Luce just huffed and began climbing the stairs.
“The Mayans were geniuses. By this point in their civilization, they’ve already predicted the end of the world in 2012.” He coughed theatrically. “But that remains to be seen. Time will tell.”
As Luce neared the top, Bill swooped in close again.
“Now, listen,” he said. “This time, if and when you go three-D—”
“Shhh,” Luce said.
“No one can hear me but you!”
“Exactly. Shhh!” She took another step up the pyramid, quietly now, and stood on the ledge at the top. She pressed her body against the hot stone of the temple wall, inches away from the open doorway. Someone inside was singing.
“I’d do it now,” Bill said, “while the guards are at the ball court.”
Luce edged to the doorway and peered in.
The sunlight streaming through the open door lit up a large throne in the center of the temple. It was shaped like a jaguar and painted red, with spots of inlaid jade. To the left was a large statue of a figure reclining on its side with a hand over its stomach. Small burning lamps made of stone and filled with oil surrounded the statue and cast a flickering light. The only other things in the room were three girls bound together at the wrists by rope, huddled in the corner.
Luce gasped, and all three girls’ heads shot up. They were all pretty, with dark hair in braids, and jade piercings through their ears. The one on the left had the darkest skin. The one on the right had deep-blue swirling lines painted up and down her arms. And the one in the middle … was Luce.
Ix Cuat was small and delicate. Her feet were dirty, and her lips were chapped. Of the three terrified girls, her dark eyes were the wildest.
“What are you waiting for?” Bill called out from his seat on the statue’s head.
“Won’t they see me?” Luce whispered through a clenched jaw. The other times she’d cleaved with her past selves, they’d either been alone or Bill had helped to shield her. What would it look like to these other girls if Luce went inside Ix Cuat’s body?
“These girls have been half mad since they got selected to be sacrificed. If they cry out about any freaky business, guess how many people are going to care?” Bill made a show of counting on his fingers. “Right. Zero. No one’s even going to hear them.”
“Who are you?” one of the girls asked, her voice splintered with fear.
Luce couldn’t answer. As she stepped forward, Ix Cuat’s eyes ignited with what looked like terror. But then, to Luce’s great shock, just as she reached down, her past self reached up with her bound hands and grabbed fast and hard to Luce’s. Ix Cuat’s hands were warm, and soft, and trembling.
She started to say something. Ix Cuat had started to say—
Fly me away.
Luce heard it in her mind as the ground beneath them shuddered and everything began to flicker. She saw Ix Cuat, the girl who’d been born unlucky, whose eyes told Luce she knew nothing about the Announcers, but who had seized hold of Luce as if Luce held her deliverance. And she saw herself, from outside herself, looking tired and hungry and ragged and rough. And older somehow. And stronger.
Then the world settled again.
Bill was gone from the statue’s head, but Luce couldn’t move to search for him. Her bound wrists were raw, and marked with black sacrificial tattoos. Her ankles, she realized, had been bound, too. Not that the bindings mattered much—fear bound her soul more tightly than any rope ever could. This wasn’t like the other times Luce had gone inside her past. Ix Cuat knew exactly what was coming to her. Death. And she did not seem to welcome it as Lys had in Versailles.
On either side of Ix Cuat, her cocaptives had edged away from her, but they could move only a few inches. The girl on the left, with the dark skin—Hanhau—was crying; the other, with the painted blue body—Ghanan—was praying. They were all afraid to die.
“You are possessed!” Hanhau sobbed through her tears. “You will contaminate the offering!”
Ghanan was at a loss for words.
Luce ignored the girls and felt around Ix Cuat’s own crippling fear. Something was running through her mind: a prayer. But not a prayer of sacrificial preparation. No, Ix Cuat was praying for Daniel.
Luce knew that the thought of him made Ix Cuat’s skin flush and her heart beat faster. Ix Cuat had loved him her whole life—but only from afar. He’d grown up a few buildings away from her family’s home. Sometimes he traded avocados to her mother at the market. Ix Cuat had been trying for years to get up the courage to talk to him. The knowledge that he was at the ball court now tormented her. Ix Cuat was praying, Luce realized, that he would lose. Her one prayer was that she did not want to die at his hand.
“Bill?” Luce whispered.
The little gargoyle swooped back inside the temple. “Game’s over! The mob’s heading over to the cenote now. That’s the limestone pool where the sacrificing takes place. Zotz and the winning players are on their way up here to walk you gals over to the ceremony.”
As the din of the mob faded, Luce trembled. There were footsteps on the stairs. Any moment now, Daniel would walk through that door.
Three shadows darkened the doorway. Zotz, the leader with the red-and-white-feathered headdress, stepped inside the temple. None of the girls moved; they were all staring in horror at the long decorative spear he held. A human head was spiked atop it. The eyes were open, crossed with strain; the neck was still dripping blood.
Luce looked away and her eyes fell on another, very muscular man entering the tomb. He was carrying another painted spear with another head impaled on its top. At least this one’s eyes were closed. There was the faintest smile across the fat, dead lips.
“The losers,” Bill said, zipping close to each of the heads to examine them. “Now aren’t you glad Daniel’s team won? Mostly thanks to this guy.” He clapped the muscular man on the shoulder, though Daniel’s teammate didn’t seem to feel a thing. Then Bill was out the door again.
When Daniel walked into the temple at last, his head was hanging. His hands were empty and his chest was bare. His hair and skin were dark, and his posture was stiffer than Luce was used to. Everything from the way the muscles of his abdomen met the muscles of his chest to the way he held his hands lifelessly at his sides was different. He was still gorgeous, still the most gorgeous thing Luce had ever seen, though he looked nothing like the boy whom Luce had gotten used to.
But then he glanced up, and his eyes glowed exactly the same shade of violet that they always did.
“Oh,” she said softly, thrashing against her bindings, desperate to escape the story they were stuck in during this lifetime—the skulls and the drought and the sacrifice—and hold on to him for all eternity.
Daniel shook his head slightly. His eyes pulsed at her, glowing. His gaze soothed her. Like he was telling her not to worry.
Zotz motioned with his free hand for the three girls to stand, then gave a swift nod, and everyone filed out through the northern door of the temple. Hanhau first, with Zotz at her side, Luce right behind her, and Ghanan bringing up the rear. The rope between them was just long enough for each girl to hold both wrists together at her side. Daniel came up and walked beside her, and the other victor walked beside Ghanan.
For the briefest instant, Daniel’s fingertips grazed her bound wrists. Ix Cuat tingled at the touch.
Just outside the temple door, the four drummers were waiting on the ledge. They fell in line behind the processional and, as the party descended the pyramid’s steep steps, played the same hectic beats Luce had heard when she’d first arrived in this life. Luce focused on walking, feeling as if she were riding a tide instead of choosing to put one foot in front of the other, down the pyramid, and then, at the base of the steps, along the wide, dusty path that led to her death.