“Don’t stop waving,” Mbali had ordered us before the ceremony. “Don’t stop smiling. They will pass your faces down to their children and grandchildren. You are not human beings—not anymore. You are nations. You are history walking.”

The road winding to the temple teemed with commoners in their best festival wrappers. Perfume thickened the air, and children tossed petals from the battlements, a flurry of gold, red, and white. Griots beat shakers and drums, and to the rhythm, the townspeople of Ebujo sang a new version of Aritsar’s well-known folk rhyme:

Tarisai brings his drum; nse

Sanjeet and Umansa bring his plow; gpopo

Kameron and Theo watch our older brother dance—

Black and gold: Ekundayo!

Mayazatyl sharpens his spear; nse

Kirah weaves his wrapper; gpopo

Thérèse and Emeronya watch our older brother dance—

Black and gold: Ekundayo!

Zathulu braids his hair; nse

Ai Ling brings his gourd; gpopo

Eleven moons watch the sun dance:

Black and gold: Ekundayo!

But all I could think of was my blistering headache.

“Are you all right, Anointed Honor?” the boy in the temple asked, shifting his feet.

My vision swam, but I forced a smile and nodded. “What do you have there?”

The boy held up a rag doll and dropped it shyly in my hand. “It’s you. I made her from my best tunic. It was too small for me, and Ma wanted to sell it for scraps, but I wouldn’t let her.”

The doll’s body was sewn from dark brown linen, matched carefully to my complexion. Cheerful button eyes shone over a seam smile, and black yarn braids burst from its brow.

My heart twinged. Memories of the boy’s fingers, shakily wielding a needle and pricking himself by accident, leeched from the doll into my palm. I made the tiny Tarisai bow to him, and the boy giggled.

“Thank you,” I told him. “How did you know what I looked like?”

“There’s a portrait in our family inn, Anointed Honor. A merchant brought it all the way from the capital. It has you, and Prince Ekundayo, and the Prince’s Bear, and the other Prince’s Eleven. Sometimes we leave maize under the portrait. Or cassava, and palm wine.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Offerings,” he said, blinking as though it were obvious. “So the town will have a good harvest.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Commoners and nobility from all over the continent were lined up before our elevated stools in the temple. Their eyes devoured the jeweled weave of my wax-dyed wrapper, the stacks of rainbow beads on my wrists and neck, and the golden cuffs on my biceps. I squirmed. They knew I was only mortal … didn’t they?

“You’re my favorite, you know,” the boy chattered. “My sister thinks Anointed Honor Ai Ling is prettier, but you can read minds. Or is it memories? Sis and I couldn’t decide. Auntie says it’s suspicious how no one knows who your mother and father are, but Papa says that doesn’t matter because you saved Prince Ekundayo’s life, and I think …”

His voice faded away as the pain between my temples surged. Those words: mother and father.

Ever since my anointing, headaches had plagued me. I remembered only two things from my life before the Children’s Palace: a mango orchard and a name—Lady. I had obeyed Mbali in my years as a candidate, never speaking of my mother, and now I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But as I slept, a song echoed on the edge of my dreams: Me, mine. She’s me and she is mine.

“Are your parents poor?” the boy whispered conspiratorially. “Will you visit them when you go back to Swana?”

My temples throbbed. Air ceased to travel through my lungs. “I—I don’t know. I—”

“That’s enough questions for Her Anointed Honor.” Dayo had risen from his stool.

The child froze and blanched. “Your … Your Imperial Highness.”

Dayo smiled and crouched so the child’s face was level with his burn scar. The thick, raised skin crept down Dayo’s cheek in an intricate lattice, ending in several branches on his collarbone. It had been the best Kirah’s healing song could do after the fire, and the sight of it always made my headaches worse.

Dayo’s obsidian oloye mask dangled from his neck; there was no need to hide it now. The twelve stripes of his immunities glittered, reflecting rainbows across the little boy’s face.

“Your mother must be proud of you,” Dayo said gently. “I bet you’re the best dollmaker in Ebujo.”

