And though I loved my friends—though I would still die and live for them—I would never be that Tarisai again.

“There’s something I need to tell you all,” I whispered then, staring emptily at the eye-filled tapestries. “I’ve been getting visions. Apparitions of children like the one who killed Thaddace. I saw one last night at the banquet—and another, after anointing Dayo. I can’t tell if they want to help me or hurt me.”

“Really?” Emeronya, who studied the supernatural as High Lady Magus, perked up in alarm. “When do the creatures usually appear? When you’re doing something? Thinking, feeling something specific?”

I considered, chewing the inside of my cheek. The first child had appeared when I was full of hope, thinking I’d succeeded at rescuing Thaddace. And when the second vision appeared, I had been watching the hall full of dancers, basking in the triumph of my Peace Banquet. Finally, moments before I had hallucinated the hall as a mass mausoleum . . . I had just celebrated Dayo’s anointing.

Why should you celebrate? the ghosts had hissed. Why should you live happy when we are dead? Do more—do more—pay for our lives.

“I’m not sure,” I said at last. “Not exactly. All I know is, before the visons appear . . . I almost feel like I’m enough. Like I’m doing the best I can, and I deserve to be Raybearer. Deserve to be empress. Then the voices make me feel . . . useless. Like there’s so much evil, so much injustice, and I have to fix it.”

“This is strange,” Emeronya said, peering again into her scrying glass. “I have heard of Underworld apparitions before, but—”

“Do you think they’re shades?” I asked hopefully. At least if the apparitions were real spirits, it would mean I was not going mad.

“Not exactly,” she said slowly. “Shades are souls that died recently. They visit our world only when summoned, and sometimes not even then. Afterward, they join Egungun’s Parade, traveling to their final resting place at Core. Some shades never make it to paradise, though. They just . . . linger in the Underworld. Unable to find rest. And sometimes—” She paused. “It’s said that abiku consume lost souls. Defile, reshape them until what’s left are creatures between death and resurrection. Beings that can appear as both spirit and flesh, known for mixing lies with the truth. Tar . . . you’re being haunted by ojiji.”

“It can’t be ojiji,” Kirah objected, as shivers chased up my glyph-covered arms. “Those are bully spirits—they coerce people into doing evil. To destroy themselves and others. They don’t coax people to solve injustice.”

“Maybe they’re taunting me,” I whispered. “Maybe they know that no matter how much I care, no matter how hard I try . . . it’ll never be enough.”

My voice broke. As hot tears sprang to my eyes, invisible caresses warmed my skin. Immediately, all eleven of my council siblings had bathed me with the Ray, expressing a depth of love that words never could. I closed my eyes, caressing them back—each member of my forever family, each branch of my external heartbeat.