Duja had scarcely set foot in the eastern wing in over two decades. She remembered, with heart-pounding immediacy, the last time she had made it to the upper floors. How could she forget that fateful afternoon? The air seeping into the guest chambers had been heavy with the promise of torrential rain. It was red-hot and suffocating, but they needed to keep the screens drawn for fear of being seen. The eastern wing⁠—whose idea had it been? Duja would have been too reticent, too skittish. As she stared down the darkened corridor, Imeria’s laughter, soft as orchid petals, echoed in her ears. Reaching through memory’s haze, Imeria’s slender fingers left trails of gooseflesh across Duja’s skin. Oh, yes, the queen remembered. The air had been thicker than honey that day, but that hadn’t been the reason she couldn’t breathe.

“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” Ojas’s deep voice jolted Duja back to the present, resonating through her bones like a gong.

She blinked. The general watched her, his stoic eyes hard with concern. Duja gave him a small smile of gratitude. Beneath his stern exterior, Ojas was undeniably loyal to the Gatdula family. It didn’t matter to Ojas who the man in the guest chambers was. If Duja or the king gave him an order, he would follow it without hesitating. His left hand rested on the doorknob, awaiting her instruction.

Duja nodded, smoothing down the thin fabric of her skirt to collect herself. “Go ahead, Ojas,” she said. “I’m ready to speak with him.”

Ojas opened the door and strode into the guest chambers. He announced her presence, as if she were receiving any other visitor. “Her Majesty, Hara Duja, daughter of Mulayri and protector of the Maynaran throne.”

But the alchemist wasn’t some highborn son or foreign dignitary. He was standing at one of the closed windows, lost in thought, when Ojas’s voice startled him. He whipped around. His spectacles, crooked wire-framed glass, slid down his nose; like his starched shirt and stiff trousers, they appeared to be of western make. He hesitated for a long, painful moment, which made Duja think he had never interacted with royalty before, then stumbled to his knees. When he lowered his head, he let out a garbled sound that might have been an attempt at obsequiousness. Duja couldn’t be sure.

A frown tugged at the corners of her lips. “Do you not understand Maynaran?” she asked the alchemist as she appraised him. “I’m afraid I didn’t think about that.”

The alchemist looked up in surprise. “N-no, I understand. If you speak slowly, at least, Your . . . Your Majesty.” He answered her not in Maynaran, but in a sister tongue. His accent had a foreign twang, and his mouth stretched strangely around certain vowels, but otherwise she could understand his speech.