My fifteenth birthday dawned with the pounding of drums, echoing through the cavernous Hall of Dreams: pa-pa-gun-gao, gun-gao. Like all Dayo’s candidates, I had learned to interpret the countless drum pitches. By the fifth gun-gao—wake for prayers—I had disentangled from my mosquito net, ripped the sleeping scarf from my neatly twisted hair, and stood erect on my mat. I waited, hands clasped over my black tunic and Swanian candidate sash, with dozens of other candidates on the girls’ side of the hall.

Servants with leatherbound books pushed the partition screen aside and took their stations, accounting for children on mats, ensuring that none were missing. Then the drumming stopped, and Mbali swept through the carved double doors, joining a yawning Dayo on his dais.

“Good morning, candidates,” she cried, and we bowed in response, touching our brows and hearts.

“Good morning, Anointed Honor,” we replied.

“Why do you rise? Why did you not die in your sleep?”

“Because the Storyteller has granted me to live another day.”

“Why did the Storyteller allow you to live?”

“So that I can serve the prince, the Chosen Raybearer of Aritsar, and aspire to be one of his anointed.”

“Why must you serve the prince?”

“Because I love him more than life itself.”

Mbali smiled over us, as she always did, with a mysterious blend of serenity and deep-seated sadness. “Very good, children.”

Then the drums sounded again, releasing us for breakfast. Dayo exited first, of course, followed by his Anointed Ones. It was the least favorite part of my day.

My pain at Dayo’s growing council festered like an ulcer. As individuals, I liked them; but I envied their intimacy. After Sanjeet, Kirah had been first to connect with Dayo’s Ray. Joyfully, she had accepted his hand in councilhood, and so every other candidate from the Blessid Valley had been expelled from the Children’s Palace. I danced with Kirah at her celebration feast, grinning to suppress my tears. I knew that I could not be anointed, and now, if I ever left the Children’s Palace, I could not take Kirah with me.

Other council members followed soon after: a stern girl from Biraslov, a blind boy from Nyamba, a girl from Quetzala with a wicked sense of humor—until candidates had been anointed from all of the realms except Djbanti, Swana, and Dhyrma.

Sanjeet, even after four more years as Dayo’s protective shadow, still refused to be anointed. The remaining Dhyrmish candidates vied for his spot, though they feared Sanjeet almost as much as the Swana candidates resented me.

I could hardly blame them for hating me. I refused to join the council, and yet Dayo rarely left my side. Even now, he grinned from the hall doors, gesturing for Sanjeet and me to join his Anointed Ones for breakfast.

Hot-faced, I slunk past the other candidates, feeling dozens of jealous eyes bore into me. They would be released for breakfast by the location of their sleeping mats. The last to reach the banquet chamber had the skimpiest pick of food, and shortest time in which to eat it before the day’s tests began.

As I neared the door, I squared my shoulders, preparing myself for the question Dayo asked, without fail, every dawn.

“Do you love me now, Tarisai of Swana?”

And as always, I closed my heart to the warmth of his smile.

“Of course not,” I snorted, gesturing back at the Hall. “Not when you’ve got every child prodigy from Swana plotting to murder me.”

He raised an eyebrow, half playful, half serious. “We could send them all home tomorrow, you know. All you have to do is say yes.” I had once towered over Dayo, but now he dwarfed me. He might have been imposing, if not for that gangly frame, and those relentlessly naive black eyes. Dayo’s dense, coily hair was flattened on one side from sleep. He probably wouldn’t even notice until halfway through breakfast.

“I’m not ready to try the Ray again,” I muttered. “You know that.”

“The only thing I know,” he said, “is that you belong.”

The words stuck like darts as I followed his council to breakfast, and they continued to burn as we marched to the northern palace courtyard for weapon drills and wrestling. I beat out my anger with poles and practice spears.

Every day, I had waited for a reason to fulfill The Lady’s command. I had tried to believe that Dayo was a monster in disguise, like me. A demon destined to hurt Aritsar, to be a nightmare of an emperor. Why else, I had reasoned, would The Lady want me to hurt him?

