perhaps, they will make Acatl smile.

Chapter Text

If he exerted himself, he could command some limited power over water. He wouldn’t be raising any city-swamping floods anytime soon—at least, not without giving himself a screaming headache and wavering so dangerously on his feet that Acatl made him sit down and take deep breaths until he felt better—but he could manage small things. Making water splash out of a cup without touching it. Keeping wells fresh and clear of any horrible whiskery swimming things. Holding a globe of water in his palm, even though that only lasted a few seconds and made his fingers tingle unpleasantly.

And he always, always knew where everything was in the lake. All he had to do was reach out his hand towards the canals and focus on who he wanted to find, and he felt their presence in the currents. There was the shape of Acatl’s hand, the curve of Mihmatini’s shoulder, the line of his brother’s jaw. He could sink into it if he wasn’t careful. It would be too easy to spend all day on the pier, feeling the hum of life around his city and getting lost in the ahuitzotls’ song.

No. There were more important things to do.

Reluctantly, he lifted his hand. He could practice later; his stomach was grumbling, and it was time to eat.

Chapter Text

“Are you going home already?”

Acatl blinked, half-turning to glance back at Teomitl. A late dinner at Neutemoc’s house had finally wound down, and he was sort of looking forward to his own bed. He wasn’t sure how well he’d sleep after having eaten so much, but he never slept very well anyway. “I was planning on it, yes. Why?”

Teomitl’s quick smile held a spark of sunlight in it. “I’ll walk you back. It’s a nice night; we could take our time.”

On one hand, he had been anticipating an early night, and he knew Teomitl could walk for hours before showing he was tired. On the other hand...he thought of the joy in Teomitl’s face when he wandered the streets of their city, how he delighted in finding new things everywhere he went. And the boy was right; it was a nice night. Maybe it would even help him digest.

So he found himself smiling back. “Alright.”

They did indeed take their time. And if the night breeze chilled them so that they wound up walking a little closer than they had been, well. Acatl wasn’t complaining.

Chapter Text

“Why are you here?!”

“I was invited,” Nezahual said, and smiled. Teomitl wanted to knock it off his face.

Deep breaths, he reminded himself. You can’t start a diplomatic incident just because the Revered Speaker of Texcoco is a pain in the ass. “I figured that,” he gritted out. “What I mean is—why are you here, specifically?” Here was Teomitl’s courtyard, which had been an oasis of calm in the bustling palace until about two minutes ago.

Nezahual looked innocent, but Teomitl knew it was a lie. “I can’t stop by to say hello? I don’t think we’ve seen each other since the plague. When your sister killed my warriors. I could demand considerable compensation for that, you know.”

There were days Teomitl could very happily murder both his oldest siblings. “You could. But you won’t, because we both know Tizoc isn’t long for this world. You want a good relationship with the next Revered Speaker, don’t you?”

Nezahual let out a long sigh. “I don’t suppose you’d feel moved to take action before this banquet, would you?”

Just for that, Teomitl said, “No.”

Chapter Text

Acatl is under the impression that he isn’t beautiful. He’s been heard to describe himself as—and this is a direct quote Teomitl still can’t believe he heard come out of that man’s mouth—as alright-looking. As though that could even remotely describe him! It’s true that he’s neither tall nor especially muscular, tending more towards wiry slenderness than anything else. It’s true that he lacks the intrinsic arrogance of warriors or noblemen, the sort that makes them fill the room with sheer force of personality.

But that doesn’t matter, not to Teomitl. Acatl’s eyes are dark and warm and serious; his hair, unbound, flows like a waterfall. He doesn’t need arrogance when his quiet devotion and certainty reshape the world around them. He might get huffy over his lack of strength, but he’s still an incredible fighter and his legs are fantastic. Plus, Teomitl would be lying if he said there isn’t something incredibly appealing about being able to wrap his hands around his lover’s wrists or lift him as though he weighs nothing, all the more so when Acatl blushes so brightly every time.

“Teomitl!” A spluttering, disbelieving laugh—and then he smiles. Always. His face is already handsome as far as Teomitl’s concerned—narrow, high cheekbones, straight nose a bit too big for it, full lips—but his smile transforms it into something heartstoppingly radiant.

(Teomitl’s tried shoving Acatl in front of a mirror to show him. It hasn’t worked. “I do indeed have a face,” his lover had said drily, and Teomitl had only been able to bury his own face in his hands.)

“You’re ridiculous,” he’s saying now, but it’s endlessly fond and his arms are wrapped around Teomitl’s shoulders, so the words don’t sting.

And he is the perfect height to kiss.

Chapter Text

The Revered Speaker is dead. Acatl should be horrified. He should be worried. He should be praying to the gods to spare them another descent of star demons.

He shouldn’t be heaving a sigh of relief and feeling the last four years of weight slough off him. He shouldn’t be thanking the gods for a man’s death. And he definitely shouldn’t be fighting back half-hysterical laughter. Finally, they’re free. Finally, they can move forward as an Empire and rebuild all the things Tizoc’s destroyed. Finally, he doesn’t need to lay awake at night wondering if the stars seem a little brighter than they did the night before.

When Ichtaca reminds him of the ritual they must perform now that the man’s dead—oh, he wonders how it happened, he sort of hopes it wasn’t Teomitl—it takes considerable effort to bite back a grin.

Chapter Text

She cooks. She weaves. She minds her brother’s children. She holds the household together. She studies magic, yes, and she’s good enough that her teachers all hope she’ll become a priestess, but she really just wants a husband and a family of her own. Simple things. That’s all she needs.

Becoming the Guardian of the Sacred Precinct, the direct link between Ometeotl and the Fifth World, is...an adjustment.

A nightmare at first, but then she realizes one simple fact. As a simple housewife, even as a concubine, she might have had happiness. But as the Guardian, she has power. Power enough to ensure her well-being and that of her family. Power enough to save the Fifth World. All she has to do is figure out how to use it.

In the meantime, she cooks. She weaves. She minds her brother’s children. She learns how to make a life together with her husband; even though he’s a stubborn idiot, he’s her stubborn idiot. And she’s happy.

Chapter Text

It was a routine funeral service, but that was no excuse to be sloppy. Cuauhtli—age 56, heart attack—deserved better than that. So Acatl and Ichtaca were still standing vigil over him past midnight, though Acatl for his part had been up since dawn and his hands were starting to shake. He ignored it. He was fine.

