Frostfire Ridge It's a start...

He was angry, and he was hurt, and Citali's words did nothing to soothe it. He remembered more than he let on, had questioned things even before Thistle had broken the dam inside his head that Ragnar had to carefully built. “Am I wrong? Are my memories wrong?” So far, he hadn't heard any of them deny what he remembered, when he dared to speak of it all. He kept the majority of the memories at bay because he was scared that the flood would kill him, and he had too much to do before he died. “Did it ever occur to any of you that I remember more than I let on?” No, he mentally thought. It obviously hadn't. “I suppose it wouldn't have. After all I'm just a stupid man.” What did he know? Nothing. “Do you really believe that Quetzalcoatl told you the full extent of your mission? Or did you all just believe it was to babysit me when I didn't need it?” At first, it hadn't made sense. Why would an adult wolf need a guard? But he remembered now, thanks to the feverish half dreams, half nightmares he'd suffered all night. Not everything, but he remembered enough. “I asked her if I could leave, I knew that no Amazon woman would follow me, but I was destined to be a King,” A craphole king, but whatever. “She let me go so that I might see her dream of equality come to life. To be the harbinger of a new age for the Amazons; that you and your sister would govern me.” To guide him when he needed it (that of course only worked when he wasn't too busy being stubborn wanting to try things out for himself to see if they worked or not). "It went beyond just keeping me safe. Her thoughts were...are treason, and you, I and her all know it."

“I wasn't ever meant to take over Coatl's Rise.” But, likely his words were wasted. He didn't want to lose any of the other women, but he faced it now as a reality. “Ironic, isn't it? How you all fought so hard for me to remember, calling me Tezcacoatl when I was trying not to, but now you don't like what you've created.” And they thought it was so easy as walking away from him. He'd tried to tell them but none of them had wanted to hear it. “Did you really expect me to be the same as you remembered me to be? I gotten separated from you, and I took shelter in the Seahawk Valley, in the pack known as Tartok. I lived with them until Ragnar and his Berserkers captured me and took me prisoner. They used me to get to Quetzalcoatl, and they are not known for their brutality for no reason.” The torture Ragnar had lied about, covered up as he wove the web that had become all Tyrr knew of his life, false as it was. The Vikings were cruel, and death had been nothing short of a kindness to Ragnar, he saw now. Far better than the man had deserved.

“And you have no idea what it's like to remember.” It was harsh, all of it molding him into something sharp and feral. So, she could spit her words at him as if they made a difference but they couldn't change the past. “So be angry at me. I don't know what more you all want from me. I am sorry that nothing happened the way it was supposed to, but you can't keep holding onto it. You have to let it go, Citali.” But he couldn't make Nochtli see this and doubted he would get Citali, who seemed to dislike him more than the ebony Amazon had, to see it, either. “I did not want to pass that judgment on Nochtli. I trusted her, blindly. As I trust you, and Manuaia, and it was the hardest thing I've had to do.” Harder even than killing Ragnar (which hadn't been that hard but he didn't want to think about it). “She turned her back on you, too, you know. On Quetzalcoatl. This goes so much deeper than myself.”

“So I'm going to ask again,” Tezcacoatl's crystalline gaze bore into her his posture stiff. “do you know of him?” Personally, Tezcacoatl was shocked that Citali seemed to not care that Nochtli'd been getting close with a male, especially given what he took to be her stance on the gender. “And you can keep your silence, but it won't protect him.” Just so they were clear on where Tezcacoatl stood with that, surely the blame could not be lain all at his feet. Tezcacoatl took the blame where it belonged to him, but he suspected there were other forces at work. Maybe he was just becoming paranoid, but at the moment he couldn't be bothered to care.