“But what if it’s impossible?” Beatrix pressed. “Impossible to love you?”

My jaw ticked. But before I could say something I’d regret, Dayo made an announcement.

“I have a theory,” he said grandly, while Ray-speaking privately: I have a surprise.

My arm hair stood immediately on edge. Dayo had notoriously poor instincts for surprises. For my seventeenth birthday just last week, he had presented me with a pearl-pink albino baby elephant—an attempt to make up for all the years he had tried to make me forget about Swana.

“It’s to remind you of the grasslands,” he had said eagerly. “Elephants have amazing memories, and you have your Hallow. You two are going to be best friends.”

The calf had proceeded to escape its pen near the Imperial Suite, get high grazing on kuso-kuso, and break into the bathhouses, where it splashed muddily into a pool of screaming noblewomen. Last I’d heard, my new best friend had been penned in the northern palace orchards, giving the poor imperial orange-pickers gray hairs.

But before I could interrogate Dayo further, he was addressing the entire Imperial Hall. “I’ve given a lot of thought to why Anointed Ones are so faithful,” he said. “So intimate with each other. It doesn’t make sense, when you think about it, right? Anointed Ones are strangers as children. They swear fealty to the Raybearer, not to each other. Yet in five hundred years of councils, Anointed Ones have never betrayed each other. Why?”

After a pause, King Nadrej of Biraslov ventured in his guttural accent, “Fear of council sickness, of course.” The mustachioed king wrapped his fur-lined garments closer about him, which he had insisted on wearing even in the Oluwan heat.

King Uxmal of Quetzala agreed, stroking jade crystal gages that hung low in each of his ears. Embedded crystals of turquoise and pyrite flashed in his teeth. “Any rivals would endure each other’s company, if the alternative was going mad.”

“I don’t think that’s the answer,” Kirah said. “Forced companionship makes people hate each other as often as not.”

“Then it’s because Anointed Ones share a common goal: to protect the Raybearer,” suggested Chief Uriyah, ruler of the Blessid Valley clans. “Just as we Blessids are many tribes, but we unite to preserve our way of life.”

“But the Blessid nomads have more in common than just one goal,” Dayo replied. “You have customs. Religion, histories. Anointed Ones hail from different realms, often with conflicting cultures and values. So why do they love each other?”

Silence spread across the table, and Dayo bounced on his heels with excitement.

“It’s the Ray bond,” he announced. “Ray-speaking. Having someone else’s thoughts and desires feel like your own. If one person understands another completely—from their deepest pain to their most passing thought—I think they can’t help but love each other. I think . . .” Dayo gave me a small smile and shrugged, crinkling his burn scar. “When you take someone’s story as your own, it’s no different than loving yourself. Tarisai can’t Ray-speak with you yet. But she can share her memories. All of them.”