News of our cancelled coronation ceremony, which Dayo still insisted on postponing until I returned from the Underworld, had shocked the volatile social world of Oluwan City. Combined with news of my forfeiting the mine—and depriving, without warning, the nobles of its profits—the atmosphere at An-Ileyoba court had been coldly sullen for days.

My gaze traveled to the skyline below, where white-washed high-rises glowed against the velvet night sky. All around Palace Hill, the citizens of Oluwan City had pretended to fall asleep.

The Emperor’s Walk was a five-hundred-year-old tradition. The night before a coronation, the Imperial Guard imposed an early curfew, and the million residents of Oluwan City took to their homes in quiet revelry—feasting, storytelling, burning lamps all night . . . and peeking if they dared from their windows, hoping for a glance of their future emperor as he walked the streets in the dark. Tonight, they would look for two figures instead of one.

“I wish our family was home,” I said, staring back wistfully at the moonlit An-Ileyoba turrets. “Emero, Maya, Kam—all of us. It would make the palace seem less . . . ominous.”

“We can’t be sure what the Crocodile will do,” Dayo reminded me. “I miss the others too, but it’s best they keep watch for alagbato attacks in their realms.”

I nodded glumly, picking at the sachet of dried kuso-kuso I kept folded in my wrapper. I placed a leaf under my tongue whenever I needed to feel my council siblings, to sync my heartbeat with theirs, scattered thousands of miles away. Occasionally, I caught snippets of words:

Love—

Tar—

Miss—

Flashes of their faces and voices that I savored each night, like drops of cool, clean water in dry season. Missing Kirah was the worst. And I’d received word that she might not return for several months, continuing from Blessid Valley to start her campaign in Songland, facilitating reparations for the Redemptors.

Dayo nudged my ribs. “The Emperor’s Walk can wait,” he said again. “Am knows you need the rest. Don’t you have your first . . . ah . . . intimate meeting with the vassal rulers tomorrow?”

I stiffened, battling the unsettling memory of King Zuri’s arms around me at the Peace Banquet, and the inviting smell of agave wafting over me as he leaned toward my ear. Of all the vassal rulers I had to convince to love me, Zuri unnerved me the most.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” I told Dayo. “And it’s not an Emperor’s Walk anymore. It’s our walk.”

I closed my hand around his. Imperial Guard Captain Bunmi, along with four of her cohort, stood in the gate’s shadow, waiting to escort us to the city. She saluted me and Dayo as we passed through. “Evening, Your Imperial Majesties. We’ve secured your route through the city.”

The warriors were dressed in plainclothes, pupils dilated with childish excitement. I winked at them, and Bunmi suppressed a smile.

“Evening, fellow commoners,” I said, dipping my head.