But in the four years I had passed by Dayo’s side, I had seen no monster. Only a boy with a big, fragile heart, and hope that could fill an ocean.

I had refused to try Dayo’s Ray test again, assuming that The Lady would come retrieve me, impatient with my inaction. But as months bled into years, I could come to only one conclusion: The Lady had forgotten me entirely.

Years ago, this reality would have hurt me. But I had different ambitions now, grander dreams than earning The Lady’s love. I wanted to help Aritsar, like Kirah and the other Anointed Ones. I wanted to join the faces of heroes on the Watching Wall. I longed to deserve the way that Dayo looked at me each morning.

But I was half-ehru. And as far as I could tell, there was no rewriting that cursed story.

Crack. The blunt end of Kirah’s practice spear connected with my gut, and I gasped, doubling over.

“You’re distracted,” she observed. Sweat beaded on her brow beneath her prayer scarf, trickling down her face as she dimpled.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, brandishing my practice spear to try the defense again.

“Let me guess.” Kirah gestured with her head across the courtyard. “You’ve developed a sudden … appetite for wrestling?”

I glanced past her, and my heart gave an involuntary spasm. Kirah nudged my shoulder and I shoved her back, grinning sheepishly.

“Are you going to finish the set or not?” I demanded, knocking my spear into hers. But my gaze still drifted to the other side of the courtyard.

Sanjeet was assisting the drill masters, training candidates in a lethal grappling maneuver. Impossibly, he had grown even taller in four years. Stubble shadowed his jaw, and he stood erect now, no longer hunched with shame. Dust caked the hollow of his back, earth the same rich copper as his skin. He hooked ankles with a stocky candidate, forcing both of them to the ground. Sanjeet let his opponent scramble on top of him, and then thrust a club-like thigh over the boy’s shoulder. Before the boy could escape, Sanjeet had seized his own ankle, trapping the boy’s neck and arm in a chokehold. It was over in seconds: His opponent gasped, tapping Sanjeet’s forearm, and Sanjeet released him.

“That wasn’t fair,” puffed the burly candidate, who was also from Dhyrma. “His Hallow exposed my weak spots. He should have told me where they were. Evened the odds.”

The muscles in Sanjeet’s back rippled as he stood, staring down at his opponent with passive, tea-colored eyes. “If you don’t know your own weaknesses,” he said, “it will take less than a Hallow to kill you in battle.”

The candidate snorted. “What do you know of battle? Back home, you were only a slum brat. I’m the son of a lord.”

“When an assassin comes at you in the night,” Sanjeet retorted, “will you be calling your parents?”

The candidate bristled.

“I don’t know anything about battle either,” Dayo said, stepping into the ring to break the tension. “You’d better throw me too, Jeet. I have more to learn than Kamal.” He smiled at the Dhyrmish candidate, who bowed sullenly and left the ring. Dayo spread his narrow feet, hunching into an awkward fighting stance. “Ready when you are, Bear.”

The corners of Sanjeet’s mouth lifted. “Your worst weakness, little brother,” he said, sweeping the prince’s leg and depositing him firmly on the ground, “is seeing the good in everyone.” He smiled, helping the prince up. “And I’d rather have your weakness than my Hallow.”

As he dusted himself off and left the ring, Sanjeet’s gaze locked on mine. I looked away, flushing to the tips of my sandals.

Most of the candidates still feared the Prince’s Bear. He rarely talked to anyone except Dayo, whom he shadowed like a grim archangel. But when the others had gone to sleep, I would hear the gender partition screen shift aside. Footsteps padded to my sleeping mat, and a pair of pleading eyes would burn down on mine.

“Please,” Sanjeet rasped. “Take them. Make the memories disappear.”

Every night since the first, we had stolen away to the old playroom, ghosts of colorful carved animals looming around us in the dark. I touched his face, feeling his pulse race as I pressed each temple. Gruesome images barraged us both.

Ribs cracking. Limbs bruising, bones shattering beneath Sanjeet’s bare hands as betting crowds egged him on to fight. His father’s voice was always the loudest of them all. “Is this hell? I’ll teach you hell. I’ll teach you what I taught your mother if you don’t get back in the pit, boy.”