“And you do?” Kirah snorted. “Is The Lady your lover or something?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Woo In spat. Then he sighed, collecting his temper. “The Lady found me when I was a boy, Kirah. I had only just escaped from the Underworld. Everyone else saw a cursed child, but The Lady saw a son. She was a mother to me, and a friend.” He paused, staring hard at Kirah’s sandals. “I should not have tried to kill your prince,” he whispered. “I was young, and desperate, and I’m sorry. The Lady told me it was the only way. That to free the Redemptors, Olugbade and his line must be vanquished, and The Lady crowned—” He broke off, glancing at me in alarm.

“Crowned empress,” I finished for him. “I know who The Lady is, Woo In.”

Kirah peered at me, reading the surprise and guilt on my face. “Tar … How long have you known that you’re a Kunleo?”

“How long have you?”

Kirah exchanged a glance with Sanjeet over my head. “Years,” she admitted. “I mean, I didn’t know for sure until Woo In told me. But Jeet and I always suspected you had the Ray. Some clues were small: tics, mannerisms you share with Dayo. But there was something else. A haze around you sometimes, when you’re angry, or happy. Or sad.”

I shifted my feet. “You shouldn’t have come looking for me. It isn’t safe.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Kirah searched her pockets and produced a calfskin scroll. The seal had been broken. “I had to make sure it was urgent,” she said. “Jeet, there’s one for you too. Our whole council has been summoned to the capital.”

I scanned the familiar burnt script of Thaddace’s Hallow-writing.

IMPERIAL SUMMONS

His Anointed Honor, High Judge Thaddace the Just, in the name of His Imperial Highness, Olugbade of Aritsar

Bids Tarisai, Apprentice Delegate of Swana and High Judge Apparent

To present herself at An-Ileyoba Palace

In preparation for her First Ruling Ceremony

Which shall take place

On the 75th day of Dry Season.

“THE SEVENTY-FIFTH?” I SAID. “BUT THAT’S …” I counted in my head. “Four months from now. I’ve barely trained for six. Thaddace said my First Ruling wouldn’t happen for years.”

Kirah looked suspicious. “What ruling does he expect you to pass?”

I shrugged. “It’s stupid. ‘Orphan Day’: a holiday for rich people to spoil poor children before tossing them back on the streets.”

“Sounds like a move to please the nobles,” Sanjeet said. “Maybe Thaddace needed a distraction from The Lady’s arrest. Something to amuse the court, so they don’t gossip about a second Raybearer.”

“But why summon our whole council?”

Sanjeet frowned at his scroll. “Looks like we all have duties. High General Wagundu wants me to drill with the emperor’s personal guard. Later this year, I’m to help lead a campaign.”

Kirah cocked her head. “Against who? No one has attacked the continent in decades.”

“Against our own people,” Sanjeet said grimly. “We’re to lay siege to any city that fails to comply with the Unity Edict.”

Kirah shuddered. “The emperor summoned me to help Mbali write new chants of prayer,” she said. “All priests and priestesses are encouraged to adopt a Book of Common Song, faith traditions no longer separated by Clay, Well, Ember, and Wing.”

“That sounds like a disaster. How could the emperor—” I began, but stopped when I remembered Woo In. It didn’t feel right to criticize Olugbade in front of someone determined to bring him down. I hated how the emperor had treated my mother, but the candidate catechism still echoed in my ears. “I’m sure the emperor and his council don’t mean to harm anyone,” I mumbled, correcting myself. “They only want peace.”

“Peace,” Woo In said, “is different than silence.” His face had grown paler. Hyung’s yellow eyes flashed, and Sanjeet’s hand went again to his scimitar. But the beast only bent its massive head, licking Woo In’s cheek.

When Woo In succumbed to a violent round of coughs, I gestured to Melu’s canopy. “You should lie down.” I still hadn’t forgiven Woo In for setting the palace fire, but we shared an uneasy kinship. We both had loved The Lady, and tried to kill for her.

He nodded and staggered over to a pile of cushions, smiling. “Don’t worry, Lady’s Daughter,” he said. “Help is on the way.”

Sanjeet’s head snapped up, locking on a figure approaching from Bhekina House: a rippling smudge of green. Energy crackled faintly in the air, almost like someone was … Ray-speaking.

