Next came the dancers, twirling and trilling odes to the Great Mother at the tops of their lungs. Behind them, a column of priestesses sprinkled a mixture of cornmeal, honey, and milk on the ground for good luck. Servants carried wooden scepters burning bowls of incense, filling the square with the sweet smells of lavender and jasmine.

Children cried out in delight as an entire menagerie paraded by—elegant giraffes and sleek leopards, prancing zebras and peacocks with their feathers bred to reflect every color of the rainbow. Following them were a thousand cavalry and a thousand foot soldiers, all with their weapons held high as they bellowed war cries.

And overhead, Bahia’s Comet soared through the sky, dimmer during the daytime yet still eye-catching. It was a Sun Day, the first day of the week and the day ruled over by Gyata the Lion. The sun itself seemed brighter than usual, perhaps refusing to be outdone by a mere comet, turning every reflective surface into a thousand mini stars.

From her vantage point on the parade grounds outside Ksar Alahari, Karina watched the parade with her mouth open in wonder. She imagined standing in the procession—no, at the front of the procession in place of the cackling griot. She saw herself laughing with children and dancing without a single guard in sight, and the pang of longing that hit her was so strong she was actually grateful when Aminata said, “All right, Karina, everything’s ready.”

After her tense meeting with the council, Karina had expected at least an hour or two to recover before jumping into her mother’s duties. But her guards had taken her straight to a meeting with a group of Eastwater diplomats, and from there to approve the final details of the First Challenge, and then to the kitchens to oversee dinner preparations, and so on.

Karina wasn’t sure how all these small details would help renew the Barrier, but she didn’t want to risk jeopardizing the spell. So she did her best to answer every question and greet every person with a smile so polite no one could have guessed the hell she’d survived the night before.

But it was impossible not to notice the disappointment in people’s eyes when they saw her round the corner instead of the Kestrel. No one ever said so outright, but she knew they were thinking the same thought that had haunted her from the moment the masked assassin had stuck that sword in the Kestrel’s back.

Why was she standing here when her mother and sister weren’t?

Karina’s temples throbbed. If she thought about this any longer, she was going to quite literally fall apart, and she couldn’t afford to let the council see that after she had protested so adamantly that Solstasia go on as planned.

Luckily, it was time for the last and most important part of Solstasia’s first day—the Opening Ceremony. Once the procession was finished, each temple would officially reveal their Champion before the public. After that would be the Lighting of the Flame, where Karina would sacrifice a single stallion as an offering to the Great Mother and use its blood to light the bonfire. This was the part of the ceremony that most worried her; she had never killed another creature before, much less anything as big as a stallion. But Farid had assured her that as long as she struck clear and true, she would be fine.

As for the fire, well . . . hopefully, she wouldn’t have to stand near it for too long.

So while Aminata busied herself with Karina’s jewelry and hair ornaments, muttering all the while that circlets were so out of fashion, Karina examined the garment her maid had laid out for her. The royal tailors had truly outdone themselves for Solstasia. The fabric in her hands was as light as air, yet the beadwork lining the gown had to have been done with an exacting eye using a needle half the size of a normal one.

However, something about the outfit wasn’t right.

“Aminata, you brought the wrong dress. This isn’t what I chose the other day.”

All the outfits Karina had picked out for the festival had been in varying shades of yellow to pay homage to her patron deity, Santrofie, and the Wind Alignment.

Yet the dress in her hands was a white so pale it was almost translucent. White was the color of the Great Mother, the color of the first cloth an infant was wrapped in after its birth, and the color of the shroud they used to bury their loved ones when they died. Outside of the Sentinels, only the sultana regularly wore white in an official capacity, no matter her Alignment, to show her allegiance to the greatest of all gods.

Aminata bit her lip and explained slowly, “The council thought it would be best if you wore your mother’s outfits for the festival because it would be against tradition to not have at least one member of the royal family in white. Don’t worry, I’ve already adjusted this dress to fit your measurements, and I will do the rest when we return to the palace.”

Karina looked at the dress in her hands. She looked up at Aminata’s concerned face, then back to the dress.

In the end, that was what broke her. Not her soul-crushing fatigue, not the pain in her temples, not even the recurring memory of the awful sound the Kestrel’s body had made when it hit the ground. It was the simple thought of Aminata meticulously undoing stitches that had been sewn for her mother just so the dress could better fit Karina that unraveled her completely.

“Get out,” whispered Karina. A film of white noise crashed through her ears.

“What?”

“I said get out!”

Normally, Aminata would have fought her, but the warning in Karina’s tone was so severe that her maid fled from the tent without a single glance back. Just as well she did, because then Karina was screaming at the top of her lungs, ripping the gown with her bare hands and trampling it in the dust beneath her feet. She pushed all the jewelry to the ground, not caring that several pieces shattered. In that moment, she was manic energy and sorrow, a loosed arrow with no target. The wound that Baba and Hanane’s deaths had opened inside her had never healed, and now her mother’s death had joined it, bleeding her heart dry with a grief that refused to be staunched. She bled and she bled, and still it poured from her, more than one person was ever meant to hold.

What was the point of any of this—the Opening Ceremony, Solstasia, renewing the Barrier even—when her mother wasn’t here to see it? Why did everyone else get to enjoy themselves when her family had to sacrifice their freedom for a protection nobody could even know about?

Karina was vaguely aware that Farid had entered the tent. He tried to pull her to him, but she pushed him away. How dare he have woken up that morning, when her mother never would again. How dare he even breathe.

Maybe she should just let the Barrier fall and leave Ziran to its fate. After all, she hadn’t asked to be born an Alahari. She had never wanted to live her life trapped within these walls. If Ziran fell, her only regret would be that she could not be the storm that tore it apart.

“Karina, look at me.”

Farid took Karina’s face in her hands and gently but firmly turned her toward him. All at once, her fury leeched away, leaving only a vague numbness behind. She regarded the remnants of her tirade: the boxes of jewelry dashed against the ground, the stool now missing a leg. The guards at the entrance to the tent, reassuring concerned onlookers that the princess was fine, just fine.

And the dress, now torn to bits.

A new emotion replaced the numbness—shame, followed quickly by embarrassment. “Farid, I’m—” she began, but he cut her off with a sympathetic smile.

“No time.” He quickly pressed his lips to her hair, and then he was off, shouting for someone to bring Karina a new outfit. As her team scrambled to fix what she had broken, Karina sank to her knees, her eyes burning. Her anguish howled and raged, coalescing into a single, immutable fact: she couldn’t do this.

She couldn’t be queen and she couldn’t give the rest of her life away to Ziran, not when she couldn’t go five minutes without trying to tear the world apart.

But there was quite literally no one who could rule in her place, as Karina was the only surviving Alahari. Running away wasn’t even an option, not just because she physically could not leave the city, but because doing so would result in a succession crisis that could rip Ziran in two.

She couldn’t be sultana. But she couldn’t not be sultana. These conflicting truths swirled in an endless loop in Karina’s mind as she searched for any way out of her predicament.

As she reached for her pack, seeking the familiar comfort of her oud, her hand jostled The Tome of the Dearly Departed. She pulled the book out and ran her hand over the glyphs embossed in the cover, her fingers lingering on the mention of death. A memory from the day before slowly came to her, and she flipped frantically to the article she’d skimmed outside the Dancing Seal.

The Rite of Resurrection is the most sacred and advanced technique, possible only during the week the Comet Meirat is visible in the sky.

Karina’s blood froze in her veins.

It was impossible. More than impossible.