“It has always been your name,” he said, and shut the door flap.

I changed into the black-red-and-gold armor. I had already cried every tear my body could spare, and so my face was dry when I looked in the mirror. A dark silk turban bound my telltale yarn braids. A dust mask would conceal the lower half of my face, helping me blend in with the guards leaving and entering the keep. I strapped a pack of supplies to my back, and as an afterthought, added Aiyetoro’s drum.

I had barely touched the empress’s artifact since Woo In and Kathleen had brought it to me in the temple. They had thought it would restore my memories; perhaps it held a clue to breaking my curse as well.

When I was finished, I presented myself to Sanjeet, holding out my arms like a spear dummy. “Search me,” I said. He balked. I reminded him coolly, “I’m a weapon, remember? If you’re traveling alone with me, you’d better make sure I’m not armed.”

He paused, and then felt down my arms, breast, and thighs. Surgical and efficient. Never meeting my gaze. “Clean,” he grunted.

“Good. Now you can be sure I won’t run off. Or stab you while you sleep.” I was being unkind. None of this was Sanjeet’s fault, and I had no right to be petty about his coldness. But I couldn’t bear it. I needed—just once—for him to look at me.

“We should go,” he said, staring hard at my sandals.

I swallowed hard and tossed him a small woven pouch. “You’ll need these.”

He shook the pouch’s contents into his palm. The first item was my council ring. The sun-and-moon emblem was still sticky, mottled from court cases I had signed with wax. I could not identify myself without my seal. No guard would let me darken the door of an imperial building. As long as Sanjeet had that ring, I could never return to Yorua Keep or An-Ileyoba Palace. Dayo would be safe forever.

The second item was his mother’s anklet. When he saw it, Sanjeet’s stone expression shifted. For the first time, his tea-colored eyes met mine.

I kept my tone light. “You can’t trust a monster with your story, right? Better save that for someone who’s human.”

I hated this. He did too. I could see it in the lines of his face, rigid with pain. But we were griots in a pantomime, forced to sing every line in this grim story, dancing to a beat my mother drummed.

Sanjeet put away the items and hung the pouch around his neck, tucking it beneath his leather chest brace. “We should get moving,” he said. “The nearest lodestone is a day’s journey as the pelican flies, but two days by the main road. We’ll spend a night at the village.”

“We can’t,” I said. “Yorua Village is where I saw The Lady last. And we can’t camp on the road; there are lions this time of year. We need to travel to the lodestone directly.”

Sanjeet stiffened, instinctively touching the curved blade in his halter. “So. We go …”

“We go through the Bush.”

Every Arit realm had a place like the Oluwan Bush. Nyamban people called theirs Shida-Shida. Nontish people, Trou-du-Fae. The Mewish name was most direct: Lost-Soul-Land.

Enoba the Perfect had created the Bushlands by accident. When he united our realms as one continent, the magic had grown new earth. These enchanted lands, scholars theorized, tempered the climate of our vast continent, allowing for fertile ground in landlocked areas that would otherwise be rendered arid. But the land had also plowed over ancient ocean passages to the Underworld, trapping malevolent spirits between this world and the next.

To mortals, Bushland appeared no different than any other savannah or forest. A goatherd could wander from pasture to Bush-pasture without knowing it. Animals were better at sensing the difference, though plenty of cattle, lured by the smell of seductively sweet grass, had vanished overnight. The poor beasts emerged from the Bush several days later, half-starved and eyes white with madness, with fewer limbs—or sometimes more—than they had entered with. At present, however, no monster frightened me more than my own reflection. If it meant avoiding The Lady, I would cross every Bush in Aritsar.

Disguised in our uniforms, Sanjeet and I left Yorua Keep with a cohort of Imperial Guard warriors. We traveled on foot; mules would have been no faster. They would have stumbled on the winding dirt path from the Yorua Cliffs and gone half-mad once we neared the Bush.