“Don’t have a conniption,” Woo In said aloud, in apparent response to a voice I could not hear. “Am’s Story, you’re almost as bad as my real big sister.”

The stranger’s cloak blew around her as she stormed under the canopy, doffing her deep green hood. “Honestly, it’s no wonder Crown Princess Min Ja disowned you,” the woman sniffed.

“Kathleen,” I breathed.

She ignored me, placed her hands on Woo In’s chest, and shut her eyes. The crackling energy intensified, and healthy color flooded Woo In’s lips. Kathleen examined him, and when it was clear his strength had returned, she slapped him.

He only laughed. “I’ve missed you too, Kat.”

“Really?” Kathleen demanded. “Really? First The Lady gets captured, then you disappear for three weeks without contacting a single council member? I was worried sick, Woo In. We thought you were dead.”

“You’re the one who ignored orders,” he retorted. “Fleeing to the safehouse the moment there was trouble—”

“It was standard procedure,” she hissed. “If The Lady is taken, her council returns to Bhekina and regroups. That was the plan.”

“Not for us,” Woo In said. “You and me, we protect the heir.” He pointed at me, making me flinch. “Those were The Lady’s orders, Kat. Protect the heir, no matter what. And if you hadn’t left your post at the keep, we never would have lost track of her.”

“It hardly matters now,” Kathleen sputtered. “She’s safe, isn’t she? And you can’t follow any orders if you’re dead.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Woo In responded after a pause. “I … I had a song-healer.” For the first time, Kathleen noticed Kirah, who stiffened.

“I’m thirsty,” Kirah announced, and turned on her heel, marching off toward Melu’s pool. Sanjeet and I followed her, grateful to distance ourselves from the foreign energy surrounding Woo In and Kathleen.

“It’s proof,” Sanjeet said as the three of us knelt in the grass. I had brought one of Melu’s baskets, and we breakfasted on dates and kola nuts by the sparkling amber pool. “The Lady anointed her own council,” Sanjeet insisted. “They’re using The Lady’s Ray.”

“Or it’s witchcraft,” I shot back. “Or—I don’t know, we’ve been out in the wilderness too long and we’re going insane.”

“Am’s Story, Tar,” Kirah snorted. “How many more signs is it going to take? Why can’t you believe that your mother has the Ray, and that you have a gift, just like her?”

“Because—” I bit my lip, hard. “Because the Ray is supposed to pick good people, all right? My mother forced an enslaved being to bed her on this very spot! One sip of that”—I pointed to Melu’s pool—“and I become some soulless monster who lies to her friends and stabs them! The Lady and I aren’t gifted, Kirah. We’re cursed.”

“The Ray,” Sanjeet said, “doesn’t pick good people. The Ray picks leaders. And if I’ve learned anything from serving on the Imperial Guard, it’s that leadership isn’t good or evil. It’s what you choose to do with it.”

“You didn’t call me a leader when Dayo was bleeding under that tree,” I said, and immediately regretted it. Sanjeet’s and Kirah’s faces crumpled with pain, and the clearing fell into silence.

“He forgives you, you know,” Kirah muttered after a moment. “Dayo. He made me promise to tell you. Once you’ve broken your curse, he wants you back as a council member.”

Tears of relief flooded my throat. I forced them back down. “Then Dayo’s a fool,” I said.

Sanjeet shook his head. “That’s all you have to say? Am’s Story, Tar, give him a break. After everything you both have gone through—”

“That’s the problem,” I sputtered. “After everything we’ve gone through, he shouldn’t want me back! He shouldn’t want anything to do with me! But he was raised in a gilded hothouse where everyone adored him, and so he’ll never see the world for what it is: cruel and stupid and full of monsters. Monsters that look like me.”

Kirah pressed her lips together. “I wasn’t born in a gilded hothouse,” she pointed out. “And neither was Sanjeet. But we’re still here, in the middle of nowhere, doing everything we can to help you. What does that make us? Just more fools in your cruel, stupid world?”

“No,” I said after a sheepish pause. “I’m sorry.” I sighed, fidgeting with the sunstone. It had grown cold and dim at the base of my throat. “I’m just … tired, Kirah. And I don’t know what to do. Melu says the only way to get rid of my curse is to find a purpose. A place in some big, grand story.”

She brightened and sat up. “Of course. A bellysong: the cure for any soul in bondage. I should have thought of that.”