And then came the next line of the funeral hymn, and he had to stop to hold back an entirely inappropriate yawn. High Priest of the Dead with Mictlan’s power coursing through his veins or not, he was inconveniently mortal.

Worse, Ichtaca had noticed. “I’m calling Palli to take over for us,” he said with a tone that suggested Acatl had no choice in the matter.

By now, Acatl knew better than to argue.

Chapter Text

“Sometimes I envy you,” Acamapichtli muttered.

Acatl nearly inhaled his mouthful of grilled duck. When he stopped wheezing—grateful that the sounds of the banquet they were both stuck at had covered the noise, though it hadn’t stopped Quenami from raising an eyebrow at him—he asked, “Why?!”

There was an expansive gesture. “Your priests are sensible, hardworking people who do what they’re told and don’t stutter over their hymns, and as far as I know none of them are planning to unseat you. The new ones I’m dealing with...” Acamapichtli shook his head, an action that spoke volumes. “I have my doubts.”

Quenami was deep in conversation with a nobleman on his other side, so Acatl felt safe in lowering his voice and murmuring, “Well, if you can deal with him, you’re fine. How do you manage it, anyway?”

Acamapichtli made a face. “Largely by ignoring him. Obviously, that won’t work on my underlings.”

“Hm.” Acatl took another bite of duck. In a roundabout way, it seemed Acamapichtli was asking him for help. A shrewder politician would be thinking of advantages to be gained, but frankly having a decent clergy of Tlaloc went beyond mortal concerns. “Have patience, then. They’ll find their footing. And if you’re firm and fair, they ought to respect you.”

“Patience? Easy for you to say,” Acamapichtli grumbled. “They’re just so stupid. They can't even scheme competently.”

Acatl raised an eyebrow. “They can’t be worse than what we already deal with.”

He jerked his head towards Quenami, but he didn’t have to; judging by his smirk, Acamapichtli caught his meaning anyway.

Chapter Text

The beast they’d come to kill was dead, but it still took Teomitl a moment to catch his breath. It had had a long, whippy, prehensile tail he’d only found out about when it had grabbed him and flung him to the ground, and even though the soil was fairly soft this time of year it still hurt. And there were gashes on his sword arm from its claws that he’d need to take care of.

Enough about him, though. Acatl was still pushing himself up from his knees, breathing hard. He’d been the one to take it down, his knives laying open its throat and practically searing it with underworld magic, but now he didn’t look good. Teomitl didn’t like the too-careful way he was moving. “Acatl-tzin?” he called.

“I’m fine,” Acatl huffed.

That meant he wasn’t. Teomitl all but lunged to his side, tugging his—gods, bloodstained—cloak away from where he was holding it bunched over his ribs. Acatl tried to bat his hands away, but he was stronger. And if Acatl was hiding it, it had to be bad. “Let me see!”

Finally, reluctantly, Acatl let go of the fabric, and Teomitl was able to see where all the blood was coming from. It made him feel a little sick.

“You call this fine?!” he snapped, hating how his voice cracked. But he couldn’t help it; the monster’s claws had ripped deep furrows through Acatl’s soft skin, exposing muscle that definitely should not be seeing outside air. His fingers didn’t shake as he snatched up his knife and started slicing his own cloak for bandages, but he suspected that was because he couldn’t really feel them very well at the moment. He’d seen Acatl bleed. He’d seen Acatl hurt. Storm Lord strike him, he’d seen Acatl hurt much worse than this! But...but still. Men died easily, and Acatl was too stubborn for his own good.

At least the man was sitting down now and taking shallow breaths, which made it easier. “It’s just,” he started, and stopped.

Teomitl glared at him. “It’s just something that means I am taking you to a healing priest, immediately. And don’t tell me it’s extravagance! You’re,”—the most important person in the world to me—“our High Priest for the Dead, Acatl-tzin!”

Acatl grimaced. “Fine. As long as you get your arm looked at as well.”

He supposed he didn’t have a choice. But if it got Acatl to sit still and accept medical attention, he didn’t have a problem agreeing.

Chapter Text

“Well,” Teomitl said, “it could—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—be worse—sorry. But it could.”

Since they were both currently crammed in the same small cage in a cave north of Tlacopan, after a diplomatic endeavour that had turned into an investigation into an unorthodox cult and promptly gone very far south very quickly, Acatl couldn’t feel even a shred of Teomitl’s optimism. They’d only been able to hastily bandage their wounds, their weapons had been confiscated, and the cage wasn’t big enough for either of them to stand up straight, never mind fight. So he hunched further into the corner and asked incredulously, “How?!”

“...I’m not sure,” Teomitl muttered. “I don’t have your gift for pessimism. But I know it could.”

Grudgingly, he nodded. They could be dead or tortured or sacrificed to fuel a spell. So far, none of that had happened.

Yet.

Chapter Text

Acatl couldn’t move.

Well, alright, he could; there was nothing technically preventing him from leaving the spot under the tree in his courtyard where he’d been eating dinner. His limbs were in good working order, and though he was certainly tired—it had been quite a big meal, thanks to all the good things Teomitl had brought over—it wasn’t to the point where he couldn’t drag himself to his mat. He could get up, go inside, wash his face, and ready himself for bed.

Except Teomitl had sat next to him, snuggled up close with the chill of the spring air as an excuse so transparent even Acatl could see through it, and had managed to actually fall asleep. So Acatl was trapped. Teomitl’s head was on his shoulder, hair gently tickling his neck, and he was afraid to move even to smooth it away. It was terribly soft.

I should do something. Anything. He should push him away, for starters. It was getting harder and harder to deny the ways of his own heart in recent months, and if Teomitl kept being pressed against him like this, warm and heavy and trusting, he was absolutely going to do something stupid. He risked lifting his free hand, intending to shake Teomitl’s shoulder.

“Mmm...” It was a breathy, barely audible noise. Acatl froze, afraid the man was waking up, but he only shifted closer and hummed something incoherent. As though he’d recognized Acatl even in sleep. As though he knew he was safe.

Safe. Hah. He let out a long sigh. It wasn’t so bad, really, no matter how his heart was pounding. Teomitl was just sleeping. He looked younger and softer like this, more vulnerable, and it pinched Acatl’s heart. When was the last time he’d rested properly? Curling up next to him had obviously been deliberate—Teomitl never admitted he was cold unless there was actual frost on the ground—but did that mean Teomitl’s feelings were anywhere near the same as his own? Did that mean he had the right to hope?

