I recount the evening, stopping at the chorus of voices I heard last night when Lark got me down from the tree. Mariah hums. “I think you’re good. That sounds like typical Medium ‘noise’ that comes and goes. You didn’t tap into enough power to disrupt the dead beyond your immediate location.”

“That’s a relief,” I say.

“The real question is, are you all locked up tight now?”

I don’t answer right away. To Mariah, being “all locked up” means that I don’t hear directly from the dead unless I ask for someone by ritual. But the truth is, some mornings, I wake up with the thirst for war in my mouth. Metallic and hot and hungry. I can’t tell whom it belongs to, but I know it doesn’t feel like me.

“Yeah, that answer is taking too long, girl,” Mariah chastises. “You locked up or not?”

I grimace. “I think so? I haven’t made an offering or done the ritual to invite anyone back in. No possessions. But sometimes, I feel… not quite myself.”

Alice pipes up. “The Legendborn can gain personality traits from their knights, so maybe that’s it?”

“Mmnnnnn…” Mariah makes a low warning sound. “But you’re not just Legendborn, you’re a Medium. Imagine smoke escaping beneath a door, trying to reach you. There could be a fire on the other side. Bleed-throughs. Be careful.”

“I’ll keep an eye on it.” I release a heavy breath, even though I’m not sure how to do that more than I already have. “I won’t keep y’all. Alice is here to braid my hair.”

“All that hair?!” Mariah rears back in the small video screen, eyes aghast. “Girrrrl, good luck.”

“Thank you!” Alice calls.

“Talk soon, Bree,” Patricia says.

Once we hang up, I swipe to a music app and press play. Alice pops up and stands behind me, pulling off my bonnet. She tugs at the loose twists, damp from my late night wash and detangle.

“Come on, Vassal Chen. Let’s get this done.”

6

MY FIRST PUBLIC act as Crown Scion is to say farewell to our dead.

However, since most of the people at this funeral don’t realize that I am the Crown Scion, it’s not really public at all.