eyes glassy and unfocused. After exchanging a look, Kirah and I climbed into the pit. Sanjeet ducked to avoid the arc of Dayo’s shovel, then wrestled the tool away. Dayo paused, staring blankly at his now empty hands. They were bleeding.
My stomach knotted. “Dayo, you idiot.” I cleaned his fingers with the hem of my nightshift. “What in Am’s name are you dreaming about?”
“Bring them back,” he mumbled. In the moonlight, the burn scars shone pale against his dark skin. Sand clung to his sweat.
“Bring them back? Bring who?”
“Children,” he said. “Redemptors. I’m the future emperor. I should—I should save them.”
“This year’s Redemptors are gone, Dayo,” Kirah said softly. “Most of them are already dead, or lost.” She grasped his arms. “This has to stop. You have to accept things you can’t change. You can’t keep scaring us like—”
“Underworld,” Dayo repeated.
I stared, realization slowly sinking in. “You asked for a shovel so you could dig to the Underworld?”
Sanjeet, Kirah, and I looked at each other. Then we began to laugh, a breathless, wheezing noise that sounded suspiciously close to sobbing. Our shoulders shook, and we held each other up for support. Dayo stood quietly, watching us with those vacant black eyes.
Sanjeet hoisted him from the pit, and I pressed Dayo’s temples with both hands. Heat pulsed through my fingertips as I silenced his memories. I erased the shrill of wounded villagers, the shrieking hyena-beasts, the cries for help, the ghosts of vanished children.
Dayo sagged in Sanjeet’s arms. Then he revived and stood, looking about dazedly. “Tar … Kirah. Jeet.” He took in our beach surroundings, and his face shaded with understanding. “Twelve realms, not again. I’m so sorry.”
“Do me a favor, little brother.” Sanjeet dusted sand from Dayo’s hair and clapped him gently on the back. “Next time you’re digging to the Underworld, bring a bigger shovel. Thérèse could weed her dahlias with this one.”
“And be more careful with this,” I added, securing the obsidian mask back around Dayo’s neck. His immunities to death were not affected by whether or not he wore the mask. Still, the thought of him damaging it made me shiver.
“What would happen, I wonder?” Kirah asked, frowning at him. “If you lost it?”
Dayo shrugged. “Not much. There are only two Raybearer masks, mine and Father’s. And according to legend, they always find their way back to their rightful owners.”
When we returned to the garden, I grimaced and touched my wrist—I’d hurt myself helping Dayo from the pit. Sanjeet noticed, scanning me immediately with his Hallow.
“You pulled a tendon,” he said. “We’ll need to stop by the medicine shed.”
“I can fix it,” Kirah piped up.
I shook my head. “Save your Hallow to help Dayo get back to sleep.”
“We won’t be long,” Sanjeet put in. “Go on. We’ll catch up.”
Dayo nodded, giving me an apologetic smile before Kirah helped him climb the banquet hall steps. Sanjeet and I stood in the garden alone.
I raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have to do this. My wrist can wait till morning.”
“Do you feel like sleeping right now?”
“No.”
“Me either.”
Night had aged into the indigo hours before dawn. Our feet crunched on white gravel as we passed beneath the wisteria again. Sanjeet was too tall for the arbor; violet petals tumbled down his bare russet shoulders. Somewhere in the dark, an owl cooed. I let my fingers pass over the wisteria vines, and my ears rang with lisps and giggles: the whispered conversations of council siblings long ago. Generations of Anointed Ones had frolicked where I stood, unaware of the eavesdropping branches overhead.
Nestled between orange trees, a wooden shed stood in the shadows, and Thérèse’s herb garden sprawled around it. When healers were unavailable from Yorua Village, Sanjeet, Kirah, and I practiced medicine here, using our Hallows to treat our guards and servants. Sanjeet would scan a patient’s body for ailments, and if the problem was physical, Kirah would attempt poultices or a healing chant. But if the problem was mental, I extracted memories and reshaped them, setting old demons to rest.
I had never tried to heal myself. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I sensed that Ye Eun’s fate had been my fault. The day after the disaster at Ebujo, I had tried to invoke Ye Eun’s shade, burning the remains of her flower crown and sitting up all night. But she didn’t appear, not even to reprimand me, which somehow felt more damning. I dared not hope she had survived. So I allowed her reproachful stare to haunt my memories, hoping