notapaladin

ce cipactli (one crocodile)

The first time Teomitl thinks the words, it’s in the shadowed privacy of his own courtyard after a lesson. Acatl is binding the wounds from their bloodletting—he insists upon it, and at any rate it’s easier than Teomitl trying to wrap his own forearm one-handed with the other end of the bandage held in his teeth—and Teomitl looks at him, grave and dark-eyed and careful, and the words fall into his mind like stones into a still pond. Slow. Heavy. Creating ripples that waver to the very edges of who he is.

I love you.

He inhales too sharply, and Acatl looks at him. “Too tight?”

What—oh, the bandages. He shakes his head.

It takes her a while, but after he returns from the coronation war, Chalchiuhnenetl decides she quite likes her baby brother. She’d discounted him at first—after all, she has many brothers, Tizoc and Axayacatl as shining examples of their general mediocrity—but he is different from the others. His conviction and ambition burns brightly within him. He is strong. Proud. A skilled warrior, even at his young age.

And so, so deliciously easy to manipulate.