He wanted to. He wanted so much. Teomitl had made him want so much. A thought filtered slowly through his mind, a desire he couldn’t articulate.

Still moving slowly and carefully, he stroked Teomitl’s cheek. The skin was soft here as it was everywhere else, with only a few patches of faint stubble, and it sent Acatl’s heart up into his throat. Oh, he thought quietly, I love you.

There. He’d admitted it to himself, and the world hadn’t ended. Emboldened, he moved his attention to the thick hair currently flopping in Teomitl’s face, adorably undignified. He’d probably be furious if he knew I thought that, he mused wryly, but that didn’t stop him from gently brushing it back.

This time, Teomitl didn’t stir. In fact, the angle of his neck where he’d flopped bonelessly against Acatl’s shoulder was producing a faint but noticeable snore. It was...oddly restful, actually.

Acatl was still trapped, but his heart rate was starting to slow down to normal, and the pine needles under him were soft. And between his cloak and Teomitl’s body, he was warm enough.

When his eyes started to slide closed, he didn’t fight it.

Chapter Text

He’s sworn to serve and protect the Revered Speaker of Tenochtitlan, the man he helped bring back to life and place upon the throne to which he had been appointed. He’s sworn to stand against his enemies, to keep the balance between worlds.

He’s sworn many things. They hang upon him like cobwebs now, easily brushed aside.

Regicide should be harder, he thinks idly. But Tizoc’s life has hung by a spider’s thread since he and the other High Priests brought him back, and to snap that thread is the work of a moment. He doesn’t need to wait for Teomitl’s ambition or Mihmatini’s prudence or Acamapichtli’s revenge. He only needs to reach out with his magic, cold and final as an icicle to the base of the neck, and finish the job he should have started years ago.

He feels it when it takes hold, the seismic shift in the foundations of the world. The boundaries will be weak for a while now. He’ll have to be vigilant.

Less vigilant than he’s been for a knife in the dark, a garrote at his throat. Less vigilant than he’s been for a terrible gap in the ranks of returning warriors, a space where Neutemoc or Teomitl should stand. Less vigilant than he’s been for ghosts walking the streets of his city.

As he performs the necessary rituals, he can’t help but smile.

Chapter Text

Acatl has beautiful hands. He has beautiful everything, really—face, body, heart, smile, and gods those thighs—but if you held a knife to Teomitl’s throat and forced him to pick, he’d probably say he loves the man’s hands the most. They’re narrow and long-fingered and elegant, striped with scars from his bloodletting, and he’s amazingly good with them whether he’s holding a knife or...

Well. Other things. And as much as Teomitl would normally love to dwell on those other things, right now he can’t really afford the distraction because Acatl is teaching him to wrap tamales. “The extent of my culinary expertise,” he’d said with familiar dry self-deprecation, but since Teomitl’s own cooking skills start and end with grilling things on sticks he’s looking forward to learning something new.

Scoop the filling onto the wet maize husk. Fold it carefully—carefully. Acatl’s so gentle with it. Tie it with a thin strip of the same husk, just to make sure it stays in place. Teomitl can’t believe he doesn’t break it.

“Now you try,” he says, and smiles.

Teomitl looks down at his own hands and the stack of maize husks in front of him. It can’t be that hard. He was paying attention, even if his mind’s eye is still mostly full of long brown fingers instead of the maize husks they were holding.

But just in case he could use the luck, he steals a quick kiss anyway.

Chapter Text

Walking out of the cool of his temple felt like entering a sauna. Acatl took a deep breath and instantly regretted it; the air felt and tasted like hot soup, and no sooner did it hit his nose than his sinuses all but clanged shut in self-defense. His heavy formal cloak was suffocating.

Ichtaca grunted instead of speaking. He grumbled something indistinct back. Unless you were actively channeling Mictlan’s power, it didn’t help at all against the ovenlike heat. And of course it didn’t do a thing for the wet, clammy, disgusting feeling of sweat accumulating on your skin with nowhere to evaporate to. The thought of descending the temple steps in full noon sunlight made him want to cry, but he started walking anyway. One step at a time, he told himself. Think about anything else. Anything.

“Acatl-tzin!”

Oh no. Teomitl was at the base of the pyramid. Granted, he was often there at noon—since that terrible plague he’d made it a point to stop by, apparently in the belief that Acatl needed to eat something—but at the moment Acatl really didn’t have the energy to greet him. He nodded instead, hoping he wasn’t too badly wilted.

Instead of commenting on his appearance or the weather, Teomitl uttered the most beautiful sentence he’d heard all day: “I brought shaved ice for everyone!”

Chapter Text

The High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli kneels before his ruler, head bowed. “I am here, my lord.”

Emperor Ahuitzotl sighs, offering a hand to help him to his feet. “Rise, Acatl. Let us show our enemies we stand united.”

Technically, the dozens of appropriately cowed and decimated lords about to walk into the celebration of the Great Temple’s rededication are no longer their enemies. Acatl’s all too aware how quickly that could change. His liege lord is right; in order for them to show their strength after the disastrous reign of Ahuitzotl’s predecessor, it will take more than a few thousand sacrifices. It will take unity. It will take resplendence.

It will take Acatl in full regalia seated next to the Emperor and Imperial Consort while the guests are welcomed in. Yes, the other High Priests will be there too, but Ahuitzotl has been extremely clear on who he wants at his left side. Who else will show that we alone keep the boundaries of the Fifth World intact? He’d asked, and the faith in his eyes still shakes Acatl to the core.

But there’s no time for introspection, because the banquet is starting. They march out of the antechamber together, Ahuitzotl glittering in gold and jewels and his High Priest for the Dead a skull-masked shadow behind him. They sit down. On Ahuitzotl’s other side, the Guardian of the Duality flashes her brother a brief smile. He nods back.

“Thank you,” the Emperor murmurs. He knows how much Acatl hates being on display for the nobility.

Acatl permits himself a small smile. “No need.” And then, because nobody is close enough to hear if he keeps his voice low, he adds, “I am ever at your disposal, my lord. Particularly if there’s anything else you require of me tonight.”

And Emperor Ahuitzotl—his Teomitl—grins. “Always.”

Chapter Text

“You,” Acatl breathed, “are a terrible influence.”

Teomitl grinned at him, unrepentant. “Me? But you were my beloved teacher. If I turned out so badly, isn’t it your fault?”

