“What is the Redemptor curse? Why did Woo In think you could control it?”

The Lady dipped her cup again. She poured the water over her fingers, washing away the dried blood until a pale red puddle pooled on the floor. “Do you know why you are more fit to rule Aritsar than that bumbling Kunleo prince?” she asked. “Because your blood is stronger. Thanks to Melu and myself, your veins run with both mortal and immortal royalty. When you anoint a council of your own, that strength will flow into them, just as theirs flows into you. Such power comes with choices, Made-of-Me. And no matter what you say—no matter what promises you make—you must always choose to preserve yourself.”

My stomach twisted. “I should go.” I stood and backed away from the bars. “I’ll visit—I’ll help you. Don’t worry.”

“You have never worried me, daughter.” The Lady sighed, turning away. “You have only disappointed.”

When I returned to my tower, I’d hoped for solitude, a place to release the tears building with each step as I descended from Heaven.

But the room was a henhouse of attendants, bustling to arrange furniture and cushions as Sanjeet hunched awkwardly in the center. A manservant wrestled another bed pallet into the room, and nodded at me for instruction before setting it down.

“Will your Anointed Honors need … contact?” the head manservant asked me and Sanjeet. “We can connect the pallets.”

“Of course she needs to touch him,” said Bimbola, bangles ringing as she giggled. “Their Anointed Honors must ward off council sickness. Perhaps it would be better if they shared—”

“No,” Sanjeet and I blurted in unison. We glanced at each other and reddened.

“Anointed Honor Sanjeet is here as my personal guard,” I announced stiffly. “Separate pallets are fine. He just needs to sleep between me and the door.”

The manservant placed the pallets side by side, gave a sidelong glance at me and Sanjeet, and then pushed the pallets together. My attendants built up the fire and laid out basins for washing. Then they stripped Sanjeet and me to our shifts, tittered to themselves, and disappeared.

We had shared a room before, of course. In various inns on our way to Swana, and beneath the canopy in Melu’s savannah. On the road, conventional propriety had mattered little as we escaped death by Bush-spirits, and followed tutsu sprites to find a mystical ehru. But this was different. Here in the palace, surrounded by hidden whispers and perfumed wall hangings, the space felt … heated. Charged.

Mortified, I sat on one of the pallets and faced away. I busied myself with wrapping my hair in its sleeping scarf. Sanjeet cleared his throat, then retreated to the washbasin. Every sound was magnified: the swish of silk on my ears as I wrapped, the splash of water against his skin.

I slipped beneath the bedding and felt Sanjeet climb onto his pallet. The scent of rosewater wafted from his hair, mixed with his smell of leather and clay. For several minutes, we lay unnaturally still. Then a breeze whistled across the window, and I thought of The Lady, alone and exposed on the An-Ileyoba turrets. My breath caught. What I intended as an exhale came out as a long, low sob.

Sanjeet hesitated, then rolled over and touched my arm. “The attendants said you saw her,” he mumbled. “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it.”

“I’m a horrible person,” I whispered.

“I’ve met worse.”

For some reason, his clinical honesty made me laugh. I turned and touched his brow, showing him my conversation with The Lady. “She was just a child when the emperor banished her,” I said after the memory had finished. “She was abused and abandoned for years, and all I did was hurt her more. How could I be so ungrateful?”

Sanjeet stared at me as though I were raving. “She starved you of affection,” he said. “On purpose. She forbade people from touching you. All so you wouldn’t learn enough to ruin her plans.”

“And to keep me safe,” I pointed out.

“She let you make your first friend,” he said slowly, “and then ordered you to murder him.”

I frowned in the dark. “But she was trying to give me a future. She risked everything she had, and I forgot her on purpose. She thinks I hate her. That I want the emperor to kill—”

“She’s manipulating you, like she always has. She made you ashamed of wanting your own name. Tar, how can you think that’s what love is?”

“I … don’t know.” I wiped my nose and shrugged. “You only get one mother, Jeet. It’s like your father. He hurt you, but can you imagine—truly imagine—having any other kind?”