The boy nodded woodenly, and Dayo ruffled his hair. Then the child bowed and retreated into the crowd, dazed with shock.

Dayo placed a hand on my shoulder. “Still no memories?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It’s horrible. I’m supposed to be the Imperial Delegate of Swana. But how can I represent a realm I don’t even remem—”

“Forget Swana,” Dayo cut in, and I blinked in surprise. Dayo rarely interrupted anyone. “I mean …,” he faltered. “You’re one of us now. That’s all that matters, right? And you won’t be Delegate of Swana anytime soon. Until Father di—That is, until Father goes to the village, we’ll just be running campaigns and throwing parties at Yorua Keep. That could last for years. Decades, even.”

In Aritsar, it was bad luck to refer to the death of an emperor. Instead, we said that a deceased emperor had “gone to the village, and would not be returning soon.” Most emperors did not go to the village sooner than eighty years of age, which meant that Dayo could be well into his forties before our council rose to the throne. Until then, we would live at Yorua Keep, the sleepy fortress in coastal Oluwan where all crown princes lived after completing their council. Once the goodwill tour ended, we would move straight there, only returning to the Children’s Palace on rare visits to the capital.

“It will be nice to run our own home,” I conceded. “I won’t miss the trials. Or getting woken up by drums.”

Dayo peered at me curiously. “You’re sweating. Is the Breach making you nervous? Nothing’s come out of it for years, you know.”

I grimaced. “Nothing needs to come out of that hole for it to stink. How do the priests stand it?”

The heart of the Ebujo Temple was a vast chamber with high walls and no roof. Centuries ago, monsters had decimated the domed ceiling. Pillars of translucent limestone shot through with purple veins rose around us, supporting nothing but the sky. One side of the chamber held a marble altar, our semicircle of gilded stools, and standing room for onlookers. On the other side, hedged by a low spiked wall and guarded by shaman warriors, lay the Oruku Breach: an entrance to the underworld.

The rift sunk into the ground, a smirking, sulfurous mouth that steamed with blue miasma. The temple had originally been built as a fortress around the Breach, guarding civilians against undead monsters. But after Enoba’s treaty, Redemptor children were forced to enter the Breach regularly, and so the impenetrable fortress had been converted into a temple. Every hundred years, the Breach chamber hosted the Peace Ritual between the Arit crown prince and the continent’s ambassadors. The ritual was preliminary, a less grand version of the continent-wide Treaty Renewal, which took place one year later in Oluwan City between the emperor and all the continent’s rulers. This century, the preliminary ritual happened to coincide with our council’s ensealment ceremony, in which we learned the titles we would inherit from the Emperor’s Eleven.

I glanced over at Kirah, who sat a few stools down from me. We had been encouraged to wear clothes representing our home realms, and she looked resplendent in the billowing tunic and trousers of Blessid chieftains. Though our titles had not yet been announced, everyone knew she would replace Mbali as High Priestess of Aritsar. Aside from Dayo’s, Kirah’s receiving line was longest: commoners and nobility alike, desperate for a taste of her healing Hallow. A balding old man knelt weeping at Kirah’s feet, bobbing with gratitude as she chanted over him.

I summoned Dayo’s Ray. When warm pressure pulsed at the center of my head, I directed the heat toward Kirah. Don’t tire yourself, I thought. You can’t help anyone if your voice gives out.

Kirah looked up, sneaking me an exhausted smile. I don’t have the energy to heal any of them fully, she thought. But they still look at me like I’m a god. I don’t know if that’s funny or tragic.

I frowned, sending a pulse of sympathy through the bond. When she responded, rejuvenation coursed through me. Nothing satiated council sickness like Ray-speaking.

These days, I barely remembered what it had been like to love without the Ray. The freedom to speak into my friends’ minds—to share pictures, even feelings if we wished—was an intimacy unlike any I had ever felt.

At least, any that I could remember. Sometimes when I slept with my anointed siblings, our bodies tangled on the Children’s Palace floor like a litter of lion cubs … familiarity twinged inside me. I had belonged to someone before, in a way just as intimate and consuming as the Ray bond. Before the Children’s Palace, someone had owned me.