the blood on her fingers. “You monstrous boy,” she murmured. “I’m not going to be empress now. You’ve killed me.”
Woo In’s face screwed up with confusion. Someone lunged at him, screaming, wailing, beating his chest. The person was me, I knew, but the world had gone numb, and my vision had shrunk to tunnels.
“That was Olugbade’s knife,” I sobbed. “He poisoned it. You poisoned her.”
The green stripe on Aiyetoro’s mask didn’t matter. The Lady had anointed Woo In, and so he could kill her—just as Thaddace had killed Olugbade. Against Woo In’s hand, she was immune to nothing.
Woo In’s face drained of color. Then a gaggle of warriors burst from the stairwell onto the rooftop, surrounding us. Woo In’s arms connected like a vise around my torso. In a flash we were airborne, rising higher, higher, above the palace, leaving The Lady behind.
“Murderer.” I sobbed against him, wanting to claw his chest but unable to move my pinned arms. “Monster. Murderer.”
“I didn’t know,” he gasped. “I didn’t know.”
The warriors were shooting at us. An arrow grazed my arm with a searing sting, and another landed with a thump in Woo In’s side. Still we ascended, away, far from An-Ileyoba. Before I drifted from consciousness, the last thing I registered was the wind whipping my ears, and a sea of warriors, surrounding a splayed body in the courtyard far below. Drums echoed on sandstone, as cries rung from parapet to parapet:
“The emperor has gone to the village. He will not be back soon. Long live His Imperial Majesty: Ekundayo, King of Oluwan, and Oba of Aritsar.”
WHEN I CAME TO, IT WAS SNOWING.
I had seen snow only once before: on my council’s goodwill tour, when we had traveled by lodestone to the mountains of Biraslov. I remembered thinking how surprisingly soft they felt—the flakes peppering my face, kisses that made me laugh and shiver.
There were no kisses now. Only icy slaps from the wind as we passed over a valley of ghostly white. Woo In still carried me, though his grip was loose, and I stayed afloat via a pulsing force I could not see. I still wore nothing but my First Ruling gown, barely shielded from the cold by Woo In’s thin cape.
“Your arm won’t bleed until we land,” Woo In said. His voice was rough and weak. “Neither will my wound. The airstream stabilizes them, but I won’t be able to keep us in the air for much longer.”
“How long was I asleep? Where are you taking me?” I thrashed, and my arm brushed the arrow in Woo In’s side. He howled in pain and we plunged toward the ground. I shrieked and Woo In cursed, then we stabilized, hovering precariously in the air.
“Trust me,” he rasped. “You don’t want me to drop you.”
“You left her.” Moment by moment, the scene at An-Ileyoba returned to me. My arm ached where the arrow had grazed it. “You poisoned The Lady and left her there.”
“My airstream can’t carry that many people. I had to pick.”
“Why me?” I demanded. “I’m not the one who’s dying, you idiot. She is. Because of you.”
He was silent for several moments, letting the wind scream in our ears.
“She isn’t dying,” I whispered. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
He sagged against me. So I snuffed out every nerve in my body, muted every thought, and grew a shell of adamant against what he was about to say.
“She was dead within minutes of us leaving the capital,” he said. “I knew it when the Ray left my body.”
My ears refused to accept the words. So they washed over me instead, falling harmlessly to the earth beneath us. I would deal with them later—one impossibility at a time. “How long have we been flying?” I asked.
“You’ve been asleep for hours,” he said. “Nine, maybe ten. We’re almost to Songland; though, thanks to your storm, we might need to stop for the night.”
“My storm?”
He gestured to the valley below, which was hedged by frosted blue mountains. At the mouth of the valley, chiseled into the rock face, stood massive twin statues of a Songland king, hand raised in foreboding. Each sculpture was the size of several towers, and must have taken centuries to complete. “That’s the Jinhwa Pass,” Woo In explained. “It’s the only way into Songland from the Arit mainland. Have you never wondered why Songland isn’t part of the Arit empire?”
“They refused,” I said, teeth chattering. “Enoba the Perfect accepted their choice, but cut them off from trade, since they wouldn’t