Sanjeet was silent for a long time, then swallowed once. “No. No, I can’t.”

Ever since the attendants had left us alone, I had been avoiding his gaze. Now I met it and saw my own ghosts mirrored there. In that moment, the curse of our parents’ legacy—the monsters we loved and feared, and the scars covering us both—tethered us together.

“I shouldn’t have brought him up,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He shook his head, smiling wanly. “I guess the only gift Father gave me was a way to understand you.” His thumb brushed my tear-streaked face. “A way to share the burden.”

“I don’t want to share, Jeet. If I fall again, I’m not bringing anyone else with me.”

“That’s the problem, sunshine girl.” His voice was a rumble in his throat. “When it comes to you, I will never stop falling.”

He kissed me. It was the first time since Nu’ina Eve, when he held me against the spray of the Obasi Ocean. I longed to lose myself in those solid arms, to believe the promise in each caress. You are not dangerous. You are not cursed. You will never hurt anyone; you will only be loved.

When we parted, Sanjeet untied the pouch containing my seal from his neck. He pressed the ring into my palm, and didn’t let me give it back. Then something else fell from the pouch, glinting in the dying firelight: the cowrie shell anklet. Sanjeet unhooked the anklet’s clasp and Ray-spoke.

I love you.

But I knew, deep down, that love had never fixed anyone. It had only given them the strength to try over, and over, and over again. So when Sanjeet reached for my foot on the pallet’s edge … I moved my leg away and said, “I can’t offer you something I don’t have.”

“I don’t want something. I want you.”

I closed his fingers around the anklet. “And I don’t belong to myself. Not while The Lady’s still controlling me. I love you too, Jeet, but you can’t be my savior.”

“Well, I won’t be your jailer,” he retorted. “So what can I be?”

I held his heavy fist to my lips and caressed the scars. “My hope,” I said. “For a future when kissing you isn’t dangerous.”

A future, I added in my head, where no child was bound by curses, and every daughter had a name.

I LAID MY HEAD ON SANJEET’S CHEST, LULLED to sleep by his heartbeat. I dreamed first as myself, chasing the scent of jasmine through large, abandoned halls. Then I was a twelve-year-old boy with limbs too long for my body.

A cramped balcony is my refuge on a street that smells of cardamom. I love my sleepless city of Vhraipur, though Father has done everything in his power to make me hate it. Pure voices drift from the temple across the road, where child acolytes sing on the rooftop. An Ember priestess dances before an altar, her stained arms and legs glistening in the moonlight. With every leap of her body, light shoots into the sky, dissolving in soft clouds of red and purple: a visible prayer. The children worship the Storyteller and Warlord Fire in tandem: Give us mercy. Give us justice. Let it burn, burn, burn.

I mimic the strong movements of the priestess, sending up a prayer of my own. Protect Amah. Punish Father. Make me brave, brave, brave.

The rustle of curtains startles me. I drop my arms and pretend to punch the air. “Practicing,” I mumble. “For the fight tomorrow.”

But it isn’t Father. Amah laughs from the balcony door. “You were dancing,” she says, reaching to stroke my cheek. I am taller than my mother, but still I hang my head, ashamed of my lie. She smells of fennel. Sheer pink muslin drapes her sturdy frame, and dark, curling hair falls to her waist in a gray-streaked braid.

I reach up to touch her fingers. Then just in time, I remember that my hands are dangerous. I pull back.

“Don’t tell Father,” I say.

“I won’t. But you pray so beautifully. Would you like to be a temple dancer?”

I want to snort. As if Father would let me near a temple, or any building that did not exist for profit. But I shrug instead, not wanting to hurt Amah’s feelings. Sometimes, when she thinks I’m sleeping after a day of pit fights, she sits on the edge of my pallet and watches me. Her hands tremble as she wraps the bruises and wipes away the blood dried on my knuckles. She curses the money that falls from my shirt. Coins thrown at me after each victory. Coins that Father missed. I am a prize bear: a hero in this city that bets on boys like horses.