Sighing, I made my way through the maze of mats to a window alcove in the corner: the same place I had found him hiding years before. The curtain was drawn, and a shadow sprawled on the broad sill behind it.

“It’s weird how often you go back here,” I told the shadow, poking it through the curtain. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall off the ledge?”

The damask screen pushed back an inch. I passed inside, climbing onto the cushioned ledge. The window was unglazed, and so we were exposed on one side to balmy night air.

Dayo didn’t look up when I sat across from him. His hair stuck out in locs. The laces of his nightshirt lay undone, exposing his collarbone as he cupped an object in his hands.

“You shouldn’t have that out, you know,” I whispered. “It’s dangerous.”

The mask was slightly smaller than his palm, and carved to resemble a young lion. A word in the tongue of old Oluwan was engraved on its brow: Oloye. Crown Prince. I shuddered, remembering my first day at An-Ileyoba, when Olugbade taunted me to kill him. Olugbade’s mask was identical to Dayo’s, except that his was marked Oba for emperor, and its mane boasted all twelve colorful stripes.

“This is the only place I can look at it,” Dayo said, then stared over the window ledge at the blackness below. “It’s hard to believe, sometimes. I could slip over the edge—fall ten stories down to the courtyard—and nothing would happen. I wonder if other princes have ever tried.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said, eyeing the mask warily. Nine stripes colored the obsidian mane, jewel tones glittering in the moonlight. For each person Dayo anointed, a new color would appear, representing the immunity that Dayo had gained, in addition to the one with which he was born. Raybearer princes wore the mask around their necks, hiding it always beneath their clothes. They showed it to no one, lest an assassin discover the kinds of death to which they were not yet immune. Only when a Raybearer’s council was complete did he wear the mask openly, displaying his deathless power to all the world.

Three colors were missing from Dayo’s mask—one for a Djbanti candidate, one for Sanjeet, and one for me.

“Orange, purple, and red,” Dayo murmured. “Gluttony, contagion, burning.”

“Shh!” I hissed, slapping his knee. “You want all of Oluwan hearing how to kill you?”

Dayo didn’t answer; instead he stared longer at the mask before replacing it on a gold chain that hung around his neck and slipped it beneath his tunic to rest with his vial of pelican oil. “Why won’t you let me anoint you?”

I shrugged, avoiding his gaze. “The Ray doesn’t work on me. It gave me a headache. You know that.”

“That was four years ago. Before you knew me. Before you—” He broke off and stared hard at the moon. The words he did not say, loved me, hung between us. “I was a wreck in court today. I had no idea what to tell Zyong’o … But you did.”

I flinched. He crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow. “You had a better ruling,” he said. “I could tell. You were scowling into space, like you do when you’ve solved one of the testmaker’s hardest riddles. Am’s Story, Tar—why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you correct me, like you did when we were little?”

I shrugged. “You’re the Raybearer. It’s not my place to make rulings.”

“Even if I’m a buffoon at making them?”

The question made me squirm, but I set my jaw and said, “Oloye.” When nothing happened, I waited for emphasis and repeated, “Oloye.” Still nothing. “Now you say it,” I pressed him.

He frowned. “You’ve made your point, Tar.”

“Say it,” I insisted.

“Oloye,” he sighed, and through his tunic, the eyes of the mask flashed.

“See?” I said, once the stars stopped spiraling in my vision. “It’s like the stories say. The mask only responds to its rightful owner: a Raybearer of Aritsar. Am chose you for this, Dayo. You don’t need me.”

“But I do—”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” I snapped, then winced, regretting it. It wasn’t Dayo’s fault he trusted me so blindly. For four years I had protected him, resisting Mother’s wish by refusing his anointing. But if I’d had any shred of a spine, I would have left him years ago. I would have found a way to escape the Children’s Palace, keeping him safe forever, instead of staying to bask in his affection.

As if reading my thoughts, Dayo said, “Promise me you won’t leave.” His voice was quiet. But his gaze was dilated, volatile with fear. “Promise you won’t abandon Aritsar.”

