Enet lay among pillows with the Singer, her smooth skin lightly sheened with sweat. Beside her, the faintly iridescent glow in the Singer’s own skin was fading as satiation took over from urgency. Enet smiled to herself, a small and secret smile, and trailed her fingers over his lower belly; he twitched and growled, and she laughed. Laughed, but stopped the caress. Best not to rouse his ire so soon after his lust.

‘Eleven years, holy lord, since the magic passed into you and raised you to greatness,’ she murmured. ‘How much you have accomplished in that time. And how your strength yet waxes. Surely you will be remembered as one of our mightiest Singers.’ The Singer didn’t respond. ‘The greatest,’ Enet whispered and caught the hitch in his breath. Ah.

‘Because of you, Tokoban and Yalotlan will be brought under the song. Because of you, Ixachipan will know peace.’ She leant forward to kiss his ear and breathed the next words. ‘Because of you, the world spirit will awaken.’

‘And I will be its eternal consort,’ the Singer murmured. He stared at the bright murals painted on the ceiling, seeming to speak only to himself. ‘The god at its side, the vessel for its will. Forever.’

‘Yes,’ Enet said. ‘Forever.’ Awe and fidelity filled her to the brim. She had a child with this man; her place, too, was guaranteed. She would make sure of it.

‘You are thinking,’ the Singer began, scowling at her. ‘I can’t quite … tell me your thoughts.’

She leant up on her elbow and gave him a lazy smile. ‘Holy lord, it is not easy to think of anything when you have brought me such pleasure.’ His scowl remained, but it was tempered with a smirk. Still, he waited for an answer. ‘I was thinking of the stories my body slave told me when I was a girl. She said the earliest Singers didn’t ascend to godhood, holy lord. She said that, before we truly understood the magic of the songstone and the world spirit’s will, they remained mortal and died as mortals. It saddened me, to think of their great sacrifices going unrewarded.’

‘Heresy,’ the Singer grunted. ‘We have always ascended. We always will. We become the highest expression of our nature. Instead of controlling the song, we go deeper, further, into it. We become song. To say otherwise is to court disaster.’

The Singer rolled towards her and examined her from beneath heavy lids. His eyes, though, were sharp. Sharper than most gave him credit for. He was tall and broad, heavy in the shoulders and arms and sculpted by the song-magic that suffused his ordinary features and strong jaw with divinity, until he was as far above mortals as the pyramid’s songstone cap was above the earth.