Since Teomitl was straddling his hips, one hand braced on the mat and the other wrapped around a fistful of Acatl’s loose hair, there was nothing stopping him from dragging his nails down his lover’s spine just a little too sharply. As Teomitl shivered appreciatively, he smirked back up at him. “No teacher can change a man’s essential nature. And if you had been anyone other than who you are, we wouldn’t be here. I assure you, I never would have thought of any of this on my own!”

“I seem to recall you having plenty of thoughts.” There was a wicked light in Teomitl’s eyes as he rolled his hips; Acatl shuddered in pleasure as he continued, “Unless you’re trying to say you’re innocent?”

He had been, once. Or well, not precisely innocent—you couldn’t be that, not as a priest for the Dead who saw the lowest and worst the world had to offer daily—but certainly chaste. Xochiquetzal Herself had tried to lure him to Her bed, and he hadn’t given in. It had taken him an embarrassingly long time and the sight of Teomitl stretching half-naked in the sun like a jaguar to conclude Xochipilli would have had better luck, but he hadn’t exactly planned to act on his desires.

But then there had been Teomitl. There had always been Teomitl, ready to peel back the layers of his delusions and self-deceptions to get at his raw and beating heart. I don’t love him? A lie. I don’t want him? A lie. I wouldn’t break the world and all my vows for him? A lie.

I wouldn’t crave him on my mat and in my heart, any way he’ll have me? The biggest lie of all. And once he’d stopped telling himself all that, Teomitl had been all too happy to encourage further honesty. Yes, Acatl could spend a few hours venting about his terrible colleagues. Yes, Acatl could openly discuss the possibility of treason. And yes, Acatl could absolutely do what they were doing now, which was to pull the married Master of the House of Darts down for a ferocious kiss and inform him, “Consider yourself my inspiration if it makes you feel better.”

Teomitl’s eyes were very dark and very hungry. “Oh, I’ll be glad to.”

In further evidence for Teomitl’s status as a bad influence, they were both late for their morning devotions to the gods and Acatl’s core muscles were all too happy to enumerate in detail all the ways in which they’d been ill-treated. It was still worth it.

Chapter Text

“That,” Quenami sniffed, “is because Acatl is a fool and a coward.”

He must have thought he was safe. They stood in the middle of a crowded palace courtyard, after all, and no up-and-coming young heir apparent to the Mexica Empire would dare to cause a scene in front of so many people. There would be far too many social and political repercussions, particularly with the Revered Speaker’s noted...instability. Quenami was one of the few people known to still reliably have the Emperor’s ear; it was common knowledge that he was, therefore, untouchable.

Teomitl had learned to consider the consequences of his actions. He had. Nothing was worth endangering the people he loved or losing their respect. Acatl would tell him to let the insult go.

Acatl wasn’t here right now, and the crack of his fist meeting Quenami’s face was far more satisfying than any moral high ground.

Chapter Text

Acatl took a deep breath and fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut. It wouldn’t help his headache. “Now,” he said with a calmness he didn’t feel, “let’s see if we’ve got the facts straight. Your city is haunted. And you have crossed the lake to beg for my help, in person, instead of ordering your own city’s High Priest of Lord Death to deal with it, because you believe I owe you? I was not aware that I was in your debt to begin with.”

Nezahual looked irritatingly smug. “I did help save your life, you’ll recall.”

“And then you threatened to sell us right back to Tenochtitlan,” Acatl snapped. “Did you think I’d forget that?”

“Words aren’t action. And besides, there is what Teomitl’s sister did to my warriors.”

“Then take it up with her.” If you can find her, he added silently. She’d vanished from the city shortly after the plague, and even Teomitl didn’t know her whereabouts. But if Nezahual was bringing that up, then that meant he was still carrying a grudge. Acatl felt a sudden pang at the thought of Teomitl having made another enemy, one who was an even more dangerous opponent to have than his own brother.

And now the youth was raising an eyebrow at him. Acatl reminded himself that one did not smack allied Revered Speakers, even if they deserved it. And even if they said, “Since she can’t be found, I might well ask for the next best thing. Do you truly want me to declare your lover an enemy?”

Acatl’s blood ran cold. They’d been discreet. He knew they’d been discreet. So how—? No, he could worry about that later. “Tell me again about those ghosts.”

Chapter Text

It was definitely going to rain, but that was expected. It was summer, after all, and the crops needed it. There was nothing to be concerned about. Really.

But when a crack of thunder split the leaden sky and opened up the heavens, Teomitl jumped anyway. His knife clattered from suddenly-clumsy fingers onto the tile floor, but for a moment he was too rattled to move. Lightning. Thunder. Rain. Blood in the water, and the ahuitzotls feasting—blood on his hands, and he’d licked his teeth and tasted the salt of it—the ahuitzotls singing in his head as he fought across the boats—

“Teomitl?” Acatl. His voice was low and careful as he laid a gentle hand on his arm.

“I’m fine,” he snapped without thinking, and bent to retrieve his knife before his expression gave anything away. It wasn’t his fault that the last time it had rained this hard had been...

There was a rustling noise from nearby as Acatl packed away their lesson supplies. “I think our lesson’s over for today. Why don’t we send to the palace kitchens for something to eat?”

Teomitl blinked at him. “What?” he asked, knowing he sounded like a fool. But Acatl was uncomfortable in the palace and rarely stayed any longer than he had to; when they ate together, it was often in the market stalls. For him to suggest a meal in Teomitl’s courtyard was...odd.

Acatl didn’t quite smile, but there was a faint, fond softening around his eyes. “Tlaloc can’t touch us now. Let’s make some better memories of the rain.”

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Acatl forgives him. Acatl forgives him. Or, well, tells him there’s no need for apologies and shares his food with him, which amounts to much the same thing. Teomitl honestly can barely believe it. He’d thought, after what he did—what he failed to do—the way he’d treated everyone—that he’d be shunned at best. At worst...he doesn’t like to think about the worst-case scenario. Mihmatini’s already furious at him. He’s not sure he could survive it if Acatl hated him too.

But instead there’s this. The temple steps, the sunset. Drinking chocolate side-by-side, close enough that he curses the caution—alright, the fear—that had led him to wear his full armor, because if he’d dressed normally he thinks he could lean against Acatl’s shoulder. He thinks Acatl would let him.

He smiles, and Acatl smiles back.

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The curse was elegant in its simplicity. If Acatl hadn’t been so annoyed by it, he might have found it admirable. For the next week, he would be compelled to speak the honest truth of his heart and live with whatever consequences there were. The sorcerer who had laid it had known him well by reputation at the least, and was surely hoping he’d say something that would get him maimed or killed. Not even the caster’s death had cured it.

