Words of Love - By Hazel Hunter Page 0,37

first time he’d seen the pyramid. It was euphoria.

Slowly, they began to climb the steps. Jesse could only use her left foot to step up. Then she’d gingerly set down her right foot just long enough to get her left foot on the next step. Brett took as much of her weight as he could with one arm. It was slow but they eventually reached the top and entered the building.

As Jesse leaned against one wall and tried to catch her breath, Frederico peered into the rectangular hole in the floor. For a moment, Brett thought of shoving him down it. But in the next moment, the pistol was pointed back at Jesse.

“You don’t really think I’m that stupid,” Frederico grinned.

Brett said nothing.

Frederico motioned toward the steps.

“You two first,” he said.

Brett went to Jesse.

She had solved the riddle–a riddle that Frederico didn’t even know existed. The Blood Gatherer wanted them to bring ‘the confession’ and Jesse knew what that meant but Frederico was watching everything they did and could hear everything they said. There was a test down there and it would be deadly.

He’d foolishly tripped the first trap before Jesse could stop him and they’d nearly been drowned in a torrent of dirt. With Jesse’s decipherment of the second riddle, they’d successfully opened the staircase and claimed the blue jade carving of the Jester God.

As he took Jesse by the waist, she groaned a little and held her stomach.

Was it a dizzy spell?

He braced himself to catch her.

“I shouldn’t have had so much nopal for breakfast,” she moaned, as though she were sick.

Brett stared at her and cocked his head.

What?

She hadn’t had any breakfast and they certainly didn’t have any nopal, the fruit of the cactus plant. He didn’t even like–

“Down the stairs,” Frederico barked.

She looked up at Brett, her eyes searching his face.

It was the riddle. She was trying to tell him something before they went down.

Slowly, he helped her away from the wall and toward the stairs.

What did nopal or cactus have to do with the confession?

Though he didn’t know what, it meant something.

Holding their lanterns in front of them, they took the steps one at a time. The descending staircase and corridor were long but completely blank. Not a single glyph or carving was anywhere to be seen. It was oddly jarring after all the glyphs and panels they’d encountered. But when they reached the chamber at the bottom, the symbols seemed to be everywhere.

• • • • •

The entire chamber glittered.

Jesse squinted as they slowly made their way into it. Every surface was carved, even the floor and ceiling, but there was no sarcophagus. She’d already known it wouldn’t be that easy.

As she and Brett slowly turned, taking in the chamber, Frederico kept his gun trained on her but his eyes darted all around.

The room was the size of a small bedroom but one wall was completely covered in Olmec Blue jade. The others were three different shades of jadeite: white, lavender, and finally a deep green like that of the ocean. It was stunning.

In silence, the three of them could only gape. Jesse had no idea what Brett was expecting but this was definitely not how she had pictured it. Other Maya kings were buried in tiny chambers hardly big enough to fit the sarcophagus. The most ornate part of the stone coffin was the cover but it was always made of limestone–and this was only the antechamber.

As usual, the glyphs started to come to life.

Jesse stared at the blue jade wall. There was the Red King on his throne, Blood Gatherer sitting cross-legged on his low platform. Whether it was her or the image, she couldn’t tell, but there was a haughty tilt to his profile and his eye seemed to be looking at them.

‘Bring me your confession,’ echoed in her head.

The Blood Gatherer wanted the ultimate confession, the pain and bloodletting typically achieved with a sharp cactus spine. He didn’t want the Jester God and the key that Frederico held was surely going to bring catastrophe.

But how?

And how could they escape it?

She quickly scanned the rest of the room.

There was the Red King’s daughter on the adjacent lavender wall. Also in profile, she wore the ornate headdress and clothes of her lineage. She knelt in front of a large bowl. The gleaming panel reflected the light of Jesse’s lantern and, with Brett’s help, she turned toward it.

The hands of the princess were near her mouth and suddenly Jesse realized what they were