Night had aged into the indigo hours before dawn. Our feet crunched on white gravel as we passed beneath the wisteria again. Sanjeet was too tall for the arbor; violet petals tumbled down his bare russet shoulders. Somewhere in the dark, an owl cooed. I let my fingers pass over the wisteria vines, and my ears rang with lisps and giggles: the whispered conversations of council siblings long ago. Generations of Anointed Ones had frolicked where I stood, unaware of the eavesdropping branches overhead.

Nestled between orange trees, a wooden shed stood in the shadows, and Thérèse’s herb garden sprawled around it. When healers were unavailable from Yorua Village, Sanjeet, Kirah, and I practiced medicine here, using our Hallows to treat our guards and servants. Sanjeet would scan a patient’s body for ailments, and if the problem was physical, Kirah would attempt poultices or a healing chant. But if the problem was mental, I extracted memories and reshaped them, setting old demons to rest.

I had never tried to heal myself. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I sensed that Ye Eun’s fate had been my fault. The day after the disaster at Ebujo, I had tried to invoke Ye Eun’s shade, burning the remains of her flower crown and sitting up all night. But she didn’t appear, not even to reprimand me, which somehow felt more damning. I dared not hope she had survived. So I allowed her reproachful stare to haunt my memories, hoping guilt would make me a better Anointed One than I had been at Ebujo.

Sanjeet unbarred the shed door and ducked inside, lighting palm oil lamps from the garden torches. The medicine shed was long and narrow, lined with shelves of bottles and bundled herbs. I waited on a crumbling stone bench until Sanjeet emerged, armed with bandages and a stoppered vial. I winced as his calloused fingers bathed my wrist in primrose oil.

“Keeps down swelling,” he said. His touch was clinical, precise, sensing the tendons beneath my skin as he bandaged. “You’ve hurt this hand before. You were thirteen, training in spearwork in the palace courtyard.”

“Your Hallow showed you all that?”

He looked sheepish. “No. I just remember when it happened.” He tied the bandage and cut the excess with a knife. “Keep it dry. Kirah can fix you up properly tomorrow.”

“You’re good at this.” I turned my wrist, admiring his handiwork. “Do you ever wish you could be a healer full-time? Instead of training to be High Lord General?”

Sanjeet gripped the edge of the damp stone bench. “Dayo will inherit the Imperial Guard and the entire Army of Twelve Realms. He will need help commanding a force that large.” In the hollow of his chest, sweat glistened from when he had wrestled the shovel from Dayo. “I will be what he needs me to be.”

A moment passed in silence. “Do you think Kirah’s right? That nothing can be done about the Songland Redemptors?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “But we need that Treaty with the Underworld. Without one, Aritsar will never have peace.”

“But we could change the Treaty,” I suggested. The renewal ceremony was in six months. After the continent’s rulers accepted the Treaty’s terms, they would be forced to uphold them for another hundred years. Nothing would change. The Breach would devour thousands more children like Ye Eun. “I don’t know why all Redemptors come from Songland. But if we made a new deal—if we started over—we could make it fairer.”

Sanjeet shook his head. “The Arit rulers would never allow it. Redemptors used to be born in every realm. No one knows why it stopped, but I doubt anyone’s eager to go back to the way things were.”

I chewed my lip, scowling into the darkness. For just a moment, the old heat flashed in my chest, a demon restricting my lungs, roaring to get out. “Why does everyone hate change so much?” I demanded.

“Because things could get worse.”

“Maybe. But do you know what I think?” My chest throbbed. “I think deep down, we’re afraid that things could get better. Afraid to find out that all the evil—all the suffering we ignore—could have been prevented. If only we had cared enough to try.”

“That’s a grim prognosis.”

I shrugged, then crossed my arms over my chest, coaxing the burning to rest.

Sanjeet’s profile was tense in the garden shadows. I remembered the night we had first met. His features had still been boyish then; awkward and round. That was gone now—replaced by an angular, protruding brow, and the shadow of a dense curly beard. His ears were the only whimsical thing about him, sticking out from his head like conch shells. I had always liked those ears.

