After sixteen years of waiting, the day for which he’d been chosen was almost here. Two days after his birth, Prince Telitzin, one of a score of royal children fathered by the king upon the bodies of negligible concubines, had been taken from the Royal nurseries and sent here, to the temple of the Fertility Goddess. He had been raised here by the priests, having almost no contact with any of the ordinary citizens of Tenochtitlan. The priests had been kind enough, and all of Telitzin’s needs, whether they be for food, clothing, education, or comfortable quarters, had been lavishly met. But it had been a lonely existence. He had never been held and rocked by his mother. He had never gone hunting for waterfowl with his father. He had at least two dozen siblings, but he’d never met any of them—and he never would. Now, at the age of sixteen, he was about to fulfill his destiny. After the ceremony that was scheduled for tomorrow, Telitzin would become one of the priests of the Goddess and would spend the rest of his life here in the Temple, no longer set apart. He hoped that perhaps his new life would be a bit less lonely than the old.
