In that moment, I had known Adebimpe better than in weeks of her flawless appearances at court.

“Don’t go,” I told Min Ja and Da Seo, rising to my feet with conviction. “I . . . I think I’m ready to prove I’m not a saint.”

I had brought no kuso-kuso leaves, and so this time, Min Ja and Da Seo were wide awake when I fed them my memories. We sat on cushions in Min Ja’s parlor, holding hands in a circle as the ugliest scenes from my life played out on an invisible stage.

First, I showed them the firepit.

We are a nine-year-old girl so desperate for her mother’s touch, warmth draws her like a moth to a flame. She indulges mad fantasies, giggling at the kitchen fire in Bhekina House. She lets it caress her, imagining human fingers, and speaks to it—Yes, Mother. I love you too, Mother—until at last she topples in.

The servants scream prayers to the Storyteller, tossing water on the fire and sustaining nasty burns as they haul the girl to safety . . .

And she’s laughing.

The girl is laughing on the ground, chortling breathlessly as her clothes smolder. She clutches her waist, shuddering, wheezing: See? I didn’t burn. You’re all so silly. I didn’t burn, because my mother loves me. That means she’ll come back. She has to come back.

Doesn’t she?

The girl rocks back and forth. By degrees, her laughter shrills into keening, wrenching sobs. The sound grates on our ears as we bleed into the next memory.

We are eleven now, meeting a doe-eyed prince for the first time. Dayo cowers behind a curtain in the Children’s Palace, his dark face the picture of innocence. He smiles, gap-toothed, warming the girl from head to foot with curious affection.

And she wants to kill him.

The fantasy plays out in her head, over and over. First, her hands around his throat. Then his cries of protest, strangled and desperate. Then the light, fading at last from his guileless black eyes.

She recoils, knowing that the fantasy is evil. This boy is a good person, better than she’ll ever be. He deserves to live, and so she should leave forever to keep him safe. It would be so easy to fail the Children’s Palace tests on purpose. Then she would be sent far away, where she could never hurt him. It’s the right thing to do, even though she likes the way he makes her feel. To stay is to actively put him in danger.

But she returns the boy’s smile and says, “I’m not going anywhere.”

The love-starved girl decides to stay by his side. She chooses to keep herself warm, even at the risk of setting the boy aflame.

At last, the girl is sixteen years old. The wind whips around Enitawa’s Quiver, causing the tree’s branches to shudder in high moans. The girl, or what is left of her, peels away Dayo’s shirt and places her hands on his bare chest. He smiles at her trustingly. A silver dagger swings in a pouch at her side.