“If Dayo didn’t need your protection,” I asked, “if he didn’t remind you of Sendhil—would you still have joined the council?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I think so. On my campaigns, I’ve seen the scars of what this continent was like before. Back when the abiku did whatever they chose. Burning towns and demanding sacrifices, causing floods and plagues, setting realms against each other. If the Kunleos hadn’t made us work together, united us in a common goal … I don’t think the realms would have survived. Still, I doubt Enoba Kunleo was as perfect or peaceful as the history scrolls say. No one conquers an empire with charisma alone.”

“What about the councils?” I asked. “Do you think they’re perfect?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, his fingers brushed the top of my unbandaged hand, sliding in meditative circles down my wrist. “There she goes again,” he said. “Asking illegal questions. Even when we were small, a word, a small suggestion from Tarisai of Swana … and every candidate in the Children’s Palace would be buzzing about systems they would topple. Rules they would break.” He smiled at me, and my breath shortened. “You’re infectious, sunshine girl.” Then suddenly he withdrew his hand, balling it into a fist.

“What’s wrong?” My skin chilled where his fingers had been. He shook his head, but I pressed him. “Tell me.”

He sighed. “When I promised to protect Dayo, I didn’t just mean his life. I meant his heart too.”

“It’s not like you to be cryptic, Jeet.”

“Now is another one of those times,” he said, “that I would like to tell a lie.”

I laughed in spite of myself. It was an old joke now: Sanjeet’s crippling inability to sugarcoat. His honesty was his tribute to Sendhil—the lost brother with a Hallowed tongue that never lied.

Sanjeet inhaled, and then spoke as if battling his own nerve. “Dayo will need to sire a Raybearer someday. He has to choose a partner from our council. And it’s going to be you. Everyone knows it, and I’m not going to get in the way. I shouldn’t make things—complicated.”

I practically fell off the bench. “Oh, everyone, is it?” I stood and planted my hands on my hips. “All of Aritsar is just waiting around for Dayo to impregnate me?”

“Yes.” Sanjeet’s tone was unnervingly matter-of-fact. “Some courtiers thought it might happen before we left the Children’s Palace.”

“What the—” I gaped with disgust. People had been gabbing about Dayo bedding me since we were kids?

Sanjeet stood too, running agitated fingers through his dark curls. “Look, I’m not saying it’s right, it’s just … when you and Dayo are together … Tar, you’ve no idea how it looks. I can’t explain it. The two of you are like planets. Orbiting. Two sides of a coin.”

Beans in a pod. I shivered, remembering Dayo’s words from that night in the Children’s Palace.

“It won’t be long before Dayo stops seeing you as a sister.” Sanjeet’s jaw hardened. “And it’s time I accept that some things are set in stone.”

“Stone?” I snorted. “Don’t I have any say in this?”

Sanjeet’s expression remained carefully blank. “I assumed you felt the same way about him.”

“Well, stop assuming.”

“Because it’s none of my business?” Sanjeet fixed me with those tea-colored eyes. “Or because I’m wrong?”

“Uh, both?”

He swore softly and shifted his feet, shaking his head. “Sorry. I’m being stupid. Just … forget I said it.”

A long moment passed. “I’ve never wanted Dayo that way,” I said quietly. “All right? I’d kill for him. Die, even. But I’ve never wanted … more.” I considered. “Not like that.”

Several emotions crossed Sanjeet’s face. Most of them I couldn’t read—but one was unmistakable, spreading across his features like the shy halo of dawn.

Relief.

Dragonflies spun circles in my stomach. I turned on my heel, needing to be back with the others, anywhere but there, beneath the heat of those searching eyes.

“Going to bed,” I mumbled, tucking my bandaged hand beneath my arm and fleeing back through the wisteria arbor.

Sanjeet did not follow me. But the Ray fluttered at the back of my neck, and a deep, warm voice floated above my ear.

Sleep well, sunshine girl. I will take whatever dreams you give me.

“YOUR COUNCIL IS HEINOUSLY BEHIND IN ITS studies.”

“Glad to see you too, Uncle Thaddace,” Dayo quipped. “Feeling refreshed after your trip from the capital?”