“Thaddace gave me more than enough,” I groaned, and then noticed the titles on Kirah’s stack. Arit Imperial Policies: the Aiyetoro Era. Genealogy of the Kunleos. The Peace Age: A Treatise on the Preservation of the Oluwan Economy Under the Reign of Aiyetoro. “Oh.”

“I heard about your First Ruling. Maybe proving The Lady’s lineage will delay the trial. I know you weren’t close with her, but …” Her expression grew stormy. “No one should have to kill their own mother. Am’s Story, it’s so cruel. How could the emperor …” She trailed off. On the theater of her face, I watched Kirah’s anger battle her allegiance to the throne. I had fought a similar battle in my head, ever since seeing the story in Melu’s pool. Kirah flushed, surprised at her own outburst. “I’m supposed to be rewriting old sacred texts,” she said, retrieving her imperial summons from her pocket. “Editing away verses that could ‘threaten empire unity.’ I know it’s wrong to question the emperor. But every time I think about changing the old songs … my blood wants to boil.”

“Maybe,” I ventured, “it’s all right to be angry.”

She pressed her lips together, and we stared at the desk in silence, sharing the bond of our uncertainty. In the bittersweet moment, I realized why council members were called siblings. Kirah and I were made of different clay, but the Children’s Palace testmakers had shaped us into similar vessels. Defending the Kunleos had been the carefully crafted goal of our existence. But in these last few months, that purpose had been stripped apart, leaving a hole with no stopper.

“I’m sorry you’re in this mess with me,” I said, throat tight with guilt. “I’m sorry you had to see Dayo bleeding. I’m sorry you had to keep secrets from our council, and cross the empire with Woo In. But—” I squeezed her hand. “I’m so happy you’re in my story, Kirah.”

She squeezed back. “And I’m happy you’re in mine.” We smiled at each other, and then a flash of mischief darted across her face. “You know,” she said. “Traveling with Woo In wasn’t always that bad.”

My brow shot into my hairline. “How not that bad?”

“Mayazatyl was right,” she observed lightly. “Kissing isn’t gross after all.”

I gasped, then laughed, then gasped again. “Kirah.”

“Like you haven’t devoured Sanjeet’s face a million times by now.”

“Not a million.” My face heated. “More like … six.” We both dissolved into giggles, but when we caught our breath I asked, “Why Woo In?”

“Why not? I mean, I didn’t know he had tried to kill Dayo when I kissed him.”

“But he’s odd. And sullen. And old enough to be your …” I considered. “Older brother. All right, that could be worse, but still—”

“I know nothing can happen,” she said abruptly. “He isn’t a council member, so it wouldn’t be right.” Her voice grew uncharacteristically soft. “I just … felt we had something in common. A hunger, I guess.”

“He tried to burn down the Children’s Palace.”

“You lured a man to a cliff and stabbed him with a knife.”

“Good point,” I conceded. “When it comes to friends and lovers, you have horrible taste.”

“Mama would be appalled,” she agreed, but she didn’t sound ashamed in the slightest.

Every day, Kirah returned to the study, keeping me company at my desk while buried in studies of her own. Instead of rewriting sacred texts, she had tracked down every record in the Imperial Library about Songland. For hours she bent over the texts, scribbling notes and occasionally reading lines out loud.

“Look,” she insisted one morning, showing me an etched diagram of rice fields. “Their irrigation techniques are more advanced than ours. They grow mountains of rice, but they can’t trade it with the rest of the continent. So their villages remain poor. It’s not fair, Tar. It’s just not fair.” Minutes later, she blurted, “‘I crest at dawn with the world on my arms. Welcome: My heart rises and breaks. Come and stay awhile.’ A shepherdess wrote that. A shepherdess! People in Songland compose poems for everyday life. Not just for rituals or histories, like Arits do. Tar, isn’t it amazing?”

“I wonder if Ye Eun liked poems,” I murmured. I still dreamed of the girl often, wondering if she had survived. “Did Woo In tell you what the Underworld was like?”

