I sighed, wetting my lips. “I should live because I’m saving lives. I’m doing the right thing. I’m a good empress. A good person.”

Not enough, hissed the children. Not enough.

I told myself it didn’t matter what the dead Redemptors thought. Ye Eun had said that the Deaths would have to let me pass, so long as I believed my answer. And I believed it. Of course I did.

Didn’t I?

“I wish the ojiji would leave you alone,” Kirah said softly. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us how bad it had gotten.”

I chewed my lip. “It’s complicated,” I said at last. “The thing is, even though the ojiji are cruel, they tell the truth as often as they don’t.”

“Tar, how can you say that?” Kirah shook her head wildly, shaking the tassels on her prayer scarf. “Those voices called you worthless. They isolated you on purpose. Stopped you from asking for help, made you do everything yourself.”

“They’re trying to wear me down,” I admitted. “So I’ll feel hopeless enough to stay in the Underworld. Still . . . they drove me to do things. Good things. The Pinnacle, the battle in Djbanti—none of that would have happened if I hadn’t felt so guilty. I want the voices to go away, Kirah, but . . . I’m afraid of what happens when they do. What if being free—feeling happy—makes me blind again? Ignorant of all the injustice around me, like I was before?”

Deep in thought, Kirah scowled at the priestess pendant around her neck—a golden pelican, inlaid in mother-of-pearl. She clutched it with pale knuckles, as if trying to squeeze out an answer.

“What was it you told me Old Mongwe said?” she asked suddenly. “About guilt?”

“That it’s useless.” I sighed, remembering the hermit’s opaque words: Guilt is self-centered, and leads only to destructive obsession. But conviction brings balance—a sense of purpose beyond oneself.

“And what you said,” Kirah pressed. “When you convinced Thaddace to leave that prison?”

I blinked in confusion. She gripped my shoulders, hazel eyes alight. “It was important, Tarisai. You said you heard it from someone—someone powerful.”

I remembered then—the voice from the shrine at Sagimsan, turning my limbs to water as the breath of the Storyteller swelled on the mountain air.

“Do not ask how many people you will save,” I murmured. “Ask, to what world will you save them? What makes a world worth surviving in?”

“That’s right.” Kirah nodded fervently. “And what made Thaddace keep going—what made him try—it wasn’t guilt. It was love.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. “It was love, Tarisai.”

I’m scared, Empress Tar, Ji Huan Ray-spoke, his voice cutting through the din of my birthday banquet.

Instead of a stately festival in the Imperial Hall, I had opted for an intimate party in the palace orchards. Encircled by gold-dappled trees and a breeze perfumed with orange blossoms, all twenty-one of my living council siblings knelt in the grass, feasting in flower crowns around a long, low table.