Kirah helped me stand and we hurried away, leaving our confused handmaidens to fetch the prayer mats and scurry after. “He misses you,” Kirah whispered, threading my arm firmly through hers until the Theatre Garden was out of sight. “He barely sleeps unless I sing, or Thérèse makes one of her teas. If you won’t see him, you could at least write.”

I had refused the notes Dayo sent daily to my tower, worried they would weaken my resolve to stay away. “Studying is better than writing,” I said. “If I find a purpose to break the curse, I won’t have to stay away.”

Kirah huffed a laugh. “We’d better find your purpose quick. Rumors are getting out of control.”

I turned sharply. “What rumors?”

“There aren’t many reasons why two anointed council members would sleep in a tower all by themselves,” she pointed out. “Even our council’s getting suspicious. Mayazatyl’s demanded regular reports of your belly size.” When I looked blank, she wiggled her eyebrows. “She thinks you’re carrying Sanjeet’s pikin. To save you both from palace scandal, she’s concocted an elaborate plan for Dayo to pass off your love child as his own.”

I snorted. “She would. Am’s Story,” I groaned. “When we move to An-Ileyoba for good, Mayazatyl’s gossiping rear end will fit right in.”

“I hope we never move here,” Kirah blurted. “I mean, I know we will. We have to. It’s what we’ve trained for our whole lives. It’s just …” She sighed and stopped in the tiled northern courtyard, letting the pristinely groomed peacocks explore the hem of her priestess kaftan. Beyond Palace Hill, the roofs of Oluwan City spread in a jagged sea. Smoke rose from bonfire mountains, where the stories of griots burned. “When I was in the Blessid Valley, I longed for a bigger world. I wanted to travel the empire, learn all there was to know. But the more I learn about Songland, the more suffocating Aritsar feels. I don’t know what I want. I only know the world is big, and I’m sick of pretending it’s smaller.”

The day of my First Ruling crept closer. Crowds of dignitaries, nobility, and commoners would attend, and so the palace bustled in preparation. Many royals, I learned with chagrin, would attend as well. This was unusual: The continent’s rulers typically sent a proxy to everything but the grandest imperial events. But since my First Ruling would occur so close to the Treaty Renewal, many of the empire’s royals would be at the palace already.

Kirah and I searched fruitlessly for the lost masks of Aiyetoro, the only proof that empress and princess Raybearers truly existed. We combed the Imperial Library for leads every day, and searched the palace crypts at night. I continued to visit Heaven. I could not come often, in case word got back to Olugbade, and his suspicion of me grew. But after hefty bribes, the guards allowed me to bring small gifts: a lump of soap, a thin blanket, a pot of salve for The Lady’s wind-whipped skin. After sliding the items through the bars of her cell door, I would sit—sometimes in silence, other times asking questions. She mostly ignored the latter, especially ones about her childhood. She only paid attention when I babbled about the inner workings of Yorua Keep, or about being tutored by Thaddace and Mbali.

“You rarely speak of the High Judge without mentioning the priestess,” she observed one day, cocking her head.

I shrugged and blushed. “They’re always together.”

“That sounds like a story, daughter.” When I hesitated, she laughed and patted my hand through the bars. “Do not worry for their reputation. I am hardly in a position to spread gossip.”

I was eager to make her smile again. Shyly, I recounted the time I had stumbled on Thaddace and Mbali at the height of passion. The Lady listened intently and chuckled. I joined in, the first time I had ever shared a joke with my own mother.

I wondered if she had heard the rumors about me and Sanjeet. Mothers, according to Kirah, were protective of daughters when it came to young men. But if The Lady suspected that I had flirtations, she never asked about them. The existence of a love affair—or any aspect of my life unrelated to her master plans—never seemed to cross her mind.

Sanjeet collapsed, exhausted, into my arms every night. He would gather me to himself, limbs rigid as amber until at last he relaxed, discarding the mask he wore for the Guard. On the worst days, the mask remained even as he slept. Frowning with worry, I would rub circles into his clenched jaw until it released.