But all he had to do was not talk to anyone for five days. Easy. He could manage that.

Except of course—because the fates were tormenting him—Teomitl all but sprinted into the temple an hour later, out of breath, talking a mile a minute, and with his cloak perilously close to falling off from how hastily it had been tied. “Acatl! What’s this about a truth spell? Are you alright? Have you found who cursed you?”

He bit his lip hard, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t keep the words in. “No, but I’m fine. I’m just glad they were aiming for me and not you. If you were hit with a truth spell, you’d probably cause seven diplomatic incidents in the first five minutes.”

Teomitl looked about to argue, but then he paused and frowned skeptically at him. “Are you sure you’re cursed?”

“Rude!” he huffed. “I love you madly, but if you don’t learn some tact before your brother dies we’re all going to be in trouble.”

Teomitl didn’t appear to have heard him. He was staring at Acatl like a stunned rabbit, mouth slightly open. Acatl tried not to think about the curve of his lower lip until the man spoke, drawing his attention right back to it. “You...love me?”

Oh. Shit. He’d never meant to say that. His face felt like it was on fire, but he couldn’t take the words back no matter how much he wanted to. Teomitl was a dozen years younger than him, married to his sister, and due to become the next Emperor of the Mexica. Acatl had taken vows of celibacy. He’d long since accepted he didn’t have a chance; gods, he was lucky to still be in Teomitl’s life at all. Please don’t ask me to elaborate, he prayed.

Too late. Teomitl was stalking closer, and when he took Acatl’s hand in both of his own Acatl couldn’t pull away. Not when the man looked at him like that, as though he was on the edge of everything he’d ever wanted but wasn’t sure it was for him to have. Not when hope was stirring in his own breast.

“You love me,” Teomitl repeated. “As a man?”

Acatl might once have at least contemplated his answer—if nothing else, he’d thought that if he ever confessed his feelings it wouldn’t be in the middle of his weedy courtyard without even imminent death as an excuse—but with the curse still on him and Teomitl looking so hopeful all he could say was, “Yes.”

And then he didn’t need to worry about saying anything else, because Teomitl was kissing him.

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He is not a coward. Not a warrior—he will never be that—but not a coward, either. He has faced gods and ghosts and emperors, and he has not backed down, knowing that this was what he must do. Others call him brave for that.

But holding Teomitl’s hand in the sunlight, kissing his mouth in the moonlight, hearing soft and tender words and returning them, even though the sheer vulnerability of it all sends his heart into his throat—he thinks those might be the bravest things he’s ever done, because they’re for himself and himself alone. No duty compels him. There’s no rationalization about the fate of the world, no terrible sacrifice he must prepare for.

There’s only Teomitl smiling at him as they lay together in the cool dark safety of his room, murmuring, “When I am crowned, I’ll make sure all the Empire knows I love you.”

He should be cautious. He should dissuade him. But Teomitl has inspired him to new heights, so he kisses his shoulder instead and breathes, “I can’t wait.”

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Acatl was smiling. It was more common than it had been—evidently, having someone he could truly be honest with was doing wonders for his ability to relax, and with that came those beautiful smiles—but Teomitl still couldn’t look away. It wasn’t even directed at him (probably a good thing; he wasn’t sure he could handle that over lunch), but gods, he’d never been more jealous of a good plate of grilled newt.

“It’s.” He licked his too-dry lips and tried again. “It’s good, right?”

Acatl hummed in acknowledgement and took another bite. “Thank you for bringing it.”

He couldn’t help but smile fondly, hopelessly. “I knew you’d be hungry.” I want to kiss you. There was a smear of sauce at the corner of Acatl’s mouth.

Without thinking, he leaned in.

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The sob woke him like a knife in his heart, snapping him out of a deep sleep and into full consciousness before he was even aware of what was going on. It took him a moment to adjust from the landscapes of his dreams, even now fading into wisps, to his much more prosaic sleeping chambers.

And, more importantly, to Teomitl on the mat next to him, curled around his arm like a child and letting out another of those heartwrenching little noises. Oh, no.

It took some awkward twisting—his lover was plainly not letting go, and his back was soundly protesting their earlier activities in a way that made him wonder whether he should get a new sleeping mat—but eventually Acatl was able to get his free hand on Teomitl’s shoulder and murmur, “Love, wake up.”

The reaction was instantaneous; Teomitl jerked backwards away from his touch, kicking Acatl in the shins on the way, and stared wide-eyed and unseeing at him for an uncomfortably long moment until some awareness filtered into his gaze. “Oh,” he croaked out. There was a horrible hitching sound in his voice.

Acatl pulled him into his arms, finding him stiff and trembling. Oh, my heart. He started rubbing Teomitl’s back and sure enough, that helped; his lover started to relax by degrees, his breathing going from shallow pants to something approaching normalcy. When he judged Teomitl might be able to answer him, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Teomitl muttered into his neck. His lashes were wet where they brushed against Acatl’s skin.

Well, Acatl had expected that. He sighed and slid one hand up into Teomitl’s hair, scratching his scalp lightly, while the other continued its gentle mapping of smooth skin and hard muscles. So strong. So stubborn. “Alright,” he murmured. “Get some sleep. I won’t go anywhere.” He paused. “Unless you’d like some water?”

Teomitl huffed out a breath and pressed himself tighter against him, a leg over his hip preventing him from moving. “No,” he muttered in a voice so small it yanked at Acatl’s heartstrings. A voice that said clearly as if he’d spoken the words, Don’t leave me.

As if there was a chance of Acatl leaving him alone when his brave, beautiful warrior sounded like that. He hummed softly, kissing Teomitl’s forehead. “I’ll be right here.”

Hopefully, Teomitl would feel better in the morning.

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Everyone knew that High Priests bore wings, the symbol of their everlasting commitment to serving their gods and the Fifth World. Everyone knew that the heron or owl or eagle feathers shed from them were holy things.

Until he assumed the position of High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli, Acatl hadn’t known that growing them hurt. That they were heavy, awkward things that changed your entire center of gravity. That feathers itched abominably as they molted, bled if they were broken or pulled out, and needed daily preening and grooming or they left you looking like an oversized turkey. All in all, there were days where he wondered whether it had been worth it.

And then he launched himself from the top of his temple on silent wings, each beat carrying him higher and farther over his city, and he knew it was.