The Lady did not appear to steal me away. Our Imperial Guard disguises seemed to have worked, but I remained skittish. Sometimes I saw her, a mirage lounging under a cliff, grinning like a lion at an antelope. She could so easily transform me into her lethal puppet: a sip from Melu’s pool, and I would turn on Sanjeet and the Guard warriors, racing back to the keep to finish the bloody job I had started.

When Sanjeet had announced our plan to cross the Bush, the guards had inhaled sharply, blessing themselves with the sign of the Pelican. But Arit law forbade them from contradicting Anointed Ones directly, so they told stories among themselves instead.

“Captain Bunmi,” said one of the warriors as we marched, “have you heard of Oro-ko, the Bush-spirit with no stomach?”

“I have not, Yinka.” The captain was a tall old woman with a gold septum ring and a necklace of imperial sun-and-moon tattoos. She cocked her head at the warrior in feigned fascination. “Is Oro-ko as bad as the Bush-Wife, the spirit that lures infants into lakes?”

“Much worse, Captain. Oro-ko is a spirit that cannot eat, so he forces travelers to eat for him!”

“I do not believe it.”

“It’s true, aheh! Once, Oro-ko lured a peasant and his son into the Bush, beguiling them with smells of saltfish and honeyed garri cakes. The son saw a great feast, and began to eat. But when he awoke from the trance, was it garri? I am not a liar: The son had eaten his father!”

The warriors traded macabre stories for hours as we traveled, speaking loudly to ensure we would hear.

“At least take a spear, Anointed Honor,” one of the warriors pleaded, noticing my empty halter. “You must protect yourself.”

I smiled ruefully, glancing at Sanjeet. A weapon would make me more dangerous than any ghost-creature of the Bush.

We stopped at a field thinly dotted with corkwood trees. Wind whistled through gnarled, long-reaching branches. Wood posts etched with skulls marked the edge of the otherwise serene meadow. The air hung faintly with kiriwi: Someone had planted the fragrant herb across the border, hoping to ward off evil. The downy plants had spread into the plain, marking an informal path.

“Stay by the kiriwi,” Captain Bunmi said, doing her best to hide her anxiety. We had forbidden the warriors from accompanying us through the Bush. “And I beg, Anointed Honors: No matter what happens, stay together.” She considered us. “Perhaps you should hold hands—”

“No need for that,” Sanjeet said. “We’ll be fine.”

He tried to cross into the Bush, but I stopped him. “Me first,” I said. “If I’m behind you, how can you make sure I don’t run off?”

The grass crunched beneath my feet as I entered the crop of trees, Sanjeet close behind. “Am be with your Anointed Honors,” the warriors yelled. We waved goodbye and moved farther in. Except for our footsteps, the meadow was pristinely quiet. A breeze tickled my face, teasing the strings of my dust mask. Within minutes the mask came loose, fluttering away. I stumbled after it.

“Stay by the kiriwi!” Captain Bunmi shrilled from across the meadow. I could barely hear her.

My fist closed around the mask. “It’s all right,” I called, turning to wave. “I’ve got …” My voice died in my throat.

The warriors were gone.

All around was an empty plain, corkwood trees snickering in the wind. My heart hammered, but to my relief, Sanjeet still stood behind me.

“You’re here,” I breathed.

“I’m here,” he echoed.

“How did that happen? The warriors just disappeared. Maybe they’re still there, but we’ve been blinded or …” I trailed off as I noticed the meadow. “Oh no.”

The kiriwi had vanished too.

Sanjeet’s hand closed around mine. “We’ll be fine,” he said.

I blinked up at him in surprise. Sanjeet’s tea-tinted eyes were calm, and his jaw free of its recent tension.

“We should find the kiriwi,” I said. My stomach fluttered with unease. I had almost forgotten what Sanjeet’s gaze felt like when he wasn’t angry. Had it only been two sunsets since he kissed me by the ocean?

“This way,” he said, still holding my hand. “We saw the plants over there.”

The area to which he gestured didn’t strike me as familiar. But now, neither did any part of the meadow. I followed him through the grass, which grew taller and thicker with every yard. “Jeet, do you think—”

“As long as we go in a consistent direction, we’ll reach the other side.”

“Are you … feeling all right?” I asked.