The ancestors’ gazes pressed against me as if they were invisible blades waiting to cut my flesh to ribbons. I had to tell the truth, but not because of the knives. I had to tell the truth because this was a court of law. One did not lie in such a place.

“The Hunt did enter your country because I cut a gate in the fence. The Master of the Wild Hunt compelled me to lead him to the dragon dreamer, to my cousin, Beatrice. I never knew there was a spirit fence around your country. I never knew I could cut through it, and that cutting through it would leave your lands vulnerable. For that, I am truly sorry.”

Her gaze had a shine that was not like living eyes but more like polished wood beads. I could almost see my reflection in it. “Who turned the eyes and will of the hunter onto me? Who was the instrument of my death?”

I straightened my shoulders. I was not proud, but neither was I ashamed. “I was clean, yet the noble cacica would have killed me as a salter if I had not asked the Master of the Wild Hunt to kill her first. I acted in self-defense.”

A gust of rain washed through the hall, dissolving the roof and beams and floor and the ancestors themselves. Wet, I found myself standing ankle-deep in clumps of dirt in a field of young cassava plants. A sandy path snaked away into the forest’s canopy, where one tree’s crown rose above the others like a tower. Beside me, Rory sank down on his haunches.

The head of Queen Anacaona still rested in my arms. The way she watched me, unblinking, made me shift my feet restlessly, but I could not run away from what I had done.

“What happened to the hall? And the ballcourt?” I asked.

“The lords who sit at the court of justice have released you. You told the truth.”

“Does that mean I’m free?”

Her stare bored into me. “My throne is shaken. My sons are scattered and weak because I was torn from the Taino court at an inauspicious time. My brother the cacique was healing in slow measure and would have survived, but instead he took his last breath. My body is dead because of you. Knowing that, do you feel free?”

Even knowing I’d made the only choice I could, and that I had truly acted in self-defense, I did not feel free. I did not want to be the kind of person who would.

“Why are you still with me, Your Highness? Is there some task I may perform for you? Somewhere I may carry you? It seems rude to just… plant you here.”

“Take me to my son.”