No. Not sparkling. Blinking.

Each sapphire was an eye, fringed in silver lashes. They covered her like a mantle, each one wiser and farther-seeing than I could possibly imagine.

“Iranti,” I murmured, a word in old Arit. “Memory.” The name had tumbled from my lips, as though I’d been carrying it all my life—and perhaps I had. The creature nodded her assent. Then she named me back, in a language without words: a sequence of grunts and musical notes that I loved at once. After I voiced my acceptance, she jutted her horn, gently resting its tip between my eyes.

I gasped. My Hallow dove into the Underworld floor, submerging me in an ocean of color and voices. My whole life, I had always struggled to retrieve memories older than a few decades. But somehow, Iranti had amplified my Hallow, allowing me to see . . . centuries. Millennia. Billions upon billions of stories spinning around me until my chest tightened and my temples began to throb, and I—

Iranti drew back, tickling my cheek with a puff of warm air from her nostrils. An apology, I realized. She hadn’t meant to hurt me. Only to show me what she, what we could do. Together.

“You can find anything,” I whispered. “Any story, from anywhere. And you’ll help me carry them, won’t you?”

Her many eyes glinted, as if with humor, and again she spoke in that voice that was not quite a voice: Iranti never forgets.

I touched my brow to her cheek, nuzzling her wrinkled face as her eyes blinked against me. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Name your emi-ehran had been the fifth task on Ye Eun’s training. Now only one, the sixth, remained:

Ascend the Stair of Mirrors, not heeding your own reflection. Stop for nothing. Trust no one.

Escape the Underworld.

CHAPTER 33

The stair of mirrors, Ye Eun had warned me, would be the most treacherous part of my journey. But I found that hard to believe. After all, I wasn’t alone anymore—Iranti’s body radiated heat like a heavenly brazier, thawing my extremities from head to toe. When we arrived at the stairs’ bottom landing, hope flickered inside me.

Compared to the rest of the Underworld, the stairs were pleasantly bright—a steep, spiraling staircase several yards wide, lit ethe really by floating green lamps. The lamps were amplified, however, by the mirrors; the floor, ceiling, and walls enclosing the staircase were all hewn from dizzyingly spotless glass and when we entered, every movement we made seemed to echo on forever. When Iranti mounted the staircase, I half expected the steps to shatter—but the glass remained firm beneath her massive plodding feet and did not smear beneath my filthy ones. One last trek—one steep climb—and I would arrive at the Oruku Breach again. A free empress at last, and a live one.

At first, it was easy to ignore my reflection. I looked terrible, of course. A girl with puffy, bloodshot eyes, a stained blue wrapper, and skin made ashy from dust stared back at me from every direction. But after days or hours of that joint-grinding climb, the girl in the mirrors began to change. On one wall, a girl with my face and body appeared to address a crowd. This Tarisai, however, was several inches taller, black hair billowing around her in a coiling halo. She radiated grave wisdom, and the adinkra gown I had worn at my Pinnacle suited her muscled, commanding frame much better than my average one. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I knew, instinctually, that masses would die to serve this girl. She stopped speaking then, glancing over her gold-powdered shoulder to meet my eye.