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To give his superior some credit, Ichtaca supposed he had to admit the man was trying to be discreet. If Acatl-tzin was any other man—say, one who regularly had some sort of social life or maybe a hobby or two—it might even have worked. But Ichtaca saw him every day, and by now he’d picked up on his usual moods. Acatl-tzin was fatalistic, cautious, and diligent to a fault. He’d seen him smile perhaps once, ever.

Which meant that when Teomitl-tzin came by and Acatl-tzin lit up like a torch...well. It was enough to make Ichtaca think, and he wasn’t sure he liked the conclusions he was coming to. Teomitl was the Master of the House of Darts, destined for a life of war and politics. His brother had tried to kill Acatl-tzin. He himself had behaved so abominably during the plague that most of Acatl-tzin’s priests still wouldn’t even look directly at him, and not out of respect. It was true that he was Mihmatini’s husband, but when had marriage vows ever stopped a bored nobleman who saw something he couldn’t have? Ichtaca had seen firsthand how persuasive he could be, how easily Acatl-tzin yielded to him. Even plans for regicide had only been deferred, not stopped, and if Acatl-tzin could be persuaded to break those vows despite how hard he’d clung to them in the face of Tizoc-tzin’s instability...

(Not to mention what the Master of the House of Darts, chosen of Chalchiuhtlicue, could do to a man who turned him down. Ichtaca didn’t even want to think about that.)

It probably wasn’t his place to say anything. They were comrades, not close friends. But he couldn’t simply shut his eyes to unnecessary touches or Acatl-tzin’s smiles or the way Teomitl’s eyes gleamed like a hunting caiman’s when Acatl-tzin walked by. Finally, it was too much. I’ll ask how Teomitl is, he decided, and go from there based on Acatl-tzin’s reaction.

As he approached, it took him a moment to realize Acatl-tzin’s courtyard was occupied. Teomitl was speaking, voice clipped and distant, and he slowed down to listen.

“—rgive me, Acatl-tzin. I overstepped. I don’t mean to press my affections where—where they’re not wanted—mmph.”

Ichtaca knew what he would see and that he didn’t especially want to, but he cautiously peered around the entryway anyway.

Ah, yes. There was Acatl-tzin with his arms around Teomitl, kissing him with surprising ardor. And there was Teomitl, stiff with shock at first before he melted into it. Neither of them seemed likely to stop anytime soon.

Grimacing, he turned away. My lord, I hope you know what you’re doing.

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The conch shells woke them both up, but even though Acatl knew it was dawn and they needed to make their devotions to the gods he couldn’t bring himself to reach for his worship-thorns. For one thing, he could barely see them; it had been raining when they’d fallen asleep and it hadn’t stopped yet. Sunlight seemed like more of a faint suggestion.

Teomitl had a little more energy, or at least a little more determination. Grumbling indistinctly, he rolled upright to grab paper and the ball of grass studded with maguey spines that had somehow migrated to Acatl’s sleeping chambers to join multiple embroidered loincloths and a very nice pair of gold-beaded sandals in the pile of things Acatl was sure hadn’t been property of any High Priest. “Grnk,” he said as he nicked his scabbed-over earlobes and mumbled his way through prayers to the Sun and to Jade Skirt.

Once Acatl might have chided him for sloppiness, but now he just accepted the papers Teomitl held out to him to catch his own blood as he muttered a prayer to Lord Death and to the Sun that was definitely, probably behind the clouds somewhere. He would burn them in the hearth when he was capable of getting up, which he didn’t think would be anytime soon. It was just so dark out. Every fiber of his being wanted to be asleep again.

“We should eat something,” Teomitl muttered. “Breakfast.”

He started to reply, but his own yawn cut the words off. In a moment, he wanted to say. Let me just rest my eyes first.

There was a soft huff of amusement. “I can make some atole for us.”

Reluctantly, he wedged one eye open. If Teomitl was going to cook, he wanted to make sure his lover didn’t burn the house down. “...Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Go back to sleep, love.”

Teomitl smiled at him, and the sun came out.

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“You hear all the stories of my childhood, but I haven’t heard any of yours. What was it like?”

They’re lazing together in the shaded summer heat of their courtyard, using Teomitl’s cloak as a blanket underneath them, when it occurs to her to ask. Because thanks to her brothers, her husband knows nearly every moment of her childhood—but he’s frustratingly close-mouthed about his own.

Before he can answer, she remembers what she knows about his family and hastens to add, “You don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not.” His commitment to honesty between them is admirable, but the last thing she wants is to bring up bad memories.

He blinks at her, clearly surprised, and then smiles. “Not like yours. It was...well, you can imagine.” She can. She wants to find whoever was responsible for Teomitl (or not responsible, as the case may be) and hunt them down like dogs. Now’s not the time, though, because Teomitl seems to have found a good memory. “But there was the time I escaped my nannies and fell into the ocelot enclosure at the House of Animals.”

Ocelots are not small animals. “How are you alive?!”

He flushes adorably. “I was five! I think the mother ocelot thought I was one of her cubs! I think she still thinks that, honestly, every time I go to visit she starts licking my arm. You climbed an actual cactus, why are you looking at me like that?!”

She shakes her head, fond and exasperated in equal measure. “At least the cactus couldn’t follow me and tear me limb from limb.” She pauses. “At least, not that type of cactus.”

“...I do not want to know.”

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It is one thing to be loved, and to love in return. If they were only ordinary men with ordinary lives, Acatl would have been content with that. But perhaps that very ordinariness would have spelled their doom; perhaps he would have walked out with their first fight, or perhaps Teomitl would have found other, more pleasant people to give his heart to.

They are not ordinary men. He is the High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli in desperate love with the Master of the House of Darts; Lord and Lady Death smile upon their relationship, and their arguments decide the fate of kings. With a single word, he can twist the order of the world; with a single smile, Teomitl can do the same. The power they balance between them is as terrifying as it is intoxicating, and sometimes he wonders whether he can handle it. Whether it would be safer after all to go back to his cold, lonely bed.

But then...

“You have chosen well,” say his patrons.

“The boundaries of the world are safe,” say his priests.

“I’m listening,” says the man who will be Emperor.

Yes, love on its own is a fine thing. But the preservation of the Fifth World? The trust—the respect—of the future Revered Speaker? The certain knowledge that the future ahead of them will be bright, glorious, because of that love? That’s something else entirely.

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Once, he would have spoken to his brother with honest respect, if not quite with affection. (Tizoc is a hard man to like, and they’ve never been especially close.) Once, his brother would have responded with fondness in his own voice. (At least, until Teomitl did something foolish, like fall in love with a peasant.)