Kirah turned pink, as she always did when I brought up the prince of Songland. We hadn’t heard from him or Kathleen since they’d left Bhekina House. Kirah considered my question. “Woo In said that every step was like dying. Not pain, exactly. Just the cold, gnawing emptiness that every creature feels before its last breath. It’s something you’re only supposed to feel for a moment. Then death relieves you, and you pass into the true afterlife, Core: a paradise at the center of the earth. But Redemptors aren’t really dead … so that relief never comes.”

When a living thing passed through the Breach, Kirah went on to explain, it was only a temporary form of death. If Redemptors found their way out, they could return to the land of living. The only other escape was being killed in the Underworld: their final death. In the Underworld, abiku could not cause physical harm to a living creature, unless the creature asked of its own free will. But the feeling of cold emptiness was so unbearable, most children only lasted for a few hours before begging for the final release.

Woo In had lasted seventeen days.

“He focused on remembering every warm thing he’d ever felt,” Kirah whispered. “Festival bonfires. His mother’s arms. The sound of his sister’s laugher. He was only ten.” Her voice broke. “The only way out was via the map on his skin. The birthmarks glowed, even in the dark, so he was able to follow a path. But every step was torture. The spirits tried every trick they could. Illusions of twisting caves and pits full of snakes, meant to lure him off track. Voices of his loved ones who had died—his father, his grandparents—whispering from the shadows, pleading with him to join them. He lost track of time. His body ached with hunger and thirst, but he couldn’t die. He would have given up if not for Hyung. The emi-ehran found him in the Underworld, and breathed strength into him. Step by step, they made it out together. But the nightmares still plague him. It helped when I sang.” She smiled sadly. “Our families are alike, Woo In’s and mine. We both had parents who kept us in bubbles. Families who feared change, even if it could mean helping our own people. Woo In and I both grew too big for our homes. So we left, and we’ve been lost ever since. And now—” She sighed, scowling at her imperial summons. “I wonder if we left one cage, only to find ourselves trapped in a bigger one.”

MY OWN STUDIES PROGRESSED AT A GLACIAL pace. Sources on the only empress in Kunleo history were sparse and contradictory. Like all Kunleo girls, she had been raised in obscurity, away from court. Some sources described her as fragile, weeping in secret beneath the weight of her reign, and leaning on the men around her for support. Other sources painted her as conniving, a vain and irrational shrew, caring only for her own survival. But neither of these portrayals supported the empress’s legacy. No historian, no matter how begrudging, could deny that in less than twenty years, the quiet, obscure Kunleo girl had abolished the Arit slave trade, crushed the ensuing rebellion, and brought an era of peace that had lasted for centuries.

The daughter of Folu Kunleo had not been summoned to the palace until she was almost a woman. When it became clear that her father would produce no sons, the reluctant priests had acknowledged her as Raybearer. She arrived at court friendless and without protection, without even an official birth name. The nobility had rubbed their palms, expecting a puppet empress they could bend to their interests. When the short, thin-boned girl arrived in the throne room, the rulers of each realm had swarmed, insisting on the privilege of naming her.

“She will be called Ireyuwa,” announced the king of Swana. “For she is half Swanian and will bring a time of great wealth for my realm.”

“She will be called Cihuacoatl,” demanded the king of Quetzala. “Do not my people supply gold and weapons for the throne? Her power will come from us.”

“She will be called Etheldred,” crowed the queen of Mewe. “For she spent her years of obscurity in my realm. She will not forget the land that raised her.”

As they argued, the girl had soundlessly pushed through the crowd. She mounted the great dais, plain sandals slapping the marble, and seated herself on the gold-encrusted throne. The carved wooden staff of her father lay before her. She picked it up and beat the floor, once, with a resounding crack. The room fell silent.

“I will be called Aiyetoro,” said the daughter of Folu. “For mine will be an era of peace at any price.”