council member? I was worried sick, Woo In. We thought you were dead.”
“You’re the one who ignored orders,” he retorted. “Fleeing to the safehouse the moment there was trouble—”
“It was standard procedure,” she hissed. “If The Lady is taken, her council returns to Bhekina and regroups. That was the plan.”
“Not for us,” Woo In said. “You and me, we protect the heir.” He pointed at me, making me flinch. “Those were The Lady’s orders, Kat. Protect the heir, no matter what. And if you hadn’t left your post at the keep, we never would have lost track of her.”
“It hardly matters now,” Kathleen sputtered. “She’s safe, isn’t she? And you can’t follow any orders if you’re dead.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Woo In responded after a pause. “I … I had a song-healer.” For the first time, Kathleen noticed Kirah, who stiffened.
“I’m thirsty,” Kirah announced, and turned on her heel, marching off toward Melu’s pool. Sanjeet and I followed her, grateful to distance ourselves from the foreign energy surrounding Woo In and Kathleen.
“It’s proof,” Sanjeet said as the three of us knelt in the grass. I had brought one of Melu’s baskets, and we breakfasted on dates and kola nuts by the sparkling amber pool. “The Lady anointed her own council,” Sanjeet insisted. “They’re using The Lady’s Ray.”
“Or it’s witchcraft,” I shot back. “Or—I don’t know, we’ve been out in the wilderness too long and we’re going insane.”
“Am’s Story, Tar,” Kirah snorted. “How many more signs is it going to take? Why can’t you believe that your mother has the Ray, and that you have a gift, just like her?”
“Because—” I bit my lip, hard. “Because the Ray is supposed to pick good people, all right? My mother forced an enslaved being to bed her on this very spot! One sip of that”—I pointed to Melu’s pool—“and I become some soulless monster who lies to her friends and stabs them! The Lady and I aren’t gifted, Kirah. We’re cursed.”
“The Ray,” Sanjeet said, “doesn’t pick good people. The Ray picks leaders. And if I’ve learned anything from serving on the Imperial Guard, it’s that leadership isn’t good or evil. It’s what you choose to do with it.”
“You didn’t call me a leader when Dayo was bleeding under that tree,” I said, and immediately regretted it. Sanjeet’s and Kirah’s faces crumpled with pain, and the clearing fell into silence.
“He forgives you, you know,” Kirah muttered after a moment. “Dayo. He made me promise to tell you. Once you’ve broken your curse, he wants you back as a council member.”
Tears of relief flooded my throat. I forced them back down. “Then Dayo’s a fool,” I said.
Sanjeet shook his head. “That’s all you have to say? Am’s Story, Tar, give him a break. After everything you both have gone through—”
“That’s the problem,” I sputtered. “After everything we’ve gone through, he shouldn’t want me back! He shouldn’t want anything to do with me! But he was raised in a gilded hothouse where everyone adored him, and so he’ll never see the world for what it is: cruel and stupid and full of monsters. Monsters that look like me.”
Kirah pressed her lips together. “I wasn’t born in a gilded hothouse,” she pointed out. “And neither was Sanjeet. But we’re still here, in the middle of nowhere, doing everything we can to help you. What does that make us? Just more fools in your cruel, stupid world?”
“No,” I said after a sheepish pause. “I’m sorry.” I sighed, fidgeting with the sunstone. It had grown cold and dim at the base of my throat. “I’m just … tired, Kirah. And I don’t know what to do. Melu says the only way to get rid of my curse is to find a purpose. A place in some big, grand story.”
She brightened and sat up. “Of course. A bellysong: the cure for any soul in bondage. I should have thought of that.”
“A belly what?”
“That’s what we Blessids call it, back home.”
Home. What a foreign concept. The chilly white walls of Bhekina House loomed in the distance, reminding me that I had never been part of anything—not until I joined Dayo’s council.
“The place closest to your soul isn’t your heart,” Kirah explained. “It’s your stomach. Anger, love, and sorrow simmer together there, like bubbles in a cauldron. People of the Wing believe that when the Pelican breathed each soul into being, it wrote two secrets on a burning coal: your greatest good and your best desire. You swallowed the coal before being born,