But then there was a knife at Acatl’s throat, that peasant’s daughter spoken in a vile hiss, blood in the streets of their city and on the rocks at Meztitlan, plague rattling through his chest and the horrible certainty that Tizoc was unworthy rattling through his mind.

“It’s been a while since you’ve deigned to speak with me,” Tizoc says now.

He keeps his eyes downcast, so his Revered Speaker can’t see the expression in them. “Forgive me, my lord.”

Between them, there’s only the rustling of the wind.

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Acatl hates to say it. He hates even to think it. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. “If the council is so corrupt that Tizoc can bribe them, perhaps we can pay them more.” Priests are not wealthy as a rule, and both of them are in disgrace, but surely they can come up with something. He bites his lip and studies the tops of his feet, deep in thought.

When he looks up, no better option having presented itself, Acamapichtli is smiling at him. It’s warm and genuine and almost proud, and it sends a chill down his spine. “What?” he snaps.

Acamapichtli actually has the nerve to pat his shoulder as though they’re friends. “Now you’re starting to think like a politician. I knew you had it in you.”

He shudders, stepping away. “Forget I said anything.”

They’ll find another way. If Acamapichtli agrees with him, he knows he’s going down the wrong path.

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Honestly, Teomitl wanted to kill her with his bare hands. She’d manipulated him into breaking Mihmatini’s heart, hurting Acatl—gods, he’d been ready and willing to break the world, just because she’d told him it would all come out right in the end. That it would be worth it to be able to steer the Empire on a better course, even if the people he loved hated him. That he would only be useful and worthy of their mother’s legacy once he was crowned. That only this path would grant him respect. That—that if his loved ones couldn’t see that, then they were weak. Acatl, weak! Mihmatini, weak! The strongest and bravest people he knew!

Yes, he would have been very happy to watch Chalchiuhnenetl die.

But he kept thinking about Mihmatini’s steady gaze and the bitter sorrow in Acatl’s eyes. They had only barely approved of his plans to kill Tizoc, who was a danger to them and to the Fifth World. They wouldn’t approve of that.

On the other hand, if his sister just happened to die in her sleep...well. Fate could be so cruel.

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Mihmatini loves her husband. Unfortunately, so does her brother.

And equally unfortunately, it’s clear that her husband loves him back. Oh, they haven’t told her any of this. But when one man turns an army around for another, she can connect the dots. Teomitl looks at her brother as though he set the sun in the sky, positively gushing over him whenever he gets the chance. By the Duality, he was willing to kill the Emperor for him. That’s not even considering Acatl himself, whose dour face turns fond whenever they’re in the same room. Who was willing to break vows when Teomitl made it clear it was necessary. It’s positively embarrassing.

Most women would be jealous. Or angry. Or both. She...well, she won’t lie and say it doesn’t annoy her a little—really, she’s not sure which of them has worse taste—but what’s worse than watching her husband’s distracted glances or her brother’s lingering smiles is knowing for a fact that it’s going to continue on exactly like this forever if she doesn’t do something.

And it will have to be her, because for all their flaws, these are men that love her. Teomitl has made it clear in a thousand ways that he’ll never break her heart again, and she doesn’t have to ask Acatl to know he’d move mountains for her. Men like that don’t snap and act on their simmering sexual-romantic tension unprompted, even when it’s so thick she could cut it with a knife.

One night, they’re eating dinner together, just the three of them in a loose triangle around the table. After the third time Teomitl’s fingers “accidentally” brush Acatl’s hand while passing a side dish and the fourth time Acatl smiles at him, her fraying patience snaps.

“Acatl. Teomitl,” she says very evenly.

Her brother blinks at her, probably warned by the tension in her voice. “What’s the matter?”

She considers subtlety—I don’t care what you do on your mat, or Both of you should be happy—but discards it. They’re not quick on the uptake in this area. So what she actually says is, “It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that you two are in love. Now, I have no problem sharing my husband, but if you two don’t start kissing instead of hovering around each other like a pair of hummingbirds, I am going to scream.”

Teomitl’s jaw drops. Acatl makes a choking noise. Neither of them appear to be breathing.

“Now,” she continues, “I am going to get up and take a walk around the Sacred Precinct. You have an hour to do...something, I don’t care what, as long as your clothes are back on by the time I return. I said I don’t mind sharing but I draw the line at seeing my brother naked. There’s a gourd full of avocado oil in Teomitl’s bedchambers. Have fun.”

And then she gets up, brushes crumbs from her skirt, and leaves. She’s almost out of earshot before she catches Teomitl’s stunned whisper of, “What the fuck did I just hear,” and it’s too much.

She bursts out into giggles.

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He’d seen love twist and break and ruin the people affected by it. He’d seen how love could turn even the best intentions sour, how it could morph into obsession if left unchecked. He’d seen what happened when flames turned to ashes swept away by the wind.

He’d seen all that, but he hadn’t known. Teomitl had taught him better. Had taught him that love could lighten his heart, that he could feel both held and free in the circle of Teomitl’s arms. That when Teomitl pressed delicate little shivery kisses along his neck he’d laugh—because it tickled, because he was happy —even as he arched for more.

That it made Teomitl chuckle too, the sound rich and warm in his ear. “I love hearing you like that. I wish I could bottle it and carry it around with me.”

“You’re ridiculous,” he murmured, and there was freedom in that too; he could say things like that, and for once know there was someone who wouldn’t take it the wrong way. Who’d made the decision to trust him, and be trusted in return.

“I’m serious!” Teomitl huffed, but a grin was starting to peek through anyway.

It was too much to resist. Acatl twisted in his lover’s arms, laughing into a breathless kiss as they rolled across the mat in a tangle of sheets and cloaks. When they stopped he was on top, hair hanging in his face—he’d lost his hair tie at some point—and almost obscuring his view of Teomitl’s grin. But moving to push it back again would mean letting go of the man, and that would never do.

Teomitl took care of it for him, fingers tangling in heavy waves and brushing softly against his cheek. “Oh look,” he murmured happily, “it’s the best view in Tenochtitlan.”

He was wrong. The best view in Tenochtitlan, Acatl knew, was the one in front of him.

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“I want vengeance,” Acamapichtli says. Even though he’s not quite looking at Acatl, his voice is like stone, and Acatl hears the unspoken vows behind it. Acamapichtli will avenge his clergy, and Acatl will be either at his side or in his way.

