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“I’m bringing her back.” Even I hear the lawless, desperate edge in my voice. The pain in my chest is worsening; it’s becoming hard to breathe around.

“It’s blasphemy,” my sister says softly.

“Fuck blasphemy. The gods will listen to me.”

Katiari shudders at my words.

I begin incanting a secret spell, one my father once spoke of in whispers before I had magic to wield. The words are in Mochica, but I understand them all the same.

“A life for a life, a soul for a soul, take what I offer and return what I’ve lost. I call Uvagukis Roxilana, Queen of Sarmatians, back to the land of the living, and I deliver another to take her place.”

Grabbing Katiari’s captive, I pull him to me long enough to slice his neck. His blood sprays across my riders’ boots, and he sags in my arms. “A life for a life.”

I cast his body aside and turn to the altar, looking for any sign that my beloved lives.

But Death still has her in his clutches.

Zosines’s wounded prisoner is beginning to panic, jerking against my blood brother and crying out in his feeble attempt to flee.

I cross over to my rider and roughly haul the Roman away from Zosines.

“A soul for a soul,” I call out as I drag my blade across this soldier’s throat as well.

Blood decorates the temple walls and floor, and still, my queen’s body remains lifeless.

Another. I beckon with my fingers to the other Sarmatians entering the temple with their prisoners. Though many of them might find my actions abhorrent, they hand over their captives all the same.

Again and again, I whisper the incantation; again and again, I cut soldiers’ throats. And again and again, blood sprays, and they fall.

Five men have been sacrificed. Now seven. Now nine. The bodies are piling up in the tight, dim space, yet my warriors continue to bring more and more prisoners.

Nothing changes on the altar, but within me, my power builds. I feel it building. Can sense the crackle of lightning running through it.

I’m bringing you back, Roxilana.

Once close to a dozen men lay scattered on the ground before me, I sense something enter the room. Not a god, exactly, but a presence nonetheless. Something familiar and beloved. My magic swarms it, and I try to draw it to me like a fish on a hook. But this essence fights the pull of my power, and for the first time in my life, I have found my magic too weak to complete the task.

Come back to me, my love, I beg.

My power fills up the temple, pressing on the walls and my warriors, thickening until it feels as though reality itself has been carved out by my power alone.

“Gods, release my wife to me!”

Still nothing. If the gods are watching, they want more. So does that essence that lingers in the room.

There is a lake of blood beneath me. I draw it all into me, letting the blood boil away and more power amass. More than I have ever used. Other things have long since boiled away, precious things that I might miss if Roxi and I survive this moment.

But considering my wife might not survive, I do not give a fuck.

“Helllllooo, berrrreavvved kinnggg,”the Hungering Ones whisper.

Not bereaved, not yet.

My skin throbs from the intensity of my gathered power, and my eyes seem to pulse from it.

Not enough.

I force the indigo cloud of my magic back into my flesh, gritting my teeth against the burn of shoving it into a body already overly full.