“N-No,” I stammered, lifting a stubborn chin. “I want to live.”

“Oh?” Another creature crept closer, eel-like, with veiny, translucent skin and unblinking, fishlike eyes. In a low, gurgling voice, the beast who could only be Drowning asked the question I had been waiting for. “And out of all the souls of the Overworld—the mortals who have died, and are dying, as we speak—why should you be allowed to live?”

I inhaled, then blurted the answer I’d rehearsed with Kirah: “Because I’m saving lives,” I said. “I’m a good empress. And a good person.”

Again, laughter shook the bridge, causing bile to roil in my stomach.

“Such hubris,” hissed Poison, a boil-covered beast with foul green breath. “Only a year ago, your hands ran with the blood of an innocent prince.”

“And from birth,” grunted Organ-Death, a tusked boar with twitching arteries, bulging like vines beneath its skin, “your days were gilded in wealth and privilege. Everything you own—your crown, your palace, even the friends you call your Anointed Ones—was bought with the lives of children.”

The words lashed like whips. Organ-Death spoke the truth. Without Redemptors, Enoba Kunleo the Perfect could never have brought peace to Aritsar. And without peace, he could not have reigned as emperor.

All this time, one beast watched me without saying a word: a sharp-clawed lion with blank, milky eyes, and a floating translucent mane. A sickening metallic smell filled my nose as I watched it, and I knew instinctively that this was one of the Unnamed Deaths—a terror beyond words.

“I’m trying to make things right,” I croaked at last. “But how can I change Aritsar if I’m dead? I deserve to live because I care. I can fix it!”

“All you could achieve,” wheezed the hairy, snub-nosed beast of Suffocation, “was fulfilled when you entered the Underworld. The new Treaty is complete. You are the last of history’s Redemptors. In death, you have accomplished far more than your life ever did.”

“To the thousands of souls already lost,” added a frost-white wolf, crouching to its massive haunches, “to the Redemptors sacrificed before you . . . you are no savior. The only thing you have left to offer them is justice: an eye for an eye.” From the hunger in its cloudy yellow eyes, I knew without a doubt that this was Old Age—one of the beasts, along with the Unnamed Deaths, who could still kill me. “Your life,” it said, “for the ones your ancestors took.”

I had heard these words before, of course: in the pounding melody of my headaches, the song at the edge of my nightmares.

Pay the price.

I slumped, my courage draining away. Perhaps this was why Zuri had let those commoners murder him. Had he been right? After defeating the warlords, had his death been the only thing left to give?

My chin hardened. Yes, Zuri of Djbanti had died for justice. But he had also died to escape—to kill the guilt that had plagued him all his life. He had looked at comfort with disdain and regarded rest as weakness. Zuri had died because it was easier to be legendary than human.