I tried to smile back, but shadows were closing in on the edges of my vision.

“Lady Empress?”

My hand still dangled over the edge of the island. Faintly, I felt her lift it and gasp.

“Your finger,” she whispered. “It’s . . . it’s not good, Lady Empress. If I leave it, the death will spread through your whole body.” She murmured something, drawing water from Hwanghu’s wings and shaping it into a glinting ice knife. “I’m sorry, Lady Empress. But . . .”

I nodded and looked away. I barely felt it as the knife sliced through ruined bone, severing the snow-white index finger of my left hand. Ye Eun sealed the wound with ice and ripped her blouse to wrap it. Then she heaved my limp body onto Iranti’s starry back, climbing up behind me.

“Let’s go home, Lady Empress,” I heard Ye Eun say, moments before I slipped from consciousness. “Let’s go plant some flowers.”

CHAPTER 36

“I need a favor, Adukeh.”

My akorin snapped to attention, her crescent-shaped eyes fixed on me as Ododo, the almost-grown panther cub, tumbled from her lap. She’d been teasing him with a piece of fish, which he pounced at triumphantly, spiriting the morsel away before Adukeh could change her mind. “Anything, Lady Empress.”

Morning light streamed into the Imperial Bedchamber. Adukeh sat in a corner, and I could barely see her through the army of clothiers and beauticians fussing over me, Dayo, and my council siblings.

From the windows, the cheerful clamor of several thousand Arits wafted up to the bedroom—the guests to our coronation, feasting in the courtyards before the official ceremony in the Imperial Hall.

I asked, half yelling through the fray, “Adukeh, how quickly can you make up a song?”

She dimpled, breaking at once into a comic soprano: “Come and see my empress, nse, nse. Tell me, is she mighty? Bem-bem-bem. Ah, but see her akorin! Nse, nse—isn’t she a genius? Bem-bem-bem.”

My council siblings and I laughed, though they fell silent when I cried out, cradling my left hand.

“Forgive me, Lady Empress,” gasped Adebimpe, covering her mouth in horror. While slipping bangles onto my wrists, she had squeezed my hand by accident, grazing the tender tissue that had once been my index finger.

I smiled at it ruefully. “It’s all right. It’s my fault for being vain enough to remove the bandage.”

It had been two weeks since I returned from the Underworld. The amputated finger was barely scarred over, though it was healing nicely.

In an instant, Sanjeet was at my side, pressing my palm to his lips, eyes scanning me anxiously as his Hallow checked for infection.

“No fever,” he observed, broad shoulders sagging with relief. Sanjeet stood resplendent in a heavily embroidered tunic of black and gold. Kohl lined his tea-colored eyes, and his beard and bushy eyebrows had been trimmed and manicured, framing his face in sleek, dark lines. “Though your pulse is elevated. You’re still recovering, sunshine girl. Until we’re sure Warlord Fire’s Death has left you, go easy on your heart. No exercise or sudden shocks.”