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