She could feel the strength and warmth of his heavily muscled arm through the thin ivory silk of her gown and caught the scent of leather and musk that was innately his own surrounding him. She leaned back against him and sighed. “I love you so. Why did I have to love you?”

She obviously didn’t expect an answer, and he gave her none. His gaze was fixed toward the south at the lower foothills of the Sun Child, the highest mountain in the chain that encircled the city. The trail leading up the mountain was dotted by thousands of torches as the citizens of Kantalan wound their way to the plateau halfway up the peak.

“I love this city.” Sayan’s words were only a thread above a whisper. Her gaze was not on the mountain but on the deserted city below them. Stately pyramids and flat-roofed marble edifices sat side by side in faultless harmony and the four rivers dividing that exquisite harmony of architecture shimmered in the silver moonlight like the inscription on Dalkar’s medallion. “Could anything be more beautiful than Kantalan?”

“No.” He experienced a surge of the same pride he had heard in her voice. It surprised him. He was a man who needed to struggle and build, and the perfection of Kantalan had always grated against his basic drives. But what else could he expect? He had chosen to become a soldier in a land that revered peace. Yet tonight, for some reason, he was responding as he had never done before to the serene beauty of his birthplace. “Nothing.”

She was silent for a long time. “Perhaps it will be easier for us than for Cadra. I don’t know if I could bear to leave this place and live among the barbarians.”

“You’ve sent Cadra away?”

She nodded. “He, at least, believed my vision. He didn’t want to leave me, but I told him it was Ra’s will and there had to be someone to tell the tale of Kantalan and summon the four who come after.”

“Where did you send him? Tenochtitlán?”

“Do you think I’m mad?” Her voice was suddenly harsh. “You told me yourself Montezuma made over five hundred human sacrifices last year. He has forsaken the true way of Quetzalcoatl. Do you realize he would have had me buried alive for the offense I committed? We were right to cut off all communication with that colony when the blood sacrifices started. I will not give them Cadra or Kantalan to sacrifice on their altars.”