There was a time when he would have at least recommended caution. When he would have tried to guide Acamapichtli away from this path.

That was before Tizoc turned his attention to his beloved sister.

The walking corpse they so foolishly placed on the throne hasn’t made his move yet, and Mihmatini herself is confident that she can handle it, but Acatl knows that the moment for caution is long gone. (Teomitl may have nobility and an army, but he has his own ideas. Knives are involved.) And so he nods and stands aside, motioning for Acamapichtli to enter the inner confines of his temple. They can speak privately there.

If Tlaloc and Mictlantecuhtli disapprove of Their High Priests planning regicide, They do not make Their opinions known.

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“You spend too much time with the dead,” Xochiquetzal had told him. “You forget what makes you alive.”

For a time, he’d thought the goddess was wrong. He had his priesthood, his temple, and his gods. He was at peace. What more did he need? Anything else would be...messy. Unnecessary. A distraction.

He built his own tomb brick by brick, not even noticing the clay caught under his fingernails. But it was fine, he was fine, he didn’t need anything else. Love and lust were for other people, for men not sworn to the gods. They weren’t for him.

But Teomitl smiled, and his heartbeat thumped against the walls of his ribcage. But Teomitl took his hand, and he felt that touch in every inch of his suddenly-awakened skin. But Teomitl shucked his cloak and stretched like a jaguar in the sun, all dark skin and strong muscles, and he couldn’t tear his stinging eyes away.

Xochiquetzal was still wrong. Acatl spent plenty of time with the dead, but he knew exactly what made him alive.

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There is a world, Acatl thinks sometimes, where he bowed to his parents’ will. Where he gave up his dreams of the priesthood for the life of a warrior, trading in his knives for a sword and his feathered headdress for a carved wooden helm. Where he married some faceless woman and fathered a dozen children. Where he brought honor to his family and his clan, and if he spent his nights dreaming of what he’d left behind or regretted his path in life when old injuries pained him, well, that was simply the price he paid for being a dutiful son.

It might have been a good world. He might have been happy.

But that’s not the world he lives in. In this world, he ascends the steps of his temple every day. In this world, he bows low over the corpses of the dead, ushering their souls gently to Mictlan. In this world, though he is scarred and battered and bloodstained, it comes from fiercer foes than the Chalcans or Tlaxcallans. In this world, he has taken no wife and fathered no children, but he has no need to. His priests are loyal to him, and Teomitl—Teomitl is radiant as the dawn. In this world, he has no need of glory, for his god’s power burns through his veins.

He doesn’t want another world, another life. He sweats under the weight of his regalia, curses his Revered Speaker’s name, and is stymied at every turn by imperial politics, but in this world—in this world, the one with Teomitl’s warm smile and Ichtaca’s steady gaze and the Wind of Knives’ unwavering sense of justice—

In this world, he’s content.

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Where Ahuitzotl marches, cities fall.

Where Ahuitzotl takes the field, the waters run crimson with blood.

Where Ahuitzotl stands, none can oppose him.

He eats with his men, walks by their sides, promises them riches and glory if they will only follow him. And they do follow him—there is fear and respect there, yes, but there is also love for this Revered Speaker who sleeps in a tent instead of a palace, who leads them from the front, who charges into battle with a song on his lips. Where Ahuitzotl fights, he is never alone.

He’s making his empire strong, bringing glory to the Mexica, erasing his brothers’ names like the sun does the morning mist. He does not regret, not for a moment, the rivers of blood and mountains of skulls he must cross to ensure that. For is this not his destiny? Was he not born for this? The Turquoise-and-Gold Crown gleams brightly on his head, for all that it is splattered with gore. His empire stretches from one end of the sea-ringed world to the other. Ahuitzotl looks upon his kingdom from the jaguar-padded seat of his throne, and he knows it is good.

(But Teomitl washes the blood and dirt from his skin, shuts his ears to the screams of dying men, and wishes himself a hundred miles away. Where there will be green-smelling canals, flower petals in Mihmatini’s hair, warm joy in Acatl’s eyes, and no need at all for Ahuitzotl.)

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There’s gray sprinkled through his hair now, and only a few stubborn strands of black clinging in Acatl’s wavy white mane. Lines trace the corners of eyes and mouths. Old injuries let them know when it’s going to rain. He’s still strong—still a warrior, still a Revered Speaker worthy of marching at the head of his army—but more and more he’s aware of the passage of time.

Never more so than now, because he’s holding a letter from far southern Danibaan that’s practically burning his shaking fingers. He’s already read it twice, but he passes his eyes over the glyphs again and is glad he’s sitting down. He can’t talk. He can’t find words.

Acatl can. A warm hand comes to rest at the small of his back as his lover rereads the page over his shoulder and murmurs proudly, “You’re going to be a grandfather.”

He is. Last year his daughter Coyolicatl was wed to the Zapotec king Cosijoeza, the price of a peace treaty between them. She went with knives in her luggage, firm embraces from her family, and strong words from Teomitl to her new husband. We are sending you Our beloved daughter, Our jade necklace, Our quetzal feathers. If she is hurt, if she is grieved, We will send you Our spears and arrows.

He would, too, and he would not be merciful. But she’s sent letters since, reassuring them that she is content. That Cosijoeza treats her kindly. And now she sends one that tells them, in her own clear hand, that—that—

He swallows hard, blinking back tears. “No,” he finally manages. “We’re going to be grandfathers. You know all of them are as much yours as mine, and look—look, she sends you her love, and she calls you uncle. Our little girl is going to have a baby!”

Acatl makes a soft noise, and Teomitl looks up to find him staring, stricken, down at the words. Ah. It seems to have sunk in after all these years that he, the High Priest of Lord Death, the man who’s never married or fathered children of his own body, is nevertheless a father. And now... “A grandfather,” he repeats quietly. Slowly, he starts to smile.

He’s still smiling when Teomitl, too overwhelmed to express his feelings any other way, leans over to kiss him.

Chapter Text

Acatl took a long, deep breath, filling his lungs with the mingled scents of flowers and fresh water and sun-warmed earth. The tree above him cast dappled, ever-shifting shade through his closed eyelids. There was still a faint chill in the air, but the sun was wonderfully, deliciously warm on his skin.

It was a good day. There was nowhere in particular he had to be, no angry deities or vengeful ghosts to placate. Nothing hurt, not even the scabs of his daily bloodletting.

He drifted, utterly content, into sleep.