I tried to laugh. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“I can’t explain it, Tar,” he whispered. “But the moment I first saw you, I knew we were linked. We’re beans in a pod, you and I. I think it’s both of us … or neither.”

My blood ran cold. I didn’t understand. They were words a lover would say, but that was not how Dayo meant them. All I wanted was to be gone from that alcove, away from the raw vulnerability in those dark eyes.

“Fine. I promise,” I said, wriggling off the ledge and opening the curtain. “Get some sleep, Dayo. And for Am’s sake—stop taking out that mask.”

I returned to my mat on the girls’ side of the hall, carefully wrapping my hair in its sleeping scarf. Then I lay on the ground, hands folded stiffly beneath my cheek. For what felt like hours, I fought sleep—until at last, heavy footfalls crept to my side, and a shadow fell across my mat.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” I whispered. “Where in Am’s name have you been?”

He looked haunted as he stared down at me, and faint, as though he hadn’t slept or eaten all day. He swallowed hard, holding out a hand to help me up. “Please,” he said.

“Did the emperor ask to speak with you? It’s all right. If it was scary, I can take the memories away—”

“My amah is dead,” Sanjeet whispered. “Father was taken to prison.”

I LET SANJEET PULL ME UP, AND WE WALKED silently to the abandoned palace playroom. Sheet-covered toys rose in white mountains around us. We sat on a dusty divan, Sanjeet’s head in his hands. My insides twisted in knots. I rubbed his broad shoulder as he shook with sobs. After a moment I reached for his face, removing my sleeping scarf to swab at his tears.

“Should we—” I paused. “Should we burn something for her shade?”

I had only seen a funeral twice before. The first was in Swana, when a deafening procession had passed Bhekina House: adults and children wailing, rattling seed-filled hosho gourds, and beating bruises into their chests.

The other time had been here at the Children’s Palace, when Dayo had anointed Theo of Sparti to his council. The moment Dayo had touched Theo’s brow, a Sparti candidate named Ianthe had risen from the banquet hall, walked calmly to the Hall of Dreams, and thrown herself from a window.

After retrieving the girl’s body, the Children’s Palace attendants had wailed and beat themselves, just like the mourners from Swana. But their eyes, I noticed, were dry. Their wailing was merely a ritual: It was unlucky to bury an unmourned body, and the Sparti girl had no family to cry for her. Ianthe had crossed two thousand miles to reach Oluwan and try for the council. Many Children’s Palace rejects, I would later learn, had traveled alone, and could not afford the lodestone journey home.

Once the mourners had left and the Hall of Dreams hushed with sleep, the High Priestess of Aritsar crept to the window from which Ianthe had jumped. Of all the Emperor’s Eleven, Mbali visited us most often. At night, she would drift between the lines of pallets, soothing younger candidates who had wet their sheets, and coaxing thrashing children from nightmares.

Pretending to sleep, I watched as Mbali placed a palm oil lamp in the windowsill and drew a gauzy cloth from her pocket: Ianthe’s candidate sash. She wept—real tears, not the shrieking performance of the earlier mourners—and held a corner of Ianthe’s sash to the lamp. As the cloth burned, the air in the hall suddenly turned cold. I froze in horror as a translucent girl floated into the hall, shadows clinging to her body like a shroud. She headed straight for Mbali.

I leapt to my feet to warn the priestess, but she held out a hand to stop me. “Don’t,” she said. “It’s the only time she has left. Shades can only appear once after death. They often don’t come at all … if they died at peace.”

Carefully, the High Priestess held out her arms. Ianthe’s shade rushed into them, and to my surprise, she embraced Mbali with arms as solid as a living child’s.

“I’ll miss you,” Ianthe said.

“Not for long,” whispered Mbali, kissing the girl’s translucent head and seeming to suppress a shiver. “You won’t miss a thing where you’re going. Go, child. You’re free at last.” Then she murmured a blessing, and Ianthe vanished.

“We should burn something of your mother’s,” I told Sanjeet, retrieving an oil lamp from a sconce in the playroom. “Then you can see her again.”