“The drilling’s over,” he said one night. “We’ve begun our campaigns in the city.” The smell of bonfires still lingered in his hair. His hands were newly bruised from when civilians had fought back, resisting when their drums and books were wrenched away. Against Sanjeet’s Hallow, they would not have resisted long.

“You won’t have to enforce the Unity Edict forever,” I said, though the comfort sounded hollow even to me. “People will get used to it. And things could change when Dayo’s emperor.”

“How many nightmares will I have by then? And how many will I have caused?” He smiled grimly, turning away on the pallet. “I guess Amah was wrong. I will always earn my keep by breaking bones.”

I scowled into the darkness, tracing patterns on his muscled back until he fell asleep. “This is not,” I whispered, “what I crossed a coal pit for.”

In the small hours of the morning, I lit a palm oil lamp and penned a calfskin letter, sealing it with my ring. Then I rapped on my tower door, which I had insisted be locked at night. I slid back the wooden hatch that hid a grate in the door’s center, allowing me to peer into the antechamber where my attendants slept. A yawning Bimbola staggered to the hatch, and I stuck my hand through the grate.

“This letter must be posted at first light,” I said, and dropped a hefty portion of my imperial allowance into her palm. “Divide this among the runners. They’ll have to use lodestones. Spare no expense.” Bimbola nodded, eyes round with curiosity. As she bustled out of the antechamber, she snuck a glance at the letter’s sealed front, which was addressed in my hurried script: KEEYA THE MERCHANT. PIKWE VILLAGE, SWANA.

THE NIGHT BEFORE MY FIRST RULING arrived, and the empress Raybearer masks were still nowhere to be found.

I paced my tower room, trying to drum out the parade of death in my head. Poison, contagion, gluttony, burning. The grit of sandstone pressed into the balls of my feet. Sanjeet watched worriedly as I tried to crush the words into the floor, pound them to dust, where they could never hurt anyone.

Drowning, suffocation, bleeding.

“The emperor doesn’t know,” I said aloud, shredding the hem of my sleeping scarf. “The emperor doesn’t know what The Lady’s weakness is.” The Lady had never finished anointing her Eleven, which meant she could still be killed by someone other than her anointed. Olugbade only needed to figure out how.

Beast mauling, disaster. Organ-death, witches’ hexes, battery.

“He’ll probably try every one until he finds it.” My voice was barely audible. By now, the edge of my sleeping scarf was a tangled mess of thread. “It will hurt her. Even if she doesn’t die, it will hurt. Jeet—I don’t—I don’t know what to—”

He folded me into his chest, but I stood rigid as steel. “Dayo and the others will be happy to see you again,” he murmured. “They’re in the Children’s Palace, preparing for your ruling right now. When I left them, Kameron and Theo were, ah, debating whether Kameron could smuggle a meerkat pup into the ceremony.”

I laughed weakly, accepting the distraction. “Why?”

“Kam thinks you could use the emotional support.”

Sanjeet fetched The Lady’s enchanted glass from the window seat, and I watched as my council siblings stood like mannequins around the Hall of Dreams, swathed in jewels and finery, teasing each other as palace garment-makers hovered, attaching buttons and hemming trains.

Yesterday, the garment-makers had come to prepare my First Ruling garments, clucking over which hues suited me best. I had almost chosen a spicy green silk, embroidered with bursts of gold. Then Bimbola had cleared her throat.

“The emperor suggested you wear this, Anointed Honor.” She held up a stiff ream of brocade, bleached as bone, with the Kunleo sun-and-stars glittering in a pattern across the hem.

Empire cloth. So the world would know who owned me.

I spied on the Children’s Palace long into the night, even after Sanjeet had fallen asleep, and my siblings had collapsed onto their pallets. But one bed in the Hall of Dreams, I noticed with a frown, was empty.

A soft knock sounded on my tower door.

I sighed. That would be Bimbola, come to chide me for burning a lamp instead of resting. I padded across the room and opened the door hatch, peering through the grate.

My attendants had vanished from the antechamber. Only one person stood outside my door, shadowy in the dim moonlight.

“Dayo,” I breathed.