“I have broken Sanjeet of Dhyrma’s curse,” I croaked, voice still parched from the smoke. “His hands were made for life, not death. Bear witness.” Then I hurled the skull into the flames. The village cheered, and the drummers pounded a deafening beat. I retrieved the last wreath crown and placed it in his combed curls, and Sanjeet caught my hands and held them against his face. My heart slammed in my chest, but just as abruptly he relinquished me, striding over to the elders.
Sanjeet held out his hand, demanding the drinking gourd without a word.
“Yes,” an elder said, handing over the gourd hesitantly. “Since your last token has been revoked, you may choose again.”
Sanjeet plunged the gourd into the vessel, tossed back some honeywine, and spat out a glittering ruby.
“Ah,” the elders crowed. “An excellent token. Am has smiled on you—”
The revelers gasped as Sanjeet threw the ruby in the dirt. He submerged the gourd into the vessel again, and this time he fished out an emerald the size of a plum pit: twice as valuable as the token before. He tossed that aside too.
Speechless, the entire village watched as Sanjeet drank and plunged, over and over, discarding a small mound of treasures in the dirt. At last, he stopped and smiled. A small round token winked in his palm.
A cowrie shell.
SANJEET POCKETED THE TOKEN AND LEFT THE festival grounds without a word. His back melted into the shadows beyond the pit’s glow. I stared after him even when the musicians began another song and revelers gyrated around me to the tonal beat of talking drums.
From her dais across the grounds, High Priestess Mbali waved me toward her. She stood and began to descend from her dais, but before she could, an arm pulled me into the crowd. I jumped, prepared to rebuke an impertinent villager … and found myself scowling up at Dayo’s grinning face. Why did he always spirit me away when I tried to speak with Mbali?
“I don’t dance,” I reminded him.
“But you can,” he said. The obsidian mask glittered on his chest as he moved in a rhythmic circle around me. “I saw you. Years ago at the Children’s Palace. You snuck up to the roof with Kirah to watch the festivals in the city. And you danced.”
“You followed me?”
He placed a hand on my waist, coaxing it to sway instinctively. “I followed you.”
Oluwan dancing relied almost entirely on hips. The drums pulsed fast and high, like the heartbeat of a wild hare. I lacked the natural grace of Oluwan women. I was awkward and stilted in places they were fluid and sultry. My steps faltered, and my face heated with embarrassment. “Everyone’s watching,” I muttered.
“Don’t look at them,” Dayo said. “Look at me.”
I did. His broad Kunleo features were radiant. He winked, teeth bright against his skin, which was beautiful even with the burn scar. I remembered how cheerfully Dayo had mocked himself in the earlier game, and I envied his childlike freedom. My hips began to roll to the beat, and I mirrored Dayo’s arms.
“Don’t look,” he reminded me as my gaze slid to the crowd of villagers around us. The Ray hummed in my ears and I heard him add, Do you love me now, Tarisai of Swana?
The music’s tempo increased. My muscles loosened; we revolved like moths in firelight. Dayo’s long, lean form grew suddenly unfamiliar as I tried to imagine it near mine, closer than we’d ever been: a promise beyond council vows. I heard the question buried beneath his words. Look at me.
I had always felt close to Dayo in a way I couldn’t explain. We knew the rumors surrounding us, the public expectation that I would bear Dayo’s heir. But the intimacy we shared had never invoked the heat between our legs. I loved him—would die for him—but this new language, the message we sent with our bodies as we danced, felt … insincere. Staged. As though we were acting out parts that the world expected us to perform.
I found my mind slipping away, gone to those shadows beyond the festival grounds, where another man waited in the welcoming darkness.
When the song finished, I backed away from Dayo, letting the revelers form a river between us. He looked on, confused, craning his neck to find me. But I turned and ran from the festival.
Like hurling a stone into a well, I sent the Ray into the darkness. After several moments I found Sanjeet; he had walked half a