“Welcome to join in,” crooned my Quetzalan council sister, Mayazatyl, flopping so she grinned at me upside down. Her silky twin braids dangled over the bedside. “You too, Kirah.”

I rolled my eyes, and Kirah’s face flushed red.

When we first moved into the suite, the private bedchambers had shocked me. In the past, my siblings and I had slept shoulder to shoulder in the Children’s Palace’s Hall of Dreams, or in a pile on the Yorua Keep floor. All the better to ward off council sickness: the fever and slow madness that plagued Anointed Ones when we separated for more than an hour. It also made us less likely to sneak off for romantic trysts, knowing we’d have to risk waking the others.

But the Imperial Suite of An-Ileyoba boasted twelve pristine—and separate—bedchambers. They were arranged in a circle, with a hallway on the outer perimeter and an airy salon in the center. Past Anointed Ones, it seemed, had strengthened their Ray bond with age, rendering group slumber unnecessary. But thanks to Olugbade’s untimely death . . . our Ray bond was less than five years old. We were the youngest Anointed Ones to rule in Arit history.

Thérèse had solved the problem with kuso-kuso vines, heightening our connection and keeping council sickness at bay. Still, out of habit, we often crowded three or more to a bed . . . and some of my siblings were enjoying the benefits of our newfound privacy more than others.

“It’s not what it looks like,” blurted Emeronya, my Biraslovian council sister, and the youngest at fourteen. She primly adjusted the lopsided veil she wore over her short dark hair, shooting a guilty look at Kirah. Both Blessids and Biraslovians belonged to People of the Wing, the most prudish religious sect in Aritsar. “We were only telling stories. Seeing if we could give one another dreams, like Tar used to do. Back before she got busy with all her treaties and banquets.”

“Banquets to which we aren’t invited,” added my council brother Zathulu of Djbanti, tilting his shaved head.

Kirah crossed her arms. “You know why tonight’s banquet is special. Tar couldn’t invite everyone. And if you’re only telling stories . . . why are you all half naked?”

“The Ray works better skin to skin,” said my Spartian council brother, Theo, draping a sculpted arm around Kameron’s torso.

“Is the great Tarisai Idajo going to condemn us with a ruling?” deadpanned my Nyamban council brother, Umansa. He flashed a smile, bright against his dark skin, which glittered with constellation tattoos. Sensing my location through the Ray, he turned his sightless white eyes on me, holding out his wrists to be cuffed.

I cringed at the honorific, hugging the bundle of scrolls to my chest. Idajo—the Just. As High Lady Judge, enforcing imperial law was technically my job.

“She would have to arrest herself,” Emeronya pointed out, in her usual prim monotone. “When Tar forgets to raise her mental shields at night, her dreams about Sanjeet